Democracy
I'm sure you can guess the sorts of reactions I've received when I tell people I'd rather we had something other than a democracy (Well, constitutional monarchy but saying that would often lead to me explaining what it is so I don't bother).

Most people react without even thinking, just assume I'd rather we were communist or had a fascist dictator and will immediately start ranting.

The more intelligent people I converse with, generally those I consider friends, will bother to ask what I'd prefer. My answer? "Not really sure. Meritocracies seem interesting but I don't know enough about how they work in practice (Singapore is the only one I know of). Ultimately though I think it'd be something that couldn't be described by a single existing word."

But why don't you like democracy?

"I think governing by popularity is retarded when you consider that most people fail to even remotely understand most things and are expected to vote somebody in (who also wont understand most things all that well...) to act on their behalf when they probably know very little of relevance about the person they are voting for, don't understand our political systems and often don't have any consideration of what might happen if the things they "want" come to pass. Then we have party politics..."

/rant over

:edit: You're going a bit far Monty. Significant numbers of people have lots of good ideas for how to do things better but that's because they have expertise in whatever it is they are commenting on. If we put those same people in power things wouldn't be much better because suddenly they have to make decisions about other things.

Mind you from what I can tell the large majority of politicians are cunts but I think it's only because of they're trying to keep people that can't/won't think happy to get their votes. If they didn't need to do that the same people might not act in such a cuntish way although that's probably wishful thinking.
( Captain V, Thu 23 Apr 2009, 9:08, Reply)