A timeless question.<p>"Who shall mend the ship of state?" - Socrates, by way of Plato, paraphrased by Bertrand Russell<p>> Plato's Socrates compares the population at large to a strong but nearsighted shipowner whose knowledge of seafaring is lacking. The quarreling sailors are demagogues and politicians, and the ship's navigator, a stargazer, is the philosopher. The sailors flatter themselves with claims to knowledge of sailing, though they know nothing of navigation, and are constantly vying with one another for the approval of the shipowner so to captain the ship, going so far as to stupefy the shipowner with drugs and wine. Meanwhile, they dismiss the navigator as a useless stargazer, though he is the only one with adequate knowledge to direct the ship's course.<p><pre><code> [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_State
</code></pre>
Plato was not a huge fan of democracy, perhaps because Socrates had been put to death by the Athenian democracy. He defined five regimes[2] of which Democracy is the second most degenerate and says that Oligarchy (rule by the rich), Timocracy (rule by land owners), and Aristocracy (rule by a privileged class) are all better than Democracy, which from his point of view is essentially rule by the mob.<p><pre><code> [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes
</code></pre>
Yet Plato's Republic, his own design for a Utopia, is essentially an totalitarian state[3] explicitly based on a lie[4]. North Korea is much closer to Plato's Republic than any country in Europe. It doesn't say much for philosophers as potential rulers that they first declare themselves to be the only suitable rulers, and then immediately propose an unworkable Orwellian nightmare of a society.<p><pre><code> [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_political_philosophy
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie#Plato's_Republic
</code></pre>
Ever since, the question, "by what means may wise rulers be selected?" has remained open, with no alternative method reliably producing better results than democracy, which itself has failures. Notably, democracy turns out to be worthless if the government controls all information or can manipulate election results. For this set of problems, fair voting systems, rule of law, and freedom of speech seem to be necessary ingredients for the long term success of democracy. However there is another failure mode, for which no solution is known: democracies are susceptible to demagogues. Demagogues have popped up on a regular basis to trouble everyone from ancient Athens[5] and 20th century America[6], always peddling much the same brand of inflammatory and largely baseless rhetoric.<p><pre><code> [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleon
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
</code></pre>
The article's suggestion that baby boomers skewed perceptions resulting from being born in a rare window of almost unprecedented prosperity has been suggested as a general pattern:<p>> “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” ― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain