What if students were given responsibilities of the government?

Not until these "students" show that they can act like rational adults.


If you all keep acting like a bunch of entitled jerks no one will ever take you seriously.

Why are we relying on a few hundred old white men in DC to come up with every law, regulation, program funding, etc

You forgot the 43 African American members.
11 Asian's.
89 women.
30 Hispanic.

a reply to: noonebutme

Again, I'm not talking about your local community college students getting barely passing grades, who drink beer more often than study books.

I'm talking about academic achievers in top schools in the nation. People that already have degrees in fields and are seeking more education and hands on experience.

a reply to: JAY1980

Yeah I didn't say all were old white men, it's just a majority.

Also, is that YouTube link showing students aiming for masters and PhD degrees from ivy league universities? If not, you're not answering my question just like a lot of others

Not to say my idea if perfect or should be, just that I hope people at least understand my idea in the first place.

a reply to: ketsuko

I'd assume people in the top of their fields come from all over, but ivy league schools have a higher concentration of motivated students. I could be wrong, hence why I am asking others opinions

Many seem to be voicing the ills of millennials and referencing all manner of things that are deemed unintelligent etc, but I'm aiming to talk about those we might be able to deem as more intelligent than average, by ratio.

If I'm wrong, let me know.. I'll be certain to look up the statistics.

a reply to: deadlyhope

Again, why Ivy League? Do you know who has been teaching them?

I wonder what kinds of ideas their little indoctrinated brains will churn out.

If you want to understand the groundswell of support behind Trump, and the revolt against the European elites represented in things such as the UK’s upcoming “Brexit” referendum, just take in this poster for an upcoming lecture at the University of Edinburgh, where a distinguished Harvard professor will make the case openly for why people like her should have more power over everyone else:

So her kids are being taught all about why we need more "legitimate coercion" by the state. So you put all her little dictators in a room and they will come out with ideas centered around forcing all of us to go what they want.

I'm so in love with this idea already ...

I would also like ask you to look up how many of our current Washington elites have degrees from Ivy League schools. That might also answer why I am sort of wary of this fascination you have. The elite are the elite and the Ivy League caters to them. You are again dipping into that closed pool.

a reply to: ketsuko

It's not really a fascination, it's an idea and one that I believe could be great or terrible. Answers within this thread are somewhat giving me a better hypothesis but not entirely.

Why shouldn't intelligence be an aspect of general governing positions? I'm certainly not saying iq should be the only measure, I'd much prefer an altruistic person of average iq be in office rather than a genius level psychopath, but still.

Who would you have fix our nation anyways? The handyman example wouldn't work well because while he might survive better and use tools well, that doesn't translate to balancing a budget of trillions of dollars and thousands of facets.

they would come up with great ideas, and then big money would come in and kill them all

a reply to: deadlyhope

You could fill the Whitehouse and Congress full of Cats and dogs and get a bigger result than you do now!

a reply to: deadlyhope

What I gave that example for was an example of how academics are pretty well stuffed with theory, but theory does not always work when faced with reality. The handy man was well versed in reality and provided the practical balance to make the theory work.

In the end, the academic would not have survived on his own with his pretty theories, and the handy man would not have survived on his own either. They needed each other.

What you are proposing is a governance structure composed entirely of empty theory which is basically what we pretty much have already. You have no practicality to balance it out, and my example was meant to show you that empty theory is flawed, sometimes fatally so.

originally posted by: deadlyhope
a reply to: everyone

You just linked a post about under graduate students, Im talking about ivy league schools. Show me the bratty kid from Stanford, MIT - these are the people I'm pointing at. People smarter than the general population. People more driven and achievers, people wanting to go the extra mile.

Obviously it would be based on performance and achievement and not just attendance alone, since sometimes rich people get their kids into such schools.

I'm a grad of a very elite university (MBA). While I agree that the average kid at an elite school is smarter than the average person, many of them are lacking in common sense. Also, many of them are in fact bratty, entitled, and spoiled.

Being book smart is not necessarily the same thing as having wisdom and life experience. Sometimes the latter two trump book smarts any day. Some of the sharpest people I've ever met don't have formal educations, but a wealth of life experience.

a reply to: ketsuko

Who has that practical knowledge?

Who knows exactly how to run a country in a way that reduces negative things and increases positive things?

European countries run a lot of things better than America, which is actually literally and subjectively measureable, however we have an entire partisan party against that form of progress soo....

originally posted by: deadlyhope
a reply to: ketsuko

Who has that practical knowledge?

Who knows exactly how to run a country in a way that reduces negative things and increases positive things?

European countries run a lot of things better than America, which is actually literally and subjectively measureable, however we have an entire partisan party against that form of progress soo....

Ah, but you were talking about ideas. If we are looking at individual ideas, and you want experts in their respective fields, then it should be no trouble to find actual people who actually work in those very fields in both public and private sector who would be able to temper the empty theory with real-world practicality.

My husband, in fact, does this. He is an expert of sorts on-call with an industry lobbying group, an SME (subject matter expert). That means when the group meets with regulatory about proposed regulations and his area of expertise might be useful, he can get called into session to discuss proposed regulatory changes from an industry perspective.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not all about writing legislation to make more money for business, but it is also about how and why some proposed theoretical changes would be impractical for various reasons. At the last one, they were animal safety reasons in fact.

