Our Socioeconomic Position is at Risk

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invaderthe barbarians enter Rome. Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset pp. 226-227 (paperback) Edited by Coyote, : added author's full name

"Bread and circuses" is not working fine in the US.There are simply too few people working to support those who are not working in the style to which they have been, or would like to become, accustomed. Add in those on food stamps or disability, or earning a pension which has not already been funded. Add in the money required to keep up with the give-aways our politicians are promising to get reelected. And perhaps one might consider the already-massive federal debt.No, "bread and circuses" is not working fine.While democracy has been "working better than any other method" it is suffering the problems Heinlein noted, and I doubt that it will be working well enough in the future.Maybe the founding fathers had it right--those who own property and pay taxes should be the ones allowed to vote. Those who are a burden on the economy should not be allowed to vote themselves "largess from the public treasury."And it is not just Heinlein, the writer of fiction who has put forth this idea:Alexander Fraser Tytler - Wikiquote