"who would reject a thoroughly rational - and therefore ethical, egalitarian, ecological, etc. - form of governance?"

No values are rational.
From a purely rational point of view, there is not even a reason why we ought be allowed to live, let alone to pursue our dreams and aspirations.
Rationality and logic can only be applied over pre-existing (but irrational) values... over which there is no general agreement.

Back to square one!

Well, we know that the pursuit of reason has been responsible for the most deaths throughout human history so it's a bit of a non-starter.
However, it seems the failure of democracies is because a globalist elite are trying to centralise nations that desperately need to be decentralised.

Without the benefit of hindsight, selecting the wise is nigh on impossible.

Well, what do you know. An academic who wants a council of wise thinkers, academics of course, to chose who is to rule us. Can you imagine the catastrophe? You only have to look at some of the choices for the Nobel Prize to see how stupid academics are when let loose. Hell they even chose Obama.

Then a tirade about Trump, the only good choice the yanks have made since Reagan. Obviously he is worried some of the billions thrown over the upturned hands of academia may be thrown elsewhere, with a more switched man at the helm.

Then the bit about Trump not winning the popular vote. No mention that research conducted into just who voted, found some 5 million illegals, non citizens, not entitled to vote had done so, in an attempt to get Hillary elected. Amazingly, with the electoral college, it didn't work.

I suggest you hang on to your hat next time around Dr Mark Manolopoulos, even id Trump doesn't totally cure the illegals problem, you will be facing a landslide in his direction.

the quicker the swamp is drained the better. Dummy spitters who claim to reject fundamentalist religion and hold to the gw fantasy and then reject the will of the people. Lets see who we could have on his little dictorial panel Gillian Triggs, Obama, George Soros, Angela Merkel, Macron, Trudea?

As was once said.....when a society starts to become complicated you know it's going in the wrong direction and a war is inevitable

Mark:
Democracy is the worst form of government, but better than all the rest! Quote, unquote. (Winston Churchill)

Democracy seems to fail sometimes, because all of the people can be fooled some of the time, some of the people all the time, but never all the people all the time!?

I've read where 30% of us, understand economics, another 30% understand politics, and the remaining 40% understanding neither, with the latter deciding all elections!

Something tells me, things have got to get worse in the USofA. Before they get better.

Someday, not too far ahead in time, some Leader? A real one, not the current, I believe, big noting counterfeit pretender and six times bankrupt!?

Will stop trying to fool the gormless and just roll out the very Keynesian economics that not only dragged us and them out of the bottomless depths of the Great Depression, but ushered in a period of unprecedented prosperity!

And attacked and systematically dismantled by fundamentally flawed conservative idealogues, given that conflicted with their master servant based ideological imperatives, and unwound over the years with various versions of Reaganomics and Thatcherism!

That said, no other system guarantees human rights and accountability! And both at the same time.

I've heard it said by one well reported political figure, of far right persuasion?

That America wasn't a democracy, but a republic!

Go figure?

What's next coming from this disingenuous, vexatious Author's frivolous pen?

A theocracy? A dictatorship by another name?

And what's in store if we're ever foolish enough to allow dogma and ideology, to replace reason and logic!
Alan B.

But we have no wise elites.

These two essays describe why both democracy and "civilization (such as it was) have both inevitably failed.
The first essay was written prior to the inevitable collapse of the European communist states.
http:///www.beezone.com/da_publications/coopdoub.html

Plus other essays connected to the above reference describe the situation too.
http://www.sacredcamelgardens.com/literature/reality-humanity.php
This set of 100 or so brief summary points describe the situation we are in. http://www.dabase.org/notp1.htm
As do the essays featured on this site:
http://www.beezone.com/news.html

Meanwhile look at the bottom-feeding swamp-dwellers that now infest the White House in the USA. Of course many of runners "conservative" religionists were (and are) very enthusiastic about the orange-haired BLOB.

At first I didn't like this article, he dissed Trump and mischaracterised many of those issues, but once I finished reading it and took it all in, I decided that I did like it after all.

A man with Greek ancestry (the founders of democracy) reminding us of Plato's 'The Republic' and talking about a 'Blueprint for a Better Global Society', away from the mess the world currently exists in today.
Arguing the 'Pro's and Con's' of things on a logical basis isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I think democracy has numerous fatal flaws but I don't wish to go into all of them.

The author pinpoints education: uneducated, undereducated, miseducated, but that's only half the problem.
The other half of the problem he mentioned in his opening but failed to mention it's significance.
The media.

I see something new coming that will stop the corporate media lies and put an emphasis back on real investigative journalism and the facts.

Soon, the internet will get just that little bit more organised, and fact based news and independent jornalism platforms will start to appear via organised crowdsourced means.
I can see this as the natural progression of attacking the alternative media and of them having to change, and of technology better employed and used to collaborate news facts by the citizens themselves, and of the people fed up with a lying and untrustworthy media.

Watch out! The universities have in recent times gone stark raving mad.
With all their left trendy machinations they have become the home of
unstable thinkers.
Meanwhile the rest of us in the real world have to get on with fixing
all the problems and debrainwashing our children.

This article has -got- to be written tongue in cheek.
Im reminded of that final scene in Dr Stangelove when nuclear holocaust is about to happen and the plan is to save the best specimens of mankind in mines to hopefully establish a new world at a later date. The scene is in the war room with all the top military and other high government officials. They all look at each other knowing they will nominate themselves as members of the elite needed to be saved.