We need to stop having all election and elect leaders through a random lottery. Feat Riz Ahmed
Summary
Riz Ahmed defends democracy against Kareem's wild proposal to replace all elections with a completely randomized lottery system. No more voting, no more campaigns, just pure chance selecting leaders like jury duty. Ahmed pushes back hard at first, calling it one of the worst ideas he's ever heard, but Kareem argues the bar is already in hell with politicians like Donald Trump. The logic shifts: right now we have crazy people who want power, but with a lottery we'd just have crazy people who want to go home. Ahmed starts to come around. They'd keep the deep state though, the bureaucrats who actually know math and make things run. Just randomize the politicians who need to reach agreements. After all, Donald Trump was basically random anyway, just a reality TV landlord.
Featured guests
Full Transcript
So, what's your 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. 100% disagree. That—that's the one of the worst ideas I've ever heard in my life. I'm genuinely shocked that you're saying.
I'm shocked that you're saying that. What's bad about it? So, no more voting.
Well, first of all, no one really votes that much anymore. I mean, turnout is pretty low. True. And second of all, what are you afraid of if you do that? That we might get bad politicians.
Yes, that is what I'm afraid of. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. You see how stupid it sounds when you say it?
Yeah. Thinking about the way the world is moving right now, I guess it's just like, can it get worse? It can't really get worse. I mean, Donald Trump, he's not good. The bar is already like in, in, like, hell. I'm trying to think of a randomized, completely like, the guy who can't like pronounce your name. He's in substitute teacher that you're dressed like that guy. He's in your uncle, Farooq.
Yeah, man. Bro, because I figure like, really, the politicians, all they are doing is they're trying to come to an agreement and a lot of time that's about common sense. And this way you wouldn't have political parties anymore. You wouldn't have like campaign finance. True. That would save a lot of time and money. So we get rid of all of that.
Okay. So I—you're a little bit changing my mind here because—okay. Yes. Right now we have people that want to be politicians cuz they want power. Yes. But the random bodega guy, he just wants to get out of it. All he wants is to go back to the bodega. Think about like jury duty, right?
Yeah. You just got to do it. Like, nobody wants to do it. Now, anyone who wants to do jury duty, you don't want them on a jury. No, you don't. You know what I mean? That's bad news. Right now, I guess we got crazy people who also want power, right? But worst case scenario, we have crazy people who just want to go home. They're pretty much random people anyways.
Fully random. Donald Trump is the most random. It's just a guy. He's a guy off of reality TV. He's a landlord. I figure like, you know, the people who actually make things run, that the guy who can really do math at the treasury, they're still there. The bureaucracy—it's just the people who got like come to an agreement.
So the deep state? We keep the deep state? We keep the deep state, bro? You think so? We're not replacing the deep state.
No, cuz that would be bad. Yeah, I—with those.