In the last few days since England’s historic vote, we’ve learned several interesting things. Two in particular were things I already knew, but that this Brexit vote highlighted.
1. Democracy is a crappy way to run a country.
I have said several times that I don’t support democracy, and neither did the founding fathers of the United States.The founding fathers were wisely terrified of democracy and made sure to install safeguards into the US Constitution to defend against it.
The first problem with democracy is that people eventually start voting for other’s people’s stuff. This, of course, is the opposite of freedom. As Ben Franklin said, democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for dinner.
The second and even more serious problem is that in a democracy, you have complete idoits voting for things they are not qualified to vote for in any way. The day after the Brexit vote, the second most popular question on Google for England was, and I shit you not, “What is the EU?” I promse you a sizaeble percenatge of people asking that question actually voted in the election.
There are stories all over the place now about people complaining that they “didn’t actually think the UK would leave the EU” if they voted that way.
In this one case, the morons happened to vote in a way I thought was best, but that still doesn’t change my criticism of democracy. Letting all the idiots who don’t know anything vote for major governmental policy decisions and representatives is utterly insane.
Why the hell do you want most people voting when 73% of Americans can’t find America on a map?
Even if people weren’t morons, is someone correct just because they happen to be in the opinion majority? The vast majority of people still think lifetime marriage still works and that the crash in 2008 was caused by too much capitalism. 77% of Americans believe in angels. Since when does being in the majority make you right?
If 51% of the population said that everyone with a blue car should pay double in taxes, would that make it right? Would that make it a good idea? In my country, the majority once thought slavery was a great idea.
Most people don’t realize that at the founding of the United States, most white men couldn’t vote. The founding fathers knew what would happen if you allowed any moron to vote in major elections. Over 200 years later, now you know.
Democracy is a horrible idea guaranteed to cause major problems in your society. When left-wingers and neoconservatives sing democracy’s praises, they’re talking out of their asses. (By the way, leftists always praise democracy until democracy does something like leave the EU. Then suddenly they hate democracy. Until they don’t any more.)
The least bad type of government is not democracy, but a representative republic, with a government bound down by an enforceable constitution.
2. Political polls and betting pools can no longer be trusted.
Pretty much all the polls said Brexit would be defeated. They were wrong.
Pretty much all the betting pools, which most experts say are more accurate than polls, said Brexit would be defated. They were wrong too.
Since around 2011-12, when the incumbent US president was re-elected in the middle of relatively high unemployment and a stagnant economy (something that has never happened in my lifetime, or perhaps ever), the Western world has turned a corner. We’re in a new environment now where Western voters are so emotional and irrational that much of the predictive models aren’t working any more. A poll might be right, and it might be wrong. As just one example, we’re now hearing stories about how people who want to vote for Donald Trump are telling posters they don’t, since they’re embarrassed to admit it.
This is new. Historically, things like polls and betting polls have been pretty accurate. No longer. This is one of the many reasons why those saying “Hillary will definitely win” or “Trump will win in a landslide” are full of shit. You don’t know, since there’s no way to know any more. You might be right, but even if you are, you’ll be right by accident, not because the data was predictive.
I think polls are accurate if they show one side winning by a massive margin, but if the polls show something somewhat close, like with this Brexit vote, I think there’s no way to tell what all the irrational, moronic voters will actually do on election day.
It’s a whole new world, folks. Enjoy the decline!
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