Armstronglivs wrote:
Fat hurts wrote:
Mencken is wrong. There is wisdom in crowds. The majority usually makes the right choice.
If the president were chosen by a democratic process then we would have had president Gore and president Hillary Clinton.
The problem with the presidency is not democracy, but lack of democracy.
There is wisdom in crowds? Nuremberg rallies come to mind. There's never been a lynching without a good crowd. A crowd easily becomes a mob. Trump's support base is another crowd.
You're right that America's democracy - or lack of it - is part of the problem, but that problem is a reflection of the divisive tribalism that afflicts the country today.
What makes a democracy work is not the "wisdom of a crowd" but the wisdom of individuals who know how to work together and with those who think differently from themselves.
You just gave a really great definition of "wisdom of crowds". It doesn't mean that groups always make better decisions or that democracy always works. It just means that in the aggregate, crowds make good decisions more often then individuals. And that indeed is why democracy works better than dictatorship or oligarchy.