The take-over problem describes the situation when a group takes almost complete control of a democratic country. It is a very possible scenario and therefore the problem cannot be dismissed by stating that it has not happened: it can happen and therefore the problem should be fixed.
The problem arises from the direct election system that is currently used in democracies. The voters do not personally know the candidates and get their knowledge through election campaigns and media. If some group starts to give large donations to election campaigns and controls a large part of media, it can to a large extent decide who gets elected. If the group supports some candidates in all major parties, it can be rather confident that its wishes will not be ignored. Assuming a candidate gets elected and tries to practice policies which harm this group, he will not only spoil his chances for the next turn, as he will not get campaign funding, but he also can be forced to resign in the middle of his term by the use of media.
Perhaps the most common solution to the take-over problem of democracy is to take the media into governmental hands, which strengthens the position of the ones in power. This solution has obvious problems in violating the idea of democracy. The power of rich groups to take over a country can be decreased by nationalization of capital, like banks and insurance companies, as was done in Communism, but it leads to a totalitarian system, not to a better form of democracy. There is the ancient solution of absolute monarchy and inherited nobility, but naturally that solution is not democratic. Finally there are different versions of guilds electing their candidates, but in those systems each candidate represents the interests of his group. It does not result to the common good, which is the goal of democracy.
A quite simple solution to the problem is that the voters elect a person whom they know. This implies that candidates do not need expensive campaigns and voters are not so easily affected by media. There is a very low limit to how many people one can say he knows, thus the election system must be hierarchical: first ten people elect one among themselves. Then the elected 1/10th are divided to groups of ten people by geographic closeness. They spend enough time together by having a number of meetings in a half a year (these meetings will not be paid by the government) and they learn about each other’s backgrounds enough to be able to elect one candidate to the next level. The next level is again divided into groups of ten, they spend half a year meeting each together and elect one candidate. Let us say that the country has 300 million inhabitants. How many levels such an election system needs? It is the number of zeroes in 300 million: eight levels. It takes four years to get make the election and four years would be the time for one term in the office. In each stage in each group the voters would be advised to follow the recommended principles. Unless the majority of the inhabitants of a country are corrupted, this method should elect quite good candidates. As there are so many levels with publicly unknown people, media cannot effectively influence the election process. We may even expect that many small groups elect the most competent among themselves. It is easier for people to make sound judgments from a small group that they somewhat know than from unknown public figures.
As I now solved the take-over problem in democracy :), or at least in theory, let us see why this problem appeared in the first place.
If all started from the Enlightenment and people reading Plato’s book The Republic. They got the idea that a monarchy may not be the best system. Freemasons started changing the world towards democracy through wars and revolutions, the first war being the independence war of the USA in 1776. The change of the system failed in Poland and already in 1789, a group of French Brothers, Jacobins, started massacring some classes of people. Jacobin ideas continued as Memphis and Mizraim Freemasonry, and, strengthened with Carbonaries and other leftist revolutionaries, developed into Communism. Freemasonry ended most of its direct political activity soon after the Paris Commune, but the activity continued under the cover of certain Rosicrucian and Theosophists secret societies. This was, in fact, necessary in order to stop the Communists, who worked through secret parties. We can trace the Nazi party through Thule and Rudolf Sebottendorf to Theosophists and Mizraim Freemasonry.
When did the group take over these secret societies and parties? It is disputed, but they got a very strong hold of Communists and they co-operated with the other side. It was inevitable: a determined tightly-knit group will manage to infiltrate most organizations. Infiltration is effective: it is commonly used by intelligence organizations and the police.
Take-over of media and financial institutions was not part of the Masonic plan, nor did they have much role in it. It was the outcome of the group’s normal behavior of advancing its interests through infiltration and economic purchases. It was foreseen that it would happen so and for that reason a transfer plan was created: the take-over was to be prevented by transferring the group to a far away place. It did not succeed as intended as the group as a whole never had any intention of moving: only a part of the group would move and they would provide a safe haven for some group members.
This is the abbreviated history that got us here. The solution I presented could be studied theoretically. Maybe it works, or maybe some better solution will be found.