A Quick Critique of Democracy

This article is a quick overview of the main reasons why democracy is not only unworkable, but is a complete sham. 

 

1) The Electors: Stupidity outweighs intelligence

You should know what an IQ distribution looks like: it's a 'normal distribution', a bell curve. The median changes in various populations, but it remains true that half the population is dumber than the other half, and a small percentage of the population is very smart.

What level of IQ do you need to make a reasonable decision about who to elect as the 'leader of the free world'? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that it is above average. If my assumption is true, then there are far more people who do not have the intelligence to make this decision properly, than there are those who are intelligent enough to have this responsibility.

2) The Electors: Volume of information exceeds human capacity

Let's say that your IQ is high enough to make a good decision about whom to elect, if you were provided the information. We are provided this information, plus a mountain of disinformation, to wade through. Who has time to adequately study and decide upon every voting possibility from local, to state, to federal? I contend it would be a full time job just to attempt to perform it adequately, which would leave little time for Honey Boo Boo episodes, rap and Lady Gaga concerts, or twerking that average voters would rather be watching or doing, or working a full time job.

3) The Electors: Humans are social animals

The evidence is insurmountable: humans make decisions socially, meaning they decide to do what everyone else is doing. If you add the point about IQ (the first point) to this point, then the obvious result is that most humans will decide to do something stupid, such as elect a fashionable leader over a qualified one.

4) The Elected: Federal legislative throughput exceeds human capacity

Have you seen the size and volume of the laws that federal legislators must vote on? It's a huge volume of information that your average human simply could not read and process in the time provided. This means that Federally elected legislators are not really reading, considering, changing, or debating the bills on which they are voting. The PPACA (Obamacare) alone was 2000+ pages. Once you factor in the changes to each law and that it must be re-evaluated after each round of changes, then it becomes obvious that a single human (a federal legislator) cannot accomplish the task.

5) The Elected: Legalese

Have you ever read a bill? The legal language alone can make the process difficult. What percentage of federal legislators are lawyers? Currently, it's about 25%, down from a high of 50%. Thus this call to elect all lawyers. That's right, the overwhelming majority of those being elected to vote on laws that they don't have time to read, probably couldn't handle the legal aspect anyway.

6) The Elected: Problem domain inexperience

Do you have any clue about the best way to manage fisheries? Neither do those who are elected to Congress, yet they are supposed to vote on laws that they don't have time to read, that they probably couldn't understand if they did have the time, which cover problem domains that would take them years or decades of study to understand adequately enough to make a wise decision.

Summary

In short, 'democracy' is a sham. The majority of electors (and we are talking about majority rule) have neither the IQ, time nor interest to make decisions about their leaders. The legislators that are elected, have neither the time, legal training nor problem domain experience to properly perform their nominal function.

Isn't it about time that we have an honest discussion about how we should run our country, once we can come to the hard truth that we live in a post-democratic illusion?