If sortition is bulletproof against corruption, why not ask the National Rifle Association to fund an assembly on gun control?
Oh, horrified at reading the full name of the NRA?
VOLDEMORT! Voldemort! Voldemort!
Are you afraid you would be sortitioned into an assembly on gun control and come away supporting gun ownership?! All your flaming liberal progressive friends would cast you out! Thank goodness you now own a gun for your personal safety!
We sortitionists claim to be non-partisan and all-inclusive, and yet as long as we’re funded by academia and nonprofits with “democracy” in their title, we will look (and we are in fact) run by leftists.
Given that Equality by Lot just published an article, “The New York Sun Casts Sortition as a Leftist Menace”, well, what have we got to lose? How many more questions can I ask in this blog?
I’m telling you, the Oakland assembly will be dismissed by conservatives as a ploy of Berkeley and the Connecticut assembly will be dismissed by conservatives as a ploy by Yale. And they’re half right! As in, these assemblies are ploys by academic institutions, but since I think Civic Assemblies are strongly immune to capture by academic elites, they are wrong to dismiss them. However, I’m arleady abeliever in sortition. I’ve read about it, I’ve seen it, and I’ve helped organize it. Most people ain’t never heard of it.
Oh, and in case it isn’t clear, Berkeley and Yale are considered evil towers of liberal parasites that don’t do shit for society. And, as much as I don’t think they’re evil, I do think academia has such misaligned incentives that their output is close to worthless. But that’s just like my opinion, man!
Let’s look at the LA Charter Reform Assembly, which I helped with. The Broad Foundation gave us (Rewrite LA/PDLA/Healthy Democracy) $25k and we accepted $200,000 from an anonymous an individual donor. Or so I was told! Now I’ve heard that maybe it wasn’t a single individual? I don’t know; I don’t care; I forget if I’m not supposed to say the exact amount, because we decided to spend half of it and save half of it for a future assembly, but we’re waiting to see what LA City Council does, but they’re cowards and we’re not supposed to say things like that publicly which might upset these politicians we hope to work with, and yada yada yada, but I yearn to have the popularity that would actually make uttering such things a risk for me.
Officially, the $200k came from the Berggruen Insititute. That is, the private donor(s) gave the cash to the Berggruen Institute and specified that it only be used for an LA assembly on the charter. What is the Berggruen Institute? “The Berggruen Institute's mission is to develop ideas and shape political, economic and social institutions for the 21st century.” (https://berggruen.org/) It’s just a billionaire named Nick Berggruen who’s paying money to his journalist friend to “develop ideas and shape political, ecopnomic and social insitutions for the 21st century.”
What’s that you say?
You thought all billionaires had names the sounded like tusk, or bozos, or smucker, or eel, or hates?
You didn’t know there’s 3,400+ billionaires?
You’re surprised most of them don’t like publicity?
Are we maybe playing into the hands of billionaires when we only talk about like the 6 who revel in their notoriety? Is it “we” who are playing into their hands or do they own the media that plays into their own hands?
Question: do you think 13 or more questions have been asked in this post so far?
Ok, back to sortition. When you look at the donors for the Connecticut Citizens’ Assembly, there’s several organizations as well as individual. We are naive to think that either the orgs or the individuals do not have agendas. Some probably want to get rid of taxes, some want more taxes, some maybe even want a Land Value Tax (!), while others just want to spread the use of Civic Assemblies, and others just want to try something new.
There an agenda. Here an agenda. Everywhere an agenda.
But agendas aren’t even bad! That’s what I’m saying! Just let it all hang out.
Say it: you hate guns and you think people who own guns are stupid.
Have you ever met any gun owners? Do the laws in Nashville have to match those in Los Angeles?
Do we believe in the deliberations of representative samples of people or not?
We let people sue the government and we trust juries to decide the outcome.
Let the NRA “sue” the government and trust a Civic Assembly decide the outcome.
The Connecticut assembly received $650k in donations and is seeking $200k more. The Oakland assembly also needed about that much funding. Maybe one day society will recognize the value of assemblies (you know, every major US city has about a dozen jury trials ongoing at any time and we seem to think that’s worth the cost). But right now, we need some sortition ammunition!
Disclaimer: I don’t know bro. I just got off a Zoom call talking about getting funding for our respective nonprofits. Do I find having a funder problematic or do I just like not having a boss? Do I like feeling holier-than-thou because I am a volunteer? I don’t know.
FUND ME https://ko-fi.com/maclark
Ahahahaha.
No but for reals. Any assembly that the Christian right would fund and that could be convened in the Bible belt would be…awesome.
Lastly, note that I said “If sortition is bulletproof…” in the first sentence. I’m not sure I would call sortition neccessarily bulletproof against corruption, but it’s the best system I’ve heard of.
I don’t know if you’ve discussed this before when it comes to Sortition or if I’ve told you this, but my favorite part of Sortition is that it could potentially empower the bureaucrats within government. They’re already quite useful and are the workhorse in Congress as an example, but combined with the potential for less incentive for ideological rigidity and lower corruption, I think they would become more valuable and respected.