If you give any group the opportunity to exploit another group, exploitation is inevitable. Smartness or dumbness has nothing to do with it.
The smart, well-informed group. But I’d hate to live in a country where only the smart and well-informed could vote.
In theory, I would support a restriction of the franchise to those who are smart or well-informed, but the problem is that someone has to decide just who that is. Effectively, we’d end up with the poll-testers being the ones who actually run the country. And how do we choose the poll-testers?
No, in the real world, it’s better to just count everyone’s vote, and hope that the ignorant voters just cancel out enough for the informed ones to shine through.
The correctness of simple, homespun, common sense seems to be the persuasion meme lately. Politically certainly it has been used to suggest the importance of inherent reasoning and the ability to make decision based on one’s gut instinct. I can go on the internet and be sure, sooner or later, to come across any number of adverts along the lines of “Secret technique to earn money/lose weight/beautify yourself/learn skills based on ideas thought up by stay-at-home parents/average joes”, or “Learn the easy ways to do something that doctors/police/professionals don’t want you to know!”. Intellectuals, people that seek out new knowledge or dedicate time to learning; these people must be mistrusted, they will use their knowledge to abuse or trick us, and when it comes down to it we don’t really need further knowledge in the first place. We would be better off just listening to our common sense.
I’d guess maybe it’s a facet of the economic problems. Smart people in suits have, genuinely, either failed to predict or contributed to recession, and actually defrauded people out of their money in some cases. But I really don’t think that it’s worth denigrating an entire group of people, and certainly not denigrating an entire approach to life. Perhaps it’s a matter of the misunderstood expertise; I don’t understand the kind of hard work and honest reporting that it takes for 99% of the successful medical issues that are discovered or improved. I don’t even hear about helpful negatives. But I do hear about the 1% of times when some doctor or some organisation fuck up, and so I generalise; even 99-1 is a vast overreaction.
To respond to the OP; I suggest he stop using the computer designed and created by intelligent and well informed people, refuse medical care, eschew his car and home as the products of clever designers, refuse food grown and transported thanks to smart people’s plans. I would hope that his opposition is not hypocritical.
I’m with ya here. The quis custodiet problem remains unsolved. On the last election day, I overheard hospital employees saying ‘I voted for X because I heard their name more,’ ‘well, I voted for Y because they have the same last name as my mom’s maiden name.’ I’m not making that up.
Right.
I think it is obvious on the face of it that the world would be a much better place if only people who are at least as smart as I am could vote. It is hard to imagine any of you not thinking the same thing, substituting your own benchmark.
But a purpose of democracy is guaranteeing that the will of the people cannot be trampled (at which of course it is somewhat successful). Sometimes that requires imagination; a referendum proposing to confiscate and redistribute the wealth of everybody whose name begins with “S” would benefit the great majority of voters but I like to think it wouldn’t pass. But sometimes it would be prevented just by the voting of the disenfranchised.
As an aside, supposedly democracy legitimizes government by the consent of the people to be governed. Yet we generally recognize that uninformed consent is not real consent. And it’s pretty clear that when politicians lie they misinform voters. So, democracy is illegitimate if politicians lie. I still don’t see the way out of this one.
Yeah, so I’ll say it. Democracy is basically a trick, but probably one that is in the end more benevolent than the non-tricky non-democratic forms of government.
Instead of fighting with guns, statesmen in a democracy fight using the emotions of stupid people.
So at least nobody has to die. That’s something at least.
This thread has to be a whoosh.
Who decides who is is “intelligent and well-informed” enough and by what measure? Who decides who is not smart enough to know what is good for them or for the the group over all/ (And after all, what is good for the “intelligent enough” of us is good for the country.)
Yeah Churchill had it right when he said, and I am sure this is an exact quote, “Democracy sucks, man, it just sucks less than all of the other shit we’ve tried.”
I kind of agree with you - I think that everyone should have a right to vote. That said, I think we, as a population, should ensure that we do our damnedest to educate our citizenry to the best of our ability.
Obviously people who agree with me are ‘intelligent and well-informed’. Those who don’t, aren’t. 
Why don’t you explain, with logical arguments, how I “proved right the position I seek to denounce”?
I agree entirely, and I’ve been a tireless advocate for shutting down failing public schools and moving as many kids as possible into charter, private, or home schooling where they can actually get an education. Unfortunately, serious progress in that direction has only been made in a few cities and states.
Just like how Capitalism sucks less than the other shit we’ve tried. Nevertheless, many believe that Capitalism needs to be “tweaked” e.g. with competition laws and regulation of the banks.
My opinion of Democracy is the same: it’s the best system we’ve thought of, but probably needs tweaking as it has so many flaws.
The problem isn’t with intellegent voters, it’s with people who put their own interest ahead of that of society. And I do this, and 99% of the people do to.
So what if dumb people make dumb choices. I’m smart, but I’ve voted stupidly before, for various reason.
If you’re gonna deny a person a right to vote, 'cause he’s too stupid to make a good choice, are you also gonna deny a person who IS SMART ENOUGH to make a good choice, but decides otherwise?
And we have “tweaks”. Obviously you know that there are no major governments that are true democracies. We vote for representation and hopefully choose individuals who are intelligent and well informed, and they actually vote on the issues for most things. Sometimes we fail to choose those who are intelligent and well informed but usually even the idiots in politics are no more stupid than the average citizen. And honestly that seems a fair bar.
In theory it’s an excellent idea. Assuming that restricting the vote to those well-enough informed to make a meaningful decision would actually make the country better (that’s a big assumption) then presumbly you’d gradually be able to expand the vote by improving educational standards. There are very few people in the US who are born unable to make criticla decisions. The problems all stem from inadequate eductation and a media that exploits and amplifies that ignorance. IMO obviously.
It’s completely unworkable in practice of course.
It’s not a whoosh. The current voters would decide such things.
Are you as astonished by the fact that most convicted felons can’t vote, ever again, even after they’ve served their sentence? Or that 17-year-olds can’t vote?
We already have restrictions on who gets to vote. I’d argue that the restrictions that we have are much worse than (some) restrictions requiring basic knowledge or understanding of who or what you’re actually voting for. Maybe they’re not, but it’s not like we currently have some utopian ideal where there are no restrictions on voting.
The uninformed should have the right to vote they should just not use it. Voting is a right that carries with it a responsibility to educate yourself about what you are voting for. The uninformed have a patriotic duty to either inform themselves or not vote.
Fine. But why stop where we are? We’re far off any kind of optimal situation.
Existing elections are all about pandering to existing prejudices, party loyalties and misinformation. Good governance is almost tangential to this.
Yes, because students of charter, private, and home schooling are uniformly better educated than students from public schools.
:rolleyes:
Stranger
We should have mandatory voting with a fine for not doing it. Everyone of legal age must vote in order to have any input at all in a process that effects their lives . There are always excuses to not go through the trouble. They should be forced to vote.
Wiki says 32 countries have mandatory voting.
Less important to me is the ‘smartness or the dumbness’, it’s the ability to be led.
Led by the politicians, led by the MSM, led by anyone as long as they just don’t have to think for themselves.