> Why does a government structured around the economic activity of its voters suddenly become tyrannical and dysfunctional when when most of them are no longer

> Why does a government structured around the economic activity of its voters suddenly become tyrannical and dysfunctional when when most of them are no longer productive? Because those people wield the power in the relationship, by virtue of the fact that they can stop working and disrupt the system economically. This is, I believe, the author's point: political power follows economic power, over time. The two can diverge temporarily, but over the long run this tends not to be stable, or has to be maintained by force with much attendant unpleasantness. Historically, I think this checks out. The combination of market(ish) economies and representative(ish) democracy that exist in most Western states evolved alongside the increased economic power of industrial workers, starting in the 18th century. Marxist theory takes the same ideas and runs with them further, hypothesizing inevitable conflict when worker-labor is alienated from the economic gains it produces. Neither of these two systems, which basically dominated the 20th century, would have emerged under conditions of agrarian peasantry. (And in the early Soviet Union, which basically blundered into Communism by mistake -- Marx had always thought it would emerge in more-industrialized Germany first! -- the peasantry was largely either forcibly transitioned into industrial laborers or exterminated, since they had no place in that political-economic system.) But even in a democratic context, a "vote" is fundamentally meaningless; it is at best merely a suggestion. Underlying the idea of democracy is always the question of what the citizenry will do if the government decides to ignore the vote. Governments that depend on economic activity which citizens can disrupt through simple nonparticipation have a vested interest in keeping those same people happy and productive. Governments that only need to worry about armed insurrection can employ more draconian methods.