[Iris7]

Allow this comment on your succinct essay: back in the 1830's John C. Calhoun pointed out that universal suffrage would result in what we see today, that is expropriation of a minority by the 50% plus one majority. People always, as a group, want more of what they want, and a majority wants other people's money.

This expropriation is inevitable without property qualifications for voting, which is why the founding generation did so restrict the suffrage. Poll taxes were usefull for this also. To return to workable politics is impossible without crisis. Machievelli and Plato said that Democracy always fails after expropriating the rich. A tyrant is voted in to accomplish this, as was Hitler.

[JohnGalt]

That is essentially libertarian political theory in a nutshell, however, while I agree with it on some level, it does not account for other tyrannies outside the tyranny of the majority.

A massive factory in the late 19th Century and well into the 1930s was a huge capital investment. Since the investment could not be moved, there was 'tyranny of place' that is not accounted for in libertarian thought of Calhoun's time. However, the Information Age will solve that.

[humbletheFiend]

Allow this comment on your succinct essay: back in the 1830's John C. Calhoun pointed out that universal suffrage would result in what we see today, that is expropriation of a minority by the 50% plus one majority. People always, as a group, want more of what they want, and a majority wants other people's money.

I suppose that the 19th Amendment was the biggest step toward "universal suffrage." How do you feel about that one?