The meaning of democracy has changed over time. The original democracy of the Athenians primarily used random selection, now known as sortition, to select government officials. This was done because the Athenians understood that elections are popularity contests easily influenced by the rich and powerful, which leads to institutional capture. In this book Corey Daniels examines the problem with modern representative democracy, the history of selection by lot from its religious roots in cleromancy to the golden era of Athenian democracy and more modern incarnations including Venice (the selection of the Doge) and how the founders of America sought to mix the forms of government that the classical writers defined. Corey then explains how his form of Athenian democracy, Randviscracy, fixes the problems of representative democracy, prevents its devolution into oligarchy, and also addresses the criticisms of Athenian democracy, primarily through weighting the random selection using IQ and experience to favor the selection of the competent and intelligent. Randviscracy blocks the formation of clientelism and institutional capture, two of the primary mechanisms which form the deep state bureaucracies. The book also explores how technology will affect governments in the future. Including chapters on blockchain-based voting systems and artificial intelligence. Corey views both of these as very beneficial to governance in the future and includes how they can be used to improve the security and convenience in both voting and governance.
