How to Stop the Masses From Voting in Socialism

A poster, Matt, on the Captain Capitalism Blog raises an interesting point about how if workers don’t feel like they are getting a fair shake, they will vote for socialist candidates/policy to ‘strike back’ at the rich. We saw this play out to some extent in 2008 and 2012 with the election and re-election of Obama by millions of low-information voters who were wooed by Obama’s smooth oratorical rhetoric. Fortunately, the GOP congress, to their credit, have done an adequate job limiting the theoretical potential destruction wrought by Obama’s desire to soak the most productive and useful members of society, the 1%. America’s stock market and economy is doing well – not because of Obama, but in spite of him. Thank the fed, TARP, free market capitalism, globalization, the tireless consumer, the global capital flight to American assets and the US dollar, and the web 2.0 boom for America’s post-2008 economic rejuvenation and global dominance. So, as much as the socialists – all the way up to the President – wanted America to fail, they were spited by forces outside of their control. This is why Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are right to be optimistic about America and to never bet against it; smart people, wealth creators, and level-headed policy markets will always pull through, countering the corrosive forces of liberalism. But it may not be good enough, in that what if socialists who have nothing to lose and are hellbent on the destruction America and its free market capitalist system find ways to occupy all branches of power?

The solution is two-fold:

Make the low-information masses have less influence. This is can be done by allowing politicians to buy votes, creating literacy and or IQ tests for voting eligibility, restricting voting only to individuals who provide a demonstrable intellectual value for society and or have net worth above a certain threshold.

Put the pragmatic elite in power, who will enact good policy out of selfish self-preservation. I would much rather have Warren Buffett as president than Obama, despite they both are ‘liberal’. Buffett is a pragmatist who believes in policy before ideology; Obama is just a Marxist-trained wealth spreader who puts ideology ahead of good policy.

These and other solutions are discussed further here:

We Need More Money in Politics and Less Voting

Why We Need to Put the Elite in Power