Arguing with alot of people on this topic I have come up with the most efficient, cheapest and therefore (in my opinion) overall best form of government. (So far I have convinced 4 people that my government is the best) Your right. People are retarded. The average IQ on the planet is like 103. Do you know how pathetic that is? From my experiences people with IQ's less then 120 can't participate in intelligent conversation. Thats means most people on the planet cannot. Mankind may be the smartest species on the planet, but its still not smart.

In democracy the most charismatic person wins elections. But as shown time after time the most charismatic ruler is not the best ruler. I think either only people with political degrees should vote. Or no elections at all.

As you're aware, I would say utopia is ubobtainable, due to human nature.

People cannot be expected to govern themselves, hence civil governments in the first place.
Good rulers are required to govern those who will not govern themselves, but rule tends to corrupt those who have it (power corrupts).
Basically, we need governors to restrain human nature, but who restrains the restrainers, who also have human nature?
As we are left to govern ourselves, perfect government is impossible, whether it be by kings or people.

However, that being said, some forms of government are better than others, because some accord less power to any one person or group of persons. Also, some are better at getting good rulers into office than others. None does any of these things perfectly, as no one is a perfect ruler and all civil offices require some power.

As a result, one must choose the lesser of two (or however many) necesary evils (civil government is necessary).

I would say the best possibility is a republic (people vote other people into offices of power). Some one governs, but can be deposed if they do a bad job (bad governing makes the voters upset). Combined with term limits (in case someone is really popular), this prevents anyone from having power for long. If you split up the government into branches that check and balance eachother, no one governing group has too much power during the limited time in which they govern.

Sure, it's prone to bickering as different people jossle for power/secure jobs, but at least it's not a dictatorship (unruled rulers) or an anarchy (unruled rulees).

my two bits without reading anything else.

Now, I have listened to everyone, but I think we're still missing each other here, because I really am reading these comments and thinking "But didn't I ANSWER that..or at least give my view?"

It seems like you do not believe I have qualified what IS a key point, ie, WHAT and WHO can be the limitations on the vote while staying just, but I thought I did in the above statements.

My only enumerated limitation has been knowledge, and then I further enumerated and specified WHAT kind of knowledge, namely, that of the issue that is on the ballot (ie, if you're voting on health care you'd best know what that actually IS) and the history of our country (which DOES give some wiggle room for issues but I thought I made my intentions clear when I made the "tell George washington apart from George W, Bush" comment, THAT basic...not asking for all the signers of the Declaration of Independence or who won the First Battle of Bull Run...)



Now, I see a response that I myself I would like to respond to, and then I'll leave it open, and at that point hopefully any criticisms will be specific and something that we can adress and decide upon through discourse, because it seems as though right now we just keep making the same general statements.

OK:

Point one, as raised by strat:

"I've deliberately tried not to 'go here', but.... seriously obi, I am willing to put my knowledge base against yours any day of the week."

THIS is the first misconception about my idea that I would like to dispell--my system does NOT have a knowledge base, ie, only the smartest vote. There are only two main bases of knowledge that both must be met, but both seem reasonable. The first is that the cognitive level of the person in question is high enough so that they are able to make judgments unaided if they wish; in other words, if a person cannot function by themselves and make indpendent choices then they should seem ill-equipped to vote...my intention here is mostly aimed towards those with a severe mental handicap, say, late Alzheimer's or very low-functioning Autism. Let me make it clear--I am NOT discriminating against this group, nor do I have anything against them (heck, two members of my family had Alzheimer's...both sides, actually, so whatever I learn in my quest for philosophical knowledge I'll likely one day forget, THERE's some irony...) but rather this is to keep them from being exploited and influenced; after all, if the one person who stays with you and cares for you tells you that you must vote for Prop 1 when in fact Prop 1 will help them and hurt the individual being influenced, that should seem unfair, hence the restriction. How would this be enforced and mandatated? We can judge levels of mental ability to a reasonable level today, enough to decide who needs what sort of handicap or help, so it doesn't seem too far a stretch (and for all those who accuse me of fACISM, notice I'm not just gassing all the mentally handicapped people like a Hitler or leaving them to die like one of Plato's philosopher kings...)

