Old_ones wrote: ↑
screwtape wrote: ↑
Seriously, my preference is to have a stupidly easy to pass civics class in high school that must be passed before you can vote. Anyone else (an immigrant, say) can also take the test as often as they like, but no one votes without it. Something at the level to which I had to be able to regurgitate the duties of a Canadian citizen, how elections and parliament function and some very basic history in front of a citizenship judge when I gained my second passport. Yes, this might exclude the mentally handicapped, and those who strongly disagree with the existing system and are unable to conceal their contempt, but we don't want them voting anyway, do we?
It could also exclude people with low socioeconomic status - people who live in impoverished urban or rural areas tend to have access to schools which are lower quality than those found in affluent areas. Maybe this is a US thing - we tend to use property taxes to pay for our schools.
Even a wretched school in a wretched area would be able to teach something as basic as this. Essentially, you show up and get even a small idea of what is going on and you will pass.
I never knew that local districts in the USA determine through their taxes if their kids will get educated or not until this happened: I drove to Glace Bay, NS, to take a trip down the undersea coalmine (many of my close relatives were coalminers in the north of England, and several died in the mines, so I have reason to be interested), and whilst I waited for it to open, I sat and listened to a guy from the USA explain to his German friend that he had lucked out in buying nice property in a district where the taxes for schools were so low as to be negligible, yet he could send his kids into a neighbouring district where the taxes were high, the school funding was high, and the outcomes were exceptional. And this rotten shit wouldn't pay a penny for any of it. I doubt he learned a thing about human effort versus outcome down that mine tour, but that's how market forces work, right? That cunt cleverly figured out how to make his neighbours pay for the education of his offspring. Evolution in action, we might say, substituting market forces for gene pressure. Well, perhaps, but still a bit abhorrent to a child of Attlee's society such as myself. If we live in social groups because our best adaptation for success is having big brains that let us co-operate, then let us co-operate as much as we can! Don't profit from exploiting someone who is, essentially, your own neighbour, but try to profit from Johnny Foreigner wherever you can. It's the only remaining form of rqcism allowed, if that makes it more attractive!