this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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That's why democracy is also known as being ruled by the hordes of idiots. It's amazing when people are well informed on what they are voting on, the problem is that's never happened in mass and never will. People will vote based on their feelings or just straight up not at all.
I'm imagining the most wealthy (who think they know what's best for the world, like P.T.) would say something eerily similar to what you are saying.
The very rich have access to all of the information. One can't expect people who face significant barriers to higher education (and other means of informing themselves) to be on the level of experts, the educated and informed, or the very rich.
Why are people against experts, the educated, and the informed?
Partisan news media seems like the likely culprit. A broken political system posing as democracy could be another factor to consider. Opaque algorithms that put people into information bubbles (with the intention to make them addicted and as uninformed/reactionary as possible) are definitely a major factor.
Calling democracy mob rule is really old. I would at least prefer representatives to be scientists or otherwise the most informed on the subject and policies they are deciding on. I would also prefer all policies to be tested to see if they actually create their desired outcomes. I would prefer the desired outcome to always be increasing human and environmental wellbeing.
I’m just thinking how for most of history, humanity put these people on a pedestal and let them get away with a lot (through religion, in most cases I think).
I think your culprits are accurate.
Humanity's leaders reflect the rot within.
family guy episode about lois campaign for mayor basically sums about the low, uniformed voters. all she needs to utter was a few words, and keep reminding people of a past incident.
Yup just tell group X who dislikes thing Y or group Z that X and Z are bad and you're in like Flynn.
https://youtu.be/QFgcqB8-AxE
He's not the first but I was thinking about that. I can't remember the critic but early on in the American experiment someone described it as mob rule.
Similar but I would prefer a representative democracy but where the representatives need to be national experts on what they are deciding. So for instance if it's medicine then the representatives need to be physicians and medical scientists, and previous heads of hospitals. If it's dealing with the environment then the representatives need to be environmental scientists, civic engineers, and so on. Aka have the most informed people for that which you are trying to make decisions. Even better, have their policies reviewed by a body of their peers the same way scientific publishing works to get a measure on how good or bad their ideas are. Even better, test their ideas when they've been implemented to see if they're actually working.
I wasn't making a political point with the video, but your points are interesting.
I agree that, as far as I understand it right now, body-reviewed policies are the democracy we should have.
How about also requiring someone to have experience or a degree in a specific field to vote on specific issues? For example, I've been working in tech for a decade, I should be able to vote on technology policies, but not on medical policies.
That's a fair additive although it can be difficult to define the boundaries. Particularly tech can have a far reaching influence and arguably global influence these days. If the scope of the policy is narrow then I can imagine that being functional, if the scope is potentially global then that may become an issue.