Is this Democracy?

Day 766, 12:51 • Published in USA USA • by Not Done Never

If you want to run for Congress in this game, you have to be approved by the party president of whichever party you are a part of. To create your own party, it costs 40 gold.

How is this democracy? I have to be approved by a party president in order to run for a position in government? That sounds like an easy way to totalitarianism to me. In RL, you have hundreds of people running on their own backing and with their own money. You don't have to be members of an individual party in order to run. And you most definitly don't need the approval of someone else to exercise your right to run for public office.

Even in RL, our election system favors the richest because of the way campaigning works. However, in eRep, if you want to run on your own platform, you have to pay 40 gold to create your own party first. I'm sorry, but that is simply not a viable option for most players who haven't been on this game for a very long time.

I don't know if this is just the admins not understanding the way the government works, or if they are actively trying to limit democracy.

It makes sense to allow anyone over level 12 to run, as that is similar to our system where anyone over age 18 can run. In fact, I would be in favor of raising that bar to level 16, where moving up levels really slows down and you have to be committed to this game to continue.

However, there should be no cost to running. The only costs should be a nominal 2-3 gold fee and then however much the candidate is willing to spend on advertising.

Some people would say that this will bring in too many unqualified candidates. But that is the true power of democracy. It's ok if there's too many options. It's up to the voters to be educated and go to the voting page with an idea of who the legitimate candidates. For example, in my local RL election, there was a candidate named Goodspaceguy. That was his actual, legal name. His platform was that we should try to find other lifeforms in space and learn from them in order to run our local government. Needless to say, he wasn't elected, but he embodies the ability anyone should have to run for public office. It shouldn't require anyone else's approval or cost a large sum of money.

That is true democracy.

Not Done Never