Well, no, the original constitution took it for granted that only propertied men were going to vote. If anything the OP is taking a back-to-basics approach

Apt Churchill Quotes

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

Yes and no. I disagree with reigning in bull and gassing bear economies because government can only create money out of nothing--not goods or services. Governments can displace the creation of goods and services, but all government spending must be balanced by a combination of taxation, inflation, or the one people tend to forget: forcing a surplus on the debt instruments market. How you spent money on the bull market really doesn't change any of that.

The last one is a bad thing because it actually decreases the liquid money available to the economy.

Government spending is really a very poor way out of any situation; it is almost never as efficient as equilibrium prices. Besides, the primary function of government is to arbitrate markets. It does not NEED to spend money when it writes the global rules of how money is exchanged.

the government cant create money out of thin air, u mean the central bank, not a part of the goverment.

and government spending is a realy good way of lifesupport for companys in a recession, building roads, schools, etc helps to keep some companys alive.  and shortterm employment subsidys are a good if u want your companys to hold on to there workforces.

and the government should own all railways, telefon cabels, roads and the electric/water grid, to open up the market. the people benefit from a competion between services, not between infrastructur.

Modern "democracy" is really just Oligarchy.

Coffee shops in Amsterdam selling pot that you can't leave the store with is nowhere near as close to what's going on in the USA.

100% agree on the agriculture situation.

As for crime rates, many parts of the USA are extremely safe to live, safer than most of Europe. As a whole nation, the USA's violent crime rate is lower than the UK's. If we take one of the safest states, New Hampshire, you'll find that on just about every metric, its crime rate is lower than any country in Europe.

USA's crime rates are driven up ridiculously high thanks to some extremely bad cities and also border violence. For a typical American living in the suburbs, USA is as safe as anywhere else.

Healthcare, yeah, is a fuck up. Primarily fucked up because of the oligarchal political system of the USA, which brings us back around to the thread topic.

As an FYI, I'm not an American, nor do I live in the USA. I was born and raised in the UK, and I emigrated to Hong Kong. I am currently on vacation in New York, however. :)

This sounds like your typical far-left radical dictatorship-like idea that one must wonder where did OP get such an idea?

*check profile, OP is from Sweden*


...ahh, there you go.

What you have said is contradictory. You can't argue for direct democracy and then say that voters must earn their right through education. EVERY adult has the right to vote, it is an unalienable right that is only lost when you die. Its a shame that you came out with what you did in points two and three because I think we need direct democracy to move forward. Representative democracy needs to be replaced by something better. However for direct democracy to work we would have to get rid of the nation state, a world without borders pretty much. We could learn from how tribes work to see direct democracy on a local scale. The whole capitalist system and everything associated with it would have to be overthrown first.

I realize this is an old thread anyway, but since I missed it back then and the2real4mafol just replied anyway, I want to post my opinion as well.

I agree on the first part about more direct democracy. Actually, I find it quite ridiculous that it's often people who praise "democracy" who are also often the most outspoken critics of more/direct democracy.
Isn't that ironic? Several scientific studies have been released in recent years which have come to the conclusion that when looking at the facts, modern political systems like the american democracy are actually not democracies, but oligarchies.

Believing at the same time that citizens are in general not politically mature enough to directly vote on policies, yet at the same time believing that they are politically mature enough to vote on representatives (and believing that it is very important that they do) is quite ridiculous.

People with this mindset may consider themselves to be very democratic, but I think that they are actually not democratic at all.

I tend to differ on the second part though. I agree that it might make sense to step away from the "one man, one vote"-thinking, but I would personally suggest a different approach:
In a truly directly democratic system, I would personally suggest that everyone can still vote, but that people's votes will have different weights.
But not in the sense of "Citizen A's vote always has weight 7.5, citizens B's vote always has weight 3.75". This would be a naive approach that which suggests that Citizen A's opinion is always more valuable than Citizen B's.
Instead, every citizen should have multiple weights; for example, Citizen B. might be very skillful when it comes to economics, while citizen A. may have very little knowledge about economics. On the other hand, Citizen A. may be very skillful when it comes to foreign policy, which Citizen B. might suck at.

So it would for example make sense that Citizen A. vote has a higher weight than Citizen B. when it comes to questions of foreign policy, and vice versa when it comes to questions of economics.

I believe that this would be the best approach - the only problem is: by which algorithm should these weights be computed? It should be a transparent, trustworthy, comprehensible automatic algorithm.

Direct Democracy is a *bad* idea. Extremely bad. And here's why: most people have neither the time, the patience, nor the intelligence to be capable of being across all of the issues necessary to make judgments while still doing everything else they have to do in life. They have jobs, among other things, that place demands on their time.

Of course, they can take a bit of time out of their lives once in a few years to vote for who they feel will do a good job of representing their interests. But they couldn't be expected to vote on every issue that comes up... not to mention that you still need people to be writing the legislation that they vote on.

The purpose of the political party system, at its core, is to have a system that allows people to choose the overall direction they feel the government should be moving in. In some countries, such as the US, the system has become rather perverted, and in others, it's not as bad, but still isn't functioning quite as intended. But the fundamental of it is solid.

What's more, representative democracy is a good thing - it means that people are selecting someone from among their ranks to represent their interests; that person's job then becomes one of reading and understanding various proposed legislation, learning all of the nuances that require dedicated study (such as coming to an informed position on issues such as climate change - note that many politicians, especially conservative ones, don't actually do this, unfortunately), and then evaluating the legislation as it affects the people for whom the politician is responsible, including indirect effects.

Unfortunately, representative democracy and the political party system were established as one-and-the-same, and the result, with the rise of the 24 hour news cycle, has been chaos and manipulation. The failure, at its core, is that representatives are tasked with being both party representatives and electorate representatives, tasks which are frequently at odds with each other... and then, when you add in the effects of money on politics, it becomes highly corrupt to boot.

What I suggest is that government needs to separate out these two systems into distinct parts of the government. And I have an idea for how to do it, too (using Australia's system, so apologies if there's any confusion resulting from that): there are typically two "houses" of government, and then an executive branch. Party politics should fundamentally apply only to one of the "houses" (I'll call it the Upper House), and not to the executive branch. Representative democracy should reign in the other "house" (I'll call it the Lower House). To ensure they remain separate, the constitutional definitions of the two "houses" should explicitly state that no Lower House member may be in any form of contract with any political party, and may not have been in such a contract within the last 5 years. This includes membership, naturally, so Lower House politicians cannot be party politicians. It would also establish that no member may be in any form of contract with any other member, so that formal blocs cannot be formed.

With that restriction in place, the Lower House members would then be elected by the usual method, whereby people within each electorate vote, and those who receive the most votes become members. I would propose a system by which each electorate would get two seats, with a preferential election system - the two candidates with the most support would get the seats for that electorate. By having two seats, you significantly reduce the ability for electorates to be gerrymandered, and ensure that left/right divides become less of an issue in terms of representation.

For the Upper House, elections would be by party, rather than by candidate. Parties would put forward their candidates, though, so that voters can see exactly who they're voting for as their party representatives. For Upper House seats, party representation would be proportional... from across the country. So if a particular left-wing party gets 30% of the vote, then they get approximately 30% of the seats.

The Executive would then be elected separately, with the same restrictions as found on the Lower House regarding memberships/contracts. However, with the exception of the Head of State position, all Executive positions would be selected in a manner more similar to that used within companies - that is, no public campaigns, etc, but resumes and responses to "selection criteria". The Head of State, of course, is the public face of the nation, and thus needs a public campaign.

All positions would be formal jobs, with requirements that members cannot hold other jobs simultaneously with it, that they have contracts explicitly restricting what they can do afterwards (to remove cases where, for instance, a Minister for Health makes changes that benefit a specific pharmaceutical company, and then leaves and immediately gets hired by said pharmaceutical company), and a routine job performance check system that allows voters to deal with representatives that fail to do their job of representing them.

My full idea for an overhaul of democracy includes more (including the melding of local, state, and federal levels of government into a system that is more coherent)... but that's a discussion for another post. The point of this one is to emphasise that the flaw isn't representative democracy, or political parties, but rather, in how they interact.

All of that said, democracy does need a serious overhaul. The current electoral systems used in most countries was devised something like 200 years ago, and modifications have been nothing more than tinkering around the edges, while the core is rotting due to changing technology and changing culture.