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And in this age of information and technology, many of these people are voting to decide the next leader of the only superpower left on Earth. This may sound g

And in this age of information and technology, many of these people are voting to decide the next leader of the only superpower left on Earth. This may sound grossly elitist, but democracy can be super scary sometimes.

laxatives 11y ago
Maybe Trump is the only politician with the knowledge/freedom to act on that realization, leading to landslide victories by appealing to the lowest common denominator in US voters. I guess that's exactly what democracy is.
- tw04 11y ago
  In theory that's why we have delegates. Unfortunately the delegates are now bought and paid for by the same corporate interests that have our country in its current state...
  - mc32 11y ago
    And ultimately the electoral college in the event it's believed voters made an egregious error in electing their president. Don't think we'll see that happen regardless of winner this cycle.
Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
Voting is considered holy, a sacred ritual immune from criticism. There exist alternatives like sortition - I favor a combination of sortiton and standardized testing.
xtian 11y ago
As it stands, the American populace has been expertly prepared to engage in our political process to the fullest extent possible. That is, to spectate the circus act for a while, and then with great certainty and condescension, choose one of two preselected options.
Houshalter 11y ago
Democracy is a really shitty form of government. It prevents tyrants, and it prevents a single party from holding power for too long. Which are great benefits over, e.g. monarchies. But the average voter isn't informed enough to really understand all the issues. So who wins isn't really correlated with who is best or who is right. In my ideal form of government, the representatives would not be elected, but randomly sampled from the population. There would also be an education and IQ test, and it would only take from the top 5% of the population or so.
- thwarted 11y ago
  A "representative democracy" is one specifically where the average voter doesn't need to be informed enough to really understand all the issues, and that's supposed to be its advantage. In contrast, direct democracy is best when all the voters (have the time to) understand the issues. But that's not very pragmatic, so we do representative democracy. But of course, that has its own issues, as what to understand moves from "the issues" to "the candidates". Somehow, this reminded me of this bit by Douglas Adams From "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" (in part): "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?" http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very-ancient-democracy-you-see-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very-...
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    I understand the purpose of representative democracy. In theory voters vote for representatives instead of policies, but in reality they do vote for policies. And in practice representatives to pander to voters, and various other interests.
  - Frqy3 11y ago
    With the infrastructure available today we should be able to do a hybrid direct-representative model and also have multiple representative delegations that we can change on an ad-hoc basis (i.e. not just at elections). For example, on some issues, I might like to do the research and make my own decision, while for other issues I might trust and delegate to a representative for that set of issues, and for a third set of issues I might trust and delegate to a different representative.
bilbo0s 11y ago
I don't mean to be snarky here. I am honestly just trying to put these issues in context by pointing out that if you believe today's "uneducated" people being able to vote is "scary", then you should take a gander at the average level of education of voters in 1960. Even fewer college grads, even fewer high school grads, even MORE people that we would today term "dropout". Additionally, the further back that you go timewise, the more poorly educated the populace was. I'm just saying that if you believe it to be bad today, then you would have certainly believed it to have been much worse in the 50's or 60's before the protocols for avoiding certain types of war had been fully established and implemented. But we, as mankind, survived. And I think it's fair to say that we, as mankind, thrived. There is a lot of negative information out there about the world today, and it can be demoralizing. But it's not about how many negative things happen to you, or your nation, or your world. It's more about our reactions to these things. In this particular instance for example, do you say... "Hey... let's educate more people!" ? Or do you say "Hey... let's take away the right to vote!" ? It's not really what happened to you that determines your future... it's your reaction to it that determines your future.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Here's a historical table of literacy rates: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#attainment https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#attainment The current estimate is 14% - and it hasn't changed for a decade. The disparity makes me wonder if the figures are right, but it's nearly impossible to find reliable research on literacy in the US. You'd think it would be assessed annually, but it isn't. The NAAL data is the most recent definitive survey, and that was done in 2003. I can find one survey since, but the National Institute for Literacy which is quoted in it seems to have closed in 2010. The fact that there seems to be so little federal interest in rigorously tracking literacy is even more amazing to me than the nominal rate.
cauterized 11y ago
That's one of the biggest reasons why we do and should have universal public education. And why we should invest the resources to make it a high quality education (for instance, pay teachers salaries that make teaching as attractive a profession to intelligent people with student debt as finance or consulting is -- or at the very least better than a guarantee of near-poverty).

laxatives 11y ago

Maybe Trump is the only politician with the knowledge/freedom to act on that realization, leading to landslide victories by appealing to the lowest common denominator in US voters. I guess that's exactly what democracy is.

tw04 11y ago
In theory that's why we have delegates. Unfortunately the delegates are now bought and paid for by the same corporate interests that have our country in its current state...
- mc32 11y ago
  And ultimately the electoral college in the event it's believed voters made an egregious error in electing their president. Don't think we'll see that happen regardless of winner this cycle.

