A 24-country survey finds a median of 59% are dissatisfied with how their democracy is functioning, and 74% think elected officials don’t care what people like them think.
One problem in the US is that the purpose of the House of Representatives has been completely subverted. It was supposed to scale up with the population so the representatives really would be part of the community they represent. But we stopped increasing the number of representatives and that lets the ruling elite control them better. The representatives no longer come from their community and the wealthy have less candidates they have to prop up. And the lower count means that gerrymandering is far more effective.
The main problem though is that the US government was built intentionally and from the ground up around representing wealthy landowners. The entire system was never meant to represent the common person and it never will.
So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.
This is not news, you say.
Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
Yes, and that's good. How's your aristocratic pseudo-democracy, authored by elites (possibly slavers, depending on your country) who feared real democracy and passed down your present system, doing for you and the world?
Like, do you really look at how there's massive popular consensus to fight climate change, have better healthcare systems, stop genocidal wars, all of which your aristocratic politicians ignore, and then say "We need less democracy because muh mob rule"??
Al Smith once remarked that "the only cure for the evils
of democracy is more democracy." Our analysis suggests that
applying that cure at the present time could well be adding
fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of
governance in the United States today stem from an excess of
democracy […] Needed, instead, is a greater degree
of moderation in democracy.
Libs are constantly going on about this. A different voting scheme isn't going to solve the real proplem which is that the oppressor class controls the government and not the people. It'll just be a new way of having the illusion of choice to allow people to pretend the US is a democracy
As Churchill once famously said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
I guess one of the nicest things about democracy is that it has a built-in mechanism for removing a government. It may not be reliable at getting good leaders in place, but at least when there's a bad one it has a way of getting them back out again without having to go in shooting.
Do you have any idea how long senators serve? Racist, violent, war hawk, regressive leaders stay in office in the USA for decades. How about family dynasties? The number of years American and European democracies are managed by family dynasties is terrible. And then of course you have fascists getting elected to high office in Italy.
All the evidence shows that Western democracies are going to end in violence.
Interestingly, Cuba has more democracy than anything ever experienced in the North Atlantic. Because the point isn't to use democracy to get representation, it's to use democracy to change society in the interests of the people.