T he simple fact is, we don’t have the power to vote for these things. Even if the community votes to amend a constitution, accept a bond issue, or modify a school district’s budget, the citizens don’t have a voice in how that amendment is written or how that money is spent. We elect politicians to write our laws, manage the budgets, and make the decisions. This type of voting has failed to deliver. Our votes go into a black hole and nothing gets changed. Again and again, democracy leads to lowest-common-denominator government, government that is either incompetent or corrupt. How are incompetent or corrupt people going to improve education? If the knowledgeable and altruistic don’t take the reigns, the ignorant and greedy will hold government in a destructive feedback loop. Ignorant voters empower evil governments. Evil governments create ignorant voters. It’s the Dumb-o-cracy Death Spiral.
Why don’t we vet politicians like we vet air traffic controllers? Politicians are responsible for an entire nation, yet we have no processes to make sure they aren’t grossly incompetent or wildly ignorant. We need Meritocracy because Meritocracy is the system that finds, tests, and empowers the specific experts who are actually capable and willing to create effective healthcare or end destructive wars or fix our school system. We will never resolve social problems until we choose the right leaders. Meritocracy is specifically designed to choose the right leaders—the best among us—the ones who are willing and capable of fixing the key issues that we all want fixed.