The second base is, again, the base of understanding, and I will attempt to give a scenario of what I mean.

Person A has never driven a car but knows enough about our history (now what "enough" is is tricky, and I'm open to suggestions, but, again, my definition would be that they would be able to pass a US Citizenship Test...that, I think, is not too much to ask, after all, if they cannot meet the requirements we give immigrants for intigrating into society and earning our vote...)

Person B knows how to drive and knows enough of our history ("enough" as explained above.)

Person C has never driven and doesn't know Ben Franklin from Ben Stein.

A lacks the knowledge of driving to vote on driving laws--having not driven himself--but may conceivably vote for the President, understanding our electoral system and having that "basic," citizenship-level understanding of our history/

B knows both, and may vote on both.

C lacks the knowledge to intelligently vote on a driving law and couldn't even pass a citizenship test, so I would declare him unfit for both categories, ie, the specific (here exemplified by the "driving/car" law) and the general, state, and federal (here represented by the ability to vote for the President.)

That's my take, I'm sure you'll have issues with it, but at least now it's hopefully more clearly layed out so it will be easier to adress.

So to summize in order to vote a citizen must...
1 not be a retard
2 be able to drive a car
3 have some knowledge of history

So long as a citizen is not a retard but fulfill at least criteria 2 or 3 they will have at least partial voting rights. 

Will citizens be voting for individual members of the cabinet? Thus lawyers vote for the attorney general, doctors for the health minister, bus drivers for the transport minister and so forth?

Ok, I've lost patience with this.

Obi, you have *not* listened to everyone, because you continue to miss the core point people are trying to make you see: disenfranchising people is a STUPID, STUPID IDEA.

Politicians all say they want to increase voter turnout, but go out of their way to sabotage efforts that will increase turnout that will tend to vote against them. You think they'll hesitate for an instant to strip the franchise from any group that tends to support the other side?

Secondly, despite the fact you may feel that someone is 'unqualified' to vote, that's just TOUGH NOOGIES. They are your fellow citizens, and have just as much a right to have their voice heard as the next person. Or would you suggest they count as, say, 3/5th of a person when it comes to the census?

Third, the point you conveniently forgot to answer earlier is that people tend to BURN THINGS DOWN when they feel they have no chance to have their grievances heard. It's feeling like the system is going to bone you no matter what, and that no matter what you do you're fucked that contributes to your LA Riots and your Oklahoma City Bombings. Fully granting that the last was by a guy who was completely fucked in the head, and has a serious misunderstanding of US history when it comes to the founding of the Republic - oh wait, kinda like the PEOPLE YOU WANT TO TAKE THE VOTE AWAY FROM. Fucking *Brilliant*, there won't be *any* consequences to that.

The reason 'everyone' is misunderstanding your idea is because it's SHEER LUNACY, more idiotic than any of the stupid trolling shit that TMW used to spew because you ACTUALLY THINK THIS IS WORKABLE.

It's on par with the internet jackhole who wanted to 'solve unemployment' by dumping all Mexican Americans back over the border - not just the illegals, but US Citizens, who had been here for generations. I'm sure his next brilliant move would be to deport all the African Americans back to Liberia. But for some reason I doubt he would have been thrilled to get shoved on a ship heading back for Europe.

In other words, your idea is stupid to begin with, would be even *more* stupid if it were enacted, and - if applied fairly - would doubtless bite *you* in the ass. The latter I don't have a problem with, since if your view of our system is that it can be 'cured' wit THIS travesty, you have even less of a 'right' to vote than someone who can't pass a Citizenship test.

How about we making voting proportional to IQ? Thus a person with an IQ of 100 gets one vote, an IQ of 90 gets .9 votes and a person with a 200 IQ gets two votes? ;-)

That reminds me - Faces, you complaint that the average IQ is 100 is completely missing the point, because the average IQ is 100 because that's the value that *designed to represent the average*, just like 100 degrees Fahrenheit was supposed to be human body temperature.

