# Was universal suffrage a mistake?



## scathefire (Apr 8, 2021)

What's the benefit of giving almost every single citizen in a nation the right to vote? It's not that I believe certain demographics of people shouldn't vote, my main concern is whether or not the people who vote are informed enough to make decisions for the country that are actually good. Should there be some way to prove that you're qualified to make those types of decisions beforehand? Because the vast majority of voters seem to have no idea what they're doing. 

Granted, I can see how gatekeeping the right to vote based on "knowledge" alone can also result in an authoritarian government restricting it to only people who agree with said government. So, I'm not sure what a good solution would be to the massive amounts of uninformed voters. Though this seems to be less of a problem among local elections than it is with national ones, because if people bother to vote in their local elections, they generally have a good grasp of what's going on with those candidates.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 8, 2021)

> Was universal suffrage a mistake?​


Yes.

Anything else?


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## Arm Pit Cream (Apr 8, 2021)

What you're describing is called a "Geniocracy". The flaw there is equivocating intelligence with knowledge of political matters and sense of politics. There's tons of smart people who know nothing about current events, running the government or who's the best choice.
If say only people with an IQ above 110 voted, there would be heavy biases and it would lean more liberal. This wouldn't really fix any of the problems of democracy and in fact it makes it worse as the lower classes would have literally no say or representative. 
Do people who have to work to get by have the time to turn on the news? Of course not, but this doesn't make the problems they're facing any less valid even if they can't always quantify it the same way.


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## Not Really Here (Apr 8, 2021)

Yes.
Anyone who takes a paycheck(including welfare) from the government should be banned from voting, with the exception on in the primary duty of their job(legislature ect.) for as long as they get paid from taxpayer funds.


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## Duke Nukem (Apr 8, 2021)

The Founders were correct in their observation that the average person cannot understand the issues well enough to make sound decisions.

There's no stopping it now though, it's now going to be a race to the bottom to see who can give the citizens more free stuff than the other. Don't get me wrong, I like free stuff. But it's not sustainable in the long run if limits are not put in place.


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## Vulva Gape (Apr 8, 2021)

Right wingers: COMMON MAN!!! WORKING CLASS!!!

the second they vote the wrong way: You are literally subhuman scum that doesn't deserve the right to vote

We need a stonetoss comic sir


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## RembrandtCourage (Apr 8, 2021)

The best arguement against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 8, 2021)

Vulva Gape said:


> Right wingers: COMMON MAN!!! WORKING CLASS!!!
> 
> the second they vote the wrong way: You are literally subhuman scum that doesn't deserve the right to vote
> 
> We need a stonetoss comic sir


Left wingers are at least as guilty of this.  Possibly even more so, given some of the current zeitgeists.

Universal suffrage was a mistake.

Why was it a mistake?

Because it hinges upon people being universally educated enough to appreciate the gravity of voting decisions, it hinges upon people being intelligent enough to think ahead more than a week, it hinges upon people researching, reading and doing things that aren't really entertaining but rather like work or schoolwork in a way.  A constituency is ideally invested enough in their country, state, city etc. to want to make informed decisions about candidates, ballot measures and propositions, and to seek out this information of their own volition.  Making a country function as a governed entity requires a will to work towards making it function, towards addressing issues that crop up and requires the ability to consider possible long-term ramifications of decisions made in a voting booth.

This is before you even get into matters like how our system ACTUALLY works, and why it's not a democracy and hopefully never will be.  One of the things universal suffrage does is balloon the pool of voters to a size that most individuals can't actually comprehend.  It lets a government hide all kinds of things in a massive blanket of numbers, and lets said government dodge accountability in so many ways it BOGGLES THE MIND.


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## DumbDude42 (Apr 8, 2021)

imo if you want to restrict the vote in a way that's positive for society then you'll have to do it based on criteria that correspond to productivity and personal investment in society's long term well-being. something like "you get to vote if and only if you are married, with children, and your family is not receiving welfare or benefits of any kind"

but in my personal opinion that's still not enough. democracy means public opinion decides who gets into power, and public opinion is dictated by mass media, so a democracy is effectively an oligarchy: those who own and control the mass media have indirect control over the entire power structure.
in theory one could maybe counteract this by consolidating the entire mass media under state control and putting extremely tight regulations on how it operates? but in practice the exact opposite is done: 'free press' is part of the dogma of liberal democracy, which means that the greatest of powers is in the hands of private interests without any public oversight, free to pursue whatever political agenda their owners decide to push.

tl;dr fuck democracy, it's nu-aristocracy in everything but name, journalists and academics have replaced the nobility as ruling class, otherwise it's the same thing.


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## Massa's Little Buckie (Apr 8, 2021)

We should go back to monarchies and shit.


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## Friendly Futa (Apr 8, 2021)

Only Jewish people should be allowed to vote.


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## No Exit (Apr 8, 2021)

Daddy's Little Kitten said:


> We should go back to monarchies and shit.


Might as well, no difference at this point.


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## Suburban Bastard (Apr 8, 2021)

Friendly Futa said:


> Only Jewish people should be allowed to vote.


This but unironically


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 8, 2021)

No Exit said:


> Might as well, no difference at this point.


Having an absolute tyrant, a dictator running the country who makes no bones about what he/she is and what they are demanding of you (and what they'll do if you don't comply) is at least HONEST and there can be no mistake about what you are seeing, no mistake about your options for courses of action... it washes away all the muddy ambiguities that let people become complacent, fat, stupid and lazy.  You are now being lorded over by a tyrant who doesn't even pretend to be accountable and will probably kill you if you try to hold them accountable.  What are your options? Comply, feign compliance and undermine/overthrow, or openly rebel.  There.  Done.  You know what you're dealing with, you know at least in the general sense what your options are, and now you can start making decisions.  But you know you need to do SOMETHING.  Nobody's going to make the hard decisions for you.  Nobody's going to say "don't worry, it'll be taken care of" - it's on YOU now.


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## verissimus (Apr 8, 2021)

I will certainly say at the federal /central level it is.


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## Arminius (Apr 8, 2021)

It's only a mistake when people I don't like win.


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## Citizen Lain (Apr 8, 2021)

If not everyone gets to vote, who should vote? Should the right be inheritable, or should there be a selection process for it?


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## The High Prophet of Truth (Apr 8, 2021)

Vulva Gape said:


> Right wingers: COMMON MAN!!! WORKING CLASS!!!
> 
> the second they vote the wrong way: You are literally subhuman scum that doesn't deserve the right to vote


This, but seriously.


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## Jewthulhu (Apr 8, 2021)

> Was universal suffrage a mistake?


Yes


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## big ups liquid richard (Apr 8, 2021)

The High Prophet of Truth said:


> This, but seriously.


Cringe.


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## The High Prophet of Truth (Apr 8, 2021)

big ups liquid richard said:


> Cringe.






Silence infidel, before I get my shoe.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 8, 2021)

A Clockwork Soybean said:


> If not everyone gets to vote, who should vote? Should the right be inheritable, or should there be a selection process for it?


Ideally, people would be learning about things in school that they would end up voting on as adults.  Ideally, people would have to pass a test that shows at least a basic level of understanding of the political system before they're allowed to participate in it via voting.

We do not live in an ideal world, though.

We live in a world with mass media campaigns run by people that are effectively unaccountable, and we live in a world where people who vote are dumb and lazy enough to accept whatever these campaigns say uncritically and use that information/misinformation to make decisions that (in theory) alter the course of not only their own lives but the lives of others.  We live in a world where people are not just imperfect, they're HILARIOUSLY so and they've embraced their advanced states of mental infirmity and dysfunction as wisdom, truth and positive qualities that demand a certain degree of genuflection from everyone around them.  And this shows no signs of changing for the better.


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## RSOD (Apr 8, 2021)

Duke Nukem said:


> The Founders were correct in their observation that the average person cannot understand the issues well enough to make sound decisions.
> 
> There's no stopping it now though, it's now going to be a race to the bottom to see who can give the citizens more free stuff than the other. Don't get me wrong, I like free stuff. But it's not sustainable in the long run if limits are not put in place.


