Their democratic system made a lot more sense than ours, TBH. They didn’t elect people to positions, because they thought that would lead to popularity contests doninated by the wealthy (🤔). Positions of power were assigned randomly by sortition (lots) amongst all the male Athenian citizens, they only voted on policy.
They didn’t elect people to positions, because they thought that would lead to popularity contests doninated by the wealthy (🤔).
We should note that the body of eligible (adult male) citizens was far from representative. If 20% of the population were slaves or other non-citizens (leaving 80% citizens), half were women (leaving 40%) and 25% were children (leaving 30%), 70% of the population were unrepresented.
And that’s for the more democratic cities like Athens; oligarchic ones might well implement wealth requirements for full citizenship and some like Sparta were particularly draconic with limting membership (to the point of self-destruction when their citizen body dwindled and they refused to admit new Spartiates).
(Also, Generals actually were elected, but that makes sense since you probably don’t want to randomly allot some guy that might or might not have the skills to coordinate army movement and activities, or might not even be wealthy enough to serve as hoplite themselves because armour is expensive.)
Especially because it was random, so in a room with 100 people, you’re very unlikely to have a member of the 0.1%, so it’s easy to decide that tax policy should be to tax the ultra-rich.
PBS did a special a while back where they actually rebuilt the machine used for selecting people. It was a lot like a modern dice tower where you’d pour things in the top and the machine would randomize it. But, instead of using dice, they used black and white balls, and one colour meant people were selected for the position, and the other one meant they didn’t get selected.
Their democratic system made a lot more sense than ours, TBH. They didn’t elect people to positions, because they thought that would lead to popularity contests doninated by the wealthy (🤔). Positions of power were assigned randomly by sortition (lots) amongst all the male Athenian citizens, they only voted on policy.
We should note that the body of eligible (adult male) citizens was far from representative. If 20% of the population were slaves or other non-citizens (leaving 80% citizens), half were women (leaving 40%) and 25% were children (leaving 30%), 70% of the population were unrepresented.
And that’s for the more democratic cities like Athens; oligarchic ones might well implement wealth requirements for full citizenship and some like Sparta were particularly draconic with limting membership (to the point of self-destruction when their citizen body dwindled and they refused to admit new Spartiates).
(Also, Generals actually were elected, but that makes sense since you probably don’t want to randomly allot some guy that might or might not have the skills to coordinate army movement and activities, or might not even be wealthy enough to serve as hoplite themselves because armour is expensive.)
Yeah, that makes much more sense.
Especially because it was random, so in a room with 100 people, you’re very unlikely to have a member of the 0.1%, so it’s easy to decide that tax policy should be to tax the ultra-rich.
PBS did a special a while back where they actually rebuilt the machine used for selecting people. It was a lot like a modern dice tower where you’d pour things in the top and the machine would randomize it. But, instead of using dice, they used black and white balls, and one colour meant people were selected for the position, and the other one meant they didn’t get selected.