[TexasPlaya]

Originally Posted by Tech House

What you're advocating is the end of democracy, substituting the current system with something like a technocracy, plutocracy, or whatever you'd call it when access to voting is restricted according to those who possess an arbitrarily defined knowledge base.

Most of us have probably had the following thought at some point in our lives: "They shouldn't even be allowed to vote." Most of us don't commit to that point of view, because we recognize that "they" (however we're defining the category) are equally protected under the Constitution and have every right to help determine who will represent them in our democratic republic.

The elite of our society are over-represented as it is. Higher levels of achievement and education correspond to higher levels of income, wealth, and power. What today's GOP and their right-wing libertarian supporters are now promulgating is a codification of over-representation that only exacerbates this societal inequity. By systematically dismantling every avenue by which the underclass can participate in mainstream American society, they're moving us toward a modern feudalism. They make it increasingly impossible for the disadvantaged to do anything to better their lives, while they criticize and condemn them with increasingly shrill voices as lazy, ignorant, worthless, criminal, and evil. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, in which outcasts become the thing they're accused of being, not because it's their preferred way of being, but because of limited recourse or alternatives. The criminal justice system illustrates this very clearly, that by branding someone with a criminal record and putting restrictions on those individuals' future participation in mainstream society, they are condemned to a life in which crime not only pays, it may just be the ONLY thing that pays.

And how is democracy the end all system of government?

The elite of our society keep calling the shots because they have the resources to manipulate the voters.