@amerika @arzachel "What we have" is failing. The definition of democracy was changed late 19th century to be "what we have" in response to rhetorical pressure from socialism and communism. (See "vaccine", definition of, for a similar recent incident.)

@sub0 @arzachel

I can only partially agree.

Democracy, the political arm of egalitarianism, morphs just as egalitarianism does into a final form like Communism.

The West has been failing for some time, and the rise of democracy among those who have read Plato and Aristotle is just one part of that.

@amerika @sub0 @arzachel any society that refuses to recognize that som people are better than others is in trouble.

I'm not saying arbitrary measures like where your ancestors lived 1000 years ago or who your parents were, I mean real measures like "is this person moral?" "Is this person useful?" "Is this person intelligent?" "Is this person wise?" -- some people are just objectively better than others. Any system that refuses to accept that fact is going to be inferior to a system that does.

On the other hand, it's equally as bad to have a dictatorship of the meritorious. I'd argue that's where we got the technocratic dictatorship that led to the COVID lockdowns.

@sj_zero @arzachel @sub0

Meritocracy is difficult because it rewards some abilities, not the whole of the human.

We want good people.

Since most of those traits are mostly heritable, breeding them in a special caste makes good sense.

@sj_zero @arzachel @amerika @sub0 Yes, but there has to be a place for stupid people. We have a lot of them, it's not their fault and they need to be able to support themselves. We need to destigmatize the work they're capable of doing, because we do badly need low- and semi-skilled labor. We need a thousand garbage men for every one doctor of philosophy.

@sweasel @arzachel @sub0 @sj_zero

A caste system also does this.

Remove the wealth transfer and they can afford everyday life too.