The problem with universal suffrage is that the more technologically advanced a civilization becomes, the smaller the fraction of people there are in it with the native intelligence to understand how it works. When the majority of humanity was employed in whacking at the dirt with a pointed stick, and the height of technology was a slightly better pointed stick, anyone with a triple digit IQ could understand what was going on. Now, we have things like stock markets, the internet, transportation infrastructure, and the Linux kernel, but most people who vote are unable to conceive of these as anything but large piles of chocolate coins, or something else they can put their mouths. Because that's how the average monkey interacts with money. They stack the blocks, the research assistant gives them a token, they exchange the token for a banana. It's no good trying to explain to the monkeys what supply chain is, or how a trillion dollars worth of rockets can't magically be converted into a trillion dollars worth of bananas just because they're both measured in dollars, as if a six-foot man and a six-foot plank of wood were interchangeable. Finding a slightly different explanation, or getting the monkeys to sit still and really listen, doesn't really help. Because the problem isn't just that the monkeys aren't paying attention. The problem is that the monkeys are monkeys. Their brains simply don't have the developmental capacity to grow the neural connections they would need in order to grasp and manipulate the concept. In the long term, this is why universal democracy is doomed. Because societies that let retards vote will fail, and be replaced by those that don't. You may think that we, as a society, face a great variety of problems. We do not. We have only one. Retards. Every other problem we have is downstream from their inability to understand the consequences of their political opinions. But to fully grasp the implications of this, you have to understand that the definition of "retard" changes over time, as technology advances, because the IQ level required to grasp what's really going on gets steadily higher and higher. Eventually, the category "retard" grows until it includes the average person. This has already happened. Nick Knudsen isn't dumber than the average guy. But the average guy, the 100 IQ salt of the earth guy that's sitting on the next bar stool over, can no longer understand the modern economy. And this isn't correctable, because the problem isn't ignorance, it's complexity. You can't make Nick Knudsen smarter by telling him things. You can't even make him less ignorant, because the bare facts aren't believable to someone who doesn't have the framework to understand how they fit together. The people who understand what's going on are so much smarter than him that he doesn't even think they sound smart. He thinks they sound crazy.

Criticize all you want, but I don’t think Tomb Raider Lara Croft has ever looked better!

Today, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire. 
It's a ridiculous amount of money for one person to be sitting on and comes as countless Americans are struggling to afford food, housing, and health care.   We need to tax wealth – immediately.

Your car is German. Your pizza is Italian. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your movies American. Your shirt is Indian. Your electronic Chinese. Your numbers Arabic. Your letters are Latin. And you complain your neighbor is an immigrant! Pull yourself together.

STAR SAFARI “An interstellar scout ship travels the galaxy seeking out breathtaking uncharted planets to develop into the most exclusive, luxurious resorts the universe has ever seen.” Created with @grok @imagine in an hour. cc @WilliamShatner @BaronDestructo @MichaelShanks