1085

Rousseau was an early advocate for democracy, which of course means the idea was quite controversial. People rightly pointed out two major problems. First, most people in society are idiots and won't know how to vote. Second, because of the huge wealth disparity, rich people can just more or less control everything anyway, including how poor people vote through propaganda.

So Rousseau conceded that democracy will really only work under two conditions. First, everyone needed a rigorous philosophical education to ensure they understand what voting is for, and that they know to vote for the general interest, not their own personal interest. For example, even if you personally like eating beef, if it is in the general interest to get rid of beef (because it destroys the environment, etc) the citizen should still vote to get rid of it. Second, and this is the big one, there can't be any rich people. No one can be rich enough to "buy" anyone else.

Anyway, we never really did these two steps, which is why people vote more or less at random, for mostly stupid reasons that the TV told them to get mad at.