Jeremy Lent On Should we choose politicians by lottery?

We usually see elections as the foundation of democracy, but Aristotle called them a recipe for oligarchy. In ancient Greece, ordinary citizens were picked by lottery to make decisions for the whole society. Could bringing back that idea fix what’s broken in our democracies today?

Jeremy Lent, a tech CEO turned author whose new book, Ecocivilization, makes the case for redesigning our economy, democracy, and technology so everyone can thrive. We start by talking about why, despite the many problems of our society, we can’t really say it’s malfunctioning, and why GDP doesn’t give a full picture of how people are really doing. Then we dive into how we can look at ecosystems for inspiration to build a fairer society, and how we could spread power and wealth more widely.