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)
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.