A bold idea to replace politicians

In recent times politics and politicians has become toxic. No matter what political persuasion you belong to, conservative, liberal, centrist or independent, the only aspect that everyone agrees on is that the views of the others is extreme and that collaboration and civility in politics is non existent.

Hence this TED talk was refreshing. And gives you Hope, even if for a brief fleeting moment before coming back to reality.

"César Hidalgo has a radical suggestion for fixing our broken political system: automate it! In this provocative talk, he outlines a bold idea to bypass politicians by empowering citizens to create personalized AI representatives that participate directly in democratic decisions. Explore a new way to make collective decisions and expand your understanding of democracy."

A bold idea to replace politicians.
César Hidalgo

 

This led to yet another interesting idea on the subject.

"If you think democracy is broken, here's an idea: let's replace politicians with randomly selected people. Author and activist Brett Hennig presents a compelling case for sortition democracy, or random selection of government officials -- a system with roots in ancient Athens that taps into the wisdom of the crowd and entrusts ordinary people with making balanced decisions for the greater good of everyone. Sound crazy? Learn more about how it could work to create a world free of partisan politics."

What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people?
Brett Hennig

And it seems like there are literally 100's of ideas and thoughts on the subject. And here's my final pick.

"Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig makes the case that our democracy has become corrupt with money, leading to inequality that means only 0.02% of the United States population actually determines who's in power. Lessig says that this fundamental breakdown of the democratic system must be fixed before we will ever be able to address major challenges like climate change, social security, and student debt. This is not the most important problem, it's just the first problem.

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and founder of Rootstrikers, a network of activists leading the fight against government corruption. He has authored numerous books, including Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Our Congress—and a Plan to Stop It, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Free Culture, and Remix."

Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here's how we fix it.
Larry Lessig

It seems like in the next 5 decades, we might actually have working alternates to the current broken system.