Geniocracy

Thank you for accepting and giving your opening arguments. Looking forward to a great debate!Contention I. Political gainsA. Money out of politicsIn the current state of politics, those who have the biggest chequebook are those who most often win elections, or those with the largest chequebooks are able to buy elections completely. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama was the person with the most money raised, a staggering $745 million USD, where his main opponent only raised $368 million USD. And the winner of this election was Barack Obama, by a margin of 192 electoral college votes [1][2]. The proportion of money raised by Obama to the money raised by McCain was just over two dollars raised by Obama per McCain dollar. Interestingly, the proportion of electoral votes for Obama to McCain was, surprisingly, just over 2 electoral votes for Obama per McCain electoral vote. We can deduce from this information that the amount of money raised nearly directly correlates to the amount of electoral votes that a presidential candidate will acheive.Now, you may be asking yourself "how would a geniocracy really fix this problem?"When a person is running for a position of power (e.g. the Secretary of Agricultural position), it is expected of them that they actually know about the topics that they will be faced against. However, as we can see from the Presidential election, people will not actually vote for the people that understand the issues that they will face, but instead who gets the most funding. In a geniocratical style government, the person that understands the topics and can solve the issues that these topics bring with them will be the person in power, where a person that is more of a figurehead or a puppet will not be able to acheive leadership. Monetary funding will not be what is the deciding factor, rather the intelligence and true knowledge of the individual will be."How is this a good thing?" would be a question that I would anticipate from my above argument.The truth is, we need actual leaders in a society, not a puppet that the super rich (Koch Brothers, I am looking at you) are able to control and will control. This will lead to an increase of personal freedom for the people because they are able to have positive changes that will benefit them, as opposed to a business that does not care for them or their beliefs.B. Reduces gridlockIn the current political system, extremist thoughts are able to make their way around to the average person and corrupt their minds because people vest an unnecessary amount of belief into non-reputable sources. An easy example is that nearly a quarter of Americans believe that global warming is not an issue, and this is easily attributable to sources that don't rely on fact, rather money from rich donors [3]. When we allow only intelligent or those with high knowledge to seek governmental positions, we are allowing likeminded people to pass laws that are based on the truth. In the example of climate change, 97% of climate scientists agree that it is a real thing, so we are able to have a large pool of scientists that would be making a positive impact [4].When we allow the facts change policy instead of misconceptions, we are opening the world to a better future. This is simply because the truth will shine above all else and will allow people to make the correct decisions.Contention II. Upholds the ideas of representative democracy.The idea behind a representative democracy is to have an educated group of people make decisions that the general electorate either: a. doesn't understand due to lack of intelligence or knowledge, b. can't be bothered to care about, or c. cares about but doesn't feel exerting energy voting on these issues. P1. A representative democracy is made because of a lack of intelligence in the general public P2. A geniocracy is made because of a lack of intelligence in the general public. C1. A geniocracy and a representative democracy uphold the same values and try to solve the same problem. Those that are against geniocracy generally believe that a democracy is better, and that the US's version of democracy is a better idea. But when you actually look at it objectively, geniocracy and representative democracy are not too different.Now, how is this a good thing?Well, in a geniocracy there is a law that mandates that there be a general intelligence level for a person to be able to run or participate in government. In a representative democracy, there is no such law, and thus anybody is able to run for a legislative body. In fact, because of this disparity in a law, there have been some people that have won state legislative seats, not because they are actually good politicians or know what they are doing, but because the area is an echo-chamber for suppressed knowledge and thoughts. A perfect example of this is Saira Blair, an 18 year old that was elected to be a state lawmaker. If we had an intelligence requirement imposed, then we would have a much better and much more wise canididate than her [5]. ConclusionAs we can see, there are many benefits to having a geniocracy. It helps solve the problem that representative democracy was trying to solve, but in a better fashion, and there are major politican gains that are to be had when we have a geniocracy. [1]. https://www.opensecrets.org...[2]. http://www.realclearpolitics.com...[3]. http://www.gallup.com...[4]. http://climate.nasa.gov...[5]. http://www.people.com...