4 ms·

Yes, or something like that. People who can be expected to be responsible (they have a lot to lose) and who will never come to depend on the government, but rat

Yes, or something like that. People who can be expected to be responsible (they have a lot to lose) and who will never come to depend on the government, but rather, government will always depend on them. Expanding suffrage to people who depend on the government rather than other way around is easy to explain (populism: "let me create millions of new voters, they will be super happy and all vote for me"), but destructive and impossible to undo. And we are at the tail end of it now when all these people not just vote, but can also make use of free speech... Of course, there could be in theory a multitude of ways to fix it, not just by limiting suffrage (like poll tax for example), but all of them unrealistic.

tablespoon 5y ago
>> It sounds like you think only wealthy property owners should have the right to vote... > Yes, or something like that.... > And we are at the tail end of it now when all these people not just vote, but can also make use of free speech... Do you also think it's a bad thing for people who aren't wealthy property owners to have free speech rights as well?
- anovikov 5y ago
  Free speech rights themselves is OK, but when they also vote - it becomes a problem. When free speech could only be made use of by relatively wealthy and well-educated classes - simply due to technology - universal suffrage wasn't that bad - because political thinking of common people was still guided by those wealthy and well-educated classes, and because they weren't (and aren't) very capable of critical thinking, they were "captive audience" of a sort and mostly taken along for a ride. But now when social media really gives usable "free speech" rights to everyone, these people live in the world where Deep State injects them with mind control chips, and White House is run by a sect of pedophiles and Trump is the only person who could save us from them... And this free speech made universal suffrage a real, and i believe unsolvable, problem. Maybe only solvable through a social collapse (like in 1991 Soviet Union) with a new state taking the territory of the previous one, voiding it, and creating a new regime with very limited suffrage.

tablespoon 5y ago

>> It sounds like you think only wealthy property owners should have the right to vote... > Yes, or something like that.... > And we are at the tail end of it now when all these people not just vote, but can also make use of free speech... Do you also think it's a bad thing for people who aren't wealthy property owners to have free speech rights as well?

anovikov 5y ago
Free speech rights themselves is OK, but when they also vote - it becomes a problem. When free speech could only be made use of by relatively wealthy and well-educated classes - simply due to technology - universal suffrage wasn't that bad - because political thinking of common people was still guided by those wealthy and well-educated classes, and because they weren't (and aren't) very capable of critical thinking, they were "captive audience" of a sort and mostly taken along for a ride. But now when social media really gives usable "free speech" rights to everyone, these people live in the world where Deep State injects them with mind control chips, and White House is run by a sect of pedophiles and Trump is the only person who could save us from them... And this free speech made universal suffrage a real, and i believe unsolvable, problem. Maybe only solvable through a social collapse (like in 1991 Soviet Union) with a new state taking the territory of the previous one, voiding it, and creating a new regime with very limited suffrage.