Comment by rootusrootus
14 hours ago
I will dare to admit aloud that I think maybe the founders were making a rational choice when they decided that only certain citizens would have the right to vote. As awful as that sounds, there are halfway decent arguments in favor. Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners, but sometimes I do wonder if we would benefit from a filter that adequately screens for people 1) with real skin in the game and 2) a plausible claim to being well informed.
That is just a thought experiment, though, I do not believe it would play out beneficially if we tried to implement it in real life.
The founders mistake was creating a presidential system.
I like this idea in theory. In practice, the problem is that someone gets to decide who is allowed to vote and on what grounds. If that institution is corrupted, it leads to worse outcome than allowing everyone to vote. And the bad actors would have all the incentives in the world to corrupt that institution.
The answer isn’t less voters, it’s more. Australia’s compulsory voting system has successfully taken the edge off extremist ideology.
You have to couple that with their use of STV voting and lack of a presidential system.
Not quite sure this works out as nicely as that. Argentina has both compulsory voting and a legal voting age of 16 and it managed to produce Javier Milei (who makes Trump look like Kissinger).
What's the best way to have a sane system? I'm not sure. I personally lost all faith in democracy.
> What's the best way to have a sane system?
A start that would not require big changes to our existing system would be open primaries. That would incentivize moderate candidates. Or perhaps eliminate primaries altogether and go with a two-stage general election like some places have for their local elections. Everybody runs, then the top two run against each other (unless one got an outright majority in the first run). Skip the more elaborate instant-runoff styles of voting because that is too advanced for average people.
Argentina is notoriously corrupt and suffers from an overly politically powerful military. Not even compulsory voting can fix those. There are dark private forces currently waging war on democracy it will be a catastrophic disaster if they win.
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Kissinger was a war criminal with a huge amount of blood on his hands.
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There are far more pressing changes needed, like reducing the impact of vote buying (reasonable spending limits for political campaigns, and the lobbying problem) and a voting system that doesn't inevitably reduce down to two sides.
If people still elevate the worst candidate to POTUS after that, then blaming the voter might be in order.
The problem is what to do with those people who can't vote. At worst, they'll rise up in arms and create an ever bigger mess.
If you're not into social and demographic engineering, then you're going to face a real problem.
My solution would be to get it over with and shoot everyone who disagrees with the system I'm trying to build. It sounds childish but it does actually genuinely work. It has been put in practice in so many places it's easy to lose count.
That only works in the immediate term. It isn't even a stable short term solution, let alone medium to long term. Consider what the incentives of such an approach are when iterated.
Unless you aspire to the way of life in places like North Korea.
It really depends on what stage of a regime's lifecycle you apply it at.
Obviously it's not going to be as extreme and as simple as 'go shoot people house-to-house until you're powerful :D', but repression is much more often than not effective. Think of the Arab Spring, the 2018 color coup attempt in Nicaragua, etc.
Hell, even if the incentives are completely misaligned, you can get away with it as long as you're strong and ruthless enough. The whole world thought Myanmar's military junta would implode and break under the weight of all the freedom fighters… and it's still hanging around, not the worse for wear. If you're willing to burn everything to the ground before you lose power, you can often raise the stakes to a level the other party simply can't afford.
> Unless you aspire to the way of life in places like North Korea
Here's the thing: the right-wingers already aspire to that way of life. They will implement it. At this point, it's not about whether I aspire to live like that, but about who's going to take the reins of power of that type of political structure.
Better us than them.
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People with those characteristics are often wealthy: can't have "real skin in the game" if you're just a pleb with a mortgage, 2 kids and 2 cars in a middle-class neighborhood, right? At which point, once again, those with $$ are more equal than others.
Sure, they might be better informed - which lets them figure out how best to corrupt the system.
Edit: in fact, I could see a strong reason to DISALLOW anyone in the top 1% to vote or spend any $$ towards the election.
1% of the vote isn't all that significant. It's the money that creates the problem.
Yes, part of the solution could be strongly curtailing how we apply the first amendment to political spending. Maybe elections should all be taxpayer funded, access to media guaranteed, etc. And if we do allow donations, it has to be something fairly trivial. Maximum $50 or something per person regardless of net worth.
The unregulated, unlimited money situation we have now is a big part of the problem.
Everybody should be allowed to vote, except for people who don't want everyone to vote.
Even people who openly aim to violently overthrow the government and abolish elections?
Yes, why not? If they are a minority, then there's no issue. If they are a majority (or close to it), then perhaps they have a point.
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If they're an electoral majority then you already have a problem.
But the point is they're less likely to get there if they're part of the power structure.
A presumed but frequently not mentioned component of democracy is the peaceful transition of power once a decision is made.
> Maybe not just restricting to white wealthy landowners,
Some of those people are not white and/or not straight. They - very incorrectly - think that wealth will shield them from the sharp teeth of White Christian Nationalism. They should consult with the Log Cabin Republicans and women who voted for both Trump and enshrining abortion into their state's constitution on the same ballot.