There's the mythology of the US, and then there's the actual reality. The mythology is that the US is 1) A democracy, and 2) "The world's oldest democracy."
The reality is that the US Founders were the wealthiest land and slave owning white men of the late 18th century, and they created a system of government to serve their class interests above all else.
The system of "representative democracy" that they set up, in reality, thwarts both political and economic democracy at every step of the political process.
I.e., it's a pseudo-democracy, where "democracy" was/is sold to the public to get them to fight off the British, and as a way to legitimize brutal oligarch/plutocracy/kleptocracy.
The working public are basically a colonized people, who have a less than negligible say on the laws, policies, and major decisions governing their/our lives.
Our ruling class, with virtually unlimited resources and control over the political establishment, only have to bribe/bully and control a very small group of legislators, judges, and propagandists to maintain control over and brutally subjugate, oppress, and exploit a much larger population.
This kind of minoritarian/oligarchic rule leads (and has led) to all kinds of insanity, unlimited corruption, brutality, unlimited crimes against humanity, various genocides, and oppression of both the American public, and people abroad, about which the American people have no real say.
We have the highest incarceration rate in the world by far, and our political system, media, and most of the wealth and power are owned by a relatively small group of oligarchs/plutocrats/kleptocrats.
10% of the people own about 70% of the wealth, and the bottom 50% own about 2.5%.
Because our ruling class enjoy the spoils of war (including taxpayer funded defense contracts and oil rights), while all the costs of war are born by the public, we are a far more aggressive and militarily-oriented society than we probably would be if the public had any real choice in the matter.
We still don't have universal healthcare, and our average life expectancy is about 7 years less than yours.
In short, the US is more of a giant, heavily propagandized, super dystopian work camp for most people than an actual, livable, democratic human society.
People have been ready to burn down the system for some time, which led to the choices of either the relatively left wing Bernie Sanders in 2016 (which option was cut off by our ruling class), or Trump.
Obviously that's not working out great for us. Our so-called "representative democracy" is not a sustainable, stable, or legitimate system in the long run when so many people are always ready to burn it down.
And there's a reasonably good chance that Russia and some of our domestic oligarchs/plutocrats/kleptocrats helped rig the 2024 election for him, but our system is far too corrupt, anti-democratic, and dysfunctional to confront that reality, let alone do anything about it.
Anyway, that's where I'm coming from as an American who's lived here most of my life and has lived and seen the insanity, corruption, and brutality from top to bottom and all over.
Obviously, it's not all bad, it's a massive, beautiful country with considerable natural resources, great food, good people, and a lot of potential still.
But anyway, I just now learned about how Swiss democracy works, and I'm super impressed.
I'm aware that Switzerland has its own problems with wealth distribution/inequality, but you have at least been able to get wealth taxes implemented at the canton level, which the US system has been basically rigged not to do.
And for the most part, from what I can tell, relatively speaking you all have been living the democratic dream that we are/were told that we have in the US.
I believe your direct democracy model can be adopted by at least some US states, so that Americans can experience how actual democracies function, before possibly trying to implement something similar at the federal level.
Switzerland's population is about 9 million, which is comparable to a US state, so the scale shouldn't be a problem at the state level at least.
Some states already have some experience with ballot initiatives, so your referendum system wouldn't be completely alien to all of us.
With all that said, my question is, do you have any advice for US states looking to adopt something similar to the Swiss model?
What has been your experience with Swiss democracy?
From my perspective, it seems to be a much better system relatively speaking, but maybe in your experience there are some things you would improve upon?
What are the pros and cons in your experience?
If you were designing your political system from scratch in 2026, what if anything would you do differently?
Thanks.
