"<i>“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,” says Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke Talent Identification Program, which collaborates with the Hopkins center. Wai combined data from 11 prospective and retrospective longitudinal studies, including SMPY, to demonstrate the correlation between early cognitive ability and adult achievement. “The kids who test in the top 1 percent tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs, and federal judges, senators and billionaires,” he says.</i>"<p>I'm telling you, the Chinese were onto something with the imperial examinations.<p>What we do is set up a test focusing on IQ and aptitude taken at, say 10 years. Based on that, we segregate everyone into castes; say, manual laborers, blue collar workers, white collar workers, and professionals. Then we focus subsequent instruction for the particular caste: professionals and white collars get pre-college material, blue collars get trade schools and the rest get baby-sat to keep them out of trouble. Further tests can provide finer gradations, particularly important for the higher castes, to identify that 1% that will become the leaders. Those are given all the advantages they need to reach their potential without having resources sapped by sheer wastage.<p>Careers and such are determined properly, by aptitude and intelligence, and not by stupid crap like which class the hot girl is taking.<p>The system has a number of other advantages: we can ditch the goofy democracy for everyone thing, since the majority aren't going to have valid opinions anyway. The result is less stress and more happiness for everyone.<p>[Edit] It just occurred to me that Plato would probably think that this is his <i>Republic.</i> Except that we could make this actually work.