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Comment by squarefoot | Hacker News Reader

That's the reason why we should never ever ever ever give "power to the people", but rather to enlightened few who would do their best to understand common people needs and take decisions accordingly. Giving today power to the people plain and simple means we'll have light poles holding hanged people at every street by next week.

There's a wonderful quote by Henry Ford regarding innovation which says "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have replied faster horses". I find it very appropriate in this context too. People would definitely know there's something wrong somewhere, but only knowledgeable ones would find how to act, where to act and how to do that without producing collateral damages.

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And how does one determine this enlightened few and how do they get out into power? It seems like you're advocating for what would quickly become an aristocracy,

People can work together, but an effective system of organization needs to be in place which allows for check and balances. The internet has bypassed many of our former checks and balances, so it's time to rework things.

I don't think it's actually that hard to choose a set of benevolent caretakers willing to understand the needs to the common folk especially if you divide the aristocracy up into a few different branches and put checks and balances on the power the aristocracy has between each branch and preserve a core set of individual liberties upon which the aristocracy shall not tread. But we've seen that fall apart so at this point I'm more interested in a Neo-monarchist experiment myself.

Is the hierarchy in your hypothetical situation hereditary? Are there benefits to being the caretakers that the rest of society doesn't share? Obviously power is one by definition, what prevents the caretakers from beginning in benevolence but then turning to selflessness?

Sounds a lot like feudalism, doesn’t it?

Elevating one group over another never ends well. And that includes our current political system.

Yeah my comment is half a facetious metaphor—making fun of the current state of affairs, and half serious in that pure popular rule has also proven to scale poorly.

Henry Ford, interesting person to quote. Why not expound on his wisdom written in the International Jew?

Just a point about how a person that is intelligent about one thing can show profound ignorance about another.

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