DUKE NUKEM FOR PRESIDENT 2024


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## Demonslayer1776 (Apr 8, 2021)

Yes, though I think people have a tendency to associate it with poor criteria. Almost every time you hear someone bring this up they just have some generic IQ or education argument which would be a bad criteria and sampling of the actual country. Voting should be limited to or weighted in favor of the people who have an actual investment in the country. Its really pretty nonsensical that you can have a foreign immigrant fresh off the boat having an equal say in changing the direction of a country compared to someone who has lived and grown up there for their entire life. I personally think that the best solution would be a weighted voting system that gave more of a say to people who are productive and have a personal investment in the countries future over people who largely take and have no ties. For example, a boost to ones vote if they are financially independent, are native born to the country, serve in the military, have children, etc. Consequentially, a reduction to the influence of a vote for people with less investment or productivity, such as long term welfare recipients,  dual citizenship, and any foreign loyalty. Anyone who has the ability to vote should also have to swear fealty to the nation and its principals. This type of approach would do a good job of weakening subversive forces who seek to change the core values of a country, as well as minimize the damages of low time preference voters, since people who have a reason to care about the country long term are given more influence.


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## L50LasPak (Apr 8, 2021)

I think people forget why humans invented things like aristocracies and other ruling classes in the first place. The fact that they were unequal and prone to abuse is impossible to argue with, but its obvious that the system of democracy we invented to deal with that isn't really any better. In some cases its vulnerable to manifesting the exact same inequalities that we were already dealing with under a landed aristocracy in the first place. Its clear that the system has failed, but too many people are still benefitting from it to effect change on the scale we need.


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## Un Platano (Apr 8, 2021)

Counterargument: This man is qualified to vote under non-universal suffrage because he is a wealthy landowner.



If we need a criteria to determine who is intelligent enough to make informed voting decisions, wealth-based measures ain't it.


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## Duke Nukem (Apr 8, 2021)

MRMUZZRAT SAUDIKILLER said:


> DUKE NUKEM FOR PRESIDENT 2024


Honestly, even the DNF/Randy Pitchford/Gearbox Software version of Duke would be a serious step up from the trash pile of "presidents" we normally get.


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## Bassomatic (Apr 8, 2021)

Just read HHH nigga, like didn't you see voting is just a failed god?

I shouldn't just leave only a meme/joke in regards to a DT thread. But yes yes it was, even in the US it's never meant to be since day one felons and slaves etc couldn't vote. 

There's a great old greek saying "a wise man plants trees to never sit in their shade" Now a days it's "racist and sexist" when only land owning males could vote. Well, they had nothing in this world aside their little farm so taking care of it meant taking care of their familes, would you sell your kids out for 200 bucks? Some shitty people would but most wouldn't, so voting was "safe" now it's who can promise more and deliver less, blaming the other team.

US is way too big for direct democracy too. The idea is incredible and star trek rad, everyone has one goal to see things get better and healthier, but we know that's not real. So really the vote is just what forefathers warned us, mob rule at this point.


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## Thumb Butler (Apr 8, 2021)

Only transgender, black, and second-generation wealthy Asians (who have never been to Asia but still speak for the billions of Asians worldwide) with a verified and "culturally sensitive" Twitter account should be allowed to vote.


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## Bland Crumbs (Apr 9, 2021)

scathefire said:


> What's the benefit of giving almost every single citizen in a nation the right to vote? It's not that I believe certain demographics of people shouldn't vote, my main concern is whether or not the people who vote are informed enough to make decisions for the country that are actually good. Should there be some way to prove that you're qualified to make those types of decisions beforehand? Because the vast majority of voters seem to have no idea what they're doing.
> 
> Granted, I can see how gatekeeping the right to vote based on "knowledge" alone can also result in an authoritarian government restricting it to only people who agree with said government. So, I'm not sure what a good solution would be to the massive amounts of uninformed voters. Though this seems to be less of a problem among local elections than it is with national ones, because if people bother to vote in their local elections, they generally have a good grasp of what's going on with those candidates.


Pretty obviously it was a mistake. Decades of slide kind of prove it was but ya know....everyone is equal right? Anyone could have done what I did and my grandfather did and start a business on their own back....must have been that white privilege check I still have not received.

Nothing is a worse idea than giving people with no part in the productivity of the country a voice in how it operates. If you do not pay federal taxes maybe you should not have a vote. Might incentivize people to do better but what do I know I am just a bigot who will see my taxes go up and receive no fucking benefit.

I see myself removing my business from the US in the next five years. I am certainly not Amazon but it is a chunk of change out of a certain state's coffers. Enjoy progits.


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## knobslobbin (Apr 9, 2021)

Voting hasn't mattered for a long time. The only way to matter was to be born into the tribe and be inducted into the cult of moloch. You're probably from a flyover state, so don't worry about it cattle.


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## Cpl. Long Dong Silver (Apr 9, 2021)

Land owning male whites only. It was good enough for 1776 and its good enough for now.

You can count Asians as white in this scenario.


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## mindlessobserver (Apr 9, 2021)




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## Pokemonquistador2 (Apr 9, 2021)

I think the time for large central governments is past. Areas should organize at a local level, with everyone participating in the government having a say in how it's run. The primary problem this would solve is keeping rural areas from being pushed around by populous urban centers that have no cultural/psychological connection to them.  These smaller, local governments could make alliances with other governments, exchanging goods and services and assisting with each other's security. 

Yeah, I know. I just invented Feudalism.  I also think this is what government is growing closer to by the day, because of the hoggish behavior of urban centers and the over-encroachment of centralized government. You can only burn down your own cities for so long before all the producers leave it for greener pastures, leaving the mobs (whose only purpose is to cow the productive into obeying) to fend for themselves.


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## Johan Schmidt (Apr 9, 2021)

It should be one man, one vote. I am that man, and I should have that vote.


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## rotten apple (Apr 9, 2021)

The ignorant and spiteful are far more easily swayed than rational and intelligent people. The former also always outnumber the latter. So as far as mob rule is concerned and in the interest of our betters it was not at all a mistake but a calculated move. It allows those in control of the media to have enormous leverage in an election. The votes don't even need to be real so long as they have a large enough group of people willing to accept the results. Although you as a free thinking individual are pretty screwed.


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## Alba gu brath (Apr 9, 2021)

Would happen due to the simple fact that it'd require constant policing of the under groupings from protesting and the likes. Whilst stupid will vote, it's better for them to waste their vote stupidly, than to sperg out and possibly cause even more stupid to become a bigger problem. Think the civil rights era, no way you could have kept what was in place without a proto-militia or terrorist group forming from angry blacks. Hell, lets go further back, include poor buggers as well, you'd just be adding to the number of possible revolt'rs. And in a country where there's a ton of guns, mibbies a good idea to avoid setting them off at you.


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## ArnoldPalmer (Apr 9, 2021)

I don't think you deserve the right to vote unless you're a landowner. Why should a childless bugman living in a San Franciscan $3000/mo pokeball apartment have any say in a future they have no stake in? Frankly, they haven't invested enough to earn their say.


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## Stoneheart (Apr 9, 2021)

Woman can vote, same for undesirables. the more important thing is that only white  protestant males are allowed to rule.
 Catholic lawmakers have the same poor working ethic and moral character as other catholics.


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## Kosher Dill (Apr 9, 2021)

knobslobbin said:


> Voting hasn't mattered for a long time.


Haven't we just had 4 years proving the opposite in the US? Look at how many Republicans personally and politically despised Trump, but fell in line with him anyway because those pesky voters loved him.


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## knobslobbin (Apr 9, 2021)

Kosher Dill said:


> Haven't we just had 4 years proving the opposite in the US? Look at how many Republicans personally and politically despised Trump, but fell in line with him anyway because those pesky voters loved him.


Yes friend, most secure elections ever, just look at the Republicans!

/all my oy vey


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## Yinci (Apr 9, 2021)

I don't believe it is a mistake. Actually come to think of it there is a co-relation with how many people get to vote and how free the society actually is. Always need more voting rights. Unless you want me as your monarch. The United States takes away voting rights a punishment at the current moment and the Society of The United States is falling into authoritarianism and is trying to drag the rest of the west with it.


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## scathefire (Apr 9, 2021)

Arm Pit Cream said:


> What you're describing is called a "Geniocracy". The flaw there is equivocating intelligence with knowledge of political matters and sense of politics. There's tons of smart people who know nothing about current events, running the government or who's the best choice.
> If say only people with an IQ above 110 voted, there would be heavy biases and it would lean more liberal. This wouldn't really fix any of the problems of democracy and in fact it makes it worse as the lower classes would have literally no say or representative.
> Do people who have to work to get by have the time to turn on the news? Of course not, but this doesn't make the problems they're facing any less valid even if they can't always quantify it the same way.


You misunderstand what I meant, I wasn't saying that only the smartest people are the most qualified to vote, I mean to say that people who are _sufficiently informed_ should be the ones to vote. Though like I said, I think that could be very easy for governments to abuse in the sense of "oh, you don't agree with the government? You must not be sufficiently informed."


