Hey, so I’ve created a community to discuss and talk about sortition, a type of governance where leaders and officials are chosen at random. This was practiced by ancient Athens, and is considered to be much better at representation than normal democracy.
With a large enough body, it’s true bribery gets harder, but you also have some of the same problems as direct democracy. At some point you’ve basically just made a smaller voting public.
There’s very few things about representative democracy that work exactly as intended, but it does makes (illegal) corruption hard to maintain. A politician having a reputation for corruption and self-dealing is one of the few things that voters uniformly don’t like, and will actually act on at the polls. (Obviously there’s a major counterexample right now, but the trend is undeniable)
I would have agreed with you before Trump. The power of conservative in-group solidarity is powerful, especially when multiplied by media support.
Ah shit, I just ninja edited that it. Too late! Oh well.
It is conservative in-group solidarity, and a crazy cult of personality he managed to stumble into, but that’s not a common, easy-to-manufacture situation.
For most of history and still in most places, paying off officials was/is a normal, everyday part of life. Now, living in Canada, I’ve never paid a bribe, or even been given the opportunity. Democracy seems like the obvious answer as to why; it’s not because Canadians are just better.