[xg15]

> societies would be best served by an educated aristocracy

And what goals and principles would that aristorcracy govern by? Who is deciding about the goals and who makes sure they are actually enacted?

What if said leaders decide that, in order to combat overpopulation, parts of the "surplus class" need to be removed?

The reason many people migrated to the US centuries ago was to get away from aristorcracy. So how do you avoid repeating the problems?

[H4CK3RM4N]

How do you propose ensuring a democracy doesn't fail? In the first passage I linked, hereditary aristocracy is referred to as "the worst of all governments", it suggests that "the wisest should govern the many", and Rousseau even acknowledges that aristtocracy "demands others which are peculiar to itself; for instance, moderation on the side of the rich and contentment on that of the poor".

[xg15]

But representative democracies - the wide majority of current-day democracies - absolutely follow "the wisest should govern the many": Most things are not decided by general elections but by specialists. Only the questions of what exactly constitutes a specialist and what the goal of their work should be are resolved via elections. (At least that's the theory)