Walk Like An Athenian.

    We've all been told that ancient Athens was the Cradle of Democracy. They had a chosen council of citizens that directed the city's affairs.  We sure don't talk a lot about the descent into tyrannical rule by "Men on Horseback".  We also  don't concentrate on how those citizens were selected.  First: Citizenship depended on wealth and class. Your parentage had to be right and you had to own property.  Universal suffrage is a relatively new idea.  The idea of selecting only on the basis of merit is a relatively new idea.
     The most important aspect of the selection is overlooked.  The members of the council were not voted for.  There were no campaigns, campaign promises or appeals to the emotions of the crowd.  I'm pretty sure all those things are at least, distasteful.  Frankly, the more people we have voting on the basis of 30 second Charmin commercials the worse off we are.  If you're clueless, do the rest of us a favor and don't vote.
    In Athens, these council members were selected by lot.  What this did was create a pool of responsible citizens who tried to inform themselves because at any time they might be called upon to make decisions for their fellow citizens and themselves.  That's a nearly total reversal of what we have now.  Most people think greed is the most corrosive motivation.  Most people slept through their survey philosophy course and relied on detailed regurgitation to pass.  In fact, the Will to Power is the most corrosive motivation.  I can think of a dozen recent examples of the damage that has been done and there are hundreds in history from before the Greeks to us.
    So, what should we do that we almost certainly are not going to?  We should fill local offices by lot from the pool of available citizens.  County and city council people and so on should be chosen by lot.  Out of that pool of people who have gained some experience, higher state legislative offices would be filled, again, by lot.  Congressional seats should be filled by members of that pool.  Executive officers would still be selected by popular vote but you would have to think those candidates would come out of those various pools of governmental experience.  That would all but eliminate greed and therefore corruption from the equation.  How do you pick an individual to bribe from a pool of potentially thousands?
    In a way, I am a Utopian. I actually believe, given the evidence, we live in, by any reasonable definition, Utopia.  Hey, that doesn't mean we can't make it better.
    That's why I think a detailed understanding of history is so important.  By not knowing what the Athenians actually did we built systems with an easily avoidable flaw.  That's pretty dumb.

    October 11, 2018;
    It turns out this is an idea and philosophy known as Sortition, that's been around for a long time. So I'm on the right track just a later train.