Mob Rule or Digital Democratization of Liberal Capitalist Society?

Let’s go to the very beginning to make this more confusing.

“It has been observed by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved, that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity: When they assembled, the field of debate presented an ungovernable mob, not only incapable of deliberation, but prepared for every enormity. In these assemblies, the enemies of the people brought forward their plans of ambition systematically. They were opposed by their enemies of another party; and it became a matter of contingency, whether the people subjected themselves to be led blindly by one tyrant or by another.”

Alexander Hamilton, Speech to Congress, June 21, 1788

Assuming this quote isn’t completely taken out of context, but it appears to me that Hamilton foresaw the very problems of democracy at the very inception of American democracy.

What exactly did Hamilton mean by “pure democracy?” To summon the world “pure” in a slave-driven society always gets me scratching my head. Is a democracy made “pure” when every constituent, regardless of their sex, skin color, creed, socioeconomic standing, etc. is given the opportunity to exercise their democratic right?

It seems paradoxical to call a governing body democratic when in its very pure form it becomes undemocratic.

Having said that, to Hamilton’s credit, the initial guardrails setup to protect American democracy from this purity took more than 240 years.

So what does the future hold? A new form of democracy?

American Democracy Version 2.0?

If you think about it, Version 1.0 was made on a completely different planet when you compare to where we live today, so it’s only fitting that an upgrade is in order. But how do you reform a pure democracy when, its inherent purity seems to work against the goal of reformation.

The founders were absolute geniuses, if you think about it. They created something unthinkably rare in this world. Everything that I can think of degrades over time. Various forms of life get old and die. Buildings get old and crumble. Trees get old and die. Massive sheets of ice that are millions of years old get old and melt away into the ocean. Stars that are billions of years old eventually explode.

But something as ephemeral as democracy becomes more and more pure as the years go by. It gets better and better. It gets stronger. More people can vote. More people can become presidents and vice presidents. More people can do more. Can you smell the purity?

So is a given democracy’s inevitable purity serve as a form its death?

Can things die in its most pure form?

When something pure dies, what are you left with?

Can you pick up the pieces of a once pure thing and rebuild it?

Wait, how do you rebuild purity?

And, why would you rebuild something pure when by its very nature, purity = death?

All i know is that whatever comes next for American democracy, there needs to a built in ability for timely and forced upgrades.

In a sense democracy needs to guard itself against democracy.