From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Sat Aug 10 2002 - 14:07:55 MDT
Technotranscendence wrote:
> however, face competition under market anarchy where under your
> "demarchy" -- I only put it in quotes because I believe someone else
> used the term many years before you to mean something different (perhaps
> "sophocracy" would be more accurate: "rule by the wise")
The original term was "aristocracy," which means "rule by the best."
Plato famously advocated a system much like this: where the wise
philosophers would form a caste that would rule over the rest of society
as custodians.
Of course, once you realize this, it's easy to see that a new class system
based on IQ would suffer from many (though not all) of the same problems
that aristocracy had when the aristoi were understood to be those with
"good breeding."
I'd argue that even the natural inclination of private citizens to promote
a class system on this basis would have negative consequences for
everyone, in the same way that racism would have negative consequences
even in an anarchocapitalist society. In particular, class systems
promote misinformation and mistrust between classes. History has shown
that even highly intelligent people can fall prey to these
misunderstandings.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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