/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>13235710
I'm not writing all of this to sketch some abstract political theory. I'm making a point here - all of this has ramifications for us /jp/sies.

Having to listen to all voices and giving everyone over a certain age the franchise makes governing incredibly slow and haphazard. That is a point that I happily concede!

Why? I'll illustrate with a hypothetical scenario.

Say your country is a "limited democracy." It's hard to define exactly what that means, but I'm assuming that voting would be restricted to a limited class of individuals, given that >>13234431 was referring to the early post-colonial U.S. This would mean that most people would be subjects, not citizens, as you'd have to be wealthy enough to own enough land to earn the franchise.

This underclass of subjects would still have the freedom to speak, sure. Who is going to listen to them? It's very unlikely that the landed elite would share the interests of those below them. They would have the freedom to move. Given how expensive it is to immigrate to most countries worth immigrating to, however, moving would be out of the question for the underclass. They'd be stuck in your country, with no meaningful input into how the government treats them. As I have pointed out above, this situation creates frustration. It creates the conditions for riots and other political violence - all that is needed is a spark to start the fire.

Now, say that spark happens: a recession creates mass unemployment, a fire in a garment factory kills dozens of workers, a man burns himself alive in protest of rampant corruption, the government loses a war and has to raise taxes to pay reparations to the winner. People are angry. Since we're in the 21st Century, anger spreads like wildfire through social media, with youth organizing flash protests that scare the government. The government and the elite is desperate and is pulling out all the stops to quell the fire before outright an outright civil war erupts.