On Democracy I (OA)

Another thing from Old Acanthus - the post that made me decide to get a blog to start with, even predates the introduction.

NOTE: This was originally posted on my Facebook page, which is why I mention at the end that I should get a blog (why yes, I could remove that bit, since it is indeed entirely pointless¹). Since I have a blog now, I'll definitely do another one of these.

Since I’m trying to convince people that I don’t think I’m better than everyone else (I lie sometimes – I totally am ;)² ), it seems like a good chance to explain my views on democracy, since it occurs to me that joking about how I think I should be dictator of the world might give the wrong impression (and because I enjoy writing about my views; I’m human like that).

So, just to clarify, I don’t think I should be dictator of the world, for reasons I’ll go into. The rest of this is just going to be me going on about my political philosophy. Just to clarify, no matter what I might say when I’m rushed to explain things, my view is not ‘people who are unintelligent shouldn’t get the vote’. Nor is it ‘one person should rule the country as dictator’. I might be being cynical, but I don’t think anyone is qualified for that, and even if they were, what about the next person? Checks and balances are always good. I simply think that noone, regardless of intelligence or education, whose knowledge of economics is limited to ‘taxes are bad’ should be given a say in the country’s economic policy. And yes, I’m aware that a decent economist supporting someone might cause people to support that candidate, but when they disagree (i.e. always) the result is based on people skills, not economics, since explaining advanced economic theory is rather difficult.

The same applies to almost everything else from the environment (people still don’t believe in human-caused global warming, so either their knowledge of climate science is woefully inadequate, or mine is) to science (should we give this grant money to the friendly and charming man who works with animals who works with animals and is rather a joke around other biologists, or the autistic savant neo-Nazi who pulls the wings off flies* and who other biologists think has about a ninety percent chance of curing cancer?).

So my first proposal is simple. Hardly ground-breaking at all. Before you’re allowed to vote on things, you have to show that you have at least a basic understanding of the things involved. And I really do mean basic, if only because as soon as it goes beyond the most basic understanding possible, the risk of institutional bias is far too great.

Yes, there are practical problems with this. That’s why I say that I have theoretical objections to democracy. You’d need to do at least some work on the practicalities, although you’d probably be able to get a group of experts which would be accepted as neutral (think Select Committees and juries).
I might do something else on this subject, going into a bit more detail on my politics, at some point. Or I might do one on world government. OTOH⁴, this is getting a bit… bloggy⁵.

EDIT: BTW, anyone who wants to criticise or in any other way make fun of this, feel free. I'm fairly confident in my opposition to democracy, but I'm not quite arrogant enough to think that I can just come up with something better at sixteen that noone's thought of yet. There are probably a few problems with my ideas (actually, there definitely is at least one, which I'll deal with if I do another one of these)⁶.

*Note: I’m not implying that any of these things are linked. Especially not the autism³.


¹ Yes, that makes this the third time that this has been published. 
² Oh my god a smiley. That's something I never do these days. Actually, I think my style's changed a fair bit since I wrote this, but it might just be that I notice the changes more. 
³ OK, if there's one thing in my style that really has changed, it's the steady increase in the numbers of footnotes. I mean seriously, one? It's almost like this was written by a completely different person who was five foot six and who had red hair and blue eyes, from whom I stole it before burying the real author under my shed.*

⁴ And an abbreviation - another thing that I don't do any more.
⁵  Actually, I think one of the things that has changed is that I've got more bloggy and less personal. There's less of an assumption that you know me. This might be bloggy for a Facebook post, but it's a little Facebooky for a blog post.

⁶ This, by the way, applies to pretty much everything I write, except for my level of confidence in my viewpoint - democracy is one of the higher ones (also, I'm not sixteen anymore. Actually, I'm not even sure I was sixteen when I wrote this. There exists a non-zero possiblilty that I might possibly have got my own age wrong.


*OK, I'd normally be a bit iffy bout commenting on my own commentary, but that joke really doesn't work. I am sorry.