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## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Apr 9, 2021)

Suffrage? 

Democracy was the mistake.


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## Kosher Dill (Apr 9, 2021)

scathefire said:


> Though like I said, I think that could be very easy for governments to abuse in the sense of "oh, you don't agree with the government? You must not be sufficiently informed."


Or just look at the history of literacy tests for voting, which were indeed abused in every conceivable way.


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## Flavius Claudius Julianus (Apr 9, 2021)

You ought to be a net tax contributor. Circa 1824 in Bongland, you needed to be a man of property, of 'sound repute' and of good employment. Roughly analogous to a lower/middle-middle class contributing member of society. 

Those criteria alone, we'd automatically get rid of the parasites.


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## Cabelaz (Apr 9, 2021)

Nobody except Mark Wahlberg can vote. There. I saved democracy!


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 9, 2021)

scathefire said:


> You misunderstand what I meant, I wasn't saying that only the smartest people are the most qualified to vote, I mean to say that people who are _sufficiently informed_ should be the ones to vote. Though like I said, I think that could be very easy for governments to abuse in the sense of "oh, you don't agree with the government? You must not be sufficiently informed."


There would be distinct irony in the government being allowed to tell ANYBODY what the qualifications are to be able to tell THEM how to spend money they extract from you via taxation, non-negotiably and you refuse at the peril of having your asshole widened by both the IRS and your fellow inmates.

When dealing with government entities you need very, very clear cut and unambiguous rules about what they are allowed to do.  If there is a loophole or oversight, they WILL find it.  This is why the erosion of numerous parts of the Bill of Rights over the decades bothers me really, really deeply.  2A is SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.  PERIOD.  NO FUCKING QUIBBLING OVER WHETHER SOMEONE REALLY NEEDS A MANPADS OR MORTAR, FUCK YOU.  1A, 4A, 5A, every last one of them needs to be upheld in a very absolute sense because those things are what keeps the government from turning you into a glorified serf, backed by the implied threat of "If you so much as look at that BoR cross-eyed, Uncle Sam, I'll fucking murder you and anyone who gets in my way".  The fact that they've been basically turned into polite suggestions at best, over and over, and somehow the ENTIRE COUNTRY hasn't banded together and painted Washington DC red with the blood and viscera of politicians and such ties into why universal suffrage is not really a good idea at this point.

Rights are only as good as your ability and willingness to assert them, whether via speech or outright ultra-violence if need be.  The government is not your friend, it is not your ally, it is not on your side and it has repeatedly demonstrated that it has a vested interest in harming you for its own benefit.  The government is not by the people and for the people anymore.  The government is not your servant, it is your RULER now and may whatever god you believe in have mercy on you if you fuck with your rulers because they sure as fuck won't.

The people fell asleep at the wheel, got lazy and complacent, and the only consolation I take away from this is that at least a lot of people are likely going to get exactly what they deserve as the years drag on.


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## Kornula (Apr 9, 2021)

Since we know that women only react emotionally rather than logically, yes, it was a huge mistake to let them vote.. let alone leave the kitchen. ... Not kidding.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 9, 2021)

Kornula said:


> Since we know that women only react emotionally rather than logically, yes, it was a huge mistake to let them vote.. let alone leave the kitchen. ... Not kidding.


They're capable of apprehending logic like anyone else.  The issue facing them is more or less the same issue facing most people - almost nobody FORCES them to apprehend it, appreciate it and use it (perhaps more so in women's case than men's, but this is still something most anybody is prone to).


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## Fougaro (Apr 9, 2021)

nigger of the north said:


> You ought to be a net tax contributor. Circa 1824 in Bongland, you needed to be a man of property, of 'sound repute' and of good employment. Roughly analogous to a lower/middle-middle class contributing member of society.
> 
> Those criteria alone, we'd automatically get rid of the parasites.


I would go a step further by splitting the vote where net taxpayers vote for the legislative while the executive is voted by servicemen and veterans. If you don't participate in the system, you don't have a say in it. End of story!

The civilised world completely shit the bed by not tying rights to responsibilities, and pretty much signed its own death warrant by giving every envious and resentful downie dipshit (read: normies) the right to vote themselves everyone else's money.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 9, 2021)

Fougaro said:


> I would go a step further by splitting the vote where net taxpayers vote for the legislative while the executive is voted by servicemen and veterans. If you don't participate in the system, you don't have a say in it. End of story!
> 
> The civilised world completely shit the bed by not tying rights to responsibilities, and pretty much signed its own death warrant by giving every envious and resentful downie dipshit (read: normies) the right to vote themselves everyone else's money.


We'd need to rein the powers of the executive back in, but we've needed to do that for a while.


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## Muh Vagina (Apr 9, 2021)

Kornula said:


> Since we know that women only react emotionally rather than logically, yes, it was a huge mistake to let them vote.. let alone leave the kitchen. ... Not kidding.


I can smell the tendies from here.


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## Lemmingwise (Apr 10, 2021)

Kornula said:


> Since we know that women only react emotionally rather than logically, yes, it was a huge mistake to let them vote.. let alone leave the kitchen. ... Not kidding.


The level at which women are informed about politics is always so abysmal. The degree to which they're willing to accept and acknowledge facts that go against their emotions are terrible if not mostly non-existant. And the multigenerational vote for security over liberty is completely destructive to everyone, including women.

But what would the reverse have been? A group wanting to vote and being denied? The subversive results of that are no less worrying, to be honest. I run the same thought experiment on other groups. If you look at it from a distance, who really should be allowed to vote? And even if your answer would be "men" how is that a safeguard against corruption (e.g. male > female legislation).



Muh Vagina said:


> I can smell the tendies from here.


Maybe you should learn to cook a proper meal.


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## mr.moon1488 (Apr 10, 2021)

Suffrage in general was a mistake.  Cromwell and Robespierre were nothing but violent criminals who murdered their way into power, and the JewSA only lasted as long as it did because it was originally a White Christian ethnostate.  You can easily observe that any time throughout history when the general population has realized that a Republic was a mistake, and tried to oust the filth from their lands through the "representative" system, it has quickly shown its true colors.  

Trial of Charles I:  Parlament literally ordered the military to shoot peasantry who were against the trial and threatened any parliament members who refused to convict King Charles
Jacobins: Led insane witch hunts for anyone who might have even the slightest objection towards the "Republic"
WW2:  Every "Republic" in the world declared war on Germany because the German people elected Hitler in order to escape Republican rule
JewSA:  Brings glorious freedom and Democracy to the whole world by bombing any population who resists it into submission

JewSA vassal Republics
Germany:  White and say something wrong = go to jail.  
Japan:  Half the population is genuinely horrified of their "benevolent" overlords
Korea:  Culture is almost entirely dictated by the US, which means so is their politics

This isn't even going into the myriad of countries that have their government's essentially bribed into adopting whatever is the social zeitgeist of global "Republics."


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## FlamingPie (Apr 10, 2021)

mr.moon1488 said:


> Germany:  White and say something wrong = go to jail.


So, basically the 1930s - early 1940s incarnation, only with less Nazis.


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## The High Prophet of Truth (Apr 10, 2021)

mr.moon1488 said:


> Japan:  Half the population is genuinely horrified of their "benevolent" overlords


Can you go into more detail on this?


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## biozeminadae1 (Apr 10, 2021)

Only people who've created their own families should be allowed to vote. Maybe add land as a requirement as well. And military service. Only heterosexuals.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 11, 2021)

It's trivial to point out the weaknesses of democracy; they've been known about and discussed for literally thousands of years. The challenge is coming up with a better system, and so far no one seems to have managed that.

Limiting the franchise in any serious capacity simply sets the stage for oligarchy and paternalism (of one form or another), and if the system you propose resigns itself to the premise that there are people who "cannot be trusted" to decide who governs them, then it provides little if any incentive for society to attempt to rectify that. To put it another way: it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A society which does not believe in the ability of it's citizens to decide it's destiny is a society where the poor remain impoverished, where the ignorant remain uneducated, and where anyone who might have had great potential in a more enterprising society remain destined to toil in obscurity for a class of people who are resigned to a vain illusion of their own superiority.

We can see what societies without universal suffrage look like, and they aren't better for it.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> It's trivial to point out the weaknesses of democracy; they've been known about and discussed for literally thousands of years. The challenge is coming up with a better system, and so far no one seems to have managed that.


