> It was used to justify, depending on the period and country, not allowing people to vote on the basis that they didn't have enough revenue, didn't own enough land, couldn't read and write well enough, etc.
Democracy was basically conceived of as a pen-and-paper version of blockchain, where the goal was to create a balance between private property rights and the redistribution of wealth. Allowing people without proof-of-stake to vote wouldn't have made any sense in the beginning given that no one had any idea how the system would work. Keep in mind that the government was basically distributing free property to people as fast as possible so that more people could vote, and only stopped doing that once the country ran out of land.
Even today, most people wouldn't want to live in a system where millions of people could just show up for vacation for a couple days, vote to give themselves ownership of all the country's assets, and then leave.
Democracy was basically conceived of as a pen-and-paper version of blockchain, where the goal was to create a balance between private property rights and the redistribution of wealth. Allowing people without proof-of-stake to vote wouldn't have made any sense in the beginning given that no one had any idea how the system would work. Keep in mind that the government was basically distributing free property to people as fast as possible so that more people could vote, and only stopped doing that once the country ran out of land.
Even today, most people wouldn't want to live in a system where millions of people could just show up for vacation for a couple days, vote to give themselves ownership of all the country's assets, and then leave.