Why so negative about democracy? It’s time to be honest that it isn’t the end game state, and simply it doesn’t really function as it’s sold. It’s a system, and over time all system have their weakness exploited. Democracy fails along side capitalism and at country or ‘union’ scale. Democracy won by forceful colonisation - and it is less directly controlling for its members than alternatives. I have a hunch the right direction is decentralising large (and small) parts again. It’s a coordination and communication problem - not to dissimilar to decentralised computer science problems, game theory and peer coordination. I don’t have the solution - however, more decentralised, fewer (simpler) laws, more accountability, more transparency, better leaders, less corruption, public service is actually public service - not public beatdown or public theft. A lot would be different. It needs to self-heal or better prevent democracies failures at scale.

And if you want just a single example, look at how useless central banks are at predicting and protecting (stabilising) against recessions/depressions - their sole stated goal. Most of these systems of democracy exist to control what they obviously do not and can not. Why? Simply put in Sapiens, by Yuval Noah: There are two main classifications of chaos. First Order Chaos doesn’t respond to prediction. The example he gave is the weather. If you predict the weather to some level of accuracy that prediction will hold because the weather doesn’t adjust based on the prediction itself. Second Order Chaos is infinitely less predictable because it does respond to prediction. Examples include things like stocks and politics.

** should have added runaway inflation to their purpose. Ha. Good luck with that one.

Kind of in line with the Sovereign Individual. Although I’d be a bit weary of petty local government structures like Lionel Shriver described in her Citadel Dispatch appearance