[forest_dweller]

You make that sound like a bad thing? There are some that believe (as I do) that democracy will leads to oligarchy. But then again I've been reading a lot of Rothbard recently.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/iron-law-of-oligarchy

As for populism in a democratic system is a symptom of politicians/political parties not being seen by their citizens to be taking actions in regards to thorny subjects such as immigration, globalisation and law enforcement.

[int_19h]

Rothbard ended up as extreme paleocon, and his adherents such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe developed his line of thinking to its logical conclusion:

"In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one's own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order."

(Then neo-reactionaries took it from there, ditching all the excuses to present this state of affairs as "libertarian", and correctly calling it the new feudalism.)

[forest_dweller]

These conversations always go like this. It becomes tedious.

1) I don't care what Rothbard became in the end. It is completely irrelevant. Rothbard's critique of the state is an interesting perspective and some of them seem particularly apt when the leviathan of government is eroding people's rights because of COVID.

2) As for the Hoppe quote. The "neo-reactionary" you mention can be counted on one hand. The activist left (which is why that quote is on wikipedia in the first place) will take quotes and call someone alt-right based on one spicy paragraph in a book (which is exactly the trick you've tried here and I am not that naive to fall for it).

I haven't read "Democracy the God that failed" (yet) and I will decide for myself once I've read the book. I very much doubt it is a new feudalism and I very much doubt you've read the book either.

From watching him speaking. Hoppe's construction seems to be that given the choice between King and a Politician, a King would be better. His rationale for this is sound IMO. The most important part of it (for me) is a King will care about his legacy and a politician typically won't.

My own feelings is that I've never thought that democracy is effective or desirable. I've found the act of voting to be completely pointless due to the fact I have nobody to vote for in the UK that represents my interests of decreasing the state.

The only time when voting is effectives is during referendums when it is a single issue. Even then it isn't effective The UK's politicians and press did everything they could to deny the referedum result (and are still doing so btw).

I have heard arguments that the whole idea of democracy itself has been perverted during the enlightenment of those putting a Christian/Individualist perspective on Athenian ideas. But I won't pretend to know the argument well enough to have any opinion either way on it.