New movements in democratic practice like deliberative democracy, participatory budgeting, and sortition (random citizen selection into governance) depend on a more hopeful view of human nature; if people are assumed to be selfish and lazy, these approaches will not work and will produce the selfish behavior expected.

causalpending

Speaker

Rutger Bregman

Evidence Quote

All of these ideas depend on a more hopeful view of human nature because if you really believe that people are just selfish and lazy, then obviously that's not going to work

Source

Yuval Noah Harari & Rutger Bregman: YES Online ConversationsYuval Noah Harari
Created: 8/11/2026, 1:47:31 AM

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