How would a person outside of the grasp of the people know about the importance of various issues to the people ? They would have to be constantly informed by outside sources which would be even more prone to corruption than our current system hell , this is how the 18 th ammendment managed to pass , as well as polls that cannot reliably tell the intensity or scale of a problem . If someone asks 100 people if they should take out their girlfriendwife to sushi or a steakhouse and they all answer , you could easily conclude that most americans care where the hell that guy takes his wife out to eat despite that not being the case . Then you have the problem of their education its self being corrupted . Who decides what is the most intelligent and ethical ? Both of those are highly subjective values . And then you go on to say that we should pick people of varying backgrounds , which is completely contradictory to the education system you mention . No one is claiming our system is perfect , but just about everyone knows that trying to set up something new would be much , much worse