This is by far the most illiberal and bourgeois topic I hope to ever discuss, but I think it's worth bouncing around. A recent thread by our own @Ghost in the Dark entitled Democracy doesn't work because most people are Stupid AF rehashed the ages-old argument against democracy, expressed in various terms by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, that humans are simply too impressionable, impulsive, intellectually lazy, and altogether stupid to handle governing themselves.
In this video (if it is the one I believe it is), Socrates' analogy of democracy to persons electing a minister of medicine is discussed: ignorant voters would be disproportionately drawn to a reductive message propagating a path of lesser resistance, such as consuming tasty but ineffective supposed medicines, over a more empirically sound method of treatment that involves pain or discomfort.
This pessimism about democratic self-governance has never felt more relevant than today, when the world's most powerful democracy has repeatedly voted for swindlers and thieves - and a near-plurality of the country's voters are in fact supporting policies that have expressly cut back on democracy, from racially charged voter purges and suppression to judicial legislating away of democratic rights in the area of collective bargaining and civil remedy.
However, it's difficult to imagine that any ancient philosopher or would-be political scientist could possibly imagine (a) the technological advancements in mass communication and intelligent consensus or (b) the great many strides that have been produced for humankind and human rights that democratic republics would achieve over the next millennium and change.
Equipped with knowledge of both the inherent virtues of democratic values in advancing popular interests and slowly redressing tyranny over society's most vulnerable persons
and the inherent flaws of democracy in de-specializing knowledge for governance, some brainstorming could be of value.
So, with that in mind, is it possible -- or rather, preferable -- to consider something like a move toward demographically representative voter classes that are formulated to represent political interests such as religion, income, sex, and race? This would entail some sort of nonpartisan or bipartisan testing method - most obviously testing (a) knowledge of political facts and concepts and (b) intellectual ability generally - whereby a certain percentage (let's say the highest scoring 20%) of the population would be allowed to vote. Such a class would purport to represent the most qualified voters that are demographically representative of the country on bases of relevant demographics like religion, income, sex, and race.
Discuss.
