I find this line of argument fascinating because it pokes at the obvious flaws in the democratic system.
1) It requires a high level of knowledge from participants and an intelligence they may or may not have
2) It does not guarantee that the morally right or logically right decisions are made
3) It is extremely inefficient and easy to hijack.
The alternatives all have similar flaws though, including benign dictatorships and anarchy.
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Democracy needs ignorant people, says science
You might think that democracies work best when people care and know about the key issues. But a new study argues that for a democracy to function at all, you need lots of ignorant people blindly sidi…
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Democracy Works When People Don’t Care http://t.co/9OYRA3eJ
Democracy Works When People Don’t Care http://t.co/UTQycuU8 #fantasy #fiction
An interesting article there, well found! The problem with having a small number of people who know what the issues are and are intelligent enough to do something about it means you can manipulate the majority (through the media, presumably) to work towards your own ends. Sounds a bit like a feudal system.
On the other hand if you have a lot of people who know about the issues but are not intelligent enough to formulate a good solution… You end up with the country going in the wrong direction.
Or, if you have loads of people who are knowledgeable and intelligent enough you have too many solutions and too many debates.
Democracy is a system that to an extent rejects originality or uniqueness in solving problems in favor of fairness. The tyranny of the majority.
It’s messy. But what’s the alternative?
It also helps if the people who know about the issues actually care about resolving them.
Sometimes I wonder about the US 2-party system being too polarised, and then you get some European countries with hundreds of parties who never seem to get anything done. It’s a fine line between being able to discuss the issues, and being able to do something about them.
I am not a fan of the US system for a number of reasons. The 2 party system is part of the problem. The electoral college is another.
But fundamentally it was designed not to work well and perhaps the founding fathers were a little too effective at that.
The founding fathers established a representative democracy, rather than a true democracy, and had an abiding mistrust of the electorate They did not, of course, establish the two-party system; that evolved later and worked well when politicians could put the interests of the country as a whole ahead of their own.
The article does provoke an interesting thought, however. If the more informed an electorate is, the worse democracy works then the apparent decline in the ability of our government to function may be traced to the rise of mass media and, especially, television. Spooky but thought provoking.
I once read a funny saying that went “Democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.”