Riz Ahmed’s Subway Hot Take: “We need to stop having all elections, of any kind, and we need to choose all of our politicians and leaders through a completely randomized lottery system… This way you wouldn’t have political parties anymore. You wouldn’t have campaign finance.”
Posted by cmaia1503
37 Comments
Just because actors play smart people, doesn’t mean they’re smart
Stupid idea
This sounds like something a 16 year old would think is a brillant idea.
He joined the new JK rowling show without pause. He isn’t the smartest guy
Were we supposed to laugh
Joker-ass idea
It’s an interesting idea called sortition. But one of the bad things about it is that it removes mechanisms of public accountability, namely elections. So theoretically the voting body could simply vote to give each of themselves $10 billion every year, and the legislative body becomes a glorified lottery.
Why so serious. (In the comment thread)
He knows it wont happen, it was just a funny and a thinker of a radical idea, nothing more nothing less.
Yes, a draft system. I’ve been saying this for decades. Get a letter in the mail just like jury duty. You were selected to be in a congressional pool for your district show up at And then a short questionnaire about your present responsibilities like whether you think taking care of kids or an elderly adult will interfere enough that you want to be excused. Maybe some other selection process or maybe not. Then you’re drafted.
Same thing for the Supreme Court. It obviously is not based on law or the constitution or it would be mostly unanimous. Not 5-4 or now 6-3 based on your political beliefs instead of the constitution and how much you were getting bribed or the organization you were part of or your spouse or kids.
I mean, come on guys, this is so obviously a joke it’s painful to see people question if he’s being serious.
Riz has a first class degree from Oxford… IN POLITICS. He makes progressive, politically-aware music, has written essays for books on politics. He obviously doesn’t believe in a random lottery system that picks Uncle Farouk as President 🤣, he’s just using the idea to satirically point out how insane and bad today’s politicians are…
I wish this sub would realize that 95% of people on subway takes are making outrageous takes as a bit they play straight instead of taking it is as a serious judgement of someone
This is called sortition, and was done in ancient Athens. He’s not pulled this idea out of his ass. It was actually seen as the only way to maintain true democracy at the time.
Why are people calling him dumb? Sortition (i.e., political lottery system) was used in Ancient Athens. One of the benefits was a reduction in political corruption. There are reasons it wouldn’t work today, though: [Redefining Democracy: Could Lotteries Improve Governance and Public Trust? (Yale)](https://isps.yale.edu/news/blog/2023/09/redefining-democracy-could-lotteries-improve-governance-and-public-trust)
How can anyone look at the disaster of modern politics and say that we shouldn’t move toward a different system? It doesn’t have to be sortition, but clearly the public interest doesn’t matter to our politicians…
People thinking he’s serious and calling him stupid are actually stupid
this would theoretically make people more buyable?
To be fair, I read the headline and went “pfffftttt get out of here” but the whole video is pretty funny. He’s making a larger point about the type of person who wants power in our system (using hyperbole, of course) and I think it’s worth watching it through before making a judgment
It’s called sortition, and historically, this idea has been used for the reasons they cite. Famous examples of sortition: ancient Athens and medieval Venice.
There are modern day adherents and some of them are troubling. Including a bomb plot against the national mall on election day in 2018.
I wildly vacillate between being sooo jealous that no one will sit next to me and ask my takes on things, and panicking and saying “get a job” when a person with a microphone approaches me
To be fair, your average random American would probably be better than 70% of elected Congresspeople.
I completely agree. All political positions should be filled like jury duty. Randomly chosen for one cycle and then exempt for 10 years.
No parties, no dynasties, no popularity contest.
It’s just a dumb joke y’all I promise it’s not that deep if you’ve ever watched this show on TikTok.
didn’t know he had so many simps on here
Anyone who’s interested, or thinks this is a dumb idea and is willing to hear a more detailed defense, here’s an essay about choosing civil servants by lottery written by a philosophy professor at Rutgers: https://aeon.co/essays/forget-voting-it-s-time-to-start-choosing-our-leaders-by-lottery
He’s clearly just being cheeky
I don’t see how it could be worse. Just swap them every year.
What a terrible idea
Edit: Oh he’s joking lmao
Americans when someone suggests having a democracy in the United States: uh wow, piping hot take dude
He’s currently doing a Harry Potter project so not shocked at this take
I wonder how recently he read our watched Harrison bergeron lmao
This is the fairest way possible.
Sortition is probably a far better system than the one we have, now.
**I too learned about sortition when I was in high school and then also learned about why it failed and is actually a terrible idea if the population is greater than like 10 people who see each other every day.**
They did this in Athens, yes,…….for about 5 seconds until everybody found out that randomly selected people don’t have any obligation to the job they’ve been given or to the people they represent and that’s actually a really dumb way of fulfilling the social contract of governance. Either there is a system of selection where people turn down the role until the positions are filled with people who would’ve campaigned for it anyway meaning it isn’t “random” at all and people aren’t given an opportunity to consider their representatives qualifications or intentions or you have made governing a compulsory and involuntary service where an individual is allowed to make decisions for the people that are also forcing them to do a job they don’t want to do. It’s inherently *undemocratic* and was also proven to be very ineffective in practice the moment any sort of decision actually had to be made.
The people trying to present this as some sort of improved alternative to current political system in any way are painfully “I’m 14 and this is deep”. And he’s still kinda weird for saying this like it’s an original untested concept for a joke.
I mean fuck it at this point why not
Let him cook…
Ahh, the Ancient Greek way
I had this thought awhile back, truly random democracy. Might be fun.