pack order
there's a pretty interesting study out. it goes kinda like this. you let a bunch of people interact with each other. their task is to assess everyone's ability in a particular field of expertise. invariable everyone over-estimates themselves. that's not too surprising. we are egotistical creatures after all. also not surprising is people are really good at evaluating others who are not as good as they are. and those who are just a little better. what's unexpected is that people are horrible at evaluating others who are better. they know they're better. but they have no clue how much better. it's kinda like people can count up to their own level. and then everyone else is equivalent. yeah, okay. so what? heh. one of the conclusions they reached is that a democracy is incapable of picking good leaders. voters' ability is a sort of bell shaped curve. so the bulk of the voting populace picks candidates at random. the extraordinary candidate is lost in the random noise of the crowd of candidates only a bit better than average. there's not a large enough pool of voters competent enough to identify him as the best. so we're doomed, right? heh. not quite. the other side of the coin is a democracy won't pick a candidate that's below average. so that's something. a very average bland something. wee.