The merits of voter driven governance

I have been thinking a bit about the vote. Be it a democracy or a republic or the weird conglomerate of the two that the US has, it all comes from the presupposition that the will of the people shall be represented in the form of a ballot. Why do we do this to our people?

I know you have all probably heard arguments like "the people are not infallible," "it transfers a huge amount of power to the media," "some issues get forgotten on voting day" and many like them. These are not what I want to talk about here. While they do have their merit, I have something more important in mind: the well being of the population.

People have many things to worry about: their jobs, their standard of living, their social lives, their physique, how their children are going to handle these issues, and everything else which determines their place in society. Why add politics to the mix? Why are we putting the burden on the people to decide what's best for the country? It's fucking asinine.

Imagine not having to deal with it. Imagine no more worrying about how half the country will vote. Imagine not having to argue about shit with ideologically driven individuals who basically regurgitate the same non-arguments they learned in grade school or on TV. Imagine not having to understand economics when your job has nothing to do with economics. Imagine knowing that people who dedicated their lives to studying and understanding the proper application of policy were hard at work fixing political problems in such a way that the people don't have to concern themselves with them. Truly such a system would be a thing of beauty.

So tell me, Holla Forums, why must we continue this vile practice we call the vote? Why must we continue to divide ourselves, not just between party lines but also between work and politics? Why can't we just do our jobs and let a dictator (or perhaps a few) do theirs?

...

Democratic systems are useful in that, for the most part, those in charge can't too radically get away with pissing off the general public, as they need them for re-election. So you're not likely to, say, see your state governor divert state funds towards rebuilding his own home into a winter palace. Transfers of power tend to be peaceful in a functioning democracy, always a plus. When things are working properly, democracy lends a strong legitimacy to the government.

On the other hand, as a whole, the populace is terrible at democracy. They tend to vote for whoever spends the most money on advertisment. Their information supply is almost exclusively the media, which is a rather glaring flaw in the system. That trump still got elected despite spending less and going directly against the media itself shows just how fucked shit must be.

In the long run, a democratic society will inevitably vote for more and more socialist bullshit until their inevitable collapse. There really isn't a way around that. Say you restrict the vote to male landowners. eventually, politicians will realize that if they give all the plebs the vote, the plebs will vote for them, and they'll win, for decades, regardless of what a majority of landed people think. Then they'll let women vote. Then they'll soon be where we are.

I think there is a lot of merit in a democratic system, but they have a definite half-life, before they are taken down by a subversive media and the culmination of their own terrible choices. It'd be nice if we could skip the part where everything degenerates into a mess and then a bloody revolution, but bureaucratic inertia is a helluva thing.

The federalist papers largely discuss the arguments I specifically said I wasn't going to talk about.

Whether or not people are capable of self governance isn't the issue I'm addressing here. The US has a pretty good track record on that front.

Sage and Report
Fuck your personal blogging slide thread bullshit

Also OP is a faggot

it's about who votes. There must be some accountability to the state. I don't want a Stalin or Mao rising up through the ranks.

Rather I think voting should just go back to how it was, that is, for landowning literate white males.

What I'm imagining is more or less a "jobification" of governance if that makes any sense. As in, if you want to govern, you go to school to learn about proper governance. When you spend a few years learning history, ethics, maybe economics if the position you're looking for deals with financial issues, and all that other good stuff you come out hoping to get an internship at some governor's office where you prove your worth and maybe get an administrative job until you can work up the ladder.

Kinda reminiscent of Confucian meritocracy, really.

Because mid-to-low cognitive capacity hominids, of all clades, cannot accept personal criticism without interpreting it as personal insult.
As such, the very notion of suggesting some amongst the population are too stupid, or otherwise incapable, to effectively select their leadership, is personally insulting to those same folk.

I think starship troopers model of government is ideal, except I would go farther and create a tiered merit based system where for example a citizen with 3 kids who pays more than he or she receives in taxes gets 2 votes (+1 for net tax surplus and +1 for adding to a nations fertility), a former 4 star general with a purple heart, 10,000 hours community service, who hires dozens of citizens, etc. gets at least 5 votes, etc, with votes capped at 10 each and welfare parasites and criminals getting no franchise whatsoever. When political franchise is directly linked to the willingness to add sweat, blood, tears, and labor to the success of a country it circumvents nearly all of the flaws of a democracy. The legislative branch in this system would be a collection of 5+ vote citizens who are outstanding selfless examples of courage, ambition, fertility, wisdom, etc. Reactionaries and fascists often insist that leadership should not be by the popular but by the strongest and the best but that is a very sharp double edged blade, if you get a benevolent leader with near total power it is fucking great, like Hitler for example, if the ruler turns out to be a tyrant there are no checks and it is a nightmare, the potential upside there is strong but it is too damn volatile for long term stability. There is also the fact that being an ethnostate makes nearly any kind of government of higher quality, Democracy in Iceland is no big deal and generally works for its citizens, multicultural democracy is pure kikery and can only be fixed with race war or physical removal in the long run. A merit based system of franchise that anyone can participate in yet strictly selects positive character traits for vote tiers within an ethnostate would basically be paradise. Also, things like debt-free nationalized currency, right to own funz, free speech, and no kikes allowed would be inviolable constitutional laws which would not be a living document which can be amended unlike Burger constitution. Constitutional republic with limited merit based franchise is the best way to mitigate the risks of both monarchy and democracy IMO.