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago

Voting is considered holy, a sacred ritual immune from criticism. There exist alternatives like sortition - I favor a combination of sortiton and standardized testing.

xtian 11y ago

As it stands, the American populace has been expertly prepared to engage in our political process to the fullest extent possible. That is, to spectate the circus act for a while, and then with great certainty and condescension, choose one of two preselected options.

Houshalter 11y ago

Democracy is a really shitty form of government. It prevents tyrants, and it prevents a single party from holding power for too long. Which are great benefits over, e.g. monarchies. But the average voter isn't informed enough to really understand all the issues. So who wins isn't really correlated with who is best or who is right. In my ideal form of government, the representatives would not be elected, but randomly sampled from the population. There would also be an education and IQ test, and it would only take from the top 5% of the population or so.

thwarted 11y ago
A "representative democracy" is one specifically where the average voter doesn't need to be informed enough to really understand all the issues, and that's supposed to be its advantage. In contrast, direct democracy is best when all the voters (have the time to) understand the issues. But that's not very pragmatic, so we do representative democracy. But of course, that has its own issues, as what to understand moves from "the issues" to "the candidates". Somehow, this reminded me of this bit by Douglas Adams From "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" (in part): "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?" http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very-ancient-democracy-you-see-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very-...
- Houshalter 11y ago
  I understand the purpose of representative democracy. In theory voters vote for representatives instead of policies, but in reality they do vote for policies. And in practice representatives to pander to voters, and various other interests.
- Frqy3 11y ago
  With the infrastructure available today we should be able to do a hybrid direct-representative model and also have multiple representative delegations that we can change on an ad-hoc basis (i.e. not just at elections). For example, on some issues, I might like to do the research and make my own decision, while for other issues I might trust and delegate to a representative for that set of issues, and for a third set of issues I might trust and delegate to a different representative.

bilbo0s 11y ago

I don't mean to be snarky here. I am honestly just trying to put these issues in context by pointing out that if you believe today's "uneducated" people being able to vote is "scary", then you should take a gander at the average level of education of voters in 1960. Even fewer college grads, even fewer high school grads, even MORE people that we would today term "dropout". Additionally, the further back that you go timewise, the more poorly educated the populace was. I'm just saying that if you believe it to be bad today, then you would have certainly believed it to have been much worse in the 50's or 60's before the protocols for avoiding certain types of war had been fully established and implemented. But we, as mankind, survived. And I think it's fair to say that we, as mankind, thrived. There is a lot of negative information out there about the world today, and it can be demoralizing. But it's not about how many negative things happen to you, or your nation, or your world. It's more about our reactions to these things. In this particular instance for example, do you say... "Hey... let's educate more people!" ? Or do you say "Hey... let's take away the right to vote!" ? It's not really what happened to you that determines your future... it's your reaction to it that determines your future.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Here's a historical table of literacy rates: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#attainment https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#attainment The current estimate is 14% - and it hasn't changed for a decade. The disparity makes me wonder if the figures are right, but it's nearly impossible to find reliable research on literacy in the US. You'd think it would be assessed annually, but it isn't. The NAAL data is the most recent definitive survey, and that was done in 2003. I can find one survey since, but the National Institute for Literacy which is quoted in it seems to have closed in 2010. The fact that there seems to be so little federal interest in rigorously tracking literacy is even more amazing to me than the nominal rate.

cauterized 11y ago

That's one of the biggest reasons why we do and should have universal public education. And why we should invest the resources to make it a high quality education (for instance, pay teachers salaries that make teaching as attractive a profession to intelligent people with student debt as finance or consulting is -- or at the very least better than a guarantee of near-poverty).