Socrates was not elitist in the normal sense:
He didn’t believe that a narrow few should only ever vote. He did, however, insist that only those who had thought about issues rationally and deeply should be let near a vote.
We have forgotten this distinction between an intellectual democracy and a democracy by birthright. We have given the vote to all without connecting it to that of wisdom. And Socrates knew exactly where that would lead: to a system the Greeks feared above all, demagoguery.
dēmos ‘the people’ + agōgos ‘leading’
Ancient Athens had painful experience of demagogues, for example, the louche figure of Alcibiades, a rich, charismatic, smooth-talking wealthy man who eroded basic freedoms and helped to push Athens to its disastrous military adventures in Sicily. Socrates knew how easily people seeking election could exploit our desire for easy answers. He asked us to imagine an election debate between two candidates, one who was like a doctor and the other who was like a sweet shop owner. The sweet shop owner would say of his rival:
Look, this person here has worked many evils on you. He hurts you, gives you bitter potions and tells you not to eat and drink whatever you like. He’ll never serve you feasts of many and varied pleasant things like I will.
Socrates asks us to consider the audience response:
Do you think the doctor would be able to reply effectively? The true answer – ‘I cause you trouble, and go against you desires in order to help you’ would cause an uproar among the voters, don’t you think?
We have forgotten all about Socrates’s salient warnings against democracy.
I eagerly embrace criticisms of mass democracy, but I’ve also seen plenty of poor decisions made by experts and groups with restricted membership, so I’m also sympathetic to the wisdom of crowds, and Buckley’s adage that he’d “rather be ruled by the first one hundred names in the Manhattan phone book…”
Of course the doctors all said they knew better and created policies that benefited doctors. And the philosophers all said they knew better and created policies that benefited philosophers. And the journalists said they knew better and created policies that benefited journalists. Does anyone really think that a 350bc doctor really knew all that much? Epistemology should be mandatory study in school so that people start to understand their limits and biases.
I have no doubt Alcibiades was a psychopath. Hence the strong hatred towards him. It was Alcibiades that pushed the great idea of attacking Syracuse. The failed Syracuse attack was THE downfall of Athens. The same Alcibiades went from city to city in the ancient world. In Sparta he was more Spartan than the Spartans. Changing his chameleon skin every time he moved somewhere else and betraying everyone he came in contact with. Alcibiades killed