IQ is not like women's pants sizes, where the tweak the meaning of the scale to make you feel better, it's pretty much "we've surveyed a crapload of people, and assigned a rough numerical value to their Intelligence Quotient. The mean of that we've arbitrarily assigned the value of 100, and variances are off that center point"

Jesus. I'm going to back to work - I never thought I'd see the day where I looked forward to dealing with business users because they were the most rational people I'd deal with in the day

@Faces349 "In democracy the most charismatic person wins elections."

Funny thing though, most dictators are actually very charismatic, Hilter, Stalin, Fidel Castro etc

I don't think restricting the vote to smart people will solve the problem of democracy. The dumbest decisions in government and in the corporate world aren't made by dumb people; they are made by smart people working for *their* cause or doing *their* job. For example, the BP disaster in the Caribbean might be a consequence of the finance people being smart at their job, and the legal people being smart at theirs (keeping in mind that these people are not environmental scientists) and the lobbyists are good at lobbying etc, and even though they are smart, the world we live in very specialized and so it is hard for any one person to see the whole picture.
Nor do I think "average people" have too much power, such that we need to curtail it and shift the power to "above average people". Most of us live in representative democracies, with representative goverment, which in turn is supported by bureaucracies (supported by experts in various fields). So while we are presented with a few options at election time, those options have been selected for us (by smart people).
Faces349 suggested that only people with political science degrees should have the vote. The world would NOT become a better place I am sure. One outcome might be that political science departments at universities would get an increase in funding, but I don't think that this particular segment of society would have a better idea of what is good for *our* society than the rest of us.

@Fasces

"The average IQ on the planet is like 103. Do you know how pathetic that is?"

This is the dumbest statement I've ever heard. IQ tests are normally distributed around 100, you idiot. By definition, the average IQ on the planet *should* be "like 103."

"I promise everyone an above average income!"

strat +1

@abgemacht and strat +1 for pointing out the foolishness.

IQ is a percentage of "average", therefore the average IQ should be around 100. Duh! Doesn't take a 103 IQ to figure that out, but then Fasces never claimed to have even an avergae IQ...

And how can everyone have an above average income? Wouldn't raising everyone's income to a elevel above the current average just create a new average? Why are some people so fucking stupid? I guess a group of idiots who don't realize averages move with the data analyzed must have below 100 IQs to make up for those who actually have more than two brain cells to rub together.

If I understand correctly, the majority of the comments center around the intelligence of the voters. So therefore it is believed that stupid, aka uninformed, voters elected individuals not qualified to hold office. The reason we believe they are unqualified is because they are making decisions based upon getting reelected, so the elected official votes for programs that take from one group and give to another, once they have enough people receiving some form of government largess they lock up enough votes to be reelected. The voters receiving the largess only want the funds to keep flowing or increased so they vote for the politician promising the most stuff.

Here's any idea, bring back the vote tax. You must pay a tax before you cast can vote; this was found unconstitutional in 1967. This would eliminate most of those who vote who have no idea what the issues are. Another and perhaps less offensive option is you can't vote if you receive any form of government handout! Now you remove those who vote for idiot politicians.

if I was king of the world, I'd make these the criteria for voting:

1. Highschool graduate/GED/Graduation from trade school, ect.
2. Employed/Pay taxes.
3. Not on Welfare/Gov't assistance

This is very rough. Obviously there would need to be exceptions made, but I think it's better than using IQ, which only means that you have the potential to be intelligent.

@Obi -

Just a quick note. Based on your statements, YOU shouldn't be allowed to vote for people in public office. You stated at least twice that the House was a special compromise FOR the small states. Well, you clearly don't know your history. Allow me to elaborate:

The Virginia Plan, supported by the LARGE states, called for representation based on population, in other words, the current House of Representatives. The New Jersey Plan, supported by the SMALL states, called for equal representation for all states, or, our current Senate. So by combining the two, we have our current system.

In other words, the House was actually a compromise in favor of the LARGE states, not the small states. Eliminating the house would mean that you think that the 35+ million people in California should be represented equally with the sub-1 million people who live in Wyoming. There's a reason they compromised.

