No.
I can tell you now, living in the UK, where we have the NHS (the example non plus ultra of universal care) that it does not prevent people from voting for candidates who stand for everything that is in opposition to the principles underlying it.
Your problem, I suspect, is that you’re in the US.
You live in a feudal system festooned with the trappings of mob rule to disguise that fact:
I know you’ve lived elsewhere, but I don’t know what the parliamentary systems there were like, so I can’t comment without making assumptions, but it seems to me that they must’ve been fundamentally presidential and/or FPTP based and so, quite possibly, you’ve never been exposed to collegiate approaches.
Yeah, about those collegiate approaches …
Proportional representation?
Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
As I’ve expounded upon before, people are not units of social and economic activity and human nature is not an engineering problem … nor is it a computer game puzzle to be solved by getting people to do the right things in the right order — educating people and leaving them to their own devices in the hope that the right behaviours will simply emerge as properties of self-organisation hasn’t worked so far and there is, therefore, no reason to suspect that this approach will do so in the Future.
I know people don’t like to hear the things I say about the human race … they think I’m cynical … nihilistic even … but the fact remains that I am a psychologist who started out focusing on neuropsychology and what makes the mind function as it does, so I know I’m right about it not because I want to be or have a particular ideological philosophy of Life but because that’s just the way things are … physically and physiologically.
My focus for over ten years now has been ‘Cluster B personality’ disorders (narcissists, psychopaths/sociopaths) … starting out from the neurobiological and expanding out to understand what the behaviours are and why.
Consequently, I have written a certain amount about the topic here on Medium — not as professionally as I would in other realms of my life, but I do enough of that professionally thankyou and Medium is an outlet for when I don’t have to be clinical, academic and professional.
I really do recommend you take a careful look at what I’ve written … I did it for a reason: educating people about the unpleasant realities and disabusing them of the pleasant fantasies — because if there is … any … hope of our resolving the problems we face, it isn’t going to come about until people get their heads around those realities.
As a bare minimum I recommend you read these:
I’ve expounded upon the theme various ways in other places but that’s the core of it … that is, sadly, the harsh reality of it.
Are there any solutions?
Yes, there is … there is one (and, at this time at least, only one) solution:
Will there ever be another?
Possibly.
If we don’t destroy the planet and survive long enough to see the day when it becomes a simple matter of survival that kindness and decency are selected for during the process of evolution, eliminating the selfish, narcissistic, sociopathic/psychopathic … then, sure, there could come a day when the solution simply arises, negating the need for a Stalin-like programme of pogroms and eternally vigilant eugenicists selecting for those characteristics and weeding out the negative.
But I wouldn’t count on it, if I were you.
In the meantime, therefore, I suggest we look at ways to ameliorate rather than attempt to fix things:
… because that, I suspect, is as good as it’s ever likely to get … but definitely as good as it’s likely to in what remains of our lifetimes.
As an aside, because I mention it in the stuff I write around these topics but … because nobody ever reads links or looks at ‘further reading’ recommendations … I’m going to stress it here: read John Gall’s book Systemantics — it’s absolutely essential for understanding why the belief that all we need do is design the perfect system and everything will work out for the best is not merely dooming us to failure but actually a reason to remove anyone and everyone who thinks so from any decision-making capacity and stifle heir voice, so that they may ever influence anyone else.
Okay, that’ll do for now … I‘ll see when you’re done.
