One of the most vital factors in deciding the quality of life for each individual person in any given society is how that society is being governed. While everyone's actions taken to affect their current situation plays a significant role, fact remains that large areas in terms of security and possibilities remain beyond the individual's control and has to be acted upon by the masses for change to take place. In other words, the masses control a significant part of the individual.

On the surface this may seem like an acceptable trade-off. After all, the alternative is to give individuals the power to rule parts of the masses. But it does suffer from one perilous flaw which has great potential to be detrimental to our well-being and, by extension, the progression of our species. Namely, it assumes that the masses hold the most balanced, educated and well-thought-out opinion when important decisions that directly affect others' lives are made. An assumption which could hardly be any further away from the truth. What I am about to present is the first few steps toward rectifying this issue and putting an end to the tyranny of the masses.

1. The political party system needs to be terminated and replaced by direct democracy

Corrupt politicians can be found behind every corner, and every day a politician presents new results from a biased research institute to further their agenda and deceive the easily impressionable parts of our populations. However, most people are aware of a politician's desires and means of gaining and maintaining control of the popular opinion. Their role as politicians make them unreliable and untrustworthy by default, as the people's best rarely correlate with what's best for the politician's political career. And to mention the nightmare example, the United States of America, worst case scenario is that you eventually end up with two parties that do everything they can to impede each other's progress and maintain status quo. Essentially leaving the people with the choice between two dictatorships that won't make much significant change. If any at all.

A revolution may be needed for a change of this magnitude to take place. But if the politicians truly care for the people whom they claim to represent, this change should be able to transpire peacefully.

2. Voting rights need to be earned

As we all are aware, the present ruling in most western countries is that all citizens have the right to vote regardless of their education, critical thinking skills and intelligence. To put it bluntly, we are giving the most unintellectual and unknowing persons equal power to the persons who take the time to truly analyze the problems that a society faces when deciding on the solution. In a world where intelligence can be measured and most education is free or easily accessible to those who want it, this is simply unacceptable. To put this in perspective, you can't join the army if you are not disciplined and you can't be a policeman if you are blind. So why would you be able to state your opinion and make decisions on issues that you don't understand or are incapable of understanding?

For this reason, you should not be able to vote if your capability to form an educated opinion on the matter at hand is deemed inadequate.

3. Voting rights need to be measured

Disqualifying the individuals who have been proven unfit to govern the society is only the first key reform concerning voting rights. The second logical step is to make the value of each individual vote proportionate to the value of its voter's opinion. As an example, a person who has done more studies and gained higher results on Intelligence quotient tests than average should be given a more valuable vote to reflect his higher probability of voting for the better and more reasonable option. Of course, there will always be exceptions where a highly qualified person votes for a less beneficial option than the average voter, but you can never make rules based on exceptions: The end result in large is what matters.

For the betterment of humanity, following these steps should be the logical route to take from here. And quite frankly, the only reason that we haven't already made progress in this direction is because of all the power that's been unfairly distributed to people of lesser intelligence: People who pull us all down by clinging on to their one way of feeling equal to people of superior intellect and decision making skills.

Today we have the means of identifying those individuals. The sooner we act, the sooner we will prosper.

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Would never happen. Regardless of any points you could make, people dont like change. This would result is riots you wouldn't even begin to imagine.

things that look good on paper hardly work out the way its intended.

I could support such a system but only if swearing allegiance to Satan becomes part of the requirements.

This might seem to work in theory, but realistically it will fail almost immedeatly and in the process degrade us into a totalitarian government.

There is a reason we still have democracy, its cause smart people haven't figure out better ways that work out for the people who are actually being governed. Which is the pupose of government.

Frankly a terrible, terrible idea. It sounds like the ludicrous plan that the Thai military junta was floating around to make some people's votes count for more (a lot more) than others, based on their value to society.

In theory it is sound, but then the question is, how to we determine value in a way that doesn't end up with terrible classism?

Fact check; "Democracy is a form of government in which all eligible citizens are meant to participate equally – either directly or, through elected representatives, indirectly – in the proposal, development and establishment of the laws by which their society is run."

ALL citizens and EQUAL participation are key in defining the term democracy. Tampering with that is a dangerous road to travel, however goodhearted such tampering might be. Throughout history we've seen governments trying to "improve" democracy by either excluding people or by restricting their ability to participate. That is what's happening in Russia right now. It's also happening in the western part of the world. The same could to some extent probably be argued about Obama's recent use of executive power on immigration reform, however goodhearted his intentions might be.

Tampering with the fundamentals of democracy is not the right way forward.

I don't agree with you that voting rights need to be earned. It's a God given right for every human being on this planet to have the ability to participate equally – either directly or, through elected representatives, indirectly – in the proposal, development and establishment of the laws by which their society is run. It's as fundamental as life itself.

Does this mean demoracy is perfect? Absolutely not. But it's the best possible system there is.

Instead of having issues with democracy itself as the framework of how to run a society, we should focus on how to fix the structural glitches that exists within our western democratic societies. Glitches that leads to extreme poverty, intolerance, low education among many people etc. Those are the problems that need to be fixed, because they are the biggest threat to the beauty of democracy.

Some of my suggestions (for the USA):

1 - Completely separate the House from the Senate. ie, the House is fully decided at Federal level, Senate at State level. House membership sized increased massively (say, 1000 reps to start off with, increases as population does).

House: Elections every 2 years, gerrymandering eliminated, alternative vote system (everybody gets primary and secondary vote, if the winner doesn't accumulate over 50% of primary votes, loser's secondary votes are counted until somebody reaches 50%), forced open primaries, low barriers to entering ballot, party names removed from ballot, universal suffrage (including felons, even those currently serving). Potentially extend voting rights to non-citizens, if they have perm. res. status.

Senate: 100% controlled by the states. Term length, term limits, means of election (or appointment), controlled by the states, who can vote, etc. States can even say that their senator must defer votes to the state legislature for certain issues, etc.

Senate requires double-qualified majority to pass (both 50% of Senators who represent 50% of population), control over Federal tax legislation. House requires simple 50% to pass, control over spending legislation. House requires 60% vote to veto Senate tax bill, Senate requires 60% double-qualified to veto House spending bill. Any other legislative matters handled in regular 50% fashion from both houses (still double-qualified for Senate).

President may offer spending bills to the House, but not tax bills to the Senate.

For Presidential elections, remove electoral college and term limits. No mandated open primary for party nominations, but low barriers to entry for others. Two rounds of voting: first is proportional representation across all candidates. If no one receives 50% of the national vote, second election 2 weeks later with the top four candidates with alternate vote counting system.

With these reforms, lobbying just became a hell of a lot more expensive, and parties a hell of a lot less influential. More power to the people through the House, more power to the States through the Senate.

It works in the Swiss Cantons and in some institutions. But it would be a total mess trying to run the US in that way and such a system also opens up the way to mob rule.