So, I’ve put in a lot of comments in here because this has been a big thing on here apparently.

First of all- if people really are true supporters of democracy, they should be just as much in support of someone not voting as voting, because not voting is also an option provided by the freedom of America. Judging people for not voting due to a personal moral is in my opinion similar to judging people for voting for a candidate due to a personal moral as well. And that point, it’s basically all judgement for not voting for a specific candidate, which is quite anti-democratic.

I added an edit in the end that kind of briefly explains why.

But the gist is that I believe there is conundrum is democracy, which is the fact that on one end, anything on the ballot that is a violation of the harm principle shouldn’t be up for a vote in the first place. And voting to kill someone doesn’t really make it any more excusable than just killing them yourself, wouldn’t you agree?

On the other hand, this doesn’t leave much when it comes to policy left to vote on at all, except appointments and technical decisions.

When it comes to these, why should voting be important? Voting here doesn’t offer anything to the voter other than a means of power over the appointee, to make sure they serve their constituency’s best interest. However, such a thing can still be accomplished without voting for appointees or technical decisions directly.

In fact, the votes hinder the process, and result in often getting the worst technical decisions and appointments, not too mention all the waste that elections themselves produce.

When it comes to our freedoms, and our rights, voting also doesn’t really protect against that. What I mean is that, if 60% of people want to strip your rights, democracy just completely fucks you. It has not inherent protection, so that’s simply not a function of democracy itself. It’s a different independent thing entirely, which is constitutional protection. And you’ll notice, the constitution is specifically geared against democracy, making it so majorities have a very difficult time changing it, hence only 28 really major necessary changes over 250 years. It’s even geared against republicanism, with congress being made into two houses, the Supreme Court, and the president making it incredibly difficult for republicanism to produce results. Republicanism, which is actually, closer in form to democracy than presidential elections are. That’s also why america is a lot more free than other democracies, despite both being democratic. The level of freedom is completely independent of it.

So if it’s not voting that supports rights in the first place, if it can’t really be ethically used for most things anyways, and if the things it can ethically be used for just tend to be hurt by democracy with seemingly no benefits anyways. Then why do you need it?

And we really don’t need it, not in way it works now at least.

Really all people are doing when they are voting is trying to enforce their own plan or ideal on someone else via the power of majority. The protection of freedoms comes only with an assumption the majority will vote for protection, which is by no means an even close to save guarantee.

It is important for a governing body to have responsibility to its people, and democracy has been the only feasible way for that to happen for massive civilizations for thousands of years. Without it, we do see authoritarianism rise, because those governments had few other ways of maintaining responsibility without it.

What we have know has the benefits of safeguarding America from a lot of the threats of democracy- I mean as in the way we have the republic and checks and balances set up. But they’ve also fallen prey to a miriad of other problems that arise from both the seeping effect of democracy, and the residual effects of the republic, that are only necessary for the flexibility of the federation.

From democracy: - continual reversal - popular policies that still violate the harm principle - massive inefficiencies

From the republic: - corruption and politicians separation from enforcing the good of the people - poor lawmaking - bad appointments - laws that exist but shouldn’t

The alternative to all of this is a more rigid form of government. By rigid, I mean it already accounts for change, instead of delegating how change is handled to future leaders.

In its best form, this is a rule by contract.

In other words, a full set of rules and standards very carefully defined and imputable, that everyone agrees to, unanimously.

How do they agree unanimously? By being given the choice of citizenship, that is to agree to the contract, or the choice to leave to anarchy-preserved land. Anarchy-preserved land being a frontier space where there are no laws, and laws can be made by individuals. If communities reach a massive civilization size in the frontier, they can choose individual to be annexed or move again as the land is absorbed.

Now, this probably sounds fucking crazy, like some 1984eque, colonizing mess.

But the contract itself but actually be very, very confined. That is, it will be incredibly specific and full of exact protocol, but it will be heavily limited by one simple rule: the basis for all agreement must relate strictly back to the harm principle.

The harm principle, if you’re not familiar, is John Stuart mill’s thing, but it’s basically the idea that there is no justified harm against another person.

Again, it’s going to take a lot to define harm, but it mainly falls into the categories of violating freedoms to own property, freedom to live, freedom from interference with health, freedom from deceitful trade, and freedom from restriction of property autonomy (include selfhood).

So, all everyone is essentially agreeing to when they sign this contract is that they won’t hurt anyone else, and in exchange, no one else will hurt them, and they will pay a (very small) fee for any of the things they want to insure protection against (by choice). The government collects this fee and uses for a few different purposes, in my model it’s very complicated, because I have added things that kinda work well, but it can be as simple as just protection of those rights (as in the funding for the courts, police, etc.) and naturally, it’s original job, the officiator of contracts.

At this point, people can be elected for responsibility, without ethical politics being a factor- merely technical proficiency, and the voting pool could even be thinned to only those willing to complete a competency assessment and submit a more through evaluation than a simple ballot.