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http://www.counterthink.org/019387.html

Howe true. But what to do about it?

So who should run the finances, then? Educated voters.

Interesting that bit. In some ways he is at about the same level of thought as I was in the mid-90s. Now, if you extend that idea to its logical conclusion ?

A few years ago I had a conversation with someone about voting and why Sun readers should get the same number of votes as someone who knows far more about the country and what's going on.

Maybe we could have intelligence tests and the number of votes you get is dependent on how intelligent you are? This idea is a bit undemocratic though As much as I like democracy, I still think it's an ultimately flawed concept.

bigjim wrote:A few years ago I had a conversation with someone about voting and why Sun readers should get the same number of votes as someone who knows far more about the country and what's going on.

Maybe we could have intelligence tests and the number of votes you get is dependent on how intelligent you are? This idea is a bit undemocratic though As much as I like democracy, I still think it's an ultimately flawed concept.

WHAT!!!!!!

Pippa wrote:WHAT!!!!!!

Democracy is a flawed concept.
so too are most (all) other ways of organising a society or civilization.

Modern Democracy is a relatively recent experiment (remember that earlier pre oil democracies replied on slaves for energy - only democratic if you happened not to be a slave).
Modern democracy is probably not viable in a society without a source of cheap energy or a society that has run up against resource constraints.

Right now democracy can be seen as the proximate cause of most of our problems...

bigjim wrote: Maybe we could have intelligence tests and the number of votes you get is dependent on how intelligent you are? This idea is a bit undemocratic though As much as I like democracy, I still think it's an ultimately flawed concept.

Intelligence is not really a key to understanding. Some subjects are very technical and involved and would take someone intelligence to understand them but that does not mean that they would then understand another subject that is also very technical. It takes time to fully understand a complex subject and no matter how intelligent a person is they most likely would not be able to full understand everything. So you would end up with people knowing about soemthings well, somethings with some varying degrees of knowledge and having no idea about other things, even if they are intelligent. Otherwise it?s a start of a good idea. Now, can we develop the idea a bit more?

Pippa wrote:
WHAT!!!!!!

I think the article actually underlines very well the fault with democracy. Democracy is a very good system when all you are dealing with is people and their opinions. However, it runs into problems when there is a technically right choice to make and people do not understand the technical side and today?s society is both people and technology. It?s like being in a car. ?Where shall we drive to today?? is a question that can be answered by democracy. It?s just a matter of opinion and there is no technically right answer so it?s something you can vote on. ?What peddle shall we use as the break?? is a technical question requiring some technical knowledge of how the car works. There is no use having a group of people, with no idea of how a car works, in a car heading at high speed towards a brick wall and for them to be voting on which peddle they should press to stop the car. They are just as likely to select the accelerator as the break!

BTW, we don?t actually have ?democracy?. We have ?representative democracy?. There?s an important difference between the two. And it?s not really ?democracy? that is important but the libertarian values that goes with it (such as freedom of speech). You can have the libertarian values without democracy.

isenhand wrote: Intelligence is not really a key to understanding.

I agree. In my opinion if you want to pick the most sane and balanced people who believe in facts, make good judgements, live with regard to others and generally do the right thing you aren't going to find these people by simply doing an intelligence test. Yes, I agree that democracy is very fragile and is dissapearing as we speak. We all need to be aware of these facts.

I am convinced that as things get tighter and tighter globally there will be alot of "picking" and "sorting" done by very "intelligent" people (who can work things out on paper all too well) - Now, .......I wonder why all those black, poor, people weren't airlifted out of New Orleans and why the police all went home and the army didn't arrive and no real food drops arrived as expected etc etc etc

isenhand wrote:
BTW, we don?t actually have ?democracy?

Sometimes it feels like we have a "hypocracy" rather than a "democracy".

bigjim wrote:A few years ago I had a conversation with someone about voting and why Sun readers should get the same number of votes as someone who knows far more about the country and what's going on.

Maybe we could have intelligence tests and the number of votes you get is dependent on how intelligent you are? This idea is a bit undemocratic though As much as I like democracy, I still think it's an ultimately flawed concept.

I believe Intelligence mainly brings about Ignorance and Arrogance. Nearly all highly intelligent people i've come across either on TV or in the flesh fit in to 1 or both of those categories. The above quote speaks for itself

Erm, yeah, there is that too wayne. Nobody's perfect

son of ballard wrote:Sometimes it feels like we have a "hypocracy" rather than a "democracy".

Or do you mean Hypnocracy as promulgated by St.Dilbert in 1972 when he came among us.

The article is quite bad, since it firstly attacks the individual voters, when in truth, the US debt finances the world economy as the US puts dollars into Chinese production and Russian energy, thus forcing the world to accept status quo due to fear of a new depression. This spending is not an action of demands from the people, but from unnecessary public spending and subsidies, which basically finances the war machine.

At the moment, democracy is universally seen as a good thing. This has not historically been the case. Given the nature of historical cycles, democracy will certainly become less fashionable again in the future.

Many of the ancient Greek cities allied with Athens had stronger democracies than we have today (even though it was only free males enfranchised, this still meant more people were involved in decision-making than in British democracy). Yet the Greeks had huge ideological struggles between democracy and oligarchy - with many favouring a stable oligarchy rather than a democracy which could be manipulated by devious demagogues with hidden agendas. People were willing to fight and die for both ideologies.

As soon as a major economic crisis comes and people begin to suffer, there is a real danger that democracy will fail us and the majority will put power in the hands of mad men.

The real problem is how to produce government that is able to act in the best interests for a sustainable world without contamination by hidden agendas or ideology. We need wise, charismatic, intelligent leadership and unfortunately such people are few and far between and often unwilling to get involved in politics.