And actually European countries DO NOT run things better. They are simply smaller, so the problems they have in their regulatory structures do not seem to be as big of an issue as they would be in a country of our scale. Trust me, my husband deals with regulatory from Europe, all of the countries there, they are not "better run" only much more regulated.

a reply to: ketsuko

Well I was talking about the type of people whom might be better to come up with ideas than the general population. The example of your husband is an obvious situation where he is an expert in that field.

My solution is free and questionable in how sound it is.

However, unless someone has ran a city, county, state, etc and dealt with social aspects and economics, there's not bound to be as many that are experts in this field. I suppose some mayors and governors could be consulted with, but what they come up with might be applicable to a very specific population, while University students would simply be theorizing what would benefit the nation as a whole.

But for the record, I'm not sold on this idea or anything, definitely still a question - and plenty of answers have provided some faults in the idea, though no one has yet given any counter ideas, so I still maintain it as a reasonable idea until presented a logical idea which is better.

a reply to: ketsuko

European countries don't have less crime per capita? Less pollution per capita? Less incarceration per capita?

Maybe I read biased websites but I thought I have looked up reasonable articles and such. Per capita is a ratio, not just an overall number. Hence why I believe they do things better, when using per capita comparisons.

originally posted by: deadlyhope
a reply to: ketsuko

European countries don't have less crime per capita? Less pollution per capita? Less incarceration per capita?

Maybe I read biased websites but I thought I have looked up reasonable articles and such. Per capita is a ratio, not just an overall number. Hence why I believe they do things better, when using per capita comparisons.

I would submit that their governments have little to do with that. You are looking at culture now.

Do you honestly believe it is government's place to teach us culture? I thought that had to do with parents, faith, neighborhoods, and other social mechanisms. Government has little to do directly with that, and in fact, the greatest social programs of our time do not seem to be making an impact. In fact, the degradation of culture seems to have began with the inception of those very programs.

Now, your examples would seem to argue that perhaps this is correlative more than causative, but either way, it does suggest that direct government action has little to do with social/societal ills except inasmuch as stable country fosters a potentially content and prosperous populace. It could be that we set up the former and discover cultural decay and proceeded to the point where it won't matter much.

Have thousands of easily manipulated kids running the government and interpreting law as they see fit?

Sounds like a great idea.

a reply to: ketsuko

If we are talking influence based on how someone might be raised, religion actually seems to be a major aspect. The worst crime in the world is the country with the most Catholic members in the world. USA has one of the highest Christian bases in the world as well.

Highly religious, uneducated populations contain the most criminals I believe.

Highly religious, educated populations are still higher crime rates than less religious educated propitious.

originally posted by: deadlyhope
a reply to: ketsuko

If we are talking influence based on how someone might be raised, religion actually seems to be a major aspect. The worst crime in the world is the country with the most Catholic members in the world. USA has one of the highest Christian bases in the world as well.

Highly religious, uneducated populations contain the most criminals I believe.

Highly religious, educated populations are still higher crime rates than less religious educated propitious.

And some of the most murderous and brutal regimes in history were oppressively irreligious, too. What is your point?

I am telling you that in order to fix the culture which is what ails society, you cannot legislate it from the top down. Government does not make people moral/ethical. I believe we have laws against murder and rape right now and yet, somehow, those crimes still happen.

In order to fix those things in a person, you have to start at the bottom, person to person, one at a time.

Your grand society of thinkers in their precious ivory towers are not going to create the peaceful utopia from the top down. It has been tried: in China, by the Khmer, in the USSR, and other places like them. Each time, millions are sacrificed.

a reply to: ketsuko

So I'd actually wonder if smaller government, giving states and communities more sovereignty would create a generally less apathetic populace and start to cure some of the ills we see today?

You'll see quite a few of my threads on here advocating for smaller government. I may like aspects of socialism - big government is not one of them.

Do you believe cutting back on the Fed, and giving cities, States and such more rights and ability to govern themselves would cause more people to be active, and help solve some issues?

a reply to: deadlyhope

Yes and no. In some places it would work very well. There are plenty of places where people still remember how to take care of themselves sufficiently to be invested enough to keep things going. Then you are also going to end up with a lot of Detroits.

Our culture has broken some down to the point where they are dependent and they are poorly educated partially as a side effect of their own apathy and poor choices and partially become they've been governed by those who take advantage of that and who have used that apathy to their advantage in stripping down the system to the point of collapse to enrich themselves.

And what happens when a large community implodes and sees its prosperous, well off neighbor?

No, this is not be accident I don't think. People who are not capable or interested in governing themselves must be governed. You remember that picture I posted of the Harvard gal talking about "legitimate coercion"? Yeah, consider that scenario, people's lack of ability to control and govern themselves because of willful ignorance and lifelong dependence and apathy (this has been an ingrained culture for generations for some) ... and think about it.

Those who cannot or will not govern themselves need to be governed, forcibly if necessary, and they hope the rest of us will go to them for our own protection. Then we become dependent for a different reason but dependent all the same, and the elite remain in absolute power, but now, they no longer have to pretend to cater to us.