Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

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Judging the benefits of anything only on the financial bottom line is risky. Many extremely valuable things are valuable because they are cheap to the point of irrelevancy. Which is why it is a valid question to ask whether the resources are worth it.

> For example, a democracy can only function if citizens are able to process complex information to base their voting decisions on.

It has worked pretty well for the last 2,500 years with voters possessing extremely questionable education. The main issue is whether a democracy has a culture of being graceful in both political victory and defeat.

> Education is correlated with health and longevity.

Correlation is not causation. Wealthy people tend to be healthy, long-lived and well educated. It might not be the education as much as having enough wealth for leisure and health.

> It has worked pretty well for the last 2,500 years with voters possessing extremely questionable education.

Early democracies often restricted the right to vote to specific parts of the population.

Also if anything has become clear in the last 5 years it’s that educated people are much less likely to be deceived by false populist promises.

> Also if anything has become clear in the last 5 years it’s that educated people are much less likely to be deceived by false populist promises.

Agree with the basic premise that the main political division is not between “right” and “left” but “educated people” (ie progressive college-educated) vs “uneducated people” (the working classes.)

Disagree that it’s clear who is right. We will have to wait 20-30 years to see. (Personally I think the working classes are wiser than the progressive elites, but that’s just one opinion..)

In political matters the ones with the guns are "right."

The last two years have shown that the educated portion of the population was just as easily deceived by false populist promises, and just as easily provoked into channelling their frustrations onto an undeserving scapegoat.

> It has worked pretty well for the last 2,500 years with voters possessing extremely questionable education. The main issue is whether a democracy has a culture of being graceful in both political victory and defeat.

I would like to hear more about this democracy that has lasted 2500 years please.

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