I think the post by Faces was tongue in cheek. At least that is how I took it.

drano019, for the most part, is correct. The Virginia Plan did call for two houses the debate was how they would be elected/selected. The Great Compromise was the final vote whereby the House was elected by the people and based upon population and teh Senate would be selected by the state legislatures. James Madison had the foresight to be concerned about the future; a growing population would lead to the those with less taking from those with more - I am paraphrasing but the point is the same. The resolution to this issue was the House would esentially be made of the common people - the poor - while the Senate would be made up of the upper class - the rich. Unfortunatley, the 17th amendment destroyed this relationship by allowing the poor to elected boht members of Congress.

... and that's why the rich have no influence in politics today

baumhaeuer: Your missing the point. The point is mankind as a whole is retarded. They are so self centered lunatics who can't see past the end of their nose. When someone votes, he votes for not the most competent leader, but the one he thinks will pass laws he wants to be passed. For example:
Say some president said if I get elected I will make weed legal. Everyone who smokes weed will vote for him (little bit of a generalization, but its the best I can think of). A lot of people will vote for a random name. For example: I know someone who voted for someone (this was in a municipal election so I can't quite remember the names) just because his name was the longest one on the ballot. When I asked him why did you vote, it was because I live in a democracy. His vote counted in the election, even though he didn't know what either of the 5 candidates on the ballots platforms was.

Also back to the human idiocy point is I am not saying most people are like him but people can be easily tricked. As my politics teacher from last year said, interview any politician and ask them what they got in Politics in high school. The most common response will be:
"Politics? I took drama."
Its true, today to become a politician all you need to do is act like you know what your talking about, and people will vote for you. Obama and Bush both Proved that.

OK.....well, that was a lot while I was away, and yet so little.

To go person by person:

drano019:

I know, I caught that after I posted; I meant that the whole idea of a bicameral legislature was a compromise, hence my saying the House was, and that the House was a compromise made for the smaller' states benefit in that they got the Senate out of it and equal voting rights THERE...so I did mean to say the correct version and it just came out awkardly put, but the fact is I still put ot out there, so -1 to obi.

I'll still do well on the rest of the Exam, hopefully, though...afterall, the other main question, telling the George W.'s apart is an easy one--George W. Bush was the father of our nation and George Washington is the father of our recession...no, wait, other way around... ;) (And YES, I'm sure there were plenty of reasons before and after Bush, it was a simple joke, folks...please don't give five paragraphs on how this wasn't Bsuh's fault, npot only would I frankly not care but I frankly wouldn't understand it wholly, terrible with economics--hence I'd PROBABLY be ill-equipped to vote for an Economic Advisor if we could elect one here, eh?) ;)

Moving on...

@spyman:

"So to summize in order to vote a citizen must...
1 not be a retard
2 be able to drive a car
3 have some knowledge of history"

Try:

1 Not be mentally handicapped (always hate that word, "retard," seems derogatory..."
2 Have a working knowledge of what they are voting on if it is a particular (ie, a prop that is solely about turning your car at a red arrow) prop (it's not limited to cars...you made the comment that, if we extend this, it could logically mean lawyers would vote for the attorney general, doctors for the surgeon general, and so on; I would respond that such a system would not work as those fields effect EVERYONE, not just those fields, I'm trying to limit the voting populace ONLY insofar as to have "qualified" voters in their fields vote on issues that deal ONLY in their fields primarily, case in point, if we were to pass an alcohol law I would NOT require my voters to have savored every last lager in production, but simply that they be OF DRINKING AGE, ie, 21, THAT, I think, sounds reasonable, as if you are not able to perform the action legally, ie drink under 21, why should you be allowed to vote on it, my exception here would be the legalization of a banned drug, ie marijuana; it's not legal to begin with, but since we are in THIS case attempting to make it legal, and this vote will effect EVERYONE, then everyone may vote on the issue, NOT just police officers, doctors, and...ahem..."experts" on marijuana.) ;)
3 Have some (again just Citizen-ship level, not asking for much here, people, you won't lose your voting rights if you cannot tell me who our 27th Vice President was, but if you think the American Revolution was won by Abrahm Lincoln as he flew the Spriti of St. Louis over Hiroshima and dropped the atomic bomb...no, sorry, THAT is just an intolerable level of idiocy, that's at the point where the question "what is 'idiocy,' then, obiwan?" is answered--THAT is idiocy, and not allowable for an INFORMED voting populace)
4 Maxim 3 precedes Maxim 2, ie, if you are not an American citizen or in fact DO believe that the Mayflower was sunk as the Mexicans bombed Pearl Harbor, I don't care if you're Mario Andretti-good and knowledgeable about driving--no vote, the converse of which is that BASIC voting rights--ie, President, governonr, Congress, etc.--are all still open to you if you, like me, don't know how to drive, but a prop on turning on a red arrow is off-limits until we actually get behind the wheel and learn

