From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Mon Aug 05 2002 - 16:07:42 MDT
Anders Sandberg wrote:
While I like demarchy (it is a great example of how a democracy doesn't
have to look like the current system) I really wonder if that IQ
selection would be advantageous. The core strength of a demarchy is that
it provides a less biased sample of citizens to represent than the
current crop of highly self-selected people. Some biasing measures are
likely necessary to make the system workable, like only using citizens
that want to participate, but what does high IQ correlate with? It
mainly correlates with academic achievement, and while I would love to
have more well educated politicians it is worth remembering that
academic achievement is no evidence for sanity or competence. I would
rather believe that it is better to have a spread of ways of thinking
and good decision support (IMHO the biggest unsolved problem of
demarchy).
### IQ up to 140 correlates well with not only academic achievement (in the
sense of doing well in school) but also with financial success, success in
virtually any profession you test with independent and occupation-specific
methods (police, accounting, management, teaching, etc.), and it negatively
correlates with antisocial and destructive behavior (wife-beating, child
abuse). There is a substantial body of peer-reviewed literature on this. We
can plausibly postulate that a similar relationship pertains for performance
in the design of laws. We must remember that only a very small minority of
the gifted are ivory-tower academics, and the vast majority are productively
involved in activities in all walks of life. A demarchy would then draw from
a much wider group than the power-hungry lawyers who represent the current
candidate pool for politics.
I would want a system with an upper chamber (top 10% of volunteers drawn for
the parliament), allowed to propose laws, and a lower chamber (the rest),
who would accept or reject the proposed laws but not independently design or
modify them. With term limits, automatic sunset clauses on all laws, and
financial oversight of the upper chamber by the lower one and vice-versa,
this could be a dynamic and responsive system, virtually free of vested
interest influence.
Anders, if you join, you get the upper chamber, me the lower, and then we
need only one more convert to have the First World Demarchy, Not
Incorporated. Donations welcome.
Rafal
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