There are two distinct forms of democracy:
Inclusive democracy
Exclusive democracy
The UK and the USA have an exclusive democracy.
Nearly all nations in the top of happiest nations in the world have an Inclusive democracy.
What is an exclusive democracy?
It is a voting format that is based on divide-and-conquer.
The voters compete, and only the majority gets the representative. The others are not-represented by their choice.
So, a majority decision made by the representatives is a majority x majority outcome.
60% (of the voters) x 60% (of the representatives) =
36% actual voter support for the decision.
What is an inclusive democracy?
Thomas Jefferson created it already. It is based on fair representation.
The parties compete for the votes, not the other way around.
In Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, about 99% of the voters can point their fingers to the person or political party they hand-selected themselves.
99% x 60% = 59.4%, a majority decision supported by the majority of the voters.
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Our world:
The lowest denominator is the greatest competitor in capitalism.
Because the United States does NOT invest in transit, education, bicycle lanes, sidewalks, healthcare for all, and suppresses minimum wage to an absolute minimum, all investors (national or foreigners) get the biggest bang for their bucks. Hooray for investors. No one cares about the big picture.
All better-regulated societies (using Thomas Jefferson's clean voting system) end up competing with these lowest standards produced by the USA and the UK. The other nations' decent choices are pulled down to that lower Anglo level.
See the results for yourself. Here is the Gini map of the world, the most important map ever produced about our current world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
See the map in top of this wikipedia page. The USA is colored darkest of ALL rich nations. We give the least of our wealth to the bottom of society.
Europe? See the UK (and weak-democratic Italy). Bulgaria (mineral rich) is even worse, still a bit communist/fascist if you ask me. They give their money to the investors and not to their bottom segment in society.
It isn't capitalism that is bad. No one should blame the horse for going where it wants to go. It is the horse jockey that is to blame.
The horse jockey in the USA, in the UK, in Italy, in Bulgaria, they don't give a damn about the world, about all people. They are the tiniest horse jockeys on the block so the horses run the fastest.
The leaders in these nations tend to just care about themselves. And they make sure to keep playing musical chairs so only the bullies end up fighting for the last remaining single seat. All good people got pushed out of the game, only the political Arnold Schwarzeneggers end up in the seats (okay, a handful of good ones notwithstanding, and after six lousy presidents we get one good one, jeez).