@Man-O-War:

NO VOTING TAX; that IS unconstitutional and unfair, the only limiting factor is if you understand what you are voting for; in a democracy it is your right to make informed decisions (keyword INFORMED, hence my issues raisesd) and so to tax that right and, by extension, perhaps make it inaccessible to the people is unfair--folks should NOT have to choose between bread and who leads their nation for the next four years.



And at EVERYBODY, since this has been raised tim and again and now *I* am sick of it, as THIS IS NOT IN MY PLAN:

OBIWAN'S IDEA FOR A NEW REPUBLIC OR DEMOCRACY DOES NOT INCLUDE AN IQ QUOTA OR LEVEL OTHER THAN PAST MENTAL RETARDATION.

Thank you.

As with any thread involving obi, I haven't read any of the discussion - life's just too short ;)

But I read this recently and thought people might found it interesting - apparently, there are studies showing that you're more likely to vote for somebody if their name starts with the same letter as yours, perhaps because you unconsciously feel they're more like you. So in the 2000 US presidential election, people whose names began with G were more likely to vote for Gore, and people whose names began with B were more likely to vote for Bush. Makes you wonder about the reliability of the voting process for determining the will of the peeps...

@hopsyturvey, that must be the people with a low IQ that obiwan won't let vote in his new republic. They wouldn't fit into his IQ quota.

@ hopsyturvy:

Where did you read that?

@ trip:

"if I was king of the world, I'd make these the criteria for voting:

1. Highschool graduate/GED/Graduation from trade school, ect.
2. Employed/Pay taxes.
3. Not on Welfare/Gov't assistance"

Just as well you're not king of the world then, you self-righteous middle-class asshole.

Why the hell should people recieving social security be denied the right to vote?

@ obiwan:

It's a bit cruel of you to deny Mario Andretti the vote. Are you saying he's some sort of retard?

I think it was in 59: http://www.amazon.co.uk/59-Seconds-Think-little-change/dp/023074429X

If I was King of the World, I wouldn't let people vote. I'm the motherfucking King, dammit, what do they need to vote on?

@ashen_shuggar:

Alright, for the last time, in all caps because now the leve of misunderstanding my point is apporaching Nietzsche levels of "oh, for the love of...WTF, MAN?!"

I DO NOT SET AN IQ STANDARD FOR MY REPUBLIC OTHER THAN BEING ABOVE MENTAL RETARDATION WHICH IS NO DIFFERENT THAN THE US AS IT IS SO STUFF A;LL THIS TALK OF PLATO-LIKE IQ REQUIREMENTS!

Seriously! How the HELL does that keep coming up when I've made it so clear that is NOT in my plan!

@Jamiet99uk:

...

See above.



Interstingly enough, guess what's on TV now?

Star Trek, the episode "Patterns of Force," bettern known as "The episode where Kirk and Spock fight an entire race of Nazis."

A sign of what happens when the mob mentality in democracies is encouraged...or just a harbinger of more eugenics-based comments to be hurled at obiwan?

Well...Leonard Nimor wearing a Nazi uniform...the irony is at least enough to get us all through... ;)