Trivial or not, it's worth doing.  As for why nobody's managed to come up with a better system than our current one, I'd argue it's more due to the current system available being INCREDIBLY convenient for the people at the top rather than any lack of will or desire to explore alternative approaches among populations, or any expected deficiencies of any alternative approaches.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Limiting the franchise in any serious capacity simply sets the stage for oligarchy and paternalism (of one form or another), and if the system you propose resigns itself to the premise that there are people who "cannot be trusted" to decide who governs them, then it provides little if any incentive for society to attempt to rectify that. To put it another way: it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.


Oligarchy and paternalism is what we have right now with suffrage only withheld from felons and children.  Just because almost nobody calls this what it is doesn't mean that isn't what it is.

The methods we have to fix what we have right now (single transferrable vote, abolishment of FPTP, educating voter-bases better and eliminating media involvement in the process, making constituencies far more aggressive about keeping elected officials on the straight and narrow, abolishment or severe limiting of the powers of the federal before the powers of local governments, etc.) are all pie-in-the-sky.  They'll never be implemented, because they're not what the people at the top want.  Again, the average American fell asleep at the wheel and now we're all going to suffer for it.  People with little to no concern for anything but the transfer of other people's money to their bank accounts and the silencing of viewpoints they personally don't like have more "power" than anyone else in the voter base, and even that isn't much compared to the power social elites and extremely wealthy people and organizations have.  Media exercises so much soft power right now it beggars belief.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 11, 2021)

Hothead said:


> The methods we have to fix what we have right now (single transferrable vote, abolishment of FPTP, educating voter-bases better and eliminating media involvement in the process, making constituencies far more aggressive about keeping elected officials on the straight and narrow, abolishment or severe limiting of the powers of the federal before the powers of local governments, etc.) are all pie-in-the-sky. They'll never be implemented, because they're not what the people at the top want. Again, the average American fell asleep at the wheel and now we're all going to suffer for it. People with little to no concern for anything but the transfer of other people's money to their bank accounts and the silencing of viewpoints they personally don't like have more "power" than anyone else in the voter base, and even that isn't much compared to the power social elites and extremely wealthy people and organizations have. Media exercises so much soft power right now it beggars belief.


None of the problems you have identified are the direct fault of universal suffrage, and none of what you have said could be used as a justification for further limiting the franchise. In fact, just about all of the things you mention are even worse in less democratic societies, which merely serves to illustrate my argument.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> None of the problems you have identified are the direct fault of universal suffrage, and none of what you have said could be used as a justification for further limiting the franchise. In fact, just about all of the things you mention are even worse in less democratic societies, which merely serves to illustrate my argument.


I'm assuming you have some kind of solution in mind, then.  It matters little to me whether they're the direct fault of universal suffrage, because after how many decades of the franchise being as open as it's ever been here somehow things seem to be worse than ever before - this implies the fault lies at least in part with the voter-base if we assume that voters have ANY POWER AT ALL, and the fix for it also lies at least in part with the voter-base.  The direct causal link may not be there, or it may be obscured, but the end result is plain to see.  Whether that's because someone wants us to see that or not may be irrelevant.  If universal suffrage is not at fault, then the people who utilize it are.  If people are not going to exercise their voting power responsibly and use it to limit the ever-encroaching hand of a government that has no love of things like rights and freedom, then universal suffrage is at best a security blanket for a bunch of infants and at worst something that ENABLES the encroachment.

Universal suffrage is only as useful as the voters are capable of making it so.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 11, 2021)

Hothead said:


> I'm assuming you have some kind of solution in mind, then.


The solution is very straightforward: invest in education, prevent monied interests from unfairly gaming the system to their advantage, and demand accountability from media outlets who peddle conspiracy theories and misinformation. Whether the political will exists for this to happen is besides the point; the solution to these problems is not to take away people's democratic voice, and the available evidence suggests that doing so will only make the problems even worse.


Hothead said:


> It matters little to me whether they're the direct fault of universal suffrage


Then your opinion on the subject of universal suffrage is fundamentally unserious, and should be discredited as such. Just about every society is burdened with some degree of corruption, falsehood, and internal contradiction. That can't be suggested as an argument against universal suffrage if the relationship is merely incidental.


Hothead said:


> because after how many decades of the franchise being as open as it's ever been here somehow things seem to be worse than ever before


Seem to be worse than ever before? Upon what do you base that conclusion? Are things worse now than they were before people had universal suffrage? Are they worse than they are in societies which still don't? These questions, of course, ought to be viewed as rhetorical, because any earnest answer is going to lose you the argument here.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Then your opinion on the subject of universal suffrage is fundamentally unserious, and should be discredited as such. Just about every society is burdened with some degree of corruption, falsehood, and internal contradiction. That can't be suggested as an argument against universal suffrage if the relationship is merely incidental.


No system is above criticism if the results produced are not conducive to its purported ends.  If you give someone a hammer and he uses it to beat old ladies' skulls in instead of building a house, the hammer is probably not something that person should have.  The tool is merely a tool, but a tool in the wrong hands is worse than useless.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Seem to be worse than ever before? Upon what do you base that conclusion? Are things worse now than they were before people had universal suffrage? Are they worse than they are in societies which still don't? These questions, of course, ought to be viewed as rhetorical, because any earnest answer is going to lose you the argument here.


Right now we're staring down the barrel of the possibility of the Bill of Rights becoming an outright afterthought.  The PATRIOT act has trivialized the 4th and possibly the 5th.  The 1st is at serious threat of being undermined to the point of meaninglessness.  The 2nd has been so badly eroded over the years that its original purpose as the looming threat to would-be dictators and thus protector of every other amendment in the BoR is in serious jeopardy.  People with alleged voting power have CHEERED THIS ON.

Right now, the government at least partly controls the education of the people and it will likely ramp this up in years to come.  It controls your ability to tell it what to do with the money it extracts from you, non-negotiably, to spend on things that not only do not benefit you but at times are actively to your detriment.  The government controls your ability to own the items that would allow you to remove them by force when more polite avenues of correction fail, and it promises to control this even MORE strictly to the point of making correction by discourse, vote or force an effective impossibility.  And again, people who are franchised are cheering this on and enabling it even as it promises to eventually undermine, trivialize and possibly destroy their voices as well.

You've been entered into a suicide pact with a bunch of fucking suicidal morons, against your own will and against any kind of better sense.  It will not be addressed via the vote, because even if you discount the possibility of the franchise already being compromised to the point of meaninglessness there are certainly plenty of people who are ready to vote to make addressing the situation unfolding more difficult if not impossible.


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## Fougaro (Apr 11, 2021)

Lemmingwise said:


> But what would the reverse have been? A group wanting to vote and being denied? The subversive results of that are no less worrying, to be honest. I run the same thought experiment on other groups. If you look at it from a distance, who really should be allowed to vote? And even if your answer would be "men" how is that a safeguard against corruption (e.g. male > female legislation).


Simple: If people want to vote, you tell them to become net taxpayers and/or join the military. If they don't want to, you tell them to shut the fuck up and go back to their normie mudhuts. If they chimp out, you simply send the ED-209s and YoRHa gynoids to deal with them and call it a day.

I also forgot to mention that if you are invested in the system by being a net taxpayer and/or in the military, you will have all the incentive to inform yourself on how _your_ money is spent and in which wars _you_ will potentially fight and die, thus solving the low information voter problem.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 11, 2021)

Hothead said:


> No system is above criticism if the results produced are not conducive to its purported ends. If you give someone a hammer and he uses it to beat old ladies' skulls in instead of building a house, the hammer is probably not something that person should have. The tool is merely a tool, but a tool in the wrong hands is worse than useless.


No system is above criticism, but unfortunately for you, the criticisms you've provided are not only fatuous and unoriginal, but also evidentially self-defeating, in that every problem you have identified—from the erosion of civil liberties, to the public acceptance and celebration of authoritarianism, to the propagandization of education, to corruption and cronyism, to just about anything else you could mention for that matter—is demonstrably worse in societies which lack universal suffrage.

This is trivial to prove, yet you keep ignoring it. You've now spent several paragraphs attempting to argue that there is a causal link between two things which don't even share a correlation, and I've been trying to save you the time by pointing out to you why this doesn't work.


