4 ms·

Democracy (as in, majoritocracy) is mainly a way to keep people from fighting each other (because they know they ll be outnumbered). Wisdom was not the primary

• yesenadam 8y ago
  Something we don't do any more, for some reason, although it might be a good thing, is ostracism. There was a regular vote in ancient Athens on who should be ostracised - expelled from the city for 10 years. Ostracism, Plutarch says[0], "was not usually inflicted on the poorer citizens, but on those of great houses, whose station exposed them to envy...every one was liable to it, whom his reputation, birth, or eloquence raised above the common level...ostracism was not the punishment of any criminal act, but was speciously said to be the mere depression and humiliation of excessive greatness and power; and was in fact a gentle relief and mitigation of envious feeling, which was thus allowed to vent itself in inflicting no intolerable injury, only a ten years' banishment. But after it came to be exercised upon base and villainous fellows, they desisted from it..." [0] in his life of Aristides. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism