Comment by H4CK3RM4N | Hacker News Reader

Comment by H4CK3RM4N | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like this is a more general symptom of attempting to apply a democracy where every citizen's is valued equally in a very large population. At some point, it's simply impossible to have a whole population which is both properly educated and able to voice it's opinion. This line of reasoning is a large part of the reason that Rousseau suggested that societies would be best served by an educated aristocracy[1].

America has an aristocracy emerging in it's political/business class, but it still attempts to have every voice heard in elections, and as a result you'll always have people who feel hardly done by attempting to rebel against the status quo.

I'm also going go take the opportunity to share CGP Grey's videos on First Past the Post voting[2] and the electoral college[3], and the issues with those. He also has videos directly the electoral college, without his opinions, if you need some background[4].

[1]http://www.bartleby.com/168/305.html

[2]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-problems-with-first-past-the...

[3]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-trouble-with-the-electoral-c...

[4]http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/how-the-electoral-college-works....

> At some point, it's simply impossible to have a whole population which is both properly educated and able to voice it's opinion

Are, it's impossible to have that at all points. The point is to strive for it, not achieve perfection.

If we don't strive, then with people like DeVos in charge of federal funding, public schools will be gutted and the problem worsens.

The vast majority of education funding comes from the states, so cutting federal funding won't really have much impact.

"That means the Federal contribution to elementary and secondary education is about 8 percent" - https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html

It really makes me wonder what we need the Department of Education for...

> It really makes me wonder what we need the Department of Education for...

According to DeVos, we need it to undermine public schooling by directing tax money to private schools.

> societies would be best served by an educated aristocracy

And what goals and principles would that aristorcracy govern by? Who is deciding about the goals and who makes sure they are actually enacted?

What if said leaders decide that, in order to combat overpopulation, parts of the "surplus class" need to be removed?

The reason many people migrated to the US centuries ago was to get away from aristorcracy. So how do you avoid repeating the problems?

How do you propose ensuring a democracy doesn't fail? In the first passage I linked, hereditary aristocracy is referred to as "the worst of all governments", it suggests that "the wisest should govern the many", and Rousseau even acknowledges that aristtocracy "demands others which are peculiar to itself; for instance, moderation on the side of the rich and contentment on that of the poor".

But representative democracies - the wide majority of current-day democracies - absolutely follow "the wisest should govern the many": Most things are not decided by general elections but by specialists. Only the questions of what exactly constitutes a specialist and what the goal of their work should be are resolved via elections. (At least that's the theory)

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