[csydas]

Not that I fully advocate for what Heinlein believed when he wrote Starship troopers, but with the US election and the Brexit vote, I found some of the quotes pertinent to the current way people approach voting and democracy.

>"...those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.”

Now, Heinlein argued for a restrictive vote based on civil service, perhaps best exemplified by another quote from the book “Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part . . . and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.” Despite his strong libertarian beliefs, there wasn't really much in terms of traditional politics that Heinlein promoted as he wrote this, aside from the fact that citizens should work to better their country.

While I don't think restricting the vote is the right answer, I do think this mentality of a full citizen is probably a good one for people to have before they vote. Not an intelligence test, not even an issues test (though also probably an okay idea), but instead just can you be relied on to be thinking about someone besides yourself.

Heinlein doesn't flesh this out much further than "man it'd be great if we cared more for our nation", and I am not smart enough to say what this looks like apolitically either, but it's a nice dream.

[AnonymousPlanet]

Heinlein's attitude towards citizenship in Starship Troopers very much reminded me of the attitude of the Prussian society regarding proper membership. In that mindset, only military discipline and a readiness for sacrifice formed a proper human being who would be a worthwhile member of society. This attitude can be seen as the Achilles' heel of humanism: every human is equal until you decide that some people just aren't human enough. I believe that this is how a country once championing humanism could take enlightenment (rationalization) and industrialization to such horrible conclusions.

Whenever considering a separation between full citizen and not-yet citizen, please keep this in mind.

[csydas]

I agree with both this and the above comment, in that I see this ideal as a dream at best, which is why as enticing as his views are, I can't fully say "yes, this is worth trying", especially since Heinlein's characters tend to be larger than life where the public just sort of accepts them for whatever reason.

So, please do understand in no way do I advocate for the actual separation. I think it'd be disastrous and used as a tool of oppression more than anything, despite my admiration of it in the initial post.

[TheOtherHobbes]

There's been a fundamental failure to teach basic intellectual literacy in the UK since the 1970s.

Issues have been reduced to opinions - often argued dishonestly, at the expense of basic facts - which in turn have been reduced to emotions.

It's one thing to think about how an issue affects you personally. It's something else entirely to utterly fail to understand that your hot-button feelings about one or two issues can have huge consequences.

Culture works through connections that increase the degrees of freedom of the system as a whole, not through individual moods and biases.

You can't run a 21st century economy without understanding this, and being able to make pragmatic choices based on it.

[simonh]

The problem with that is how do you know that people who've been in a public service job, even the military, have such an attitude? From my experience you get all sorts in the military. I think we has doing a lot of projecting from himself and his close associates on what's actually a hugely diverse group. Then there are plenty of others that act selflessly for society. Charity workers for example. If you start from his assumptions you can come to his conclusions quite naturally, but that's true of most people. I just find his assumptions very simplistic.

[Thimothy]

Yeah, it's obvious that Heinlein didn't really believe himself that the military route was the one to go. As the parent says, he leaves it at "man it'd be great if we really cared more for our nation", but... Although the idea of separating citizens-that-care from citizens-that-don't-care has it's appeal, the chances of one class entrenching and eventually abusing the other are so high that it's not really worth it.

[JoeAltmaier]

But - the Heinlein approach was to simply volunteer to be a Citizen. Yes it came with duties, but that's kind of the point. So there would be classes sure, but self-selected. If you feel abused, why just join the other class.

[Thimothy]

The solution proposed by Heinlein has all the desirable characteristics: zero barriers to entry, not very burdensome (for the received benefits) and reliabilly produces good citizens.

The problem is that I can't imagine a real method that can compare. There is no proof that the military way produces good citizens, and every other method ever tried introduces barriers, which usually leads to minorities being excluded.

[simonh]

> There is no proof that the military way produces good citizens, and every other method ever tried introduces barriers, which usually leads to minorities being excluded

This set me thinking. The big problem with a mechanism for selecting voters is that the people doing the selecting get to manipulate the contents of the voter pool. In this case, army recruiters. Now not only are you selecting candidates who'l make good soldiers, you're selecting candidates who will vote the way you want them to. Combine that with the power to train and condition those people as you choose during their military service, and expel soldiers that don't tow the line, and you've got the makings of a pretty effective one party state system run for the benefit of the party (the military in this case) and not the citizens.

[JoeAltmaier]

You can sign up without going through a recruiter?

[csydas]

Late reply but keep in mind that military service wasn't the only path to citizenship - it's just what he focused on since he had military experience. It was intended in the Starship Troopers world that other civil services, like teaching, would also grant citizenship upon completion.