Well, democracy is not just voting. Most of it actually happens before voting. I mean Russia has voting, Belarus has voting, USSR had voting, Iran has voting, I'm not sure whether North Korea has voting but they certainly could have. To have properly functioning democracy you need the support system that leads to responsible, informed voting and that provided feedback mechanisms between the government and the population. Which includes a vivid and robust public discussion of the topics important for people.
This is what is breaking down I feel. And what we're seeing is just a symptom - employers want to ban workplace politics not because politics and participation is bad per se, but because it has become so dirty and vicious that allowing it can literally destroy the company. You can't efficiently work together with people you hate, and I definitely feel like hate has become the primary weapon and the primary drive of US politics. It is basically required from anybody who plays in it to hate your opponent, and to hate everybody who doesn't march in lockstep with you. If you don't, you're probably secretly in league with "them" and must be targeted for hate yourself. There's no respectful disagreement, there's no difference of opinion allowed, there's no assumption of good will and willing to work through disagreements. The slogan of the day is "burn it all down". Of course there's only two ways for the company to survive in such environment - either everybody thinks the same and wrongthinkers are expelled - thus ensuring all hate is directed outside the company - or ban the politics and keep the hate outside the place of employment. Third way would be to actually remove the hate from the equation, but it doesn't look like there are enough grownups around for this to happen.
> I guess an other possibility would be to have proper unions
I don't see how the unions - especially US unions which are completely partisan - would help anything, except making the union shop inaccessible to those who isn't willing to join union's party.
You know ... there's a reason that US Unions are partisan, which is that the Republican party has been on a mission to destroy them since Reagan and has largely succeeded.
It's more like that centralized top-down economy is much more comfortable for the union leadership than chaotic horizontal competitive economy. It's much easier to enforce certain policy by the power of the government than negotiate it privately with each employer. That makes unions a natural ally of socialists. And of course there's nothing like government subsidies and regulations - which can be exchanged for votes and donations - to hide the inefficiencies of inflexible unionized setups and deflect the competitive threats from more agile and enterprising newcomers. Again, here the unions are the natural allies of centralized regulatory state. And the effects of this are pretty obvious:
https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/why-nyc-is-priciest-city-in-th...https://www.nj.com/news/2018/06/money_for_nothing_working_th...
(And Zerohedge is a trashbag of libertarian fanfiction and russian govt talking points - with the exception of their currency coverage - which is great stuff.)
This is what is breaking down I feel. And what we're seeing is just a symptom - employers want to ban workplace politics not because politics and participation is bad per se, but because it has become so dirty and vicious that allowing it can literally destroy the company. You can't efficiently work together with people you hate, and I definitely feel like hate has become the primary weapon and the primary drive of US politics. It is basically required from anybody who plays in it to hate your opponent, and to hate everybody who doesn't march in lockstep with you. If you don't, you're probably secretly in league with "them" and must be targeted for hate yourself. There's no respectful disagreement, there's no difference of opinion allowed, there's no assumption of good will and willing to work through disagreements. The slogan of the day is "burn it all down". Of course there's only two ways for the company to survive in such environment - either everybody thinks the same and wrongthinkers are expelled - thus ensuring all hate is directed outside the company - or ban the politics and keep the hate outside the place of employment. Third way would be to actually remove the hate from the equation, but it doesn't look like there are enough grownups around for this to happen.
> I guess an other possibility would be to have proper unions
I don't see how the unions - especially US unions which are completely partisan - would help anything, except making the union shop inaccessible to those who isn't willing to join union's party.