Bouricius, a former Vermont legislator, describes a housing bill affecting tenants and landlords. When he surveyed the committee, none were renters, so he counted the whole state House. It is his case for choosing legislators by lottery.
…internal logic and incentives that encourage people who are narcissists and psychopaths to seek power. I don't want to besmirch all politicians. Some of them are brilliant and excellent and humane and humble people, but as a group, they are more narcissistic and sociopathic than the population.
…members relied more on anecdotal information from their social networks than statistical reports or witness testimony, especially the testimony on behalf of renters. You say that you surveyed the committee to find out how many of you were renters as opposed to homeowners. And the answer was zero.
None. I then said, well, what about the whole house? I could only find one renter out of the 150 members of the House of Representatives. One. Meanwhile, nearly a third of Vermonters are renters. This is not a representative body. Within bodies that are trying to solve problems, there's some research to suggest that having a diversity in many cases is more valuable than having expertise. In fact, there's a theorem that you may have come across the
Hong Page, I think it's called.
Yeah, it's not a universal thing, but when you have a relatively homogeneous group, they tend to know similar sorts of things. And there can be whole domains of knowledge that they're completely unaware of. Just having a diverse group, one person might bring one key piece of information. Oh, I…
It does make me think that when we read about Congress deliberating on health care, transportation, you name it, that we're looking at the problem that you just described, writ even larger, yes, because the leverage is so much greater at the federal level.