I say this a little tongue in cheek, but it's a real problem I've yet to understand -- how can an outlier intelligent person thrive in a system that caters to the masses? The masses have an incentive to drain any marginal value out of the intelligent, and have the political power to do so.
Edit: @majormajor sorry HN wont let me reply. The reason would be because the bottom 51% have something to gain from extraction. The top 51% however are already superior and dont need to rely on extraction to fulfill their wants/needs.
51% might have been too broad a number, but do you get my drift? Those in the lower intelligence brackets have a lot to gain, but those in the upper intelligence brackets do not have a lot to gain
Of course, at the time this almost exclusively meant wealthy white men - which is obviously a terrible way to run a voting system.
The converse of this is the "bread and circuses" problem with Democracy. This was supposed to be mitigated by the "House of Lords" equivalent in the U.S. - The Senate.
The Senate was supposed to have been a buffer that protected against popular vote because they were assigned by the state legislature. They were beholden to the welfare of the state, not to direct-democracy political campaigning and all its ills.
Personally, I think its time to re-evaluate the 17th amendment to see if it had the desired effect, or resulted in massive unintended consequences.
51 + 51 = 102%
The bottom 51% have more influence than the top 49% because one is a majority. There is your answer.
Outside the US, countries after WW1/2 opted for democracies instead of republics with strong foundations. We're witnessing the point of failure due to the exact issues outlined in those papers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
disclaimer: I distance myself from the groups currently associated with these schools of thought. I also think the English version of this article is lacks scientific savoir faire.
The gender inequality part is empirically and historically wrong.
edit: To be honest the whole article is trash, better read it here (Psychological theory):
Serfs did it in the past when feudalism become to harsh and moved to the cities to make a living. Europeans did it when life became to harsh in Europe and moved to the Americas.
