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Notes -
I think this is the ultimate issue of democracy. The goal is to loot the treasury for your political allies. This works okay as long as the money doesn’t run out. Unfortunately, we’re now in the era where we no longer have enough productive labor to prop up the gibs. And so you have the fun of watching as political parties try to decide whether to cut off the gibs and save the country, or continue the gibs lest the entitled burn down the country.
Members of a demographic that has dictated politics for their entire natural life due to its sheer size most likely to believe strict majoritarianism is the most just/stable/holy system of government ever devised.
In other news, the wetness of water now in dispute.
Or maybe democracy doesn’t work for exactly that reason. Social security was never meant to support an entire generation leeching off the economy for 30+ years. In the beginning, the age of retirement was set above the median life expectancy. It was never adjusted for increased lifespans, until the difference is now 30 years. But nobody in a Democratic Republic ever votes against their selfish interests and thus it’s now expected that even though you’re healthy — in fact probably still active enough for even physical labor — you deserve a + year second childhood style retirement where you spend your time going on trips, playing games, and so on. And if the kids don’t want to pay for it all, well, sucks to be them.
To be fair, the same is true of other forms of gibs. No one will ever win an urban election on cutting welfare or Medicaid. No one will win an urban election on promises to test recipients for drugs, requiring work or education, or lowering the poverty level cutoff.
This is something that Yarvin is right about in regards to democracy at least as we currently do it. The name of the game is looting the treasury until it’s empty, lest the other side get there first and use it to pay off their loyalists. Eventually you run out of other people’s money to give away and it all falls apart because what you’d need to do to fix it would never ever win an election. Democracy therefore selects for winning elections rather than running the country and winning is the only thing the political class cares about.
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