Western representative democracy is a joint venture, better a collusion, between plutocracy and political professionalism, i.e. between money and careers. Man in the street is a non-entity.
The way to cancel such monstrosity is disempowering both plutocrats and professional politicians, then empowering man in the street through selective, direct democracy. In the USA 300 million sovereign citizens are too many for direct democracy, in Italy 60 million are likewise too many.
The thing to do is enabling a randomly convened, revolving ‘macrojury’ of, say, 1% of the adult population, that is a computer-selected segment of the population, and make it the sovereign body of the nation, in lieu of the whole of the elected politicians. The members of the deliberative assemblies, also those of all levels of government, could be drawn from said 1%. Provided that each 1% macrojury is empowered, for instance, for six months, the result is that in 10 years 20% of the population will be directly involved in legislation and government -a very substantial section of the political society.
The following steps are conceivable:
1. Elections are abolished and a central computer selects the 1% macro-jury for a 6 month term. Such macro-jury of super-citizens is the active subject of the sovereignty. Out of it a number of progressive selections by a central computer draw randomly the members of all levels of deliberation and government.
2. The central computer is so programmed that only persons with specified qualifications (f.i. education, work experience, civic and humanitarian credits) are selected.
3. Those chosen by the lot are entitled to a moderate compensation and assume obligations. First of all they are required to read the information the system will provide to them on each issue.
4. Lobbyists, vested interests, special coalitions will of course try to influence, even corrupt, the supercitizens. But the quantitative factors will be decisive -too many macro-jurors to influence/corrupt.
While plain persons are adequate to decide on small towns matters, increasing qualifications will be required for the councils and offices of larger cities, then of counties, states and the Nation. So a normal housewife will be the acceptable 6-month treasurer of a village; the treasurer of a metropolis must be randomly chosen among, say, the ten persons whose objective, proven know how and merits are the highest -for instance having managed a large bank, having tought finance in a leading university, and so on.
Analogously the random selection of the head of a government department or of a nation-owned large corporation must be done among the few persons who have already administered important entities.
The term of service of the supercitizens and of the holders of office should be rather short, in order not to induce temptations of career. The duration of service in highly technical roles should be longer, but the controls on said officers should be correspondingly more exacting.
An interim conclusion: each person of good will should endeavor to conceive better ways than the above ones, in order to eradicate the abominable robber lifetime politicians. They are the voracious termites of freedom.
Jone