[magicsmoke]

The founders of modern democracy already questioned the quality of the average citizen and whether they could be trusted with policy making. Hence the US was founded as a representative democracy. Citizens didn't make judgements on war and industry, they made judgements on politicians that would do so on their behalf.

[vkou]

The founding fathers were so concerned about this, that the US was also founded as a representative democracy, where the only people whose opinions counted were wealthy white landowning men.

Let's not look at a model where less than 2% of the population could vote as some brilliant stroke of foresight. It was created by aristocrats for aristocrats.

Mind you, this post does not advocate for direct democracy, but the origin myth of the founding fathers always needs to be looked at with a bit more context then it is usually afforded.

[Jarwain]

Well the argument for that at the time was that the only people who really received any halfway decent education were wealthy white landowning men. The idea being that education's important for comparing policy and making a good decision re: representation, or more generally that an educated populace is important for a functioning democracy.

And in that I kinda agree; an educated population is Important for a functioning democracy. While the mindset/culture/resource limitations of the time resulted in that being both discriminatory and classist, it's different today since we have universal standards of education.

Whether our current standards are good enough is a different argument

[Spivak]

Fine, then look with even more context. You're forgetting that the founding fathers didn't actually care about white landowning men specifically, that was a product of their time. They thought of women and minorities voting back then like we think of people under 18 voting today -- so normal and "obvious" that you don't even question it.

And their writings about representative democracy and fears about the typical citizen not being qualified to make policy decisions applied to those white landowning men. The voting population was entirely aristocratic equals and yet they still didn't think direct democracy would work.

[jjcon]

> Let's not look at a model where less than 2% of the population could vote as some brilliant stroke of foresight

Yeah umm that is just completely false.

[Igelau]

You may be right, but that still wouldn't say anything about their decision to construct a representative democracy. It just sounds like you have an ax to grind against a bunch of dead guys.

[lopmotr]

It's still true that only about 2% of people can vote in America today. That's because it's a right restricted to members of the privileged citizen class. You might say that foreigners shouldn't vote because it doesn't affect them, but it does. America has a lot of influence over other countries whose citizens are as helpless as blacks and women back then.

[metiscus]

I think your math is a bit off. More than 2 percent of the US population voted in the previous election. Unless you are claiming that 330 million over the entire world population is 2 percent and thus only the people located in America (or citizens overseas) can vote which is and should be true.

[Igelau]

Foreign interference isn't a bug– it's a feature!