Please don't use "realistically" to privilege your own opinion beyond its merit. My opinion is just as reality-based as yours. Time after time after time, leaders within any elite have accumulated personal power and turned it into an instrument of that power (as opposed to its original purpose). When that elite is ruling society, those leaders therefore are too, and we have a word for that: oligarchs. We probably can't fix the organizational dynamics that lead to this accretion of power, but we can prevent it from being our basis of government by keeping the franchise broad. Limiting franchise has always been a favorite tool of dictators, oligarchs, and supremacists - not of people who actually believe in democracy.
Only assuming you can process information from the real world correctly, which isn't a given. Not a judgment on you personally.
> We probably can't fix the organizational dynamics that lead to this accretion of power, but we can prevent it from being our basis of government by keeping the franchise broad.
Is there any evidence that keeping the franchise broad is the most effective strategy of running a country over multiple generations, where knowledge of organizational dynamics gets lost over time? That's a very strong claim, without much supporting it.
> Limiting franchise has always been a favorite tool of dictators, oligarchs, and supremacists - not of people who actually believe in democracy.
I don't particularly believe in democracy (one of the reasons being an extremely broad, misused catch-all term for whatever the speaker means themselves), but I do believe in strong institutions and separation of powers to the degree that it's possible.
But again, that's kind of orthogonal to whether this is an effective way to enact change by the broad franchise.
> Only assuming you can process information from the real world correctly, which isn't a given. Not a judgment on you personally.
You realize this claim can be made about you too, right? You might believe you process information correctly, but that's a very strong claim, without much supporting it.
> Please don't use "realistically" to privilege your own opinion beyond its merit. My opinion is just as reality-based as yours.
Just to make a note about this separately.
I will privilege my opinion in discussions, because I generally tend to give concepts a lot more thought than the average person. It is also my prerogative to defend what I believe in and I try to do that with evidence and astute observation.
To ask someone not to do this is absolutely ridiculous.
