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>universal suffrage is a stupid idea without universal risk/ skin in the game

Can you clarify this statement? I don’t understand what you mean.




Right now almost everyone gets to vote ( basically if you are a citizen who is over 18 you get to vote in most democracies) but when you look at how the government actually functions a majority of these voters are strongly net beneficiaries of government (through direct and indirect transfers) and have almost no risk from any of their votes because the strongest argument you can make is their taxes may go up but their transfers will likely still cover it and those transfers may be in forms that are less optimal than whatever they were spending that cash on directly before it was taxed away and then transferred back. Its' a very weak claim to having any skin in the game. Even among the minority of people actually paying for all this and not getting it back as transfers, you can make an argument that a subset of those guys are also largely insulated because they are good at getting excess government subsidy for their businesses via lobbying. Overall, there's a very tiny group of people who are experiencing actual costs from the decisions made by voters, which is stupid. Most of the people making the decisions need to have some real exposure to their decisions. I would personally do it by requiring people put up 2 weeks salary as a bond that pays some nominal interest but is stuck for at least the period that that election is valid for and if the people elected run deficits then the deficit is paid for out of the posted salary first prorated so that everyone experiences the same percentage of the pain and has to post the same percentage again at the next election if they want to vote there. You could also solve this by limiting voting to the people actually paying but that's a really bad idea for abuse reasons. Better to keep the voter rolls as broad as possible and just ensure people get a taste of the results of their choices as above (or through some other method, I'm open to ideas).


>Its' a very weak claim to having any skin in the game.

The government is the only entity that can legally take away my liberties, possessions, and life. By falling under its rule, all residents literally have their skins in the game.

Your starting point of money transfers could be read as an argument for better economic equality. If, for a person with a socially necessary and full-time job, taking more in taxes than they receive in benefits will financially ruin them, I won't blame the worker.


>The government is the only entity that can legally take away my liberties, possessions, and life. By falling under its rule, all residents literally have their skins in the game.

No, what that is is a recipe for tyranny of the majority (of weak performers) over the high performers by way of voting for policies that transfer wealth from the guys that got the job done to the guys that didn't. You are conflating the need for a strong constitution limiting government power with the idea that because maybe it's possible for the government to do some bad things to you you should get the right to tell the government to take from others and give to you.

Your second paragraph is just wrong. Money transfers are abusing one group for the benefit of a different group. It's weaponization of the very thing you incorrectly claimed as a reason you should get a vote in your first paragraph. The argument for transfers would be about network effects from the transfer being so great to the payer that they are better off (think providing healthcare has a network effect of healthier workers and customers making the paying business owner better off through increased sales/lower sick costs and other things of this variety) and the argument would be that if they weren't trying to freeload they would do the transfer anyway because it is in their interest. Your second sentence of your wrong second paragraph is wrong in the sense of being nonsensical. if you want to clarify what you mean I can then tell you why it's wrong from a logic perspective (or maybe I will agree with you, I can't tell).




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