The US was a dream to follow, but it has also become a nightmare. The US federal state has become quite horrible over the years as well.
My conclusion is that current day democracy does not work at the scale of hundreds of millions of people. The US, the EU, Russia and China are all examples of that in different ways.
We need a new form of democracy which scales better than the one we have today. Only then can we try to build sustainable unions on this scale.
I have no answer to what that would look like though. I can only guess at some of the components.
I think it would greatly help if people who vote were required to demonstrate that they understand the underlying facts to some degree. In addition to making sure everyone has the means to freely access and learn these facts. Once you know the facts, it's much easier to draw correct conclusions.
On the other hand, democratic elections as we know them skip the basic-understanding part entirely and go straight to the debate, denounce & convince part. Having that would be fine if people actually had a solid base from which to judge these arguments.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if there were a test similar to driver's license tests, far less involved but still a bit of a hurdle, and the voter base shrinking to a much smaller but on average much better informed populace.
Again, this has to come with completely free, government-sponsored access to time, opportunity and information for any citizen, so that even the poorest homeless person has a reasonable chance to take and pass that test. In that sense, it's a fragile system that can (maybe too) easily be rigged against the poor and struggling by educated and potentially malicious actors.
>Once you know the facts, it's much easier to draw correct conclusions.
I disagree. Facts can and do often get in the way or confuse people - and oversimplifying the facts for mass consumption has its own problems.
What if the facts are data/statistics? Depending how they get massaged you can have wildly different conclusions and both still be "right". Or voters not willing to investigate the data themselves (or lack the ability to perform statistical analysis) could be easily influenced by how the data is presented, if the data is presented in a manner meant to make drawing the "favored" solution easier.
What if the information presented is meant to mislead people with facts? Such as the old "ban dihydrogen monoxide" campaign.
I can't remember the city (state?), but they held a vote to ban Uber. The way the phrasing was to accept/decline the ordinance to outlaw Uber was so confusingly worded I read it several times and still wasn't sure if I was supposed to vote "yes" or "no" on the ordinance... was it saying "yes" to the new ordinance to overrule/replace the old ordinance or was it voting "yes" to keep the old ordinance? If I voted "yes" was I voting to outlaw Uber or allow Uber? I have a feeling it was intentionally made as confusing as possible.
My conclusion is that current day democracy does not work at the scale of hundreds of millions of people. The US, the EU, Russia and China are all examples of that in different ways.
We need a new form of democracy which scales better than the one we have today. Only then can we try to build sustainable unions on this scale.
I have no answer to what that would look like though. I can only guess at some of the components.