There are certainly tradeoffs in everything, but majority rule is good enough. In practice any candidate that couldn't possibly handle the job has no real chance of winning. By the time you get into the race amongst those who have a realistic chance, they're all pretty much equally capable. Even if you don't get exactly who you want to see, the winner will be fine.
It's not exactly the most difficult job in the world† to begin with. If you get someone slightly worse than another, is it really going to matter? All they have to do is pay attention to the democracy taking place the local level and carry that sentiment to the central meeting place. What they deliver in the central meeting place is formally recorded, so if they are not acting in good faith to the constituents a tar and feathering will occur.
But to your question, yes, dumb people especially get overly worked up about this. Dumb people have come to believe that democracy ends after they have selected the employee. This is why they feel it is a tragedy when their top choice isn't selected. Whereas the smart people understand that democracy begins only after the employee is hired. That is when you start to talk to them and direct them, as is your democratic obligation.
† Which is to say that it isn't if you are surrounded by smart people who understand the democratic process. If you have to put with dumb people who think you are supposed be some kind of "leader" over them (even though they hired you), then the job becomes very hard trying to read their minds. One certainly does not envy anyone stuck in that position.
> especially when those solutions involve convincing dumb people.
That's the positive note about representative democracy. Since the dumb people end up being too dumb to participate, smart people end up ruling the day. This actually, even if a little counterintuitive, makes it much easier to get things done in practice for those who are smart.
- It forces people to vote strategically according to who they believe has a chance to win instead of accurately describing their preferences.
- They can only express their opinion about one candidate, not all of them.
- The spoiler effect - more candidates for one side (on a given axis) increases the chance of a candidate on the other side winning.
I really encourage you to read all of those pages and play with the explorable explanations.
Dumb people are either able to understand this or generally have lower tendencies to engage in self-education so they don't know about these issues.
And, changing this fundamentally requires convincing dumb people because last time I checked there was not a single country where votes were weighted by intelligence.
> Since the dumb people end up being too dumb to participate
Again, this is incredibly wrong, everybody's vote counts the same.
There are certainly tradeoffs in everything, but majority rule is good enough. In practice any candidate that couldn't possibly handle the job has no real chance of winning. By the time you get into the race amongst those who have a realistic chance, they're all pretty much equally capable. Even if you don't get exactly who you want to see, the winner will be fine.
It's not exactly the most difficult job in the world† to begin with. If you get someone slightly worse than another, is it really going to matter? All they have to do is pay attention to the democracy taking place the local level and carry that sentiment to the central meeting place. What they deliver in the central meeting place is formally recorded, so if they are not acting in good faith to the constituents a tar and feathering will occur.
But to your question, yes, dumb people especially get overly worked up about this. Dumb people have come to believe that democracy ends after they have selected the employee. This is why they feel it is a tragedy when their top choice isn't selected. Whereas the smart people understand that democracy begins only after the employee is hired. That is when you start to talk to them and direct them, as is your democratic obligation.
† Which is to say that it isn't if you are surrounded by smart people who understand the democratic process. If you have to put with dumb people who think you are supposed be some kind of "leader" over them (even though they hired you), then the job becomes very hard trying to read their minds. One certainly does not envy anyone stuck in that position.
> especially when those solutions involve convincing dumb people.
That's the positive note about representative democracy. Since the dumb people end up being too dumb to participate, smart people end up ruling the day. This actually, even if a little counterintuitive, makes it much easier to get things done in practice for those who are smart.