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Dan,Where did we leave off November 9?Oh yeah, what might better qualify voters?Your answer supposed property ownership might be a good qualifying measure. Then, inexplicably, you rhetorically wondered whether all those people who stupidly purchased houses with sub-prime loans really are the people I want to be ruled by.

You wrote: " All kinds of people who signed for mortgages they couldn't possibly afford, for various reasons.  Leaving aside the question of whether or not it was their " fault, " do you want to be ruled by people who make such decisions? "

But, such people are property owners. Maybe the better qualification property-wise, is to be ruled by people who own their property and do not owe on it. If so, when an owner sells without buying outright new property, he or she would lose their vote. And, to borrow-to-eventually-own is no qualification whatsoever.

Is that what you mean?It's interesting to wonder about what the deal was with property ownership back at the end of the 18th century, when there wasn't entry to eventual ownership provided by vast lenders. In fact, there is a history of ownership, isn't there? Moreover, it was a practice to seize property and claim ownership.

Anyway, the problem of being ruled by a majority that aggregates the different capabilities could point in the direction of wondering about how specific capabilities might represent better qualifications for having a 'portion' of ruling say-so.

My opinion is: such capabilities would be demonstrable via some kind of assessment, but, I'd be surprised this would correlate with property ownership, except with respect to capabilities---in effect--- " about " property ownership.

Given those specific capabilities, whatever they are, I suppose one could structure a political philosophy and political pragmatics (or utility,) around the vaunting of those capabilities. There's a possible rub. it might turn out that capabilities and principles manifested on behalf of property would focus upon concentrating property in only the hands of those who can buy property outright. There might be no reason to expect property-as-a-principle to also be guided by altruism.

Of course, like the founders, we could re-institute property ownership as the main basis for taxation. That would, promptly, get us back to the libertarian, conservative, social darwinist utopia!

***

That's not such a hard problem. The " optimum " is the best, and the best

is the philosopher king. Alas, there never has existed a philosopher king via which we could observe the self-evident " best " in character. 

Yet, there are any number of ways to characterize the best, even ways which clash head-on with each other.Ayn Rand? Winstanley?Other collisions?

***This would be the case were we to work through what kind of education the citizenry might endure so as to become better voters.Which values would you want to lay as a foundation, even if not every last man could be, in effect, educated to them?

Alternately, if you had a magic wand, what would the ideal citizen's knowledge be vis a vis either being governed or being a part of the ruler?Order alone needs the folk to be mostly compliant. What needs rebels?

One of the odd features of all the Tea Party stuff, is that the co-option of 'sacred' revolutionary rhetoric isn't dependent on anybody's revolutionary enlightenment. Ironically, The tea party gist is deeply post-modern! ...appropriate text-message sized clips from Jefferson, while not being able to articulate the case of Jefferson's genius? 

More broadly, our experiment in democracy comes to be re-translated to be an experiment in conservatism, and the founders are celebrated as uber-conservatives. Huh? Is it possible to be that ignorant? ...to not 'get' why the original beat down was waged against a king and tories?

***It's curious that the unconscious factors in the current climate seem to bring to opposition two aspects, one being the fearful negative about 'having one's freedoms erased,' the other being 'how much better it would be if we all were more obedient to the truth of America. This strikes me as a complex riven with the unconscious bad/good father. 

regards,