Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign …

— The Lessons of History P. 78 Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. Education has spread, but intelligence is perpetually retarded by the fertility of the simple. A cynic remarked that

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“The problem with democracy,” we explained to a friend yesterday, as she looked at her watch and hoped her phone would ring, “is a matter of scale” …

– Bill Bonner Diary May 12, 2016 The problem with democracy,” we explained to a friend yesterday, as she looked at her watch and hoped her phone would ring, “is a matter of scale.” “We see the New England town meeting as a model,” we explained. “It’s a democracy that seems to work plausibly well.

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More people are going to want money paid out for a lot longer… from an account that has no money in it. No amount of financial smoke and mirrors will prevent the system from collapsing under its own weight

Palm Beach Letter April 2016 There are no real assets in the Social Security trust fund. Now, add a couple of more problems to the mix. Social Security has had two problems from the start. The first is retirement age. When the government designed the program in 1935, it set the retirement age at 65.

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The main problem in any democracy is that crowd pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whup up their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy – then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece

Hunter S. Thompson The main problem in any democracy,” wrote Hunter S. Thompson in a lucid moment, “is that crowd pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whup up their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy – then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor

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