Talk:New World/@comment-34985584-20180610020645/@comment-45.56.46.26-20180619065001

It's not really that ironic.

Tribal/clan societies are closer to the natural evolutionary setting which developed both abilities of people assess the competence and morality of their leaders as well as the ability of leaders to actually care about a significant proportion of their followers as individuals.

In other words, a civilized society, by having leaders be responsible for tens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands times more people than they are even evolutionarily wired to be capable of imagining as individuals, ensures that leaders cannot be competent. Meanwhile, by having millions of people follow leaders they personally have never even seen aside from 'photo-op' type public appearances ensures that the people have no instinctive way to tell a good leader from a rotten one.