Hothead said:


> Right now we're staring down the barrel of the possibility of the Bill of Rights becoming an outright afterthought. The PATRIOT act has trivialized the 4th and possibly the 5th. The 1st is at serious threat of being undermined to the point of meaninglessness. The 2nd has been so badly eroded over the years that its original purpose as the looming threat to would-be dictators and thus protector of every other amendment in the BoR is in serious jeopardy. People with alleged voting power have CHEERED THIS ON.
> 
> Right now, the government at least partly controls the education of the people and it will likely ramp this up in years to come. It controls your ability to tell it what to do with the money it extracts from you, non-negotiably, to spend on things that not only do not benefit you but at times are actively to your detriment. The government controls your ability to own the items that would allow you to remove them by force when more polite avenues of correction fail, and it promises to control this even MORE strictly to the point of making correction by discourse, vote or force an effective impossibility. And again, people who are franchised are cheering this on and enabling it even as it promises to eventually undermine, trivialize and possibly destroy their voices as well.
> 
> You've been entered into a suicide pact with a bunch of fucking suicidal morons, against your own will and against any kind of better sense. It will not be addressed via the vote, because even if you discount the possibility of the franchise already being compromised to the point of meaninglessness there are certainly plenty of people who are ready to vote to make addressing the situation unfolding more difficult if not impossible.


So? In a democratic system, people generally get the government they deserve. Again, hardly an original observation, but also a useless one if you're unable to provide evidence of a superior system which doesn't lead to corruption, coercion, or abuse by those in power, because thus far, you have not.

Personally, I'm inclined to think that your entire argument here is bullshit, and that you in fact reject democracy in principle. It has been said in the past that much of the right-wing antipathy towards democracy rests upon a principle of otherness, wherein there must be an ingroup whom the law protects but does not bind, and an outgroup, whom the law binds but does not protect. I suppose you must fancy yourself as a member of the ingroup.


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## The High Prophet of Truth (Apr 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> So? In a democratic system, people generally get the government they deserve.


Trust me, America is getting exactly what it wanted and deserves.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> So? In a democratic system, people generally get the government they deserve.


If a group of 11 people is comprised of 10 people who want to rape the other people to death, and the 1 vehemently disagrees with being raped to death, then everyone involved deserves to be raped to death.  That 1 person being raped to death by the other 10 is something he deserves.



Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Personally, I'm inclined to think that your entire argument here is bullshit, and that you in fact reject democracy in principle. It has been said in the past that much of the right-wing antipathy towards democracy rests upon a principle of otherness, wherein there must be an ingroup whom the law protects but does not bind, and an outgroup, whom the law binds but does not protect. I suppose you must fancy yourself as a member of the ingroup.


I don't give a rat's fucking ass because you're repeatedly dragging this back to me in order to undermine a criticism of a system that is far bigger than me, you or any other individual within it.  You're symptomatic of why democracy is under scrutiny and why I dislike the modern left.  You accuse me of thinking I am an ingroup when you make arguments that would be made by someone within the ingroup against an outsider looking in.  Your hypocrisy is untenable and your method of arguing is contemptuous and deserving of repeated strikes to the face with a blunt object, but it's almost a guarantee that you won't get that and you know that or you wouldn't be so insufferably smug.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 11, 2021)

Hothead said:


> If a group of 11 people is comprised of 10 people who want to rape the other people to death, and the 1 vehemently disagrees with being raped to death, then everyone involved deserves to be raped to death. That 1 person being raped to death by the other 10 is something he deserves.


What you're describing here is mob rule, not democracy. Liberal democracy in fact contains checks and balances designed specifically to protect the rights of the minority. This is precisely why the bill of rights exists. The scenario you're providing here is actually far more analogous to a society where democracy has broken down; not one where it is functioning as intended. Either way, it's a facile argument.


Hothead said:


> I don't give a rat's fucking ass because you're repeatedly dragging this back to me in order to undermine a criticism of a system that is far bigger than me, you or any other individual within it. You're symptomatic of why democracy is under scrutiny and why I dislike the modern left. You accuse me of thinking I am an ingroup when you make arguments that would be made by someone within the ingroup against an outsider looking in. Your hypocrisy is untenable and your method of arguing is contemptuous and deserving of repeated strikes to the face with a blunt object, but it's almost a guarantee that you won't get that and you know that or you wouldn't be so insufferably smug.


If I am incorrect in my assessment of your position and motivations, then why don't you explain to me how limiting who gets to vote wouldn't result in the creation of an outgroup who would remain permanently disenfranchised? Tell me, how would you prevent those who get to vote from simply voting themselves and their children all of society's dividends while the disenfranchised group is left with nothing?

I think you fail to appreciate how easy it is for people to jump from the premise that "this group isn't educated enough to vote" to "this group isn't worth educating". The end result of this line of thinking is ultimately the creation of a permanent underclass who would be destined to remain impoverished and uneducated, and who's poverty and lack of education could, in turn, be used as an ideological justification not to educate them or lift them out of poverty. As I said earlier: it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What I am describing here is not without precedent. We have countless examples of disenfranchised groups throughout history who have been denied a political voice in society, and the outcome for those people was invariably bleak. It was only when our institutions eventually came around to the view that these people deserved a stake in their society that their lot in life began to improve. Perhaps you think that things should return to the way they were; I most certainly do not.


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## Lemmingwise (Apr 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> designed specifically to protect the rights of the minority.


Minority status not extended to people that vote rightwing, right.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 11, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> What you're describing here is mob rule, not democracy. Liberal democracy in fact contains checks and balances designed specifically to protect the rights of the minority. This is precisely why the bill of rights exists. The scenario you're providing here is actually far more analogous to a society where democracy has broken down; not one where it is functioning as intended. Either way, it's a facile argument.


How are those checks and balances working for us now? How's that Bill of Rights looking lately?


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> If I am incorrect in my assessment of your position and motivations, then why don't you explain to me how limiting who gets to vote wouldn't result in the creation of an outgroup who would remain permanently disenfranchised? Tell me, how would you prevent those who get to vote from simply voting themselves and their children all of society's dividends while the disenfranchised group is left with nothing?


Why don't you explain to me how this doesn't already happen under your "liberal democracy"? What's the difference between a diktat from one larger mob directed against another smaller mob and your "liberal democracy"?


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I think you fail to appreciate how easy it is for people to jump from the premise that "this group isn't educated enough to vote" to "this group isn't worth educating". The end result of this line of thinking is ultimately the creation of a permanent underclass who would be destined to remain impoverished and uneducated, and who's poverty and lack of education could, in turn, be used as an ideological justification not to educate them or lift them out of poverty. As I said earlier: it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.


I've already mentioned that it would be heinously absurd for the government to be dictating voting rights to people it collects taxes from in the first place, so I think you fail to appreciate my appreciation for the problem.  Not that I'm surprised you'd gloss over any information that preemptively pokes holes in your assessment of me.  As for education, whose responsibility should it be to educate? Who should make the assessment of an individual being sufficiently informed enough to vote? Who should make the assessment of an individual having STANDING to vote?


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## Drain Todger (Apr 11, 2021)

scathefire said:


> What's the benefit of giving almost every single citizen in a nation the right to vote? It's not that I believe certain demographics of people shouldn't vote, my main concern is whether or not the people who vote are informed enough to make decisions for the country that are actually good. Should there be some way to prove that you're qualified to make those types of decisions beforehand? Because the vast majority of voters seem to have no idea what they're doing.
> 
> Granted, I can see how gatekeeping the right to vote based on "knowledge" alone can also result in an authoritarian government restricting it to only people who agree with said government. So, I'm not sure what a good solution would be to the massive amounts of uninformed voters. Though this seems to be less of a problem among local elections than it is with national ones, because if people bother to vote in their local elections, they generally have a good grasp of what's going on with those candidates.


The biggest problem with democracy is not universal suffrage, but the fact that governments and educational systems actively deny people the information that they need to make informed votes, choosing instead to bombard people with propaganda that shapes their opinion of each candidate. Even debates between candidates are presented in a confrontational style that tells the electorate absolutely nothing substantive about the candidate's real intentions and what they plan to do when they attain the office they seek. As a result, people vote more on the basis of their emotions than anything else.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 12, 2021)

Lemmingwise said:


> Minority status not extended to people that vote rightwing, right.


Checks and balances designed to protect the minority from the mob ought to apply to everyone evenly, else they are worthless. I have never tried to suggest otherwise, so you should probably rein in the persecution complex. Remember that I am not the one here who is suggesting that people's right to vote should be taken away.


Hothead said:


> How are those checks and balances working for us now? How's that Bill of Rights looking lately?


Compared to societies which lack universal suffrage: relatively well, which is precisely why your objections thus far have been so unconvincing. Compare the United States in 2021 to any country which lacks universal suffrage, and the United States comes out very much in credit with respect to the complaints you've raised.


Hothead said:


> Why don't you explain to me how this doesn't already happen under your "liberal democracy"? What's the difference between a diktat from one larger mob directed against another smaller mob and your "liberal democracy"?


