Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE. I picked up this title at the Dollar Tree the other night:
Gaming the Vote:
Why Elections Aren't Fair
(and What We Can
Do About It)
by William Poundstone
Kindle Edition
Bargain Price Hardcover
Paperback
Posted on 09/15/2011 7:12:50 AM PDT by Neville Chamberlain
A difficult, delicate conversation here in our latest distillation of another critically important conservative/libertarian book. These ideas are like discovering continents; you cannot undiscover them. If you're able to figure out which book we're discussing before we mention the name of the book, you are at the top of your class.
Why We Are Screwed: the ‘masses’
“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a “warm body” democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction…. [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.”
-Robert A. Heinlein’s To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
No problem at all.
Rome had the same issues with the same level of people (er masses) and they solved it with ever more bread and more violent, more gaudy, more sensual circuses. And, Rome’s problem was solved for good. Well, 200 years anyway - well past the election cycle of the Roman Senators. (After that, things kind of went to h*ll in a handbacket when the Huns, Goth, Visigoths, and Vandals invaded.)
Well, then again, that’s how Washington’s liberals are trying to solve it .... But today, Hollywood is providing the circuses inside every TV, movie theater and every internet porn connection. And our future generations are providing the “bread” to today’s mob of self-centered parasites, enviro’s and their liberal enablers.
bookmark for later
Nice comment, Cook. Give that man a cigar!
Nice comment, Cook. Give that man a cigar!
I’ve always believed that, in the long run, universal suffrage can’t work. I know the argument is not popular in virtually any circles so I rarely bother making it, but one day societies are going to figure out that no one on the government dole should be able to vote themselves more hand outs. Eventually, the concept of multiple categories of citizens (voting and non voting) will be found to be a better arrangement for democracies.
Anything by Stephen King.
Gaming the Vote:
Why Elections Aren't Fair
(and What We Can
Do About It)
by William Poundstone
Kindle Edition
Bargain Price Hardcover
Paperback
You’ve kindle’d my interest!
:’)
Or, as one of the later Louis’s (Kings of France) said:
“God must love the common people, He made so many of them.”
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