RE: Politicians are liars or corrupt by nature. True or False? Part II: Let's talk about True Democracy.
When the U.S. was founded, it was fairly decentralized in nature. Arguably, the first attempt with the Articles of Confederation was too decentralized (at least for that time and technology). Hence the Constitution. The anti-federalists argued that it went to far. I think it did a fair job for the time with the problem being that it hasn't prevented greater centralization over time. A piece of paper never can.
I'm not sure "well prepared individuals chosen by lottery" is a workable concept. Who gets to decide who is "well prepared" and how? Do people vote on that? If so, you've just added a level of indirection, not really changed much. Plus, the whole point of having well prepared individuals as representatives is that they vote on the policies for you. I don't know that it is practical that every single policy be voted on by the population as a whole plus if those voting are not "well prepared" then what good is having "well prepared" representatives? If the people don't like a policy they can always vote for a representative who opposes it. Politicians lying isn't really the problem. It's that too often they aren't punished by the voters for lying (by not electing them again for instance). Restricting government from gaining too much power in the first place is the real difficulty and just because a policy is voted on by a majority doesn't mean it should be law. You still need protections for "natural rights" that cannot be overridden. All of these difficulties really come down to the fact that government is too centralized and has too much power.
I agree that the key is to be as decentralized as possible so that an individual's voice has more meaning and also so that there is more competition in terms of governance. This was the whole idea behind the 10th amendment and states rights, etc. It's just that the people have failed to prevent the central government from consolidating power, more through apathy than anything. I don't know what the solution is for that.
At the end of the day, for True Democracy, as you describe it, to be better than what we have now, more people have to be well informed and care about it. If more people cared about it and were well informed, what we have now would probably be better.
Well, I'm not from the US. But I believe that someone that wants to run for any public office must prequalify with some minimum requirements, that could be age, educational background, good reputation history (if it was involved in any law penalties, tax records, etc.), something like that, people can choose what they believe it's necessary for a person to hold any office. They work for us. That I think is easy to do. It's like when someone nominates himself to be a juror: http://www.uscourts.gov/services-forms/jury-service/juror-qualifications
Then, when you choose a determined number of participants, the election by lottery takes place. The person/people who gets the position then exercises the mandate of the population who serves, he doesn't exercise power by itself. Of course, that only works if most people in a community/state/nation participate.
Cannot agree more. I think that constitutions have to prevent that majorities could impose policies on others that could damage the system and some honest individuals. But remember: If there's no electoral contests, there will not be necessary to have political parties, there would not be a large group who could impose their agenda because that doesn't guarantee that official supporting them would be elected.
Now, to get this really working, this is the key: