No. I am against the simplistic idealistic approach of just unconditionally allowing the most popular candidates to rule, especially given the surrounding circumstances like mass media propaganda turning this nice idea into a pay-to-win scheme, and the broken implementations in most countries (FPTP, systematic voter disenfranchisement, etc.). Just look at how that turns out in the USA, repeatedly. There are many other ways democracy can be structured. Most ‘democractic countries’ have extremely broken federal electoral systems which fail to represent the voting people, despite it seeming democratic on the surface with elections.
Who gets to decide the leaders now? If you live in a modernized country and a federal candidate does not have the support of the rich owning class, they won’t have much chance at competing with airtime on television and news, support of paid ‘influencers’ and other celebrities, commercial advertising spots, social media astroturfing campaigns and all the other ways to make a candidate seem important enough to have a chance of winning. The bottom line is, realistically speaking, the only viable candidates at leading on a federal level are those promoted by the ultra-rich, every other candidate and party is fringe. I assert that you effectively having to choose between candidates pre-selected by the owning class is not a valid democracy. Even if you have the right and the freedom to do due diligence and vote for a minor party which is closer to your views, that freedom is ultimately useless in a popularity contest influenced by mass media. That minor party, in real life, never had a fair chance of winning, no matter how popular their policies are.
So you are against democracy. Who gets to decide the leaders then? You?
No. I am against the simplistic idealistic approach of just unconditionally allowing the most popular candidates to rule, especially given the surrounding circumstances like mass media propaganda turning this nice idea into a pay-to-win scheme, and the broken implementations in most countries (FPTP, systematic voter disenfranchisement, etc.). Just look at how that turns out in the USA, repeatedly. There are many other ways democracy can be structured. Most ‘democractic countries’ have extremely broken federal electoral systems which fail to represent the voting people, despite it seeming democratic on the surface with elections.
Who gets to decide the leaders now? If you live in a modernized country and a federal candidate does not have the support of the rich owning class, they won’t have much chance at competing with airtime on television and news, support of paid ‘influencers’ and other celebrities, commercial advertising spots, social media astroturfing campaigns and all the other ways to make a candidate seem important enough to have a chance of winning. The bottom line is, realistically speaking, the only viable candidates at leading on a federal level are those promoted by the ultra-rich, every other candidate and party is fringe. I assert that you effectively having to choose between candidates pre-selected by the owning class is not a valid democracy. Even if you have the right and the freedom to do due diligence and vote for a minor party which is closer to your views, that freedom is ultimately useless in a popularity contest influenced by mass media. That minor party, in real life, never had a fair chance of winning, no matter how popular their policies are.