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Well, you've raised some questions that I think are much bigger than an HN comments section, and I think there are many books and essays that will give better answers than I ever could. If you are interested in mitigating the issues of high voter turnout by discouraging turnout, you are not a supporter of democracy. I don't say that as a value judgment, just by definition, democracy means everyone voting for a government that reflects the whole population. If you support democracy, then you should support other efforts to solve these problems. Improve education to increase voter quality. Design the government so some crucial positions are somewhat shielded from popular opinion (judges, generals, etc.). Modify term limits to protect politicians from potentially unpopular decisions. I don't know, I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas. We could ask Belgium and Turkey and Sweden what they do to combat the threat of irrational and uneducated voters. I have not evaluated all the alternatives to democracy, but I would say history has. That's not a perfect answer, but in practice democracy is clearly at least as effective as any other government system, and by many measures clearly the best option. When I say that a benevolent genius would be better, I don't think that contradicts my other points because all real governments are run by humans, and all humans are flawed. But when a dictator or a small group of ruling elites screws up, they have incredibly strong motivations to hang onto power anyway. This is a bad thing. In an ideal democracy, there is no long-term way for any one person or group of people to remain in power unless they govern in a way that benefits their whole country. I don't think this is true for any other system of government. Finally, if you don't consistently make decisions that your people support, they will overthrow you. It doesn't matter if you know what's best for them. There is no point in trying to design a government that doesn't reflect the people, because it won't last, regardless of how great its policies are. |