@light I don’t think it works. If you don’t have democracy, you have some form of tyranny. It can be benevolent and effective for a while, but at sine point the rulers lose touch with the ruled. Eventually terrible consequences (crushing oppression, bloody revolution) result. Experts are made stupid by their pride in their purported expertise. The way out of this is institutions. The details of how we rule ourselves matter much more than broad-brush labels I think.