Democracy is a brilliant idea. The notion of free citizens electing the best and the brightest people among them as leaders is one of the best notions that the human race has ever had. It’s a pity that the results are so often disappointing, especially since the chosen leaders so seldom appear to be the best and the brightest.
Citizens have noticed this. About half of them don’t even bother to vote, and those that do tend to elect candidates who are, to put it mildly, uninspiring and sometimes actually criminal. Why is this? Plato had an answer.
Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher with authoritarian tendencies who lived in the very first age of democracy, which didn’t last long. His case against democracy was simply that ordinary citizens are too greedy and selfish, and not very smart,
and we choose representatives just like ourselves. So Plato proposed that a few superior people should take on the difficult task of governing the rest. Plato’s ideal Republic was based on a system of rule by wise philosopher kings who governed for the common good.
The idea of philosopher kings may seem like a bitter joke right now. But forget the king and focus on the philosopher, the idea that those who govern should be the most intelligent and thoughtful leaders who can be found.
Right now, politics is wide open. Anyone can be a politician. Every other responsible profession demands rigorous training, an examination of competence, and a code of ethics. Politicians need no qualifications: they get into power simply by making themselves popular, and that was Plato’s whole complaint about government by and for the people. Popularity is not the same as wisdom, or even common sense. The Chinese, like the ancient Greeks, valued knowledge highly in their elites and had a system of rigorous exams for public office that lasted for almost a thousand years.
An ideal democratic system would require appropriate qualifications for political office, from the lowest to the highest. At the very minimum, those who govern a society of three hundred million people, with global power, should have enough intelligence and training to understand the economic and social sciences, to know at least something about the physical sciences, and (perhaps most important) to understand history. They should be able to speak at least one complete sentence in their own language without a teleprompter and be acquainted with at least one foreign language. It’s a complicated world out there.
Qualified candidates would proceed to the election with their educational and career achievements, as well as their psychological health scores, made public, so that voters could make an informed choice.
Frankly, I think this is a brilliant idea, worthy of Plato himself. If we hurry, we may just have time to put the tests in place before candidates start lining up for the 2028 election, if there is one.
