Do YOU hire somebody somewhere? Anybody anywhere? You can go ahead and lead by example, until you do you have 0 moral ground for any argument like that.

Some of the Asian countries do have cultures that love learning and the very smart. However, they have various other cultural problems.

There's this old joke, heaven is English policemen, German scientists/engineers, Italian lovers, Swiss bankers, and French cooks. Hell is English cooks, German policemen, Italian bankers, Swiss lovers, and, well, I don't suppose French make bad scientists/engineers, but I'm botching the joke some. But the point is that if we could take the very best of all our cultures and fuse them, humanity would advance far faster.

The Chinese have admirable work ethic and love of learning, however, their government needs improvement in inclusiveness and combating corruption. Some of the European governments are far superior in these respects (or so it seems from the outside.) The anti-intellectualism of the USA is rapidly degrading the US political system, its economy, its worldwide power, and its future prospect for maintaining dominance in science/tech/economy/military. However, again, not everywhere in the world does humanity glorify sports or singing and hate learning and intelligence.

Perhaps we can hope that the negative aspect of humanity will cause their own self-destruction without destroying the best aspects of humanity.

Free market monopolies are not a problem whatsoever, they only exist as the market allows them to exist. It is government monopolies that are a real threat to all people and those are created because governments usurp power to oppress individual rights.

Right, USSR ideology to the rescue... destroy the wealthy so that there is no more concentrated wealth so there is no wealth left at all, then come after the less wealthy and once you don't have those left, come after the less wealthy yet, rinse and repeat until you have made everybody equal... in their misery.

Yeah, the only person who should disappear in a puff of logic is you, somebody who equates working to save to voting to steal.

Right, "rein". At least I didn't write "rain".

At the moment, at least nominally the government bureaucracy isn't writing the laws. Instead, it's the various congressional bureaucracies that change when the ass occupying the congressional seat changes. However, with government by sortition, I think it'd be a practical necessity that each congressional office have a permanent bureaucracy associated with it to provide expertise and continuinity that would be lacking.

It is this bureaucracy that I think might become problematic and corrupt.

--PM

I don't care what most people believe or do not believe, they are wrong. Dangerous monopolies are created by governments, not by the free market, in a free market no monopoly has more power than the market is willing to give it and if the market is willing to give a company monopoly power it is always temporary and it is there as long as that company provides the market with the highest quality, cheapest product.

Cable companies or any companies should be able to merge all they want, governments interfering with any mergers is the problem, not any type of a solution, especially given that governments created monopolies in telecommunications in the first place.

A half-mile diameter disk isn't going to be easy to rotate and point in different directions, and considerable motion by the light detector is also going to be required.

Frankly, I think these disadvantages so severely reduce the utility of the telescope that I wouldn't want to deal with it.

Not only that, but a half-mile diameter disk is one heck of a target for random space junk.

--PM

I've pondered sortition government, but I wonder how you would reign in the power of the bureaucracy.

As an AC said, the random citizenry isn't going to have the depth to really write good laws, so it'll probably largely fall to a bureaucracy, which might end up with all the real power. I can scarcely see that as an improvement.

However, the sortition has the big benefits you mention:
1) Actually representative of the people, because they ARE the people
2) Don't arrive in office corrupt, aren't beholden to donors

Maybe have the lower house of Government chosen by sortition?

--PM

Oh, I see, so who did google steal from? Or those guys that sold them youtube for a billion and a half (for starters)? The silly 'whatsup' billionaires, did they steal from somebody? For that matter transportation or energy or any kind of billionaires. No, thieves are found in government and among the voting mob first of all. Glass houses.

I think that the problem is voting based on the hopes of stealing from others and that happens in a system where people actually expect government to steal on their behalf and allow the government to usurp power.

No, the real problem is not money in politics, the real problem is use of violence by governments to take away individual rights.

The real problem is that such a large number of people actually support government threatening violence to steal from people. At that point money enters politics to buy favours. Money in politics is an indicator of a sick system, it's not the cause of it.

The cause of a sick system is people who want to have a sick system, a system based on jealousy, envy, use of violence against others (mostly those, who have more than the average voter, regardless of anything else, for example regardless of whether the money made by a person is earned or stolen).

If you want a just system that is not corrupted and where money cannot buy power, you cannot have a system that allows governments to steal from individuals, steal their rights (as in right to private property, defence and speech that are necessary to protect private property) and steal the outcome of their work by taxing people's incomes or wealth.

Free market does not require people to play by the rules or anything like that because there cannot be government rules.

The problem of-course is government power, not the fact that in a free market (or any market) people want to get ahead. The real problem is just normal people who want to get ahead having political power, the real problem is power that politicians hold. Power to use violence, guns and jails against individuals.

Threat of violence by system is what gives politicians the power to destroy the free market, nothing else. It is not about people not being honest or not playing by the rules. It is about rules that are set up by the governments to allow very specific people to get ahead while holding everybody else back.

The real problem is you, because you believe that what you are advocating (government power over the individuals, over the free market) is justified for your weird ideology of theft and murder.

You do realise that there is nothing wrong with being a 'working class'? There is also nothing wrong with being a billionaire.

If your first reaction to somebody who is wealthier than you is a 'pitchfork', then maybe the problem is you.

You become what you hate.