this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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Politicians are almost all sociopaths, not even trying to be funny. Sometimes they do things you like and sometimes they dont, but that never has anything to do with the interests and priorities of citizens. They are just people whose job is acting their entire life according to some doctrine, they dont have real personalities.
The political system we live under is rotting. It’s holding us back, suffocating real democracy, and clinging to relics of an era we should’ve buried centuries ago. Why are we still pretending centralized power structures, dominated by presidents and parliaments, are the best we can do? It’s time to turn the whole thing upside down. Imagine power flowing not from the top down but bubbling up from councils—real, grassroots bodies in towns, workplaces, and universities where people directly decide what matters to them. No presidents. No untouchable elites. Just democracy as it was meant to be: local, participatory, and alive.
Critics say that direct democracy would be too costly and cumbersome in large countries. But that’s a lie told to make us think power belongs anywhere but in our hands. The truth is, it doesn’t work their way—infrequent, clunky referenda that barely scratch the surface of what real participation looks like. But why not councils that meet regularly, that use technology we already have to count votes and hear every voice? Why not frequent, transparent, and accessible decision-making? We have the tools. What we lack is the will—and that’s on us.
And about the politicians. They’ve turned ruling into a career. They live above us, pocket bribes, rub shoulders with CEOs, and laugh at the idea of accountability. Enough. All representatives should be recallable at any time, earning no more than the median worker’s salary. Partial sortition (random official selection) could ensure even more fairness. It worked in ancient Greece which was (for the free male citizens ofc) closer to actual democracy than the unaccountable neo-aristocratic order we have today, so why not today when we have the formal equality before the law and equal rights, but we know the reality.
But if no one will be above anyone because everyone will get their chance to actually change something about the world and their life without running into the stone walls of the system, it will be a complete revolution in human relations that will uproot the poisonous root of disdain so many feel for their fellow humans for simply being worse off than them.
Imagine a system where politics isn’t about who has power but about how power flows and where the needs of the people are actually heard and resolved. Blockchain (and no, I'm abso-fucking-lutely not a cryptobro. PoW is still useful for things like captcha replacements but the whole thing is the biggest example of capitalism's way of turning useful and promising inventions into means of speculation and outright scams by and large) could be used to make the process more transparent than ever. It's not the technology that hold us back, but their fear of us using it to take what’s ours.
Term limits, too. No one should sit in power long enough to forget what life is like for the rest of us. Politics should be service, not a career. If we’re serious about democracy, every single one of us—no matter how "uneducated" we’re told we are—needs to learn how to govern. Because democracy isn’t just voting for the lesser evil every few years. It’s taking the reins of your life, your community, your future. It’s about ruling instead of being ruled.
Here’s the thing: the ruling class will not go quietly. When we start to take real power into our hands, they’ll fight back. They’ll use every dirty trick in the book to claw it back. That’s how this game works. But if we stand together, if we build a united force that can’t be undermined, if we refuse to let fear or complacency stop us—then they lose. And we win something they can never take away: the power to determine our destiny. That’s what’s at stake. Let’s stop settling for scraps. It’s time to demand the whole damn table.