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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   21567 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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My most unrealistic take is that we could probably solve half our problems with democracy by deliberately structuring it so that only around 30% of the population could do things like vote or serve on jury duty. My preferred solution would be to require an exam, military service, or a fuck ton of community service hours before you get these rights. The real intention is for the exam to be the filter. The military and community service operate as a release valve for people thinking the exam is too exclusionary.

Let me link an essay in defence of juries!

The other day, while I was meditating on morality and Mr. H. Pitt, I was, so to speak, snatched up and put into a jury box to try people. The snatching took some weeks, but to me it seemed something sudden and arbitrary. I was put into this box because I lived in Battersea, and my name began with a C. Looking round me, I saw that there were also summoned and in attendance in the court whole crowds and processions of men, all of whom lived in Battersea, and all of whose names began with a C.

...We settle down with a rollicking ease into our seats (for we are a bold, devil-may-care race, the C’s of Battersea), and an oath is administered to us in a totally inaudible manner by an individual resembling an army surgeon in his second childhood. We understand, however, that we are to well and truly try the case between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, neither of whom has put in an appearance as yet.

Just when I was wondering whether the King and the prisoner were, perhaps, coming to an amicable understanding in some adjoining public-house, the prisoner’s head appears above the barrier of the dock; he is accused of stealing bicycles, and he is the living image of a great friend of mine. We go into the matter of the stealing of the bicycles. We do well and truly try the case between the King and the prisoner in the affair of the bicycles. And we come to the conclusion, after a brief but reasonable discussion, that the King is not in any way implicated. Then we pass on to a woman who neglected her children, and who looks as if somebody or something had neglected her. And I am one of those who fancy that something had.

...The trend of our epoch up to this time has been consistently towards socialism and professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because they fight better, trained singers because they sing better, trained dancers because they dance better, specially instructed laughers because they laugh better, and so on and so on. The principle has been applied to law and politics by innumerable modern writers. Many Fabians have insisted that a greater part of our political work should be performed by experts. Many legalists have declared that the untrained jury should be altogether supplanted by the trained Judge.

Now, if this world of ours were really what is called reasonable, I do not know that there would be any fault to find with this. But the true result of all experience and the true foundation of all religion is this.

...The Fabian argument of the expert, that the man who is trained should be the man who is trusted, would be absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that a man who studied a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and more of its significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of its significance. In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we are continually goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing less and less of the significance of the sky or the stones.

Now, it is a terrible business to mark a man out for the vengeance of men. But it is a thing to which a man can grow accustomed, as he can to other terrible things; he can even grow accustomed to the sun. And the horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policemen, is not that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stupid (several of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got used to it.

Strictly they do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of judgment; they only see their own workshop. Therefore, the instinct of Christian civilisation has most wisely declared that into their judgments there shall upon every occasion be infused fresh blood and fresh thoughts from the streets. Men shall come in who can see the court and the crowd, and coarse faces of the policemen and the professional criminals, the wasted faces of the wastrels, the unreal faces of the gesticulating counsel, and see it all as one sees a new picture or a ballet hitherto unvisited.

Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

The problem with legal professionalism is that it has produced plea bargains, where an absolute scumbag can bargain their way out of deserved punishment because the courts are too full and the lawyers too cynical and burned-out to have a proper trial, so everything is tidied out of the way in order to free up the dockets. Even worse, someone can be condemned for a crime because they're advised "better take the bargain, if we go to trial there's no guarantee you'll win and the resulting sentence will be even worse than this offer".

That's not justice, either. We have decided that a man should be tried by a jury of his peers, and if his peers are fools, prejudiced, opinionated, or so secure in their self-esteem ("I'm an engineer, you know, I'm smart, I decide things out by reason and logic alone not emotion") as to be blind to their own biases then so be it. The ordinary man gets judged by the other ordinary men of the society.

Sounds like the world of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. I would like to know more. The problem I have with it is that it is vulnerable to gerrymandering in a way that universal suffrage is not. Example: If you want right-wing governments forever you increase the difficulty of the community service or exam options.

Pretty much, the problem with lots of exclusionary systems is that a motivated set of agents can exploit them in a way that is more harmful than a blanket system approach. Someone is always looking to break your edge case for personal gain. I'm not sure what the best way to fix that problem is, I just am losing faith in the ability of universal suffrage to adequately allow governance in an increasingly polarized and mercenary society.

I think you have to inculcate a sense of duty and noblesse oblige in whomever you enfranchise. Doing this for a smaller number of people is obviously easier, and then the system can gain legitimacy if the fruits of good governance are visible to the people. A benevolent and enlightened ruler is then simplest, so why expand that power at all? Expanding the franchise is defense in depth against an one idiot or tyrant wielding power irresponsibly or ineffectively. But at some point the expected value of the marginal additional voter becomes negative; I think this is least controversially demonstrated by proposals to lower the voting age.

Voting used to be limited to white landowning males, which worked fine, except that inevitably some of those men saw a political opportunity in expanding the franchise to other groups in exchange for the implicit promise that they would vote for them, and after a few iterations of that game, here we are.

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