An editorial by John W. Campbell
Utopian voters
Judging from the general shape of historical trends, it looks as though Governments, like living things, are operational only so long as they are in dynamic equilibrium. That the first thing any group setting out to establish a new government must recognize is that government is a dynamic system, and that there can not ever be a secure, stable, dependable government, in the sense that all men, at all times, have always wanted —a government secure and stable in the sense that you can count on it to remain what it is.
The moment a government does become stable, dependable—something you can count on from generation to generation—it’s dead. It will henceforth and forever remain what it was ... but a new government moves in and takes over by revolution, conquest, or simple anarchy-disintegration.
Rome, which was one of the first large-scale true republics, showed the syndrome that has appeared in every century since; it started off with an oligarchy of wise citizens, the patricians. Citizenship was hereditary, of course. And genetics being what it is, that is unstable—but unstable in a random, not a dynamic, fashion. All the molecules in a mass of gas may be moving at ten miles per second—but it may be either an extremely hot gas standing still, with molecules moving at random, or a cold gas moving at high velocity. What government needs is not the instability of random effects, simple heat, but the instability of dynamic motion.
When genetics gets in its licks on an hereditary class, two things are happening: The Ins are, usually, a minority of unusually competent people, at the start. Random genetics will tend to level this group downward toward the norm. And, meanwhile, the larger group of Outs is continuing, by genetic statistics, to produce abnormally talented individuals who want, and deserve, position at the In level. Being abnormally talented, they're apt to work out ways and means of getting there, too.
Scanning Roman history—the Encyclopaedia Britannica does a good job of boiling the enormously complex picture down to a sort of cartoon outline, a caricature of the portrait, so to speak—you’ll find that mechanism at work through every stage of Roman development.
And you’ll find it at work in every other historical civilization, too. Specifically including modern history, in both the United States and the U.S.S.R.
No culture is going to work well if it seeks to suppress its individuals of high talent; it doesn’t pay to try to oppress men who are smarter than you are yourself. You can enslave someone who is stronger than you are, or more numerous—but things are going to get into extremely bad trouble if you try it with the individuals who are smarter than you.
A government can work, and work well, which denies the vote to 80% of its people—provided that 80% is simply strong, determined, courageous, numerous, but stupid. That is, in fact, the situation that has obtained in each of the world’s historical periods of great growth and accomplishment.
However, if the system pushes so much as 1% of the brilliant, competent and determined down into the ruled group, and out of the ruling— that 1% will destroy the system. The 80% are stupid; a few brilliant leaders can organize their stupidity into a revolt that benefits only the 1%— or, many times, not even that 1% is benefited, save in terms of the deep, glowing satisfaction of "Vengeance at last!" as the whole cultural structure tumbles down to destruction. Samson, after all, was overjoyed to bring the temple of his enemies tumbling down about them, suicide though it was.
The trouble is that those who are not ruling are very sure that they could do a much better job—-and that they "have a right to" the things they want, and know they can never earn. They will, inevitably, blame the system, not their own failure to earn what they want, no matter how many times they see individuals who start beside them wind up far above.
The fool exists always, and the prime characteristic is that while you can readily make a wise man feel uncertain of his wisdom, it is absolutely impossible to make a fool doubt his wisdom. His every failure is someone else’s fault, or the evil influence of sheer bad luck, or ... he always has some answer.
Therefore, we have as observational data: All men believe themselves competent to rule. And while the wise and competent believe they are competent to rule, the fools are unshakably convinced of the certainty of their competence.
This factor alone will assure the instability of any government men ever seek to erect. The very nature of men assures a power-source to keep dynamic action going.
That power-source can either produce random action—sheer destructive heat—or can be channeled into progressive dynamic stability.
The thing that makes governmental systems explode is the accumulation of high-competence individuals in the Outs group. That’s far more important than the decrease of competence in the Ins group. No matter how incompetent a government may be, if there is no competent opposition, it will remain in power by simple inertia.
The New Testament tells of Herod’s effort to eliminate the threat of a high-competence individual among the Outs, by a technique that was popular during most of human history. Having heard that a new king was born, but not having any exact details on the matter, Herod ordered the slaughter of all boys who had been born in a certain period.
That approach to the problem had about the usual degree of success; Jesus had, of course, been moved out of the danger area as soon as the threat appeared. The generalization being, simply, that the really smart ones are always hard to stop.
The one sure way of guaranteeing that every high-competence individual will be brought into the Ins group is simple Universal Suffrage. The nice, simple, sure way of solving the whole problem ...
But it is, actually, a sure way to ruin the culture—again, because of genetics and statistics. No matter how you slice it, no matter how you define your terms, one half of the population must be rated as subnormal. You can establish a test so simple as "If it looks vaguely human, and is breathing, it votes," which anyone capable of protesting about things can pass—and still one half of the population is subnormal. You may pass all the laws you like—but man-made laws don’t affect the laws of Nature, and the statistical nature of genetics existed long before Mendel discovered the fact, and will exist no matter what laws are passed against the fact.
Any successful culture must be an oligarchy. The rulers must be a selected group. If a mass of solid propellant fuel is burned in free space, it produces an expanding gas-cloud that isn’t going anywhere. Only when it is confined, channeled, and directed will the energy available produce progress. A random system gets nowhere—and will, with perfectly predictable certainty, be taken over by a nonrandom progressive system.
Voters must be selected; the Ins must be selected.
But the method of selection must be one that is based on the individual’s own, individual, personal abilities and competences, and not on heredity ... save as heredity influences his individual abilities.
A while back, I proposed the test of pragmatic competence to earn an income in the top 20% as a test for the right to vote. This was hotly objected to—quite largely by individuals who did not realize that, in damning the "rich, greedy, selfish" people in the top 20% they were damning themselves.
Very well; let’s try another test procedure. We will, this time, make the test a simple use-vocabulary test. Any individual who can pass a use-vocabulary test showing a use-vocabulary greater than n-thousand words gets to vote, with no other requirement whatsoever, of age, sex, race, creed, financial standing, or police record.
Now the interesting gimmick on this test is that it is, flatly in contradiction to what it may appear to be, absolutely not an academic test. And many extensive studies of the subject by psychological testing groups has turned up the surprising-at-first fact that the magnitude of an individual’s use-vocabulary has no relationship whatever to his educational background. It doesn’t even have any marked correlation with his cultural background! It turns out to be not a linguistic test at all—but a mental-precision test in the purest sense. A brilliant German, Russian, Chinese, or Ghanian, coming to the United States and living here for a year may display a use-vocabulary approaching 40,000 words ... while a native born moron of thirty-five years residence here has a use-vocabulary of 4,000. Under the standards of our modern school system, moreover, the native-born moron may have a high school diploma—and the Russian may have grown up in a remote area of Siberia, and have no schooling whatever.