Bigfella

I don't have time to properly discuss this article right now, except to say that it is both extremely biased & ill-informed. It takes an absurdly reductionist view of what constitutes 'democracy' and then runs with it.

I am not in a position to challenge many of the 'facts' presented in support of this argument, but a couple I am familiar with make me doubt the rest.

*Mr Ludwig refers to 'heavy fines' in Australia for not voting. Perhaps he & I have different ideas of what constitutes 'heavy'. I once failed to vote in an election & was fined. The fine was sufficiently small that I (& indeed most Australians on minimum wage) will earn enough before lunch today to pay it. Or, to put it another way, it cost less than two full price compact discs. Hardly enough to compel anyone who doesn't wish to participate.

*Mr Ludwig also parrots the familiar claim that Hitler came to power in a democracy. Without going into all the detail, it is fair to say that the Weimar Republic had ceased to function in what any reasonable observer could call a democratic way almost 3 years before Hitler came to power.

If these points are typical of the accuracy of the rest of mr Ludwig's 'facts' then I suspect that his poorly constructed argument is also poorly supported.