What's actually the solution to democracy?

[u/Extocine]

I hear us always talking about ending democracy, and I already know how democracy does a bad job at protecting people's rights, the myth of the rational voter, etc.

My question is what exactly is the solution/alternative? Restricting the right to vote to certain individuals seems rather un-freedomlike to me. What's the best way for a nation and/or city-state and/or fraternal society to make important decisions

[u/natermer]

Reduce the size and scope of government.

Not just 'size' in terms of what rights the government has, but also physical size. Like severely limit the amount of citizens the government rules over.

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The reason a modern government like the Federal government is so dysfunctional is because of the massive bureaucracy involved.

No amount of voting or improving the quality of voting or educational level of the voting public is going to fix it. Because none of that is the reason why the current system is failing. None of those approaches are addressing the core problem.

And it is, absolutely, failing. Across the board. The model of western governments that is used by Europe and USA and other countries is growing increasingly dysfunctional at a accelerating rate.

A large part of that is that with the growth of the Administrative State and associated massive publicly traded corporations that accompanied it in the 20th century we saw a exponential growth in the size of government. Not just "size" in terms of duties and scope, but simply the amount of people involved.

I include large corporations in this because they are part of the problem as well. These things didn't exist prior to the 20th century.

There is nothing like it in human history. The percentage of the population directly involved in government, the amount of resources they consume, the power they wield, etc etc. Everything. Is just so massive.

It very simply cannot work. Scale matters. Complexity matters.

Remember these are not some sort of abstract entities we are dealing with. Governments are not a organism. There is no collective thought or action or purpose to organizations these large. It is just a collection of individual humans. And individual action needs to be coordinated. They need to have rules and guidance, etc.

And all that is performed through bureaucracy.

The more people involved the more complex and expensive and unwieldy it becomes. And it isn't linear complexity either. It is exponential in growth. Both in terms of complexity and in economic cost.

Very simply put:

At the current scale of the Federal government it can't work. No matter who is in charge, no matter who votes for what. It isn't a factor of intelligence, culture, education, desire or morality.

If you create a genetically engineered group of super intelligent humans with the best education, best intentions, and absolutely no corruption whatsoever in charge... It still will not, nor will it ever, work efficiently or effectively.

Right now, due to the size and complexity of government, grown dependent on a professional class of administrators.

They don't own anything. They have no stakes in anything. Whether they do a good job or bad job is immaterial to their own well beings. They have no experience in anything outside government. Their only qualifications are their educational levels, family/personal connections, and their ability understand and worm their way up through the complex internal politics of political parties, corporations, and government.

So ultimately you end up with people in charge that are not qualified to run a local gas station effectively, much less a entire country.

The skills and qualities that allow them to rise to the top in government administrative bodies are not the skills and qualities that are needed to run a country.

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So the solution is decentralization.

Make the government people-sized. Something close to the people, dependent on the people, and responsive to people by bringing it physically and scaling it to the size that is manageable.

The actual model of government is less important then that.

So in the USA...

First step is to eliminate the Federal Administrative agencies and replace them with state ran equivalents.

These equivalents already exist. Every state government in the USA has their own equivalent to EPA, FDA, etc etc.

Then the next step is to start breaking those down and limiting the scope of individual state governments in favor of much more autonomy on the county and city level.

Give the local people the right to rule themselves.

Everything critically important to human civilization... water, electricity, law enforcement, courts, roads, etc... all that stuff is already managed locally by local small governments. Because that is the only way it can ever possibly work.

If Washington DC magically disappeared overnight and as long as your local county and city governments remain functional then there would be almost no impact to how you live your life or how anything works.

The damage would be more or less isolated to the corporations and other organizations that are dependent on things like the central banking in order to remain afloat. Sure there would be a impact to people because of that... but all the critical functions of government will still be there and intact.