Reddit reviews Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford Political Theory)

You're right, it is unfeasible to change things by voting. The good news is, our power extends far beyond checking a few boxes every couple years. All it takes is realizing it.

I would start by strongly questioning voting for representatives as a means of getting what we want. The system itself does not favor us: Despite the fact that we get to choose who we allow to have power over our lives, we are still submitting our own power to a remarkably small group of people. This system naturally lends itself to those people trying to hold and gain more power for themselves, as their decisions that affect all of us are naturally influenced by their own personal gain.

But what else is there if not representative democracy? How about a system where we do not accept that a select few people are allowed to have power over all of us? Why do we need a president? Why do we need 100 Senators to decide what happens to 300 million of us? I strongly encourage people to consider direct, participatory democracy as an alternative. It's messy and complicated, sure, but so is our current system. The only difference is that now we hold onto our own power as individuals and use it to collectively shape our world. For an in-depth look about how these ideas could be applied, Iris Marion Young's Inclusion and Democracy is a phenomenal book.

But, you say, we don't have the power! They've got all the money and they control the laws! True, so it won't be easy. But it's important to remember that money and laws are only real because we believe in them. We're like the doberman that thinks it's impossible to walk off the edge of the property just because the owner said so. Plus, we have the most incredible, potentially-game-changing tool quite literally at our fingertips. Whereas for the last 100 years money and power were virtually required to have a loud, influential voice (mass media), we now have the ability to communicate as loudly as anybody for virtually no cost. Good ideas (and bad ideas, admittedly) can make it to the front page of Reddit and be seen by millions of people. We can now communicate directly with people all over the planet! Holy shit!

So we can get loud, but we can't just do that on Reddit. As we all know, it is frequented by a certain demographic with certain predispositions, and can too easily turn into an echo chamber, a circle jerk, and a preaching to the choir. We need to take these ideas and spread them to all other demographics! Stop bickering about Republican vs. Democrat and start reaching to others with different political viewpoints. Imagine the ideal of a world without war and poverty and hunger, a world where everybody is given as much actual security as possible, a world that actively cares for EVERYBODY within it, and then work to come up with the best way to do that. Don't be afraid to question socially created systems like markets and the economy and nations and borders and the silly notion that we are naturally stuck with such a broken system if those are the things that are actively stopping us from having a better world. Understand people who have different points of view than you and work to come up with a solution that benefits them just as well as you. Nobody should be left out of this process.

Now, I know this has been a bit rambling, and it certainly doesn't equip everyone with the tools to instantly fix such entrenched problems. Still, I can assure you that an absolutely necessary prerequisite to changing a system that does not benefit us is to understand that we have the power to change that system. Getting people to realize and understand this plight, along with the power we DO have, is a massive step to solving the world's problems.

TL;DR: Why are we waiting for the people on top of a broken system to fix this for us? Why the hell would they? To paraphrase John Dewey, why would you expect the poison to suddenly create the cure? Thankfully, we have the power to do so all on our own, we just need to realize it first.