Andy

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/20/clerk.earl.ap/index.html

How odd is it that for hundreds, even thousands of years, people were
born into positions of power without earning them?  I guess there is
still a lot of that going on, but thankfully not as much as there once
was.


		
Patrick Haller to Andy

My guess is that it's because:
1] Someone has to lead (leadership is beneficial to society)
2] We're all more or less the same when we exit the womb
3] Training someone is expensive for society

So we trained people, but only a few that we could afford. Genetic
bias meant that the current ruling set chose their kids to be the ones
society trained. Occasionally some uppity people came along and killed
off the current ruling set. Sometimes this was good, sometimes it was
bad. ;)

I think the big advantage to representative democracy is that it's
easier to remove the bad apples. Add in Montesquieu's idea of a
tripartite balance of power and you have to be very diligent over a
long period to shift a democracy.