I've been thinking about a video essay that explores philosopher Tongdong Bai's proposal for combining democracy with meritocracy, and I thought the central question was worth discussing.
The basic argument isn't that democracy should be abolished. Instead, it asks whether every political decision should carry equal institutional weight when some decisions require specialized knowledge, long-term planning, or technical expertise.
The proposed system would keep:
- Constitutional rights
- Universal suffrage
- Local democratic elections
- A popularly elected lower house
But it would also add a meritocratic upper chamber composed of individuals selected for demonstrated competence, experience, and public service. The idea is that this body would help safeguard long-term national interests, minority rights, future generations, and policies that may be unpopular in the short term but beneficial over decades.
Of course, this immediately raises the harder questions:
- Who decides what "merit" actually is?
- How do you prevent experts from becoming a self-perpetuating elite?
- Can any institution objectively measure political wisdom?
- Would such a chamber improve governance—or simply replace democratic accountability with technocracy?
The video doesn't present meritocracy as an easy solution. If anything, it argues that the real dilemma isn't whether capable people should govern, but whether it's possible to identify "the capable" without creating an aristocracy under another name.
I'd be interested in hearing what people think.
Is democracy strengthened when expertise has a formal constitutional role, or does legitimacy ultimately require political equality—even if it sometimes produces worse outcomes?
Posted by StainlessTiger8
6 Comments
Meritocracy is bad because it’s based on an evaluation system that is self-reinforcing instead of self-correcting. Democracy works because what is considered desirable changes and any meritocratic system will inevitably chase whatever objective it is reinforcing even if that is no longer desirable. That being said an effective way to do this is to have a body appointed by the democratic group to achieve the objectives outlined by them and thus be both self-correcting and merit based. Personally, I think a good hybrid would be adopting a City Manager system on a national scale. A contracted executive appointed by the legislature to achieve goals set out by said legislature.
I’d be less worried about a self-perpetuating elite and more worried about who is choosing them
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/01/why-replacing-politicians-with-experts-is-a-reckless-idea#img-1
Probably not
This is terrible.
The optimal solution is a mixed member proportional system combining the house and senate.
Every State is give two senators who are directly elected.
The representatives are picked via a national proportional vote based on party that uses senate election as count already picked up seats when deciding total seat total.
There are two elections, one during midterms and the other during the presidential race. Half stands for election during each.
The presidential race is a ranked choice national race with two stages.
Senators are the senior members and are the only members that are allowed to sit on committee or hold leadership positions.
This guarantees small population areas have representation in the crafting of bills.
Large population areas are guaranteed dominance over the approving of legislation.
By making sure only the people directly elected hold the highest position prevents cliques or Liz Truss leadership. It also forces parties to coordinate and form coalition to hold key positions so minority parties aren’t rewarded for trolling elections. Keeping minority parties happy forces majority parties to take minority party interests when picking senator candidates.
representatives are expanded to cover their loss in power.
Cabinet and supreme court seats require the senators and representatives to each have greater than 50%. Justices have to have been a federal district judge for 10 years and approved by their peers before nomination. Cabinets are picked by the presidents party without presidential approval.
It strips small states of their blocking power and makes it so the average voter only needs to track two or three candidates during a national election
I’ve said this before, but the question I think the sub will have to sort out eventually is whether the purpose of government is to be good outcomes (growth, material standards, ease of business, safety regulations, life expectancy, sustainable fiscal position) even if the populace and citizenry disagrees (liberal outcomes, but the individual serves the state),
or whether the purpose of government is to be representative and reflective of the people by democratic consent, but has the right to be wrong, stupid, rent seeking and populist (the state serves the individual as an agent, but creates illiberal outcomes).
Is the state more important than the individual in such a connected, interdependent society that’s beyond the role of “military protector” and “civil arbitrator”, or not?
Educated elites are capable of making better policy decisions than the masses, but they often don’t do so, either because of their own self-interest, or because they try and legislate outside their area of expertise.
In other words, I’m skeptical of any kind of meritocracy or technocracy that’s not restrained by the public.