It's a curious thought, isn't it. That so many wise men had established so many nations, only for midwits to plan and ploy and destroy their nations. Giving them too much rope with which to hang everyone, perhaps?
Mao got rid of those "educated youth" by sending them to the countryside to farm. It worked. And frankly, I haven't figured a better approach. People should be farming more and scheming less, and I'd gladly join the farming.
"the balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way then of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue, is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society: to make a division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates" - John Adams
“those who own the country ought to govern it.” - John Jay
These insights by Adams and Jay are insightful, particularly comparing them with, for example, Hans Hermann Hoppe's argument for Monarchy, that when the King owned the country he was incentivized to be a good steward. Whereas nowadays politicians are incentivized towards plunder rather than stewardship.
If you combine these ideas, it seems that for a Republic to function and liberty to flourish, you need lots of economically independent families/individuals, because then they will have the same governance incentives as Monarchs.
Other interesting ways in which our system is totally dysfunctional and headed towards destruction are of course its subjugation to those who do not have stakes in their communities, not only meaning international financial actors, but also the old and childless.
There there is of course the problem of women as dependents - not only are they statistically always a net negative on state finances and so as a group they are dependents, but that's not even including the other structural ways in which they are subsidized, most infamously being DEI, but also even the existence of police and the military and their safety being at all times guaranteed by men. All of it biasing nowadays in favor of them being a client of the state rather than the patriarchal family.
Interesting article. Personally, I would just go with a simple, "Does the voter own their own home and do they pay taxes?" But that could be expanded.
P.S. What do you think about the requirement to be married with kids? Fair or too much?
I think the scaled household vote is the better way of achieving that
And yeah that works too, but I wanted to see what could be designed based more explicitly on their specific ideas and concerns
Really anything that keeps the bottom quintile from voting would work
Okay thanks. 👍 Agreed.
There's also the complication of mortgages. I think Virginia disallowed land with a mortgage on it from counting at one time.
Interesting. I hadn’t thought about homes with mortgages.
It's a curious thought, isn't it. That so many wise men had established so many nations, only for midwits to plan and ploy and destroy their nations. Giving them too much rope with which to hang everyone, perhaps?
Mao got rid of those "educated youth" by sending them to the countryside to farm. It worked. And frankly, I haven't figured a better approach. People should be farming more and scheming less, and I'd gladly join the farming.
Agreed
I did some (minor) work on a family farm growing up, and doing that was very good for me
"the balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way then of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue, is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society: to make a division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates" - John Adams
“those who own the country ought to govern it.” - John Jay
These insights by Adams and Jay are insightful, particularly comparing them with, for example, Hans Hermann Hoppe's argument for Monarchy, that when the King owned the country he was incentivized to be a good steward. Whereas nowadays politicians are incentivized towards plunder rather than stewardship.
If you combine these ideas, it seems that for a Republic to function and liberty to flourish, you need lots of economically independent families/individuals, because then they will have the same governance incentives as Monarchs.
Other interesting ways in which our system is totally dysfunctional and headed towards destruction are of course its subjugation to those who do not have stakes in their communities, not only meaning international financial actors, but also the old and childless.
There there is of course the problem of women as dependents - not only are they statistically always a net negative on state finances and so as a group they are dependents, but that's not even including the other structural ways in which they are subsidized, most infamously being DEI, but also even the existence of police and the military and their safety being at all times guaranteed by men. All of it biasing nowadays in favor of them being a client of the state rather than the patriarchal family.