The difference is that under universal suffrage, everyone has a voice within the halls of power, and the system is therefore incentivized to facilitate the people's demands. Does this work perfectly in practice? Of course not, but this goes back to what I said earlier about the imperfect nature of democracy not being a sufficient argument against it being the best system.

Asking me to explain why democratic systems still result in problems is like asking me to explain why people with burglar alarms still get broken into, or how non-smokers can still get lung cancer. It's hardly a convincing argument against burglar alarms, is it?


Hothead said:


> I've already mentioned that it would be heinously absurd for the government to be dictating voting rights to people it collects taxes from in the first place, so I think you fail to appreciate my appreciation for the problem. Not that I'm surprised you'd gloss over any information that preemptively pokes holes in your assessment of me. As for education, whose responsibility should it be to educate? Who should make the assessment of an individual being sufficiently informed enough to vote? Who should make the assessment of an individual having STANDING to vote?


The answer to just about all of these questions, as I see it, is that no one should be making such assessments, because no one can truly be an objective observer; especially when it comes to the subject of other people's rights. The principle of universal suffrage is that everyone should have a say in who governs them, and that the moment you try to chip away at this principle, democracy ceases to be. I shouldn't need to provide historical examples to illustrate my point here; you should know this.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 12, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Checks and balances designed to protect the minority from the mob ought to apply to everyone evenly, else they are worthless. I have never tried to suggest otherwise, so you should probably rein in the persecution complex. Remember that I am not the one here who is suggesting that people's right to vote should be taken away.


And yet they're failing, and they're promising to fail even faster.  We've yet to turn back the clock significantly on a great deal of government overreaches, and it's likely we never will with our current trajectory.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Compared to societies which lack universal suffrage: relatively well, which is precisely why your objections thus far have been so unconvincing. Compare the United States in 2021 to any country which lacks universal suffrage, and the United States comes out very much in credit with respect to the complaints you've raised.


The United States is none of these other countries.  Not in geography, demographics or culture.  To say "well if the US lacked universal suffrage they'd be just like them!" is willfully eliding every other difference between the US and those countries.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The difference is that under universal suffrage, everyone has a voice within the halls of power, and the system is therefore incentivized to facilitate the people's demands. Does this work perfectly in practice? Of course not, but this goes back to what I said earlier about the imperfect nature of democracy not being a sufficient argument against it being the best system.


No, it is not.  It is incentivized to advance its own power, and it will happily use the voices of those who scream for X things to be taken away from Y to buttress taking away X from everyone.  The system as it stands is so INCREDIBLY FAR FROM PERFECT and clearly could be improved that saying "well, nothing's perfect" is nothing more an excuse to enable your own torpor and the torpor of others.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Asking me to explain why democratic systems still result in problems is like asking me to explain why people with burglar alarms still get broken into, or how non-smokers can still get lung cancer. It's hardly a convincing argument against burglar alarms, is it?


The system, when "working normally", has proceeded to trample the BoR and fuck constituencies harder than a boomtown whore after a major gold rush.  Burglars and lung cancer are not the accepted norm - this is part of why burglary is a crime instead of an "unexpected visit" and lung cancer is a serious disease instead of a "body difference" for fuck's sake.  I reiterate - the system is functioning normally.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The answer to just about all of these questions, as I see it, is that no one should be making such assessments, because no one can truly be an objective observer; especially when it comes to the subject of other people's rights. The principle of universal suffrage is that everyone should have a say in who governs them, and that the moment you try to chip away at this principle, democracy ceases to be. I shouldn't need to provide historical examples to illustrate my point here; you should know this.


So let me get to the heart of the matter - voting and the franchise as we know it is a joke.  Between the "2 wolves and a sheep voting for dinner" allegory and the fact that participating in the franchise itself gives validity to a government that absolutely deserves none in its current incarnation and voting offers little real hope for anything improving... it's theater, you may have a voice but that doesn't mean anyone's listening.

Right now, having the franchise is a security blanket that gives people hope that they can fix this system, the system that has taken on a life of its own with its own peculiar concerns, desires and agenda that can (and frequently are) detached from the needs, desires and expectations of their constituencies.  It creates a myth of accountable power, it soothes and lulls people into thinking that polite suggestions are all that's really needed despite decades of that clearly not being the case.  You think the vote will fix this.  I disagree, and I think anyone who's convinced the vote will fix this despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary is either stupid or willfully oblivious.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 12, 2021)

Hothead said:


> And yet they're failing, and they're promising to fail even faster. We've yet to turn back the clock significantly on a great deal of government overreaches, and it's likely we never will with our current trajectory.


They're only failing to the extent that the public is apathetic and misinformed, which is a problem only incidental to the subject we're discussing. The fact remains that taking away people's right to vote isn't going to solve any of the problems you've identified, and will in all likelihood, only make them even worse.

If you had a serious concern about issues such as government overreach, or the public's apparent indifference to the subject, you'd be arguing that the government ought to be even more accountable to the scrutiny of public opinion, not that the public should have less of a say. This is why I think that your objections to universal suffrage are fundamentally unserious, and while you may chide me for insinuating my suspicion that you have ulterior motives, I think this insinuation is far kinder than the alternative explanation that you're just not very bright. I am trying to be charitable here.


Hothead said:


> The United States is none of these other countries. Not in geography, demographics or culture. To say "well if the US lacked universal suffrage they'd be just like them!" is willfully eliding every other difference between the US and those countries.


The point you keep missing is that there is a very clear correlation between democracy and political freedom. You can't just handwave this fact away to culture and demographics, unless you want to try to argue that Japan and South Korea are more demographically similar to the United States and Europe than they are to China and North Korea; something which I think demographers, historians, and population geneticists would all very firmly dispute.

The common denominator here is universal suffrage and democratic accountability, and this is perhaps the singular obstacle to your objections making any sense. Until you can A) provide evidence of a superior system which doesn't lead to the problems you speak of, or at the very least, experiences them to a lesser degree, and B) demonstrate that there is a clear correlation (let alone a causal relationship) between universal suffrage and these problems, then your objections are entirely without merit.


Hothead said:


> No, it is not. It is incentivized to advance its own power, and it will happily use the voices of those who scream for X things to be taken away from Y to buttress taking away X from everyone. The system as it stands is so INCREDIBLY FAR FROM PERFECT and clearly could be improved that saying "well, nothing's perfect" is nothing more an excuse to enable your own torpor and the torpor of others.


All governments are incentivized to advance their own power, which is precisely why it is a bad idea to have (much less prescribe) a strong social barrier between those who hold political power, and those who don't. You want the government to serve the people, not the other way around, and the only way you can reasonably guarantee that is by tying the legitimacy of those in positions of authority to the consent of the people they govern. It is a necessary condition for a free society, even if it isn't always a sufficient one in practice.


Hothead said:


> So let me get to the heart of the matter - voting and the franchise as we know it is a joke. Between the "2 wolves and a sheep voting for dinner" allegory and the fact that participating in the franchise itself gives validity to a government that absolutely deserves none in its current incarnation and voting offers little real hope for anything improving... it's theater, you may have a voice but that doesn't mean anyone's listening.


There is little real hope of anything improving, so lets take away what little hope there is by chipping away further at the people's ability to decide who gets to represent them. I'm guessing this argument sounded better in your head.


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## Merried Senior Comic (Apr 12, 2021)

Fully Automated Luxury Gay Lesbian Tranny Dilation Space Station Communism is the only way.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 12, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> They're only failing to the extent that the public is apathetic and misinformed, which is a problem only incidental to the subject we're discussing. The fact remains that taking away people's right to vote isn't going to solve any of the problems you've identified, and will in all likelihood, only make them even worse.


It's at the very CORE of the problem.  Voting and the franchise is a tool, and it's a tool being placed in the hands of people who are demonstrating a distinct lack of ability to recognize its potential for benefit or harm.  More to the point, nothing is being done right now to improve their ability to wield that tool effectively - the opposite is the case.  We're seeing all the other rights in jeopardy, and people having this one right is not improving that - if anything it seems to be making the situation worse.  The fact that people cannot and will not understand that a polite suggestion to the government that isn't backed by an implication that "right now we're doing things the easy way, but we will absolutely do this the hard way if you fuck it up" is a toothless plea for mercy from an utterly merciless gestalt-machine of powerseeking sociopaths surrounded by useful idiots is a CORE FAILING OF THE ENTIRE PROCESS.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The point you keep missing is that there is a very clear correlation between democracy and political freedom. You can't just handwave this fact away to culture and demographics, unless you want to try to argue that Japan and South Korea are more demographically similar to the United States and Europe than they are to China and North Korea; something which I think demographers, historians, and population geneticists would all very firmly dispute.
> 
> The common denominator here is universal suffrage and democratic accountability, and this is perhaps the singular obstacle to your objections making any sense. Until you can A) provide evidence of a superior system which doesn't lead to the problems you speak of, or at the very least, experiences them to a lesser degree, and B) demonstrate that there is a clear correlation (let alone a causal relationship) between universal suffrage and these problems, then your objections are entirely without merit.


