Elon Musk thinks Mars should have a government. He thinks it should be a direct democracy. 

This, right here, is why it shouldn't. 

Because of this paragraph of text: 

Scarcity occurs when people want more of something than there is. When that happens, the price goes up. When the price goes up, there is more money to be made selling that thing. People who want money start figuring out ways to make more of that thing. So they can sell it. Then there is more of that to go around, and the price comes down. 

Did you understand all that? 

Then congratulations, you understood the concept of second and higher order effects. Your IQ is at least one standard deviation above the mean. 

Also, you are outnumbered five to one at the voting booth. 

By people who think you can pass a law to make things free. 

Lotsa luck, smart guy. 

So, what if we apply the concept of second (and higher) order effects to democracy itself? 

What will happen if we go to Mars and set up a direct democracy, with one equal vote for every person, on every issue? 

Well, what happened in America? 

Democracy worked great... until it didn't. 

You see, early America had an IQ filter. If you live on the east coast, you can still see it today. Look outside your window, it's the big blue wobbly thing. 

Back in the days when the height of travel technology was stringing up bits of cloth at clever angles so the weather could push you around, it was kinda difficult to cross. 

You kinda had to have your shit together in some form to make it. One of the most common forms of this was probably having an IQ at least one standard deviation above the mean. 

People like that can vote with an understanding of how things work. And if they are voting for a person instead of a policy, well, that person is going to have to campaign for their votes by talking about how things work, because they are people who can understand that. 

Those were the first-order effects of the great blue wobbly thing (not to mention the wilderness on the other side). 

But what were the second-order effects? The effects of the effects? 

Well, it turns out that if you get a whole bunch of reasonably smart people in one place, they still screw up and have dumb ideas a lot, because most ideas turn out to be dumb, and you have to discard a lot of them to get to the good ones. 

But when someone has a good idea, and it actually works out, that filtered population does something different. 

Instead of ignoring the man with the good idea, because he talks like a fag and his shit's all retarded, they say, hey, that's a good idea. And they imitate him. 

And somebody else gets to work on the next good idea. 

And pretty soon, you have a really big pile of great ideas. 

Which is even better. It makes things really awesome... yay democracy! 

Except...

Some of those really great ideas are really great ideas for making it cheaper and easier to cross an ocean. And for taming the wilderness on the other side. 

Can you see it? Can you see the problem? 

Because the Americans didn't design their filter, didn't plan it in, didn't maintain it with vigilance, the second order effects of the filter... destroyed the filter. 

And now California is full of people who think you can make things free by passing a law. 

And there is no way to use the political process to dig yourself out of that trap, because every person who understands the trap you are in will be outvoted by five people who think you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded. 

You have to shoot your way out, or escape to a frontier which still has a filter on it. 

So what do you think will happen if they implement direct democracy on Mars? 

Well, everything will be great at first. And they'll come up with lots of clever ways to move cargo to Mars from Earth. They'll have to. Their very survival will depend on it. 

But one possible cargo that it will be cheaper to move to Mars from Earth will be... retards. 

You know, people who think you can make things free by passing a law. 

And then Mars will become the kind of society where you need permission to launch a rocket, and you can't get it without an environmental impact study and the ritual kidnapping and molestation of a very confused seal. 

Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Or, we could try something radical and admit that all men are not created equal. It might not give us a warm fuzzy feeling of righteousness in our tum-tums, but we'd be able to have nice things again. 

Some kinds of bigotry are load-bearing. This is the real reason why our ancestors were bigots. Democracy worked in ancient Greece because they were sexist, racist, classist, and snobby, and wouldn't allow women, foreigners, poors, and that one weird guy, who wore a cape and smelled like french fries, to vote.

We forgot this because for a little while, maybe a hundred years and change, the big blue wobbly thing did our bigotry for us. 

Now we're going to have to chose between facing some unpleasant truths, or kicking the can down the road again for our descendants to deal with. If they can.  

I wonder what population average IQ is required to to reject feel-good philosophies and choose the former.