>If two people care equally, but one doesn't attend because they would lose their job or need to earn enough money for dinner—then I have a massive problem.
Urgh. This is the same creative writing exercise that another poster here is engaging in. I'll tell you the same thing, I told him. You don't know that person. You don't know if that person exists. You don't know if that is actually a problem that affects even a tiny minority of would-be attendees. What you're doing is creating a caricature of working people and engaging in an imagination exercise of seeing how your caricatures would respond in hypothetical situations that don't actually exist ... because maybe you have no other connection to those working people? I don't know.
I don't know how to argue that. You created a scenario that doesn't exist. The best I can do is just say that you did that.
Anyway, I'm not going to debate whether such a person exists. If you think there exists no such person, we're not going to productively carry the conversation forward.
If you think there exists such people, but it's a small enough set that the merits of a caucus outweigh the disenfranchisement of that set, we can discuss that.
But if your argument is that flat out no such person exists, then we can stop discussing it.
>Anyway, I'm not going to debate whether such a person exists.
Of course, because you made up that person. You made up the problem. Can you quantify how many people are being prevented for caucusing because they can't take a day off? What are we talking about here, apart from imaginary situations?
>If you think there exists such people, but it's a small enough set that the merits of a caucus outweigh the disenfranchisement of that set, we can discuss that.
That is the argument. It's a big country with hundreds of millions of people. Lots of things are happening all the time. I'm sure a person broke their leg and couldn't caucus, or they found out they were pregnant and were distraught, or their mother recently died, or they couldn't take a day off work, or they don't care enough. So what?! There's an election every 2 years. There are local, state, and federal elections. If you miss one caucus because of life, it's not the end of the world, life happens. Go to the next one. Besides, it's a representative democracy, a single voter isn't dictating policy. Your neighbours and like-minded voters will be pushing for policies you care about. In Democracy, it takes a long time for people to be converted to a new position, so it takes years of grassroots organizing to enact change because every person has their own ideas.
Jesus Christ, you're making it seem like it's China where nobody is able to vote. Or as if it is a crime against humanity if a life event prevents some individual from participating at some political event - to the extent where we need to reform the entire system that worked well for hundreds of years. And by the way, life will happen no matter which way you redesign voting and democracy.
Urgh. This is the same creative writing exercise that another poster here is engaging in. I'll tell you the same thing, I told him. You don't know that person. You don't know if that person exists. You don't know if that is actually a problem that affects even a tiny minority of would-be attendees. What you're doing is creating a caricature of working people and engaging in an imagination exercise of seeing how your caricatures would respond in hypothetical situations that don't actually exist ... because maybe you have no other connection to those working people? I don't know.
I don't know how to argue that. You created a scenario that doesn't exist. The best I can do is just say that you did that.