It’s an objectively fascist belief to hold, there’s no need to tie it to the rest of Musks bullshit, because it’s disgusting enough on its own.
I don’t think that viewing the world through the else of “racist or not” is necessarily the best way to approach a thought experiment. There is an old, perpetually mis-attributed quote along the lines of “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it”.
I happen to take personal objection with the notion that felons can’t vote in the USA. It provides a path to disenfranchise undesirable votes by perhaps abusing the law, or creating laws specifically to diminish the voting capacity of groups. I think that’s “facist”, but simply applying that label without a good faith explanation towards that “what” and “why” doesn’t lead to anyone learning anything about anything.
I’ve heard support of adding upper age limits on legislators under the justification of “they’ll be dead before they ever feel the results of their bad decisions”. I don’t see that argument as fundamentally different.
To be clear, I am not in favour of anyone’s vote getting taken away.
But I AM in favour of grown up discussions about how as a species, our ability to transform the earth has reached a point that our decisions can echo so far into the future, so far past our own lifespans, that it’s become way too easy to let future generations hold the bag.
We already see it financially. The boomers policy absolutely pulled the ladder up behind them buttfucking millenials and genz.
The headline isn’t"you must have children to vote", thats controversial and a bait solution.
Don’t fall for it. accept and consider the actually existant issue that the incentive model for legislation who’s effects push past the lifetime of decisioning stakeholders is broken… Because it is.
“A society is great when old men plant trees under who’s shade they will never sit.”
How do we make THAT happen?
There’s hundreds of years of experimentation with different democratic formations. We have pretty solid data on what does and doesn’t work. Put simply, the entire system we have works exactly as intended. Minority rule by private property holders and owners of capital is expressly the intended outcome of our system. If you want better outcomes, you need a system predicated on creating those outcomes, not one predicated on ensuring elite rule in perpetuity. We’ve reformed the system hundreds of times, we‘be got to accept at some point that you can’t reform a system away from the very thing it was built to ensure.
I could get into a discussion about alternative and significantly more equitable and representative forms of organization, but that’s not what Musk is doing here. He’s doing, as he always does, the work of the far right while masking his intentions behind bullshit transparent “I’m just asking questions” shtick that I don’t understand how anyone ever fell for in the first place, much less how people buy it now.
If the system is working as intended, but giving minority rule to large businesses interests, then I think we all agree that discussing alternatives is appropriate, no?
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need to involve Musk in this conversation at all. You don’t. I’m not.
So, it sounds like we agree: our system has flaws. There aren’t features in place that incentivise things like, not causing the planet to be uninhabitable in say, 150 years (when we’re all dead anyway so not OUR problem).
So, what would you do? I’m sincerely asking in good faith. You have a soapbox and I’m listening.
What I find disgusting is not anybody’s expressed opinion on anything no matter how objectionable I may find it. What I do find disgusting is a political system that no longer works for the greater good of the society as a whole. The voting system is there to give the voting public the illusion that they hold the keys to change. Government and its servants for the lost part can disregard those votes. What matters is $$$ and how these $$$ can affect elections by a voting public that for the most part is uninformed and falls easily for simple slogans that the $$$ get repeated often enough till people believe them to represent the truth.
And somehow restricting the right to vote even further towards those with a material interest towards maintaining the system as is, while disenfranchising those most negatively effected by the system, will lead to better outcomes for those disenfranchised and disaffected groups?
Well first this is never going to happen so the whole issues is academic. I would argue that it would not push the power to those with $$. The current system does that beautifully. You want the system of voting as watered down and in the hands of as many people as possible for $$ to have the highest impact on the outcome.