There is nothing quite like the United States in the world, and that IS my point.  We are not Europe.  We are not Asia.  We are not even similar enough to other former British colonies for there to be useful comparisons made there.  What we can learn from any of those is sorely limited by any combination of things like demographical differences, economic differences, differences in mindsets (in the United States ALONE there are wildly varying mindsets from one part of a state within the union to another for fuck's sake).

Regarding "evidence of a superior system" - this is only part of the picture.  We have a system right now that is HILARIOUSLY dysfunctional and is on the verge of becoming more so regardless of the existence of universal suffrage here.  To say "well, we can't think of anything better right now!" is unhelpful.  Really? Nothing at all? I've already suggested numerous things that aren't outright disenfranchisement - abolish FPTP, bring in STV, weaken the federal, rein in the executive.  Those are the "reasonable" fixes.  Those are the "workable" fixes.  And they'll probably never happen because the machine doesn't WANT that.  More to the point, the machine is now in the position where it is dictating your rights or lack thereof as if they were polite suggestions and not "If you fuck with these, we'll fucking end your existence"-tier promises of consequence, despite the franchise being more open than it ever has.  How did that happen? The voters didn't do a good job with that tool? You don't say? Can they do a better job? Will they do a better job? Do they WANT to do a better job? All signs point to "no" at this juncture.

A superior system cannot come about with the current system in place, operating as it does.  The voters being comfortable with what's happening completely precludes that, and it never occurs to them that their immediate comfort WILL give way to extreme discomfort, possibly sooner rather than later.  They willingly believe whatever lies they are told about "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" or whatever the utter codswallop du jour is, served to them on platters by smiling misinformation-mongers and would-be tin-pot dictators.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> All governments are incentivized to advance their own power, which is precisely why it is a bad idea to have (much less prescribe) a strong social barrier between those who hold political power, and those who don't. You want the government to serve the people, not the other way around, and the only way you can reasonably guarantee that is by tying the legitimacy of those in positions of authority to the consent of the people they govern. It is a necessary condition for a free society, even if it isn't always a sufficient one in practice.


Our current situation exists in seeming opposition to the franchise of a free people, and no amount of voting has done anything to curtail the constant creep of government overreach.  You're talking in "shoulds" and not talking about "is".  The vote SHOULD effectively curtail government overreach.  The voters SHOULD be more informed and canny.  The government SHOULD serve the people.  To call the current measures "insufficient" is some kind of strange damnation by faint praise, like calling leeches "insufficient" for curing bubonic plague.  It fails to capture the gravity of the system's failure in a remarkable way.


Hellbound Hellhound said:


> There is little real hope of anything improving, so lets take away what little hope there is by chipping away further at the people's ability to decide who gets to represent them. I'm guessing this argument sounded better in your head.


Hope without sufficient action towards realizing that hope is worse than useless.  All evidence points towards actions taken to date being, as you put it, "insufficient".


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## Varg Did Nothing Wrong (Apr 12, 2021)

Expecting the average working class Joe Public to have enough psychological stamina after working a 40+ hour week, dealing with household chores, etc to be able to read up on "the issues" he's voting for, or the candidates that purport to know about "the issues", is preposterous.

This is why we have "democracy" where most of the voter base votes for "their party" regardless of what the actual positions held by this party entail. This is why we have people who vote based on memes or which candidate spends the most money on advertising, or which one looks more trustworthy.

What's the point of universal suffrage if 90% of the voting base cannot ever know enough about anything to make an informed decision? Aside from the fuzzy feeling you get from "knowing your vote made a difference"?

Democracy is a corrupt system that modern day politicians use to gaslight the masses into believing anything bad that happens is their own fault, and that the masses are choosing the direction that the country/world is going, when in reality none of that is true.


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## Lemmingwise (Apr 12, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Checks and balances designed to protect the minority from the mob ought to apply to everyone evenly, else they are worthless. I have never tried to suggest otherwise, so you should probably rein in the persecution complex


This is pretty much what I mean though. I'm pointing out a group that is disenfranchised from being able to participate in democracy by being made unable to communicate. Ignoring that reality, means you're either so out of touch or so dishonest that you'll attack the idea of it by calling it a persecution complex. It reminds of that time a UK university cancelled a student run international men's day event. They had planned to talk about the rising suicide rates. The university released a statement that they'll continue to fight for gender equality by focusing on women only.

Americans have this odd use of the word "minority" where it seems to exclude all kind of groups and I suggested one that is probably excluded from it.

You have the same of a different flavor in european countries where things like the EU constitution get voted against and then it gets passed anyways.

When people, like in this thread,  discuss what people should be able to vote, it's just some history nerds fantasising about an ideal system in isolation of any real country of possibility, anyways.


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## cockle (Apr 13, 2021)

No. You're all fucking insane.


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## Fliddaroonie (Apr 13, 2021)

Hothead said:


> Ideally, people would be learning about things in school that they would end up voting on as adults.  Ideally, people would have to pass a test that shows at least a basic level of understanding of the political system before they're allowed to participate in it via voting.
> 
> We do not live in an ideal world, though.
> 
> We live in a world with mass media campaigns run by people that are effectively unaccountable, and we live in a world where people who vote are dumb and lazy enough to accept whatever these campaigns say uncritically and use that information/misinformation to make decisions that (in theory) alter the course of not only their own lives but the lives of others.  We live in a world where people are not just imperfect, they're HILARIOUSLY so and they've embraced their advanced states of mental infirmity and dysfunction as wisdom, truth and positive qualities that demand a certain degree of genuflection from everyone around them.  And this shows no signs of changing for the better.


Why school? Schoo,lexists as a tool of secondary socialisation, to get you to pass exams and to mould you into a good little worker drone.

It's parents that should be teaching that shit and the fact that so many people swallow the "schools should turn you into a fully formed human being and responsible citizen" is the heart of why society is jam-packed full of fucking spastics, raising fucking spastics.


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## wtfNeedSignUp (Apr 13, 2021)

Universal suffrage basically takes away every speck of political power the middle class has and gives it to the elites through their control of mass media.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 13, 2021)

Hothead said:


> It's at the very CORE of the problem. Voting and the franchise is a tool, and it's a tool being placed in the hands of people who are demonstrating a distinct lack of ability to recognize its potential for benefit or harm. More to the point, nothing is being done right now to improve their ability to wield that tool effectively - the opposite is the case. We're seeing all the other rights in jeopardy, and people having this one right is not improving that - if anything it seems to be making the situation worse. The fact that people cannot and will not understand that a polite suggestion to the government that isn't backed by an implication that "right now we're doing things the easy way, but we will absolutely do this the hard way if you fuck it up" is a toothless plea for mercy from an utterly merciless gestalt-machine of powerseeking sociopaths surrounded by useful idiots is a CORE FAILING OF THE ENTIRE PROCESS.


You still haven't demonstrated anything more than an incidental relationship between the existence of universal suffrage and the problems you're attributing to it, and your insinuation that democracy makes these problems worse is demonstrably false, because so far every one you have mentioned is measurably worse in societies which don't have universal suffrage. I have pointed this out to you multiple times now, and you keep refusing to see sense. It's really getting rather tiresome.

If you want the general public to care about the things you care about, then why not become politically active, and try to raise awareness about these issues? Why not educate yourself about how to best persuade people, and engage in effective community organizing, or start a grassroots campaign? If you can't or won't do that, then you're in no position to be lecturing the general public about being apathetic or ignorant, and you're certainly in no position to suggest that their right to choose their representatives is superfluous, when it has clearly been no more useful in your hands.

Like I said earlier: people have complained about the flaws of democracy for thousands of years. Your complaints about voter apathy, ignorance, and the effective use of state propaganda to beguile the public are not new, and they likely aren't going to disappear in the near future. The persistent problem viewpoints like yours have, however, is that you have not provided evidence of a better alternative: you have not demonstrated that limiting the franchise is the solution to the problems you've identified, and you never will, because it clearly isn't.


