> Its why for going on 200 years there has always been a movement to "fix" society through government that never actually seems to get much of anywhere.
I'd say this is just a convincing argument that we can't leave it to government to fix society then.
With respect to your points about capitalism. Yea sure. I think that to create a society that better respects the rights of workers and ensures that people live good lives. You'll see countries that are considered even more capitalistic than the US like the Nordics have really good government that they vote for and participate in, and they have great protections for workers. But they also pay for those things with higher taxes. The issue in the US is just that we don't believe the government can effectively do those things (and for decent enough reasons) so we just sit in this vicious cycle. Nobody wants to fix things.
> there is a reason the US was founded to have an electorate of white, land owning men.
Well there's a few reasons, but part of why we have a republic instead of a direct democracy is because the founders were worried about mobs of uneducated voters causing the government to do really dumb things. At the time the only educated people were white, land-owning men. If you can't trust your fellow citizens right now to vote, then I'm not sure why you'd trust them with even more power. To me it seems day in and day out I'm more and more convinced Americans shouldn't even be allowed to vote on account of how many dumb decisions we make. We don't deserve a republic or democracy. Fat, lazy, entitlement mentality for far too many.
I'd say this is just a convincing argument that we can't leave it to government to fix society then.
With respect to your points about capitalism. Yea sure. I think that to create a society that better respects the rights of workers and ensures that people live good lives. You'll see countries that are considered even more capitalistic than the US like the Nordics have really good government that they vote for and participate in, and they have great protections for workers. But they also pay for those things with higher taxes. The issue in the US is just that we don't believe the government can effectively do those things (and for decent enough reasons) so we just sit in this vicious cycle. Nobody wants to fix things.
> there is a reason the US was founded to have an electorate of white, land owning men.
Well there's a few reasons, but part of why we have a republic instead of a direct democracy is because the founders were worried about mobs of uneducated voters causing the government to do really dumb things. At the time the only educated people were white, land-owning men. If you can't trust your fellow citizens right now to vote, then I'm not sure why you'd trust them with even more power. To me it seems day in and day out I'm more and more convinced Americans shouldn't even be allowed to vote on account of how many dumb decisions we make. We don't deserve a republic or democracy. Fat, lazy, entitlement mentality for far too many.