Knowledge and intelligence actually exist much more concentrated in some individuals than in others. The high school GED test does an adequate job of discerning which individuals are most deficient and which are most generously supplied. I do not suggest GED tests are the ideal filters; only that the 10% highest scores would greatly improve the average voter’s quality of judgment. The rational first step in implement improvements is always an accurate diagnosis of conditions.

Sometimes an accurate diagnosis suggests the problems are insoluble, or that the patients are going to die. The accuracy of a diagnosis is unrelated to personal desires for particular outcomes. It’s just that desirable outcomes are difficult to rationally implement without an accurate diagnosis.

If you do not suppose voter incompetence is the main factor that has given Western Democracies their corrupt, bloated, and inept governments, do you have a plausible alternative explanation? What reason do you have to suppose fools are ever going to elect wise men instead of knaves? Doesn’t history argue that fools only vote for those they like? Fools would rather embrace pleasant delusions than painful actualities. Fools do not like wise men, who generally insist the fools should honestly confront the painful actualities. Fools like knaves that tell them they are not fools and that once in office they will take from those who have the most and give to those who have the least. As I said, baring some system of disenfranchising the fools, I see few grounds for optimism.

I refuse to argue the point about every citizen having an equal vote and political voice because in modern democracy universal suffrage is a basic principle. What would be ideal is if all voters were educated about all issues but that is far too difficult a proposition even in light of the fact that public education is also a basic tenet of modern democracies.

I would also argue that some of our most successful people who have made major contributions in business and society are not high school graduates and never were very good in school. So I cannot agree with your criterion for determining whose vote should count.

As for the citizen being the servant of the state, that was very true in the Soviet and Fascist systems of government. It is a stretch to state that is the case in most democracies today although in China it appears to be a principle of their version of communism.

Modern civilization has now evolved to the stage where the citizen is the servant of the state, instead of the state being the servant of the citizen. The notion of elected public officials being public servants is now an ironically cruel hoax. Every modern state would sacrifice every last one of its subjects to preserve its own institutions. The future of human civilization is at risk because there are clear conflicts of interest between the present ruling class and the general population. Baring intervention by non-human agencies, or total collapse of industrial society, I can see few grounds for optimism.