Musk reignites debate over who should vote, and Spain's IMV enters the discussion

Musk questions universal suffrage and the debate drifts to Spain's IMV

Who should be allowed to vote? The question, as old as politics itself, returned to the spotlight when Elon Musk posted a message with the phrase "I have wised up", accompanied by an image warning of a theft. The terse post acted as a spark: within hours the conversation jumped from universal suffrage to Spain's Ingreso Mínimo Vital (a minimum income benefit), from Athenian democracy to the price of CBD, and from Peter Thiel to defense contractors.

The argument being discussed is a recurring thesis in certain tech-libertarian circles: that the vote should be restricted to those who contribute to the system, with mentions of employees of state contractors such as DARPA or SpaceX. The idea is not new —census suffrage governed in Europe well into the 20th century— but Musk's megaphone puts it back at the center.

From census suffrage to the IMV "starter pack"

The conversation quickly drifted toward the everyday. Some participants argued that universal suffrage allows those who do not contribute to decide over the money of those who do, citing as an example the **Ingreso Mínimo Vital**: 730 euros a month for a single person and "a thousand and change" with one child, according to the figures cited in the discussion.

Against that thesis, another camp defended that restricting the vote means "rolling back 250 years of civil rights" and recalled that census suffrage excluded precisely the most vulnerable. The argument about the monopoly on violence —who controls the police, the courts and the army— emerged as an alternative: the problem would not be who votes, but the concentration of power.

The calculation nobody can quite settle: IMV versus wages

One of the most uncomfortable points of the exchange was the comparison between the benefit and the wages of the worst-paid jobs. It was pointed out that the IMV comes close to what low-skilled jobs pay, which raises a perverse incentive: if the benefit matches the salary, who would accept a contract? There is no definitive answer in the material, and that is precisely the sustancia ilegal the reader will want to explore.

The domestic detail also appeared: who buys a fan, who installs air conditioning, how much the electricity bill costs in summer. The conversation came down from the Olympus of political theory to the living-room thermostat.

Athenian democracy as a mirror

Some rescued the drawing of lots for offices in classical Athens as a mechanism less prone to demagogy than conventional elections, and others proposed replacing the party system with rotation of offices at municipal level. The idea that universal suffrage is a "ticking time bomb" without civic education and good governance was repeated in various formulations.

The exchange ends without consensus. Some see in Musk's proposal a defense of privilege disguised as efficiency; others, a legitimate warning about fiscal demagogy. The only thing that is clear is that the three-word phrase has peine a debate thought to have been buried along with census suffrage.