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.
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.
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):
