The problem is you can educate stupid people but it won't make them not stupid. By definition 50% of people are left of the mean on the IQ spectrum. By HN standards probably 80% of all people are hopeless.
When you make "being educated" a prerequisite for voting you necessarily create an underclass. You prevent people who are "undereducated", as defined by those who are "educated" (see the problem there?), from participating in society. That is, you strip them of citizenship. They are not represented.
I don't know if that's good or bad. Many argue that democracy is inherently flawed because of people's general unintelligence. I think this argument has much merit. But you can't solve the flaw within democracy itself. Which means maybe there is another, better system of governance out there, and democracy isn't the be-all and end-all we've been raised to think of it as.
Democracy isn't a good thing in and of itself, basically, so maybe we should re-evaluate.
> Many argue that democracy is inherently flawed because of people's general unintelligence.
It'd be great if elections could be fought on something more substantial than a candidate's haircut or who most people would rather drink a beer with.
I don't think that general lack of intelligence is responsible for people creating or publishing polls about drinking beer with candidates.
People get fed this tripe.
And even on HN it's hard to have political discussions. Every political thread will have some great, insightful, thoughtful, comments, and a bunch of tedious partisan bickering.
The problem is you can educate stupid people but it won't make them not stupid. By definition 50% of people are left of the mean on the IQ spectrum. By HN standards probably 80% of all people are hopeless.
When you make "being educated" a prerequisite for voting you necessarily create an underclass. You prevent people who are "undereducated", as defined by those who are "educated" (see the problem there?), from participating in society. That is, you strip them of citizenship. They are not represented.
I don't know if that's good or bad. Many argue that democracy is inherently flawed because of people's general unintelligence. I think this argument has much merit. But you can't solve the flaw within democracy itself. Which means maybe there is another, better system of governance out there, and democracy isn't the be-all and end-all we've been raised to think of it as.
Democracy isn't a good thing in and of itself, basically, so maybe we should re-evaluate.