Cattell on democracy

Raymond Cattell had some interesting things to say about democracy. He acknowledged the advantages of democracy, with its open discussion, orderly progress and the importance of the individual, he also hoped that while democracy could help us find the goals (needs) of people by democratic vote, we could more successfully transfer the means of reaching the goals to technical elites. Cattell hoped that somehow society could lose its bias against judgments by technical elites, perhaps better defined as “selected bodies.” Cattell's interest was primarily in the sociobiological sciences and psychometric testing. People could be chosen through open, completely objective meritocracies, with great freedom to enter and leave.

Cattell hoped we could somehow find a way to measure votes toward more responsible individuals. Perhaps we should have a common tax paid by all, terminating at incomes under a low amount, so that the burden of taxation isn't on the above average people, who we need most to help solve our many problems, since unfair taxation keeps them from having children, while the below average have more children. Cattell tentatively asked: what if only tax-payers voted? This might eliminate the vote from the 10 percent who swing votes in their own self-serving, nonworking, directions. Alas, people believe that to question this is to question democracy itself. The man in the street thinks in terms of rich and poor when 80 percent of the population is neither.

As many philosophers have pointed out, the problem with democracy is that representatives can make a good living giving the people not what is actually good for them but what they want.  Cattell reminded us that Jefferson thought the Constitution could be revised every 20 years or so. Cattell is to be commended for thinking that democracy is not beyond improvement.