Would love to discuss this with you.
You agree that everyone is not equal. Why should everyone have equity then? A "republic" is still pretty much representative of the majority's will.
You are saying that tyranny of the majority is bad, and turn around and say that representative republic is good. That's one tiny step removed from tyranny of the majority, and is essentially the same thing with some weak safeguards. And, because of it's removal from directly answering to the people, it's even more susceptible to corruption and corporatism.
>insistence of equality of outcomes
This is a byproduct of democracy-worship. People are brainwashed with ideas of equality from a young age and incorrectly conclude that outcomes should be more or less equal.
Not only are people not equal... they are no where near equal.
Fair points, and I can see what you are saying in the criticisms of what I wrote. The issue I struggle with is, who gets to decide everyone's level of "equalness"? That's a highly subjective assessment, and individual perspective matters. How does one quantifiably measure "merit" for such a thing? We often use money/wealth as a proxy for this, although that has many many flaws (albeit far better than mandating equality across the board).
Another key aspect is, how do you minimize the representation of those that are less equal but still keep them happy? (or at least, keep them from revolting) Our system does that with financial handouts, but all that does is force the equalness gap wider. I feel our Republic setup, while certainly not perfect, tries to fit all these variables into a mix that does a better job than all other systems. The problem is that we aren't actually working under a well-running Republic right now. Its been subverted by nepotism, corporatism, corruption, and crony capitalism.
If you recognize property rights, then wealth is not a proxy but is in fact one real measure of merit.
I think any form of government in some way eventually does 2 things: 1) gives more representation to the wealthy, and 2) tries to keep the "less equal" people happy.
You are right - more/less equal is not defined explicitly but more by how the world works - i.e. money. There's no way to change this without abolishing property rights and moving to communism, which is why you get these big communist movements in democratic countries.
Not sure what the solution is. Mencius Moldbug wrote some interesting stuff on it, he advocates for 1) recognizing the who holds the real power and 2) explicitly giving those people direct control. This has the effect of enforcing a kind of accountability - e.g. storming the capitol building accomplishes nothing, but storming Bezos' house might. At the same time, it allows for a similar kind of recognition/credit-giving when the wealthy are good actors instead of evil.
Some people here advocate for some kind of constitutional monarchy although I haven't seen a detailed post defending it yet.
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