I'm all in favor of a constitution, one including the right to bear arms. I'm even in favor of sections of the government being able to challenge each other. What I'm opposed to is forcing people who otherwise have no interest in the government to rally themselves under some cause or another when they are better off concerning themselves with what they've dedicated their skillset to.

But a lot of that is due to the voting system, is it not?
I mean, if we made governance just like any other job, would we not start to see it as such?
For example: I suck shit at bending sheet metal. I can't accurately scribe, I have a hard time lining the sheet up on the brake in the right spot, and I second guess the shit out of myself whenever I do have it aligned. Half of the sheet metal I work with becomes a scratched up mess from 40 failed scribing attempts that is then bent crooked.

You know what I don't do, though?
I don't work with sheet metal for a living. And I certainly don't try to tell other people how to do so if that happens to be their job.

you can't have pure democracy because basically shit is too complicated.

You have to have a republican form of government, and in this age, leaders need to be men of science, military, and thought.

In a sense, but more over, its due to the idea being implanted in their heads that they deserve the right to vote, that the absence of their input in selection of leadership is an imposition upon them.

An impossibility, because governance is not just like any other job.

So you're bad with sheet metal, got it.
Ah, but there's the rub: What if, even despite your absence of skill, you could acquire much - wealth, resources, favors, power - via presenting yourself as being skilled with sheet metal (knowing that there is no accountability on your behalf to actually be skilled with sheet metal once you've acquired the job)?

The question, which ties by to my previously-posted image, is this: Which is more important to you - competent leadership, or having a say in the leader selected?

Most people today genuinely believe that the people having a say is more important, in fact, they believe that the two are inter-connected: that the people having a say is the means via which to best ensure a competent leader comes to, and remains in, power.

The problem is, as I've said, that this mindset does not interract well with the reality of human biodiversity, such that
etc etc

The notion that the people having a say leads to selection of competent leadership is blatantly dissonant relative to the actual cognitive landscape of the modern hominid population - but, if you try to present such argumentation, large swathes of the modern hominid population cannot interpret that concept as anything but a personal insult against themselves (being of the lower cognitive echelons).
IOW: There are too many morons for a voter-based paradigm to function effectively in the context of bringing competent leaders to power, but to explain that to those morons inevitably results in them taking it as a personal insult and thus drastically-increasing the likelihood of their rejection of that concept, the interpretation on their behalf itself being a consequential factor of them being morons.

I see the voting system a part of a larger social system that tries to retain stability over the failed monarch states. Monarchism continued becoming a bigger and bigger failure throughout Europe. The destruction of feudalism and the creation of absolute monarchies brought in both nationalism and catastrophic labour abuse. Voting was perceived as an alternative to the potential cycle of failed monarchs. Relatively speaking, the newer system created does indeed offer more stability.

However, this same system also cycles and delves into endless (and I say pointless) fights between political ideologies. Thus when a political ideology, left or right, is left to rule for too long, they end up seeking to reach the maxima of their ideology. This pointless onslaught and seeking of a Utopia can exist due to the sub systems that allow it to do so. One of them is voting. Voting in its current form is not efficient enough to prevent this endless cycle.

democracy is not the problem, its just that not everyone should have a vote.

Lad, democracy is only ever one majority vote away from opening up the restrictions as to who can vote.

That's why democracy is, in fact, the problem - and why we are where we are today.

And that is literally what I think the problem is. This is a terrible idea to implant into people.
Care to elaborate on why it cannot be?
You have accountability to others in government.
You won't get promoted from district admin to mayor if you can't demonstrate your competence in some way. And you most certainly won't last long if you embezzle funds.
I'm not arguing from an elitist position. Even a very intelligent man doesn't necessarily know shit about politics, especially if he's busy improving the field in which he chose to devote his efforts.

Slightly off-topic: "Tyrant" wasn't always synonymous with "evil leader".

Originally, a tyrant was simply an authoritarian leader who came to power through unconventional means. IE, someone who was not part of the established aristocracy or nobility. These were typically high-merit leaders who came to power during times of turmoil and poor leadership that never got anything done, by means of support from the military and/or common people.

