The luxury of the West in 1 sentence.

Have fun telling that to yourself when a random idiot that 30% of people voted for has power of life and death over you and your family.

As if you have a say other than "that guy" or "that other guy".

The wealthy already fund politicians' careers, they fund judges, they fund campaigns. The wealthy already run the country. They fund both parties as a tactic. The parties are just "good cop/bad cop".

This is democracy, it doesn't mean it's perfect. It's just a tool to keep a lot of people in line. It's the HOW that matters, which is what life finally is about.

Being a crazy authoritarian guy with power of life and death over each of your citizens is one. No government at all is the other extreme, which finally leads always to another crazy guy.

In between there is an ocean.

...and putting everything in the same pot is mostly wrong, but lately it's cool to be anti-everything.

Is it a democracy when theres a whole class of people who can take over the political apparatus?

Is it democracy if a group of people totally coopt the electoral process by cultivating all the candidates and their policies behind the scenes and then present a few issues for us to bicker about?

Democracy is supposed to be everybody.

And you may say "but you can pick the person and representatives". But often these are already cultivated by the rich OR the political apparatus has been so corrupted that picking them does nothing.

Not only cause you can't influence policies after you vote, so that voting essentially becomes a pinky promise you make with the candidate. But also because the rest of the govt is so corrupted that an individual candidate, even if independent, is gonna have a hard time working in favor of the people.

You say in between theres an ocean, but for analogy purposes, what can the Millions of us do in an ocean if we don't have a boat?

Where's your think tank and lobbying group?

> Being a crazy authoritarian guy with power of life and death over each of your citizens is one. No government at all is the other extreme

no, the other extreme of "crazy authoritarian" is "liberal democracy"

The other extreme of "no government at all" is "everything is run by the government"

Fair enough, technically you are right.

> The wealthy already run the country

Dude this is a programming forum. Aren't you "The wealthy"?

Strictly it is capitalists who run the government.

While an individual can be wealthy, it is those who own the wealth-making-assets who control the government, AKA the capitalists. Because controlling the wealth-making-assets makes you an important element of national security, so you get a seat at the table.

While making 750k a year means you get a seat at your companies table to do what they require of you. It is very very different. It's capitalists VS workers that matters. Not strictly the wealth levels.

PS. Also I got laid off, I'm broke, lol. To all you childish mofos who think I'm a socialist because I'm currently broke: False. Some people are raised socialists.