I'm not sure I understand to which of my musings your conjecture is directed. Are you saying that without sufficiently many honest and competent people we cann

I'm not sure I understand to which of my musings your conjecture is directed. Are you saying that without sufficiently many honest and competent people we cannot have great government because we need those people to run the government or to choose it? I think you're saying the former and also maybe taking the position that all we really need to do to fix the present situation is to elect enough honest and competent people. I don't fully agree with either of those points (I think there are ways we could employ technology that would greatly mitigate the damage caused by incompetence or malice of government officials), but also I'd point out that the common failure of our current system of government to get honest and competent candidates elected is itself a failure of government that has room for improvement.