sure. unfortunately reality is very complicated! 1/

still, the motivating question here is “why democracy?” if your worldview is something like what @mattyglesias.bsky.social confesses at the top of the thread. so far, the responses (not by Matt) have been it’s a failsafe against really really bad technocracy. 2/

particularly given actual experience of what follows when the demos rejects a longstanding establishment, i’ve argued this might not be so compelling a case for democracy. 3/

but i think it turns on this question of the distribution of successors, when technocracy fails sufficiently to impose a radical break despite technocrats’ pandering and manipulation, is there a reasonable shot something good results, 4/

the whole view strikes me as entirely indefensible if the ex ante expectation is something *worse* (which experience does i think largely suggest). 5/

if democratic revulsion leads to worse, then under technocratic utilitarian ethics (where this thought experiment begins) we should prefer authoritarian technocracy that the demos is not permitted to overthrow. 6/

if you have a more sanguine view of the distribution if successors, then a case can be made for this view. if successors are typically bad, but a bit better than what they replace, you could support this version of democracy under a pessimistic “worst except all the alternatives” philosophy. 7/

you’d be hard-pressed to make any kind of enthusiastic, positive case for this version of democracy unless successors following democratic revulsion tend positively to be good. i find that a hard case to make, but YMMV! /fin