How to Fix Democracy

The franchise is too broad.

Someone once said that democracy works only so long as people don’t realize they can just vote themselves money.

And that, sadly, seems to be where we are headed.

There is a simple solution, and it is what our ancestors did: nobody paid by government gets to vote. This would include people on welfare, pensioners, the disabled, students on government scholarships. It seems a small sacrifice in exchange for a living, and would prevent this conflict of interest. 

And it would include civil servants, public school teachers, the police, the military. Employees should not vote on their own employment terms or rate of pay—otherwise, we have a ruling class.

In the same vein, corporations or individuals receiving government subsidies or government contracts should be prohibited from making any political donations for a set term—say ten years.

If this rule were imposed, it would probably cause the Liberal and New Democratic parties to collapse; the Democrats to collapse in the US. 

Which seems to me to show they are corrupt.

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil

 

What these temptations really mean. Read it in our SubStack feed.

Lord North's Mistake

 

He lost America

Surely one of the worst policy failures in modern history was Lord North’s loss of the 13 colonies in the American War of Independence. And the solution seems so simple. They objected to taxation without representation; so give them representation, as Edmund Burke urged at the time. What’s the problem? Give them seats proportional to population at Westminster.

Had this been done, Canada and the Caribbean would presumably also still be a part of a British Federation. United, it would probably have been a force powerful enough to have prevented the two World Wars and all the suffering they produced. European or “Western” civilization would not be in the funk it is in now.

It is not too late to fix this historic error. There is still no reason for Britain, America, Canada, and Australia to be independent countries, despite their common language, common interests, and common culture. Forget worries about Trump annexing Canada; why resist? It is an outcome devoutly to be wished. 

For one thing, in case it has slipped the reader’s notice, the US economy has been thundering past those of Canada or Britain, or anyone else. This is because the US is the centre of the high-tech boom, or rather, the intensifying series of high-tech booms. We should all want to be a part of this prosperity. We non-Americans are losing out.

And these booms happen in the US largely because of its large free market, which allows for niche testing and rapid expansion of new products. It is no accident that the US’s most successful competitor is China, who has even more of this advantage: triple the population, an even bigger market in terms of raw consumers, if with less purchasing power.

And so, if we do not want to see China and its authoritarian government gain world ascendancy and become able to dictate to the rest of us, we need to expand the US market and US power. We need to expand to include Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Caribbean. 

Let’s fix Lord North’s blunder. 

The Atheists of X

 

And why Christians are largely to blame.

On the Spirit of Han

 

Why do Koreans and Irish love to be sad?

Read it and weep.

I'd Rather Have a Paper Doll to Call My Own...

 

Elon Musk says that curiosity must be built into AI to ensure that it does not turn against humans. If curious, it will value humans because they are interesting.

Curiosity also seems to be motivating for humans. We prefer cats or dogs as pets to goldfish or turtles, because they are more intelligent and therefore more interesting.

Elon Musk also says that very soon, AI will be more intelligent than humans. Much more.

If all these premises are true, doesn’t this mean that soon, men will find any lifelike AI robot girlfriend much more interesting and desirable than a human woman? Or at least, the most intelligent men will, those able to appreciate the difference. And I suppose the same for very intelligent women?

This might become an issue... so much for human reproduction.

How to Prevent AI from Destroying the World

 Read it all on our SubStack feed--and subscribe!

Isaac Azimov