Purist democracy will always fail. The US was founded with limited voting rights in mind - universal suffrage was the death knell. In the modern corrupted system, simply reverting to land ownership would be insufficient, but for the time period it was much better.
In modern day I'd suggest a starship troopers style system of franchise only being earned through potentially deadly personal civic service.
Democracy might be alot more appealing if the system we currently have in place actually listened when the will of the people spoke.
Instead we have a set of so-called 'elites' who think they know better.
I've hammered this before, but I'll do it again; The gay marriage vote failed in California. California. It only got on the books due to legislation from the bench. Unchecked immigration is universally unpopular, and yet...
Before we get back to disenfranchisement and a better constitutional republic, we'd best deal with said 'elites' so they don't get in the way.
Unrestricted democracy does not work, period. Allowing people without the moral capacity or incentive to care about the higher functions of society to vote results in an easily manipulable system.
It really does boil down to "Power either corrupts or attracts the corrupt."
The US only lasted as long as it has because it recognized that fact and took steps to restrict the power, either by splitting it up, or by limiting how long individuals had access to it. Of course, scumbags figured out the meta and cheat the system by installing literal puppets or otherwise outright ignoring the rules.
Which means the only failure of democracy in our country is that we don't show up to the doors of those elites and just shoot them for being traitors.
Which has nothing to do with a failure of the system itself as that is a universal issue across all types. The moment people are afraid to put patriotism before weak morality statements it all rolls downhill.
The tax database and voter database are already intertwined in many countries (it's how they know where to send voting cards to), it would on a operations-management level be relatively simple to checklist "anyone who is a net ower of taxes before the taxes already deducted step".
Personally, I think voting should cost one dollar. One dollar is nothing. Many people won't bother picking up a dollar off the ground if it is slightly out of the way, leaving it for a kid or beggar to find instead. A fountain drink costs more than a dollar in most places. If the future of your country isn't worth one dollar, you shouldn't be interacting with the future of your country. It's small enough that objectively speaking it doesn't matter, but exists enough that it would filter out all the slacktivists and leeches.
Purist democracy will always fail. The US was founded with limited voting rights in mind - universal suffrage was the death knell. In the modern corrupted system, simply reverting to land ownership would be insufficient, but for the time period it was much better.
In modern day I'd suggest a starship troopers style system of franchise only being earned through potentially deadly personal civic service.
Democracy might be alot more appealing if the system we currently have in place actually listened when the will of the people spoke.
Instead we have a set of so-called 'elites' who think they know better.
I've hammered this before, but I'll do it again; The gay marriage vote failed in California. California. It only got on the books due to legislation from the bench. Unchecked immigration is universally unpopular, and yet...
Before we get back to disenfranchisement and a better constitutional republic, we'd best deal with said 'elites' so they don't get in the way.
Unrestricted democracy does not work, period. Allowing people without the moral capacity or incentive to care about the higher functions of society to vote results in an easily manipulable system.
It really does boil down to "Power either corrupts or attracts the corrupt."
The US only lasted as long as it has because it recognized that fact and took steps to restrict the power, either by splitting it up, or by limiting how long individuals had access to it. Of course, scumbags figured out the meta and cheat the system by installing literal puppets or otherwise outright ignoring the rules.
Which means the only failure of democracy in our country is that we don't show up to the doors of those elites and just shoot them for being traitors.
Which has nothing to do with a failure of the system itself as that is a universal issue across all types. The moment people are afraid to put patriotism before weak morality statements it all rolls downhill.
That's democracy working as intended. Get the media, the polls, the Experts™ to manufacture consensus. Herd mentality will do the rest.
Go Robert Heinlein. TANFL
I don't think you even need to go that far to have profound change:
Would drastically reshape the voting landscape.
Alternatively just make it so all the leeches (such as welfare moms that just pump out kids for gov money) can't vote.
The tax database and voter database are already intertwined in many countries (it's how they know where to send voting cards to), it would on a operations-management level be relatively simple to checklist "anyone who is a net ower of taxes before the taxes already deducted step".
Personally, I think voting should cost one dollar. One dollar is nothing. Many people won't bother picking up a dollar off the ground if it is slightly out of the way, leaving it for a kid or beggar to find instead. A fountain drink costs more than a dollar in most places. If the future of your country isn't worth one dollar, you shouldn't be interacting with the future of your country. It's small enough that objectively speaking it doesn't matter, but exists enough that it would filter out all the slacktivists and leeches.