Would sortition rule out government by the “best”? This question, too, can scarcely be considered with a straight face. We all know what Mark Twain said about Congressmen, and matters have not notably improved since. Besides, as Callenbach and Phillips write, “pure intelligence — if there is such a thing — is certainly not directly related to political wisdom. The only reasonable assumption is that both are broadly distributed through the population.

Great text by George Scialabba at the LA Review of Books. Personally, I’m a strong sympathiser of government by lot.