Lemmingwise said:


> This is pretty much what I mean though. I'm pointing out a group that is disenfranchised from being able to participate in democracy by being made unable to communicate. Ignoring that reality, means you're either so out of touch or so dishonest that you'll attack the idea of it by calling it a persecution complex. It reminds of that time a UK university cancelled a student run international men's day event. They had planned to talk about the rising suicide rates. The university released a statement that they'll continue to fight for gender equality by focusing on women only.


The groups you mention aren't prevented from participating in democracy though; they've simply lost a lot of cultural influence, and their opinions may face marginalization in society as a result of that. This is something to be concerned about, for sure, but it's an entirely separate discussion from the one around universal suffrage. People with fringe political opinions have the same right to vote as everyone else, and you can hardly argue that it is the right to vote itself which is responsible for this marginalization you speak about. Compare the level of free speech in countries which have universal suffrage, to ones that don't, and the evidence is abundantly clear.


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## Lemmingwise (Apr 13, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The groups you mention aren't prevented from participating in democracy though


Online censorship, having search and social media silently squelch certain views isn't "prevention of participation in democracy"?

At that point you might as well say north korea isn't preventing anyone from participating in democracy. They have higher voter turnouts as well.

We are more like north korea than we'd like to admit, even if we're not quite there yet.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 13, 2021)

Lemmingwise said:


> Online censorship, having search and social media silently squelch certain views isn't "prevention of participation in democracy"?
> 
> At that point you might as well say north korea isn't preventing anyone from participating in democracy. They have higher voter turnouts as well


Online censorship corrupts democracy, certainly, but it doesn't completely eliminate it. The citizens in democratic countries still have some power to decide who rules over them, while the citizens in North Korea have absolutely none. One is clearly preferable to the other, and it's important not to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

The fact still remains that you haven't demonstrated a causal link between universal suffrage and the complaints you've raised, and you aren't going to.


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## Lemmingwise (Apr 13, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> The fact still remains that you haven't demonstrated a causal link between universal suffrage and the complaints you've raised, and you aren't going to.


Maybe I haven't because I'm not against universal suffrage.

I'm just taking issue with people like you that defend a system so corrupted and act like it is working fine. Since now you are admitting that it is corrupted and that censorship does exist and does interfere with the functioning of democracy my mission here is done.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 13, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> You still haven't demonstrated anything more than an incidental relationship between the existence of universal suffrage and the problems you're attributing to it, and your insinuation that democracy makes these problems worse is demonstrably false, because so far every one you have mentioned is measurably worse in societies which don't have universal suffrage. I have pointed this out to you multiple times now, and you keep refusing to see sense. It's really getting rather tiresome.


People vote for politicians.  Politicians put riders in budget bills for things like the PATRIOT Act.   People do not immediately agitate for this person to be removed from office.  Causal link found.



Lemmingwise said:


> Maybe I haven't because I'm not against universal suffrage.
> 
> I'm just taking issue with people like you that defend a system so corrupted and act like it is working fine. Since now you are admitting that it is corrupted and that censorship does exist and does interfere with the functioning of democracy my mission here is done.


He's just a shitheel being a shitheel.  How very dare someone contest that the system he loves is deeply flawed.


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## Lemmingwise (Apr 14, 2021)

Hothead said:


> He's just a shitheel being a shitheel.  How very dare someone contest that the system he loves is deeply flawed.


Online austistic screeching just like american wrestling is more fun if you have a heel that you can hate.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 14, 2021)

Lemmingwise said:


> Online austistic screeching just like american wrestling is more fun if you have a heel that you can hate.


I'm not here to hate some random disingenuous fuckwad.


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## Lemmingwise (Apr 14, 2021)

You just don't know it yet.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Apr 14, 2021)

Hothead said:


> People vote for politicians. Politicians put riders in budget bills for things like the PATRIOT Act. People do not immediately agitate for this person to be removed from office. Causal link found.


People don't immediately agitate for the removal of bad politicians because they're apathetic and misinformed. The causal link isn't with universal suffrage, because under a system without universal suffrage, they would have no means to advocate for reform, nor throw out the leaders they don't like.

Consider the following 4 scenarios:

*Scenario 1*: the citizens have universal suffrage, but are too lazy and ignorant to care. The result: *nothing changes*.
*Scenario 2*: the citizens have universal suffrage, and are both informed and politically engaged. The result: *they force the system to change*.
*Scenario 3*: the citizens do not have universal suffrage, and are too lazy and ignorant to care. The result: *nothing changes*.
*Scenario 4*: the citizens do not have universal suffrage, but are both informed and politically engaged. The result: they have no power to change the system, so *nothing changes*.
If you want to talk about causal relationships here, it's pretty clear that the problem isn't universal suffrage.


Lemmingwise said:


> I'm just taking issue with people like you that defend a system so corrupted and act like it is working fine.





Hothead said:


> He's just a shitheel being a shitheel. How very dare someone contest that the system he loves is deeply flawed.


Both of you seem to have forgotten that I have admitted from the very beginning that democracy is deeply flawed. The crucial point you both keep missing is that it's still better than the alternative.


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## Lemmingwise (Apr 14, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Both of you seem to have forgotten that I have admitted from the very beginning that democracy is deeply flawed. The crucial point you both keep missing is that it's still better than the alternative


I'm just taking issue with your apparent position of it working as intended. I agree with the fundamentals, but it is like talking about the importance of exercise and healthy eating when sitting bedside with a cancer patient. It's not that these things aren't healthy, but we're wasting time when the poor girl needs chemo and might not even  survive the best treatment.


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## usernames can change now! (Apr 14, 2021)

RembrandtCourage said:


> The best arguement against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.


And the problem is the lack of alternatives. Unaccountable Byzantine bureaucracy? Not an improvement. Absolute dictatorship/monarchy/etc? Works fine if you have an enlightened leader of the people or whatever, but breaks down immediately when their syphallitic lunatic son inherits the throne (or the Enlightened Leader gets dementia). Communism? "But it wasn't real communism so we tried again and everyone got murdered but it wasn't real communism so we tried again..."


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## wtfNeedSignUp (Apr 14, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> People don't immediately agitate for the removal of bad politicians because they're apathetic and misinformed. The causal link isn't with universal suffrage, because under a system without universal suffrage, they would have no means to advocate for reform, nor throw out the leaders they don't like.
> 
> Consider the following 4 scenarios:
> 
> ...


Someone said it before, the difference is that if things suck there is at least a person in the top to blame. Under universal suffrage there's always the gotcha of "you voted so it's your responsibility".
Also a limited group of voters could vote in more complex systems than a "choose one".


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## Pentex (Apr 27, 2021)

scathefire said:


> What's the benefit of giving almost every single citizen in a nation the right to vote?


It makes it easier for sophists and demagogues to effect their will through the idiot masses.


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## Just Another Apocalypse (Apr 27, 2021)

Women didn't want the vote when they thought they were going to get drafted.

Equal responsibility treacle


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## knobslobbin (Apr 27, 2021)

Wammins once they could vote:  prohibition, expanded welfare, divorce benefiting only wammins, endless waves of turd-worlders imported.  

Yeah hard pass, after the collapse we should re-evaluate who can vote. No emotional low-information people of any of the 276 genders should vote.

Make that 277, I just saw an attack-helicopter-person fly by the window.  

Please respect my pronouns: big-dickus / fat-dickum


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## Just Another Apocalypse (Apr 27, 2021)

knobslobbin said:


> Wammins once they could vote:  prohibition, expanded welfare, divorce benefiting only wammins, endless waves of turd-worlders imported.
> 
> Yeah hard pass, after the collapse we should re-evaluate who can vote. No emotional low-information people of any of the 276 genders should vote.
> 
> ...


You forgot wars they didn't have to fight in.


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## TFT-A9 (Apr 27, 2021)

Just Another Apocalypse said:


> You forgot wars they didn't have to fight in.


It's actually worse than that, if you look at the White Feather campaigns.  They not only did not have to fight in the wars, they were shaming men who didn't even have the ability to vote into going and dying in a trench somewhere, and as near as anyone can tell their actual motives for doing this were so brutally utilitarian and sociopathic that you'd start to wonder why the fuck they were EVER allowed within spitting distance of a franchise that would let them vote in people who could and would absolutely commit more bodies to the pyres of war without so much as a second thought.


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## Johan Schmidt (May 1, 2021)

We should genetically engineer superhuman combat gimps that will guard voting booths. You have to wrestle them and win in order to cast your vote. When not used in the role of poll guards, they will be let free in the wild to devour campers, rape bears, and scare the shit out of various woodland animals so as to put the fear of man into them.


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