Political Crossfire Forums

To be fair, the vast chunk of people have no media literacy at all. Assuming it is carefully polished, you can serve them utter shit all day, and they'll never even notice, let alone complain. Advertising is also highly sophisticated these days, benefiting enormously from new developments in behavioral psychology and neurology...

All that said, I think you are absolutely right. The problem is definitely the people voting - there is no willingness to experiment with new ideas, and that is true of the people here, let alone the average person with no political education at all. Internet as infrastructure? Nah, let's just double down on the same shitty ideas that have caused us to fall so drastically behind. New ideas for wealth redistribution? f**k no, the ideal form of handling inequality is social programs and tax manipulation. Alternative foreign policy measures? Nope, we can't rock the boat, lest we capsize. And on and on it goes.

The problem is that dumb people are dumb, and smart people are full of fear, and so the same idiots keep on getting elected over and over. The only thing that changes is the sophistication of the electoral campaign.

So, how to fix that? Better candidates or just insist that people vote? For instance, some countries fine you for not voting. You don't have to vote for anyone if you don't want, you can just scribble on your ballet, but you have to show up. Maybe its time to do that?

Compulsory voting is interesting and I think there are good arguments both for an against it, but it's not going to solve the problem if people are still absurdly ignorant and foolish when they go to vote. When I say democracy hasn't been tried, I don't just mean that people aren't showing up to vote. I mean they claim to want better and different things but refuse to engage enough to understand how to vote for that.

I'm not sure that can be solved... Dumb people be dumb, and that is at least 60% of the population.