I theorize that the actual reason democracy ‘works’ is because the actual information to run a government is coming from elites, just that instead of a single unaccountable elite (a dictatorship), voters can express preferences to stop the absolute worst behaviors by the elite. (except, uh, all the times they fail to do this)
This was my background assumption. That’s why I kept the examples to legislators instead of postulating a voting public. I’m assuming you want to elect legislators rather than solve everything with direct democracy.
And I agree that democratic election of legislators is more like “keeping the devils in check by throwing out the worst” rather than true election of the best lawmakers. But repeatedly throwing out the worst can bring us to a tolerable equilibrium of quality.
We might be able to do better with Futarchy, which extracts information from elites more directly (while extracting preferences from voters by having them directly vote on which values the government should optimize). But I consider that beyond the scope of the question; here I’m interested in splitting up the problem of good legislation into (a) selecting a highly competent, but otherwise representative, legislative body (this part is not within problem scope; solve separately) and (b) designing good mechanisms for how these legislators select laws (this is the problem I’m interested in).
This was my background assumption. That’s why I kept the examples to legislators instead of postulating a voting public. I’m assuming you want to elect legislators rather than solve everything with direct democracy.
And I agree that democratic election of legislators is more like “keeping the devils in check by throwing out the worst” rather than true election of the best lawmakers. But repeatedly throwing out the worst can bring us to a tolerable equilibrium of quality.
We might be able to do better with Futarchy, which extracts information from elites more directly (while extracting preferences from voters by having them directly vote on which values the government should optimize). But I consider that beyond the scope of the question; here I’m interested in splitting up the problem of good legislation into (a) selecting a highly competent, but otherwise representative, legislative body (this part is not within problem scope; solve separately) and (b) designing good mechanisms for how these legislators select laws (this is the problem I’m interested in).