This morning a user made a (largely off topic) post in the Clams thread. Clams is proof-of-stake and recently implemented a way for stakers to vote on petitions. Some people have complained, and one of the complaints was expressed in the post this morning:
...
This brings me to the second point and return to the issue of stakeholder democracy. As stated previously, the idea generally seems grand to those deemed stakeholders or pigs found to be more equal than others. This leads the lesser equals with little alternative but to be at the mercy of equals? I should congratulate Clamour for not being like this in the way Marxism and various off shoots are, several people have stated this is about being unequal and securing that fact. The fact is you have disenfranchised a large portion of the user base with this system. I can neither vote nor add a petition for several reasons. The first is I have no Clams and therefor any vote I cast will count for zero under the staking allocation of votes. The second is that I am unable to run the Clam client of on my PC due to the poor DSL and wallet software drastically slowing down my rig. I downloaded it but it never synced and is too far behind now to try again without leaving it running for sev
eral days. Don't even try to say download the torrent.
This system is very similar to the the early American restriction of voters to male property owners. The U.S. and Anglosphere have the remarkable ability to reform themselves which is probably why we have avoided internal revolutions. The unfairness of male property owners having an outsized voice in society has long been known. In fact, we in the U.S. deliberately expressed the ability of any person 18 years or older, with very few exceptions, to cast their vote by amending the Constitution by explicitly stating it. There are countless people whose voices are silenced even though they use Clam regularly but don't stake any. It gets even better. Clams is substantially more dependent on the disenfranchised then by the currently blessed stakeholders.
...
I've heard before that in the early U.S. voting was restricted to male property owners, and assume it's largely true. (History is usually more complicated in the details.) Obviously in the past 200 years the U.S. has extended voting rights beyond property owners (and beyond males and even dropped to the age of 18). The arguments for allowing "non-stakeholders" to vote are expressed above.
I'm posting this in the Politics section (where I don't usually look) because it reminds me of something I hear sometimes from my fellow Europeans:
Why don't we get to vote in U.S. elections? The argument goes that the U.S. has an outsized influence in the world and certainly affects Europeans. The argument against it is obvious: only U.S. citizens should be able to vote in U.S. elections. But isn't this based on the same idea as restricting voting to property owners/stakeholders? If it's different, can someone explain why? I have mixed feelings. I would to some degree like to vote in U.S. elections. But it terrifies me to think of United Stations voting in Spanish elections.
