Was universal suffrage a mistake?

[Hellbound Hellhound]

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.

 

[TFT-A9]

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.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

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.

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.

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.

 

[TFT-A9]

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.

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.

 

[Fougaro]

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.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

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.

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.

 

[The High Prophet of Truth]

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

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

 

[TFT-A9]

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.

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.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

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.

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.

 

[Lemmingwise]

designed specifically to protect the rights of the minority.

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

 

[TFT-A9]

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?

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"?

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?

 

[Drain Todger]

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.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

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.

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.

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?

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.

 

[TFT-A9]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Merried Senior Comic]

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

 

[TFT-A9]

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.

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.

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.

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".

 

[Varg Did Nothing Wrong]

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.

 

[Lemmingwise]

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.

 

[cockle]

No. You're all fucking insane.