Elections elevate rentiers and the servants of rentiers.

They always have. They always will.

Even with campaign finance reform, the people most able to put their lives on hold to campaign or serve in office are those with passive income streams.

As Georgists, we know that means rents.

How can we ever expect to enact full taxation of land values when our system for selecting decision-makers systematically concentrates landlords?

If we believe the research that it only takes 3.5% of the population to get major political changes, why didn’t our movement change the world back in George’s day?

It seems like they had the numbers. Why didn’t their successes stick and spread?

I think it’s because tax policy isn’t as visible as social questions like civil rights or women’s suffrage, so politicians were able to quietly roll back what Georgists achieved with little public outcry, all in the service of the rentier political ruling class.

I am afraid that any successes that the current Georgist movement will be able to achieve will be wiped out in the same way, unless we fix the root problem with democracy: politicians.

I think we have a unique opportunity to position Georgists at the front of a growing governing paradigm that will reshape politics as we know it in the coming years: sortition.

For those who aren’t familiar, sortition means empowering temporary, representative samples of the people, given the resources to wisely use and delegate our power, to make our collective decisions.

Ancient Athens and Renaissance Venice used sortition for hundreds of years. Aristotle, Rousseau and others all recognized that democratic governments should use sortition, not elections.

Awareness of sortition is growing.

In 2020, the OECD published a report ‘Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions’ highlighting citizens assemblies and sortition.

Roger Hallam of Extinction Rebellion is saying that, if we hope to avoid catastrophic climate change, we must replace politicians with citizens assemblies and sortition.

And just this month, January 2025, Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel, two of the world’s leading intellectuals, published a book ‘Equality’ in which they call for selecting our leaders by sortition.

These are just a few examples.

I believe that Georgism can help sortition by providing an example of an excellent, non-partisan policy that electoral politics has failed to implement. Sortition can help Georgism by pushing our policy ideas to the front of a movement that, I believe, will reshape politics at a time when the housing and climate crises desperately need our ideas.

Compatriots, here is what I am asking of you:

1. If you’re not convinced about sortition, or you have questions, please discuss it with me. I’m happy to do that over on the Georgism discord chat. I also have a sortition outreach meetup every Friday at 2pm MT on the democracywithoutelections.org discord server.
2. Consider reading “The Trouble With Elections” by Terry Bouricius. It’s free here.
3. If you agree that we are much more likely to succeed in implementing LVT by convincing citizens assemblies than politicians, then help me spread the word about sortition. Consider joining DemocracyWithoutElections.org. Use your platforms to familiarize people. Get ready for big changes. We live in historic times.