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Comment by bestouff | Hacker News Reader

I'm always impressed how many of our problems were solved very long ago (in this case, we know Athenians did "Citizen Assemblies" more than a thousand years ago) but then our systems slowly decay and the solution is lost.

That means a well working democratic country with a working welfare and social net will eventually degrade into some random authoritarian shithole. That scares me.

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Not true: While frame as "the holy first democratic state", most people were excluded: The ones who were allowed to vote/elect, were mainly the rich upperclass, Women, Slaves, Children etc. weren allowed to participate / attend.

yes, but at the time, they were considered property. With the system the way it currently is, only the rich get to play.

The only way in which this is relevant is if the populations of voters are different in ways that affect the voting mechanism. For all we care they could have been warlord cannibals: all that matters is that we can use the same mechanism.

I mean, if the oppressed where allowed to vote in free and fair elections then they would likely have been oppressed less.

The election of the GOP in the States recently seems to offer a counter to your view.

Keep in mind that Athenian democracy was ended through conquest by Macedon, not internal collapse.

One of my favorite quotes re: the classics:

"Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago."

Well, seeing how easy it is to get such an answer, I think the most important thing is that people do raise questions and search for the answer.

A bigger problem to me is that so many stopped questioning.

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