Pretty interesting article that's relevant:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...inst-democracy


I do like Churchill's quote,
Seems pretty accurate. Some people think it's really dangerous that uninformed people are allowed to vote. The flipside to that is if only the truly intelligent and competent make decisions, they'll lean towards a bias that aids their kind and potentially institutionalize oppression against the working/lower class.

We also run into the problem that people who are in charge work towards aiding the problems affecting their "kind" disproportionately. It's a very real tradition that the rich, intelligent, powerful, and advantaged demographics address, attack, and fix their problems much more quickly and command far more media attention than poor. Just look at flight overbooking. One rich doctor has a problem in how overbooking of flights were handled, which is inherently a problem that troubles the middle/upper-class more than anyone else because poor people can't afford to fly. Within the next month, all the media is reporting are more and more cases of flight overbooking, and now legislation is being passed to stop this issue. Meanwhile Flint Michigan has now gone two years without clean water and surprise surprise, 57% of their demographics are african american. Oh and 40.1% of their population lives in poverty.

But then you have the argument of affirmative action and the problems with the reverse of meritocracy. People who are put into position of power not because of their competency but because of their race obviously do a worse job.

The nature of our political system in the US also has problems with terms and what people do with their terms. It's been said before that you're either working to stay in office, or working to acquire office if you're in the political game. There's not enough of people actually doing their job. People are so worried that they'll lose their upcoming election, that they spend their time kissing babies and shaking hands that they aren't drafting legislation, holding important public conferences, and actually solving problems.

Finally - the people who would actually qualify to be good at the jobs we need in our government are smart enough to know working in government sucks. The way they are treated, their compensation, the way the media misrepresents people, it's too big of a headache and it's not worth it.


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I don't really think any ideology works best. Democracy isn't terrible. Our two party system is pretty set up with two ideologies, Democrats vs. Republicans. Democrats want the lives of poor people to not suck, Republicans want it to be easier to be rich. Which in term means it'll be easier to go from poor to not poor. It's advantageous to be part of the majority in this country, and we apparently acknowledge that since we do things for people strictly because their a part of a minority. I always say "Republicans are the greedy asses who's system of government works, but some people's lives suck in it. Democrats are living in a dreamland who's system of government only works if people don't suck, and some people tend to really suck". Their counterbalancing of one another seems healthy. I think the only way we improve as a nation is by increasing our education. The smarter our society, the more compassionate we tend to be. When we're smart, effect, and compassionate, we live in a more awesome society.

I think a lot of those problems will be fixed by increasing automation. Once we can allocate most crappy jobs to automation, we're going to find ourselves in a much better spot.

There's a book that might interest you. It's by a guy named Richard Reeves (he's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute), and it's called Dream Hoarders. He makes the argument that a lot of the problems America faces, economic and political, stem from the upper middle class of society (6 figure families) pushing their problems into the spotlight because they have the power and money and influence to accomplish it for sustained periods of time, without the larger stigma associated with the top percentage of the population. Due to various antiquated laws and traditions that, in a lot of cases, evolved from racist or discriminatory practices, a lot of America is structured to favor people who come from a family with some degree of success. Universities and colleges are more likely to accept descendants of alumni, housing regulations in an area can mandate a minimum amount of land owned per household (thus eliminating cheaper housing like apartments), and other similar mechanisms that inherently favors the top 20%, or disadvantage the bottom 80%.

Essentially, while not officially, America is becoming a class-based society, the opposite of the supposed meritocracy it's supposed to be. And for real progress towards the goal of a meritocracy to be achieved, Reeves states that it must become apparent, and accepted, by the top 20% that for somebody to be upwardly mobile, somebody will have to be downwardly mobile. Which is a hard pill to swallow. Telling a successful doctor or engineer that their child, despite all their best efforts and investment, should never succeed in an actual merit-based society, and that this type of system is ultimately better for society, is not a popular opinion to peddle.