Every citizen takes a standardized test when they reach the age of majority, preferably Raven's matrices. This test would be used for scholastic and career purposes, aside from government.
A representative body of 150 people is randomly selected from those in the top 0.1 percent every N years. The IQ test filters for intelligence, obviously. Random sampling serves as an anticorruption mechanism, increasing the cost of influencing leaders before they are elected. It also strongly reduces the incentive to game the test. And unlike most other election procedures does not maximally select for those most interested in fame and power.
These representatives are given very, very high salaries so there is significant incentive to take the position.
1. IQ tests are very good proxies for intelligence. Despite decades of ideology-based objections, the relevant fields have reached consensus that IQ does measure a general factor of intelligence, and it is a good predictor of future scholastic and career ability.
2. My system isn't an alternative to perfection, it's an alternative to democracy which is decidedly imperfect. Intelligence is likely a better proxy for pro-social attitudes than the ability to navigate political institutions and then trick a bunch of people into voting for you.
3. Again, compare this not to perfection but to what we currently have.
4. Training for IQ tests has very limited returns. But as I specified, the test will be used outside of politics, too. In fact its most common use would be by academic institutions and employers. Because of this, most people will have incentives to train to whatever extent possible. Thus the test becomes slightly less G-loaded and slightly more a test of conscientiousness, but any plan to train up a bunch of corrupt lackeys would have very poor expected value.
5. Again, compare not to perfection but to what we actually have now.
Although I believe there is value to the IQ metric, I agree with you that raw intelligence should not be the way we choose our governors/reps/etc.
As if democracy didn't have enough struggles, telecommunications (and especially television) have forever changed the way that the people choose their representatives. Superficialities are much more important now than they were pre-1960, and everything we get is filtered through the media outlets that control the television broadcasts; if they dislike someone, all they have to do is repeatedly re-broadcast a single unflattering yelp and that person's prospects are done. [0]
Who writes the test questions? Who administers the test? Who grades it? How random is the random choice? Who determines what cutoffs to use as the population size changes?
You'll start to see gaming of the test, where those with resources either get involved in the administration or devote their time to perfecting their offspring's change of getting in that top 0.1 percent. Eventually, those without resources will be wholly unable from achieving scores necessary to be in the top 0.1 percent. You'll have an entire class of people who will either be part of government or feasibly able to join as members die, retire, or finish their terms. They will self-seclude as they have little to gain from interacting with the 99.9%.
As I specified above, it's vital that the test be used outside of politics, too. If employers and academics institutions rely on the test for admissions, this would provide pressure to keep the test bound to IQ. If we further specify the test must be symbolic like Raven's Matrices, I think there is a good chance we could keep the test g-loaded.
As for your second point, random selection is a vital to mitigate that possibility. A publicly verifiable source of randomness would be ideal.
I'm guessing a lot of minorities and immigrants would be left out of representation. Who decides what's on the test, how do we decide that it's fair and not used just to justify that people conform to marketed opinions? How does this test help against those that are disenfranchised and without privilege? How do we challenge those with privilege and power and their positions and goals?
Your argument is that this proposition is valid notwithstanding the very real power struggle in society. Why would one want to even put someone through something as humiliating as an intelligence test to determine their rights. It reminds me of the reading tests during segregation to suppress black voters. If we would have implemented this test then, tell me would they have a fair chance in society?
At least from my perspective, the government is fair game for everyone. Already our best and brightest are working for us, however power is incredibly corrupting. The issue isn't the voter, it's the system that seeks to suppress and deny the will of the voter. The voter should have full responsibility, just like someone who decides to take unsanctioned drugs
Why would you put someone through something as humiliating as a college education, and their final exams? Presumably you want a measure of their knowledge and capability. In my system, no one has the right to become a representative. It's a job like any other, that requires non-standard admissions procedures (namely random sampling) to avoid corruption. I'm unsure if traditions could be enshrined to make my system stable, as it doesn't have a fiction as beautiful as the people's will to justify its existence. But I do think it's worth considering.
Maybe there could be 2 parallel branches, like the House and Senate, one of which uses this random sampling / testing system. The other uses something resembling a popular vote.
You do realize this is not an "election" procedure, right? "Election" implies that some group of people is choosing their rulers or representatives. Given that this obviously disenfranchises the vast majority of the population even more than now, I must infer that you don't consider the popular will a factor that should play a major part in government.
Also, even granting that IQ tests are as reliable as you assume, you still need to justify a few things:
- Why do you assume the comparative advantage of these extraordinarily IQ people is to spend time as a representative, rather than in academia, science, business, non-elected positions in government, etc? I'm not convinced that the 0.1% most intelligent people make a particularly better voting body than the top 1%, or for that matter the top 15% percent, which certainly includes the majority of our elected representatives today.
- It's been argued that rationality and intelligence in the sense measured by IQ tests are not particularly closely correlated, so I'm not sure why extreme quickness of thought should be privileged in particular for representative positions. Related to that, there seem to be a large number of high-IQ cranks that I wouldn't want to trust the fate of an entire nation to -- for example, Mencius Moldbug.
- Do you have any particular reason to believe that the high IQ members of this body would vote for the good of the entire nation, rather than in their own interests (granted, you've already privileged them with your proposal to use IQ tests pervasively in society)? 0.1% of the US is 320,000, and though your mechanism might prevent the small number of representatives at a given time from enriching themselves to Third World-dictator standards, I don't see any reason they wouldn't grant all 0.1% highest IQ people a $1m per-annum -- it would only cost $320b/year, less than 10% of the 2016 federal revenue.
This mostly sounds like a technocratic wet dream to me -- you could have Robin Hanson rule the U.S with no opposition at all.
I like the random selection part as anti-corruption measure. But the top 0.1 percent IQ filter is not very democratic. You can train for those (if you have the time and money) and there will always be some cultural bias built into the test. It's uncomfortably close to excluding a whole race or sex.
I've long thought an entirely random selection "civic house" in legislative branches would be an interesting check or balance to the current interests and status quo. Make serving for legislature something like jury duty in that you just randomly might be asked to do it for a few months. In the age of internet communications you can presumably do it in such a way that the random selectees will not see much impact on their "normal lives" and jobs... in fact that could be a useful selective pressure against certain forms of politicking ("I can't listen to this filibuster all night, I have to actually work in the morning.").
Every citizen takes a standardized test when they reach the age of majority, preferably Raven's matrices. This test would be used for scholastic and career purposes, aside from government.
A representative body of 150 people is randomly selected from those in the top 0.1 percent every N years. The IQ test filters for intelligence, obviously. Random sampling serves as an anticorruption mechanism, increasing the cost of influencing leaders before they are elected. It also strongly reduces the incentive to game the test. And unlike most other election procedures does not maximally select for those most interested in fame and power.
These representatives are given very, very high salaries so there is significant incentive to take the position.