&quot;<i>It might of course just be such a bad idea that everybody smart enough to give high quality contributions on the topic does not want to waste their time with the idea. But if this is the case it is totally non obvious to me, and most criticism I&#x27;ve read seem to be from people that do not have a clear understanding of the potential advantages sortition might have.</i>&quot;<p>All major media and academic outlets are, by definition, powerful. To have a megaphone, to have reach, to be able to have thousands or millions of people listen to your message, is the essence of power.<p>These media and academic outlets, along with political parties, major activist groups, lobbyists, NGO&#x27;s etc, have evolved to be powerful within the current political framework. The feedback loop between their ability to send messages to the population, and then get votes in return, is what makes them powerful.<p>Thus, no powerful outlet has any interest in sortition. Sortition would threaten their power. It would be a great unknown, who knows what the political system would look like under such a dramatic change? Thus nobody really talks about it, and if someone does talk about it, nobody retweets them, or cites them, or gives grants to study it, or otherwise gets excited about the idea.<p>But at any rate, even if you could convince the powers-that-be to implement sortition, I think the idea is fatally flawed. There is a difference between power and authority. A lottery could give people authority - but exercising actual power requires much, much more. It requires real talent at dealing with people, real influence, real knowledge of how things get done.<p>Democracy, as in real rule by the people, does not exist, cannot exist, should not exist. The Iron Law of oligarchy always wins, and attempts to ignore the Iron Law of Oligarchy and implement &quot;true&quot; democracy simply result in corrupt and degenerate subversion of the on-paper electoral system.