Under the reign of a tyrant conditions would typically improve dramatically, because they were able to do whatever needed to be done with absolute authority and without having to answer to anyone. Eventually things would go downhill again, usually when the tyrant died and someone less qualified would succeed them. Tyrants got their negative connotation mainly because the meme of the times was that rulers ought to have "divine right" and tyrants were just some filthy commoner that had the audacity to rise to power through wit and ability and assume command in a time of need.

democracy has never been a strong form of government
the only strong forms of government have been republics or monarchies
the original democracy itself was created by a sage as a means of compromise to avoid a civil war ffs
we want a republic of good men leaders who are exactly as you've described
the sage kings Plato in the West and Confucious in the East both claimed would be the ideal form of government
but kings/dictators can also be a good thing as Marcus Aurelius and the five good emperors showed us

good point
historically in Greece there was little difference between a Tyrant or an Archon besides circumstance of birth

No other job provides the power potential which leadership in the context of governance represents.
You can go into deeper deconstruction of this concept, but I suggest it is suffice to say that there is no other professional role on the planet which ascribes as much power and influence over others as those which fall into the political sphere.

A dubious assertion.
Sure you will!
Again, you don't actually have to demonstrate competence, you merely have to convince others that such demonstration has occurred.
Except plenty do exactly that.

The point is, you aren't actually accountable for anything, in most cases, once elected - you can run on a platform of X, Y and Z, but once in office? You are not bound to achieve X, Y, or Z - you aren't even bound to make it appear as though you've achieved X, Y or Z… Though, often enough, the appearance is what you'll get, if anything at all. Look at Obongo - he ran on a platform of legalizing weed and closing Guantanamo… Yet weed is still legal, and Guantanamo is still open - and was he held accountable for this, in any appreciable/meaningful context?
No. He was not. Nor will he be anytime soon.

In the case of our sheet metal metaphor, it'd be like you pursuing a job with a platform suggesting you are highly-skilled with sheet metal, despite having minimal skill with sheet metal, and once you've achieved the job there is no means via which your employer is likely to be able to fire you when it becomes obvious you are not skilled with sheet metal after all…. That's basically democratic politics: You tell the morons what they want to hear, make yourself look good, and you can get into power (and all that comes with it), even if you are not actually representative of any of the things you told the morons (because they wanted to hear it/it made you look good).

I am.
I am representative of, statistically, the upper 10% - probably more like 5% - of the modern hominid population in terms of cognitive ability, and I hold no qualms in stating outright that an IQ 81 nigger (hell, an IQ 93 White) is not my cognitive equal and likely should not have a say, certainly not a say equal to mine, in selection of leadership.
Why? Because - again, based merely on statistics and extrapolation of data - they are more likely to be easily manipulated by political actors.
True, but, proportionality exists.
Are you truly going to try to argue that, just statistically, a person who exhibits a higher IQ is not more likely to demonstrate a keen political understanding than one who exhibits a lower IQ?
This part I disagree with in its entirety, in that it implies ones awareness and understanding of politics is inhibited by being successful and innovative in their field of focus.

...

This is true, but as long as there is a system of checks and balances I think it could be maintained as far removed from the lives of the people as possible, only doing something that affects their lives when such action is needed.

How does that play out, exactly?
So let's say an admin with ulterior motives manages to become a mayor. Does he show his true colors then? when he only has power over a single city and has many people above him that can call to have his ass fired? Of course not. He's gonna need to continue to act as though he's competent as mayor and play nice until he can be promoted. But how's he gonna convince anyone he's ready for advancement to county administrator when wages haven't gone up, growth has stagnated, and taxes are becoming more burdensome on the population in his city? Maybe he could get lucky and a valuable resource is discovered and the economy booms, but will that happen again for this guy at every step up the ladder? Do you think no one's going to put any scrutiny as to how he managed his accomplishments?
In our system. And that's mostly because it's hard to get rid of elected officials without people getting into an uproar.
But in my system, people can be fired and replaced. And there will be plenty of competent people looking to jump at that vacancy at a moment's notice.
I obviously agree with you there. What I'm trying to say though is it's not the conversation that I'm really interested in having.
We could all agree that morons shouldn't vote and feel really good about ourselves at the end of this thread, or we can find points where we disagree and actually be confronted with ideas we're not immediately on board with.
Of course not. A moron can't into biochemistry, a moron can't into governance.
It's true to a certain extent. If you're up all night slaving away and trying to solve the big problems that face your industry, you're spending much less time learning/thinking about politics. Sure, some people are more flexible than others, especially the most intelligent of people. But even the most intelligent of people always have more to learn. They could choose to devote that time to whatever their field of work is, or to politics.

I'm gonna give myself a bump, just this once.