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Originally Posted by Nodrog
but it depends what kind of system youre talking about. There are almost as many problems with having unelected officials as there are from having elected ones, but if you had a strong codified constitution and an educated populace then you could probably get by with some kind of heriditary aristocracy for a few hundred years until apathy ripped it apart.
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Yeah. I'd probably favour some form of bureaucrat government. It'd require a lot of mending and nudging on the legal side, but it'd probably be interesting going through the incentive system regarding such. Max Weber has some interesting texts concerning government bureaucracy. I'm not convinced though that heriditary would be the plausible purpose - perhaps some form of a board elected by a given unit of experts. The issue there might arise would be the incentive to concentrate power, but apart from that it would sound plausible.
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Originally Posted by Nodrog
That most people vote based almost entirely on egocentric and short-sighted criteria is true (the recent smoking ban arguments probably being one of the more blatent examples of this), but this is probably caused by a lack of education
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The lack of education is a problem that won't cure itself. Also, in addition to it, the lack of interest is a huge issue. A few hundred years ago people were willing to die for democracy (cliché), nowadays almost half of them won't even vote on elections. I believe it's more of the latter. Only if people are interested in working on it, they'll be interested in thinking about it in depth and on long term. The current wellfare societies are probably too good for democracy (ie. complacency).
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Originally Posted by Nodrog
As I said though, the problems are complex and mutually reenforcing - you cant really isolate one factor and call it the cause. You have an electoral system which is built around superficiality and ignorance, a mass media which promotes superficiality and ignorance, and an education system which teaches people to be superficial and ignorant.
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Even with all the superficiality and ignorance, there's still a large number of people who are able to critically think and work in with the system. This would imply that the issue isn't necessarily only the mass media, and education, but also the lack of interest and general complacency, as well as the issue regarding the elections as a huge institution and a single voter as a tiny entity. Median voting theory would imply that actually all power is focused on one single voter at a time, but that's probably way far off from practise. With figures of voting activity on the decline, and levels of education on increase, there seems to be a negative correlation. Although, as mentioned in the original, many other factors affect the voting, and are also a persistent and increasing problem of national democracy. Part of the inefficiencies may be blamed on lack of education (and the fault mass-media may have would also imply lack of education and media critisism), but the interest in voting probably can't.