You can have an elite (in wealth/earnings) and still have a voting system that reflects the majority's wishes.
In fact, unless you can balance those two you don't have a democracy -- at best you have a bastard system where elites buy influence (and not outright, that would still be up to the people "selling" their vote: they buy it though political favors, gerrymandering, mass media influence, etc).
>And since Brexit was brought up, can you think of any huge promise that was made in order to get the vote but won't be kept?
Many. EU's history is full of people voting against EU policies, even directly and overwhelmingly in referendums, (France, Ireland, Italy, etc) and then getting ignored by their representatives.
Even with Brexit the whole concern from day one after the shock that despite the whole "you're ignorant/you're doomed/this is the end/the sky will fall/TINA to the EU" campaign people still voted for it, the first concern openly expressed was how to annul it or make it so that it's followed in letter but in practice everything remains the same.
Not only are most people easily manipulated into believing they want something when they actually need something else or their votes are simply bought with "trinkets", sometimes they are also not even being offered those trinkets in the end. Their vote is worth nothing the second they cast it.
You're focusing too much on Brexit, it was just an example. Politicians fooled people into thinking they vote for (among others) more money to the NHS only to turn around right after the vote and say "that's not happening". The vote was heavily based on misdirection and manipulation. All perfectly democratic but without actually giving any power to the people. What happens after a promise is broken? Nothing.
Somewhere else in the world people might be told that "I'm sure education is important but the war against terror...". So they vote for the war without even realizing that they're losing twice: they have to fight a war and miss out on education. Again, perfectly democratic.
Democracy as it stands now is actually the business of selling promises. If you vote for a promise that's never fulfilled what exactly is your power other than to try again?
Sorry, but I consider accusations of whataboutism an easy cop-out from the duty to put things in perspective. It's predominantly one-sided too, those accusing people of bringing up Y in a critique of X seldom or never critique Y. But even if they did, both critiques would be bogus without whataboutism anyway. Things can only make sense and can be understood in comparison, not in some abstract pure critique that ignores what happens in parallel and what the alternatives were.
But I digress. Let's get back to the comment.
>You're focusing too much on Brexit, it was just an example. Politicians fooled people into thinking they vote for (among others) more money to the NHS only to turn around right after the vote and say "that's not happening". The vote was heavily based on misdirection and manipulation. All perfectly democratic but without actually giving any power to the people. What happens after a promise is broken? Nothing.
Sure. But that's neither here not there -- that's a common with politics.
I'm focusing on Brexit because it's the perfect example of this contempt for democracy (and the "unwashed masses") when it involves a choice the 10% doesn't like.
As if one choice or the other was objectively good and the other objectively bad -- which misunderstands and diminishes the role of democracy to always choosing the objectively good. Instead, democracy is about balancing opposing interests, as individuals see them.
Saying that those that voted opposite to what one would want are "voting against their interests" etc, is putting one's position above politics, and into the realm of inherently good. That's not democracy, that's TINA.
>Democracy as it stands now is actually the business of selling promises. If you vote for a promise that's never fulfilled what exactly is your power other than to try again?
Mass protests? Mass participation to party meetings and conferences? Grassroots emergence of new candidates? All of those have been tried with various degrees of success (including toppling governments). Not all of them are guaranteed to work all the time of course, but that's life. It's all up to the vigilance of the citizenry (or lack thereof).
Well, that may be your duty, to be "the defender" regardless of the topic. But from my perspective not only is it one of the most useless techniques if you want to contradict someone, it's also irrelevant to the discussion. Which was about democracy in general, with a particular example of Brexit. Telling me others (FR, IT, DE) do the same presumably to make the UK (or the people) look... less bad is a pathetic way to provide an excuse for Brexit. An excuse that nobody asked for. I don't care whether it'll turn out well as long as I could prove "democracy" meant people getting tricked with false promises. A point you don't really want to address I see.
You also just manage to strengthen my point with it: democracy may be the best thing we have but it's still so fragile and screaming to be manipulated that in real life most implementations only give the impression that you as "the people" have any power.
I think the majority of people are actually comfortable with the existence of even extreme (billionaire-scale) inequality. Although people want to feel that the inequality is just -- based on wealth-creation, rather than rent-seeking.
50% of Americans earn ~$37000. The poorest 35% had a decrease from 2016 to 2017. Do you feel they are particularly favored in the grand scheme of things? Because they certainly have the power to change this by sheer voting power.
As I said before, democracy is the business of selling promises once every 4 years. Unless you have the power to get what you actually want you are not leading anything and you have no real power. It's like the power to choose your poison is not an actual power if you didn't want to die in the first place.
If they gave the people what they wanted then everybody (and nobody?) would be elites, right? Or maybe the majority of people just want those 10% to be rich. And since Brexit was brought up, can you think of any huge promise that was made in order to get the vote but won't be kept? Must be that what people really want is to be lied to. [1]
Today's democracy functions as a 2 step process: the campaign where people hear what they want to hear (and usually they're even told what they want) and the term where they're getting something else. Or getting what they want to a degree. You vote promises, not results.
Democracy may be the best system we have but it's far from good because while the theory is stellar, the practical application is less so.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA3XTYfzd1I