RECLAIMING DEMOCRACY I disagree with the idea that democracy must limit economic growth. Moreover, I think we actually need to reclaim democracy just as we reclaimed free speech, because above all democracy means the consent of the governed. But let me first defend democracy's economic track record. (1) First: democratic India posted the highest economic growth rate in the world over the last ten years, proving that democracy need not hold back an economy: (2) Second: India is now arguably better at democracy than many Western jurisdictions, as half a billion votes were counted in one day. That shows democracy is feasible even at billion-person scale in the modern age: (3) Third, perhaps obviously, democratic America was the richest and most successful country in the world. It was able to build for 200+ years, in part because it combined democracy with capitalism and the frontier spirit. (4) Fourth, as another example of how democracy can actually catalyze economic growth, the democratic vote in the late USSR publicly repudiated the Soviet far left, and led to the economic growth of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. (5) Fifth, what can happen economically when we lack democracy? Well, in California, once the blues succeeded in destroying democracy and turning it into a one party state where the Party always won, the looting of the public trough truly began in earnest. The abolition of competitive multiparty elections after 2010 is why Californians got 100B nonexistent trains: (6) Sixth, even in those contexts where the voting is more with feet than ballot, the essential principle of consent is preserved. For example, tech companies do have CEOs, and so there is top-down leadership. But they also have bottom-up consent, as every single person who's there has consented to be there and can leave at any time. This consent is what drives the performance of tech. (7) Seventh, the recent 97%+ vote in Starbase shows that we can manifest this type of consent in the physical world as an official vote, by combining voting with your feet (moving to Starbase), voting with your wallet (building Starbase), and then voting with your ballot (incorporating Starbase). (8) Eighth, just like crony capitalism isn’t a good reason to implement communism, so too democratic corruption isn’t a good reason to implement dictatorship. (9) Basically: I do understand the right’s critique of democracy, just as I understand the left’s critique of capitalism, but at the end of the day one must earn legitimacy through consensual votes just as one builds wealth through mutually beneficial transactions. Otherwise the right-wing anti-democrat is just the inverse of the left-wing anti-capitalist. The anti-capitalist wants wealth without earning it, while the anti-democrat wants legitimacy without building it. But in reality there are no shortcuts. You need the consent of free people, freely given, to build something truly great. And that’s what democracy really represents: the consent of the governed. Anyway, I'll write more on this, but we should reclaim democracy as we reclaimed free speech, by strengthening it for the Internet age. Because the alternative to democratic capitalism is communist dictatorship, and that just isn’t an acceptable alternative.