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Comment by dghf | Hacker News Reader

> But as far as ancient athens goes, every male regardless of wealth or status got to vote the laws and decrees.

Except for slaves and former slaves. Also a large portion of the population were resident foreigners, who didn't get the vote.

Wikipedia puts the number of voters at 10% to 20% of the total population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy

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Foreign residents by definition are not citizens. They don't get to vote in elections of parliementary regimes either. But assuming foreign residents could vote, then anyone can come en masse and just change the outcome of the vote. As for slaves, they weren't citizens either, but either mostly war captives which were taken into slavery rather then executed or citizens which were stripped of their citizenship for various crimes. War captives or people who commited crimes don't get to vote in elections either in parliamentary regimes.

But both slaves and foreign residents ("metics") transmitted their status by birth: you could be born in Athens, as could your father, and your father's father, and still have no route to citizenship, unless the city chose to grant it as a gift (a rare event). So even if you discount the foreign-born, you still have an elite ruling over a disenfranchised population.

No, it's the other way around. It was athenian citizenship which was transmitted by birth. First you had to have at least one athenian parent. And then later athenians voted to change the law so two athenian parents would be required. And this is in part because 'metekos' were more often than not rich merchants and not underdogs at all. And the athenians were weary about them having influence just like they ostracized any citizen who had too much influence. But anyway, more or less restrictive citizenship conditions is irrelevant to the fact that electing masters is not and never will be democracy.

> electing masters is not and never will be democracy

Neither is having political power in the exclusive hands of a hereditary elite. That's oligarchy or aristocracy.

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