Turning to sortition to elect our representatives

Maybe we should draw names from a hat to decide who should represent us on the Greater Shepparton City Council?

And that “hat” would be big enough to hold the names of all the city’s ratepayers and from that would come the nine people who would be our city councillors.

The idea that we should use what is really a lottery to choose our city councillors would be as equally effective as voting for our preferred person.

Should you question or doubt such an idea, and you may well be correct, but often reason is worse than useless and sometimes the most rational choice is little more than a random stab in the dark.

Michael Schulson, an American freelance writer, who covers science, religion, technology, and ethics recently wrote in Aeon magazine about “sortition” saying that someone, somewhere, or something is always playing dice.

Sortition (the random choice for anything) is not new as it was practiced by the Athenians in ancient Greece to choose those in charge of governing committees; magistrates, a role they could not hold more than once in their life, putting paid to career politicians.

Of course, the field in those times had been narrowed somewhat as you needed to be a property owner and male, two things that would not and should not be among the criteria today.

Of course, sortation is alive and well in our society today and it brings with it responsibilities far in excess of whatever you might encounter as a city councillor – using what in effect is a lottery system we appoint people to juries and hand them the power to infringe on the life of another, even to the extent of sending them to gaol.

A cursory glance at history illustrates that even rational and reasoned choices can go horribly wrong; the values of some elected are often not what they seem, and because of their actions people can die and society can pay an alarming cost, both economically, structurally,  and emotionally.

Shifting to a dice-like decision-making process might seem objectionable to many, but surely anyone prepared to have an honest and objective look at what exists and brings people to power who are loaded with obligations to causes and ideologies that are frequently foreign to the common good, must admit that what we have is really oligarchy rather than democracy.

Sortition or election by lottery, would not be without its problems, but who could argue that what exists is problem-free.

Writing on the ABC’s The Drum, Ian Dunlop said: “What if all the stuff we complain about in regard to our politicians - that they are unrepresentative, that they are out of touch, that they are in the pocket of various vested interests, that all they are really interested in is getting re-elected - what if all those problems are actually a by-product of voting itself?”

He referred to Belgian historian, David Van Reybrouck, the founder of the G1000 Citizens' Summit, who doesn't want to get rid of voting altogether, but does want us to think about other ways of deciding who governs us.

Reybrouck, he wrote, wants to replace traditional democratic voting with a combination of voting and sortition. That is the drawing of lots.

And so rather than voting in October for whoever we want on the council, maybe we should just cast our lot in with luck – it’s simpler, cheaper, and in nearly all instances, more effective and doesn’t bring with it personal and ideological baggage.

Privacy is a perculiar, and archaic thing

Privacy is a peculiar thing and a longing for it is somewhat archaic and something of an ill-fit in this modern world.

In this quickly emerging connected world, the “internet of everything” through which most everything we do, from shopping, work, travel, and leisure, will be facilitated electronically, privacy will eventually be a disadvantage.

Privacy is subjective with some seeing it as the root of their wellbeing, while others at the extremes of the arc, care naught for what others know or care about them.

And so it is into this malaise of confusion about privacy that Australian Bureau of Statistics have waded, or it is plunged? with its first online census.

It seems that allowing people to complete the census online is not the issue rather that they must not only provide the usual census information but also add their name, age, and address.

The bureau has guaranteed security arguing it will separate those personal details immediately, “anonymizing” the information as it arrives.

However, it notes that the separated off identifying data will be used by the government to better understand the Australian population and so plan for its wants and needs.

Several years ago a CEO of a leading computer company said even then that privacy was a thing of the past and today it is being argued that if we want (and it is not going to be “want” for we will have no choice) to access what is being touted as the “new economy”, then the first thing to go will be our privacy.

Of course, what do we call “privacy” – my life is fairly public, but yet there is  a host of things in my life, about which people know nothing or little, and nor would they care or be interested, I suspect.

The Australian Privacy Foundation defends the right of individuals to control their personal information and to be free of excessive intrusions.

The Australian foundation is aligned with “Privacy International”, a body that investigates the secret world of government surveillance and exposes the companies enabling it.

Privacy as an idea painted by at least these two groups appears as a bulwark against conspiracies by government and corporations designed to entangle people and strip them of their rights.

History illustrates that both governments and corporations have invaded peoples’ privacy, and will again, but looked at objectively and considered in isolation, tomorrow’s census is not something to be feared, rather embraced.

Public is the antithesis of private, but if we are to avoid the travails of exponential population growth and the associated despoliation of our environment, then public must have priority and that probably needs compromises on perceived privacies.

History illustrates, interestingly, that many of the good things in life, including here in the Goulburn Valley, can be traced directly to public participation.