The trouble with judging ideas by their proponents is that there could be confounders. For instance, if intelligent people are more often in white-collar jobs than blue-collar, intelligent people might tend to favor laws benefiting white-collar workers even when they’re not objectively correct. Even selecting for benevolence might not be enough—maybe benevolent people tend to go into the government, and people who are benevolent by human standards are still highly ingroup-biased. Then you’d see more benevolent people tending to support more funds and power going to the government, whether or not that’s a good idea.
The trouble with judging ideas by their proponents is that there could be confounders. For instance, if intelligent people are more often in white-collar jobs than blue-collar, intelligent people might tend to favor laws benefiting white-collar workers even when they’re not objectively correct. Even selecting for benevolence might not be enough—maybe benevolent people tend to go into the government, and people who are benevolent by human standards are still highly ingroup-biased. Then you’d see more benevolent people tending to support more funds and power going to the government, whether or not that’s a good idea.