Eh, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but have you talked to some of the voters? Last pre-covid party I was to I had a conversation with a global warming "skeptic". In an attempt to understand better, I listened more than I talked and it is .. illuminating, scary, annoying and a whole lot of other emotions that are difficult to put into words here.
Point is, voting relies heavily on educated populace. I am not certain we have it now. Maybe we need to reconsider kings ( today's billionaires ) and hope they are not into torture..
When you have a bad president you're going to be put through four years of hell - when you have a bad king you're going to be put through four decades of hell. Additionally kingship, no matter how well designed before hand, degenerates into nepotism since part of the assumption with kings is near absolute power. The dreamt of "Philosopher King" will never happen.
Putting the power into few hands is extremely dangerous. I think the ideal situation is pretty close to what we've got now - trust most people to choose the smartest people in the room, then ignore most people and listen to those people. We just need to work on flushing out decades of corruption that seeped into the system.
Power corrupts even the best of the minds, and ultimate power corrupts... ultimately. Those kings would be in danger of ending up as another North Korea - evil dynasties ruling forever.
One big problem is, if you are on top, life can be relatively great even in utter catastrophe, at least when looked through optic of usual sociopath/psychopath that usually end up on top. It can actually help if your goals are perverted enough. No real motivation to fight for the environment.
On other hand, wishing for corruption to be magically removed 'because it would be great and we really need it now' is so naive its painful. We're steadily heading in opposite direction, there is regulatory capture, US foreign policies are run by war equipment manufacturers, and current president is a topic on its own.
To sum it up, we're fucked, our kids are fucked so much more - this hurts pretty badly. Enlightened AI might be solution, but I would expect it wouldn't be done neutral, and anyway that's a pipe dream currently.
I agree - we're in a terrible situation right now... So, how do we solve it and dig our way out of the hole?
I'm not suggesting that we can wish corruption away - I'm not even trying to imply that doing it will be easy. I just think it's the only way to return to sane governance. There are some ways we could increase voter representation like IRV & abolishing the electoral college. Increased representation makes it harder for crooks to stay in power, but even getting that through is a struggle (otherwise we would've done if when we realized it was better than what we have now).
And, in the meantime, we need to work with what we've got.
Point is, voting relies heavily on educated populace. I am not certain we have it now. Maybe we need to reconsider kings ( today's billionaires ) and hope they are not into torture..