Especially since the video extensively goes over Hitler‘s plans to systematically ethnically cleanse the Slavs from Europe and enslave whoever else they deem worthy.
But it’s all “Hitler would’ve saved Europe”. Bitch about 35% percent of Europeans wouldn’t exist today if Hitler won.
It seems to me that system where a leader is directly evaluated by their capabilities is the most logical system of governance as opposed to democracy and monarchy. The latter is just rule by the royal family and leaders are determined by no criteria other than bloodline.
Democracy though, is currently the most popular form of government in west at least. But democracy’s flaws have remained unchanged since the time of its critiques by Socrates and Plato.
Their criticism remain the same; a large segment of people won’t always be educated or interested enough to cast well reasoned votes. And crowds of people are prone to manipulation, propaganda, coercion and group think. Which is to say people are often fickle and you can’t always trust popularity to determine a good leader.
It’s seems to me as if determining leaders via “tests“ solves this issue. Especially if the criteria the candidates are being selected on is elected by the values of the people. If the process of evaluation is well guarded, ie no cheating or nepotism then wouldn’t it always produce the most ideal leader without any room for deceit?
This obviously runs into the some of the same problems as democracy. The problem of test evaluators is essentially the same problem that democracy has with ballot checkers. Ideally the tests would be made in such a way where results will always be a clear number. And ideally there would be multiple independent evaluators checking they all get the same value. Yeah but of course like any other system it can only work through strict adherence to the rules which is maintained through incentives, will of the people and enforcement in a number of ways.
Candidates would ideally be scored by economic, tactical, social, intellectual, and moral metrics and as long as we develop tests that accurately test for those desired traits in a leader then it would logically result in the best leader in those aspects.
I’m obviously not advocating for solely using pencil and paper tests for this but maybe “field tests” where we could judge candidates on their effects in a certain field of evaluation, like their interactions with people. You might be thinking something like “how would a test to measure someone’s “morality“ even work?“ Given the technology we have we could probably develop a test to accurately measure an aspect of anyone’s morality. We can definitely make a system of determining a leader that is harder to trick than human nature.
Now, what makes a good leader is subjective and is constantly changing along with the values of the people which is why I think the criteria that candidates would be assessed on should be subject to democracy to a certain extent.
For example: the weighting of each aspect of a leader can be determined by democracy, what morality is and what it specifically entails could also be left to democracy to an extent, various tweaks and definitions can be held to a vote etc. This makes it so the people control what they want from a leader but they also get statistically the best candidate for what they want.
This system should always produce the most ideal leader for its people, something that always chooses the closest to a “philosopher king“ out of it’s population. This system makes it so that only the most capable are in charge and thus can be trusted with the most responsiblity and accountability, since ideally their performance should keep being assessed during their reign and being compared to other candidates every 5 years or whenever tests are being taken.
The problem of Goodhart’s Law (the problem that people will learn to perfect taking the tests instead of actually being proficient in the field) can be avoided if whenever tests are being held data collected from the current leaders reign is put into consideration with the other candidates. So that if they have proven to be a bad leader they will just replaced with a candidate with a better score. And the tests will need be changed each time year they are taken to avoid cheating.
“Machiavellian” is used to describe a cunning, conniving, fake or self interested person. But after listening to the Audio book of the The Prince I realize he was ”realer” than most of his contemporaries. Everything he suggests the reader to consider and do was already being done in renaissance Italy. He was just the only one brave of enough to write about it. He criticizes a ton of contemporaries in the book for constantly lying and putting on a fake face but he also acknowledges that it works a lot of the time. He says that there will always be someone who believes a lie. In a way he is more selfless than selfish since he writes the book despite knowing that acknowledging the truth will make him look less pious. The fact that people portray him today as a conniving rat despite his blatant honesty only proves his point. If he had not been honest and he didn’t write about the reality he lived in and had instead put on a pious persona like everyone else did, people today would not be calling others Machiavellian.
This is a dream that I had when I was a little kid but it stuck with me. I was walking down some steps in my house in the night but the stairs led me down into dimly lit cave. At the center of the cave was a wooden desk and a reading lamp. Sitting at the desk, doing paper work was a white haired man. He noticed me and stared at me with glowing yellow eyes, and for some reason I just knew he was the devil. He said something, I don’t remember what but I started to feel my hair literally lengthen like time was passing by and I felt a prolonged chill go through my entire body. Then I woke up. For some reason while I was experiencing this dream I wasn’t terrified. I was more curious. The chill didn’t feel like it was because of fear but it was just an effect his glare had on my body.