What's wrong with democracy?

by John Mackay 550 words

It’s time to stop expecting a competitive electoral system to produce democratic results—or worse, believing it ever intended to.

The system is functioning exactly as designed.

As Steven Covey once said, "If you don’t like the results a system produces, change the system." Yet most of us are still hoping that tweaking the edges of electoral democracy will somehow yield justice, fairness, or true representation.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: electoral democracy is not democracy. It’s an oligarchic system disguised as democratic process. Aristotle knew this 2,000 years ago when he said that elections are inherently oligarchic—structured for rule by the few.

So let’s stop lamenting that there's nothing democratic about it, and start acknowledging two key truths:

1. It was never meant to be democratic;
2. If we want democracy, we’ll have to build it ourselves.

From Competition to Co-petition

Real democracy isn’t about competing for power. It’s about sharing it. It’s about co-petition—working together in pursuit of common good, not victory over an opponent. Colocracy is grounded in that principle.

It engineers governance toward win-win results rather than the win-lose paradigm electoral systems enforce. But here’s the catch: the current power structure has no incentive to change anything.

If we want people’s government, the people have to build it.

From Complaint to Responsibility

We can’t complain our way to transformation. We have to move from a culture of grievance to a culture of responsibility.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
—Noam Chomsky

This is why protest is tolerated—but building alternatives is not. The moment you propose real power transfer, the system will move to crush it.

Building Democracy in Parallel

By building openly, we allow the public to benchmark the system in real time. By building anonymously, we protect those involved.

This is the foundation of Colocracy. It means verifiable credentials (VCs), biometric authentication, proof-of-humanity safeguards, and transparent governance built on tools like Gitea—deployable for less than $100.

• Public policy discussion
• Transparent deliberation
• Credential-based legislative selection

This Isn’t Protest. This Is Responsibility.

If this resonates—if you're done waiting for someone else to fix the system—you’ll want to read the free ebook: