Right, recovered JaimeRetief's posts in this thread.
Supporting memberships seems to be the key problem - from one point of view, it's simply a way to sell votes. Stop that, and wouldn't that stop the organised campaigns?
Yes, but how would Worldcon and the awards receive financing.
Moreover the world part is still dubious, it is a primarily North American event that does not represent science fiction fandom adequately.It would be wonderful if there was more non Anglosphere science fiction and more non Anglosphere fans were able to participate.
This non-American is taken aback by the dogmatic vitriol of both the God and guns brigade and the identity politics language zealots. Frankly, they seem like two sides of same coin to me - passionately partisan, Manichean in outlook, and absolutely certain of their own righteousness. While it's a given that other Western democracies don't have an analogue to the Gods and guns crowd, they also don't have an analogue for the American academic leftists who obsess over depictions of gender and race with a pious eye for transgression that approaches a religious intensity. Enemies have a way of becoming like one another. I say a pox on both their houses.
It is because they have a very limited grasp of the rest of the world.
I sometimes think that for Americans all of history started with their revolution and that because they managed to cobble up a functional democracy out of the cultural and legal heritage of Britain, the ideas of the Enlightenment and the abundant and rich land of North America they formed what Henry Kissinger terms a "messianic" worldview, this worldview was reinforced by the massive economic growth, the World Wars and the Cold War.
In reality the North American colonies were extremely prosperous even before they became independent from Britain.
Adam Smith for example gives an excellent account of the prosperity of the Colonists, whose economic predicament was better than that of many inhabitants of the British Isles.
Furthermore over a third of all British ships were built in North America and at one point prior to 1776 it produced over 70% of the world's pig iron.
And pig iron and ships were not even among the most lucrative products.
An important fact in the development of the colonies was the lack of a rent seeking elite, like the aristocracy in Europe.
All of those factors led to the establishment of a pretty stable republic, however they very few Americans themselves understand all this and consequently over simplify complex,centuries and even millennia long developments.
They also forget to mention things like political machines, corruption and the fact that the franchise was only gradually expanded, nor do they care enough about to research the first Progressive reform movement, which was a very broad coalition, comprised of urban professionals employed in the various service and industry positions created by industrialization, the educated, farmers and small businessmen fed up with bad government services and unreliable railways, suffragettes, and those that wanted to expand and improve educstion, abolish machine politics, cronyism and government waste.
Even some of the Titans of US capitalism at the time were willing to support the movement's goals because it would benefit them.
It was not about a single party, person or platform, it was a broad coalition that went beyond party, gender and ethnic lines.
It succeeded in a number of ways, and failed in others.
Prohibition is one example, the rise of Robert Moses and the continuing existence of machine politics was another.
