>Modern democracy mostly just doesn't seem to work how it ought.
It is funny to say this as if every other modern democracy hasn't solved the specific problem that you have given. The issue isn't democracy, it is the American democracy (or republic if you want to be pedantic).
Specifically, the combination of our expansive freedom of speech protections (which make campaign financing restrictions near impossible) and first past the post voting system make it easy for corporations and the rich to shape the government however they want.
This is mostly grass is greener thinking. Here [1] is a relevant poll across the EU, for instance. [1] 65% of people do not think high level corruption cases are sufficiently pursued and 57% do not think efforts against corruption are effective. And everywhere except Scandiland has a majority to vast majority that think corruption is widespread in their country.
The only place it seems to be really working is in Switzerland and in the Scandinavian micronations (notably Sweden is trending more towards the patterns of Europe than Scandinavia).
It is weird to claim it is simply "grass is greener thinking" and then point to opinion polls as if those polls won't suffer the same fate. But either way, that wasn't my point. The "specific problem" I was referring to was the example you gave of health insurers maximizing profit and the government's inability/unwillingness to reign that in. The way all those European countries have addressed that is via universal healthcare.
> The way all those European countries have addressed
They addressed by rationing and limiting access. Of course their systems are generally much more efficient cost wise. However Europe isn’t some Utopian wonderland.
And yet the US trails those European countries in most measures of quality of healthcare including access. It is clear the US pays more for healthcare and receives worse service. That doesn't mean anyone is calling Europe utopian, but the American approach to healthcare is worse by almost every objective measure.
I initially thought the greener grass reference was in relation to their own link. I wonder what a more objective measure of government corruption would be. I suspect it's not possible. The closest measure I could think of it was something along the lines of governmental efficiency, w which would include corruption, incompetence and dysfunction.
I wonder if someone could put together a Time series data on some benchmarks like the government cost to put up a stop sign.
There are groups that try to quantify this sort of stuff. According to one measure, the US was already behind most of Europe in 2024[1] and I would expect us to drop much further in the next iteration of this list.
It is funny to say this as if every other modern democracy hasn't solved the specific problem that you have given. The issue isn't democracy, it is the American democracy (or republic if you want to be pedantic).
Specifically, the combination of our expansive freedom of speech protections (which make campaign financing restrictions near impossible) and first past the post voting system make it easy for corporations and the rich to shape the government however they want.