The right to stand for election means that anyone of a certain age who is a German citizen and who has not been deprived of the right to vote due to political offenses may vote.

This minimum standard does not exclude retards, psychopaths and sociopaths, fanatics and zealots, as long as they have not committed a “political” offense. And the controls on delinquency are extremely lax. And this is precisely where the problem lies: with such a virtually non-existent standard, precisely those unsuitable people are attracted to politics who should never have become politicians in the first place.

A democracy can only function if it pushes the best people to make a contribution to society. And on the one hand, the best must be selected, so there must be an assessment standard that checks the prospective politicians for suitability and, on the other hand, the best must have a positive interest in serving society and their fellow human beings.

The standards to be applied could be determined by suitable scientific institutes on the one hand in feedback with a referendum on the other, so that the basis for filtering the suitable and the willing is laid democratically / professionally / scientifically.

The same should apply here: The higher the offices, the higher the standards that must be met. It is not enough to meet the minimum standards and then to have been a narcissist’s porter for 20 years in order to qualify for a high state office.

Whether there are still willing people who meet the standards and at the same time are prepared to work for a symbolic salary (current salaries of parliamentarians can be regarded as symbolic) is a question of social esteem.

People who have built up a reputation through outstanding political work will certainly be able to monetize this reputation after their political career. And whether this would be the only motivating factor remains to be seen.

If, as expected, no suitable candidates for political office can be found, either due to a lack of qualifications or a lack of pecuniary motivation, the result without representatives could not be worse than in the modern Berlin Republic, in which blind actionism does more harm to society than inaction ever could.

Democracy, as the rule of the people, is a classic paradox. The people, the actual sovereign of the state, have no power, decision-making or determining authority whatsoever in the modern form of democracy of the 22nd century.

The only way to maintain the illusion that the individual citizen has any possibility of influencing the fate of the state is to vote in an arbitrarily determined cycle. But that is not the case.

On the one hand, once elected, they do not have to adhere to election statements or program points, nor do they have to fear any kind of consequences for misconduct or wrong decisions. Only their own political clique determines whether and who has to resign for which behavior. Even then, it is not clear whether the political career was ended or only extremely slowed down and delayed.

This form of impunity and lawlessness, coupled with non-existent barriers to entry into the career of a professional politician, mainly attracts power-hungry and immoral people who are not or only rudimentarily suited to the actual task of representing the people in a meaningful and dignified manner.

But it is precisely these elected representatives, who hardly differ in their character image of a morally and ethically degenerate subject beyond party boundaries, who have a decisive influence on the fate of the people.

The envisaged separation of powers, which is intended to prevent an abuse of power, does not work, as the political office-holders largely determine the rules of the judiciary, which in turn controls the executive. There is therefore a power pyramid that only prevents the rapid and direct abuse of power, but not the creeping abuse that slowly erodes the protective mechanisms of democracy and can then lead to new forms of rule.

In recent history, Turkey and Russia are some of these examples.

Thus the paradox of modern German democracy is that the people are the rulers and yet have absolutely nothing to say.

To change this, the entire social system needs to be rethought. What may the parliament alone decide, where should the whole people be consulted? We need to move away from a party democracy towards a grassroots democracy with a new separation of powers that can successfully prevent the abuse of power.

A positive example of this is Switzerland

Many politicians and people in public life believe that the reference to our democracy or even the mere mention of democracy is something positive in itself.

It is easy to forget that democracy is not a homogeneous construct, that democracy does not exist in a context-free space and must always be seen in interaction with society, legal norms, state institutions and the current zeitgeist.

Democracy is not good per se, but rather the form of democracy practiced must be evaluated in its context. Depending on the assessment, the form of democracy can then be categorized as either a formal or a genuine democracy.

In a formal democracy, abuse of power, corruption and a deep state are not excluded. The ruling system has found ways to eliminate the control of the demos (the actual sovereign).

Now, even in a formal democracy, the boundaries between dsyfunctional and ineffective democracy are fluid. Furthermore, the principles of power, which have been shifted from the demos to a political elite, are different in the various forms of formal democracies.

What formal democracies have in common, however, is that acceptance among citizens erodes over time and dissatisfaction with the political system increases. The closer a formal democracy approaches the structures of an authoritarian state, the more likely the population is to accept a “capable autocrat” over an incompetent autocracy/technocracy that treats citizens in a similar way to an autocracy.

The path from a formal democracy to a de facto autocracy is gradual. In order to transform a formal democracy back into a real democracy, it is necessary to break up the prevailing political structures using the peaceful means of democracy.

German democracy is currently on a dangerous path away from genuine democracy towards a formal, autocratic form.