More Equal Animals: The Power of Randomness - Chapter 5 (Unofficial Summary)
Randomness can be a crucial part of political processes and can prevent ‘capture by political parties’ and ‘biases towards the status quo’ as well as allow minority opinions to be heard over time. It’s a way to mix things up.
The Pareto Principle
Pareto distributions occur naturally. For example, ‘20% of the input creates 80% of the result.’ It is also recursive so 1% of the input create 51% of the result. In politics this means 1% can control 51% of the population and 100% of the outcome when the majority rules. In politics the distribution favors those who make false promises and are effective campaigners. Randomness can level the playing field. The Amish use randomness, also called sortition, to elect their leaders and sortition was also used in ancient Athenian democracies. Randomness would likely be suboptimal if used over the entire population, but using it among a filtered list of the 10% who are most capable can be effective.