With democracy, we exclude the rights of the individual (I never understood why, if three fourths of a group of people agree with someone, it trumps the ideas of the remaining fourth.) With voting, we have to choose the lesser of two evils to tell us how to live? Even a monarchy is better than a democracy (well, not really) but in principal, electing someone for four years gives them the time to get as much money as possible and get out, where monarchy at least has their kids to think about in the future and how they'll run the country. With self-interest, those same people getting elected, and getting all that money, could just be making money in a legitimate business, right? We have tons of people, all voting for things for the government to do, when all the things are different things? Isn't this just years and years of compromise after compromise that takes a ton of time to reverse? Why do we even have leaders, when we could, alternately, let businesses be our leaders and our money be our vote? Isn't that true democracy? That way those that disagree could spend their money elsewhere. If one business sucks; start another. If the public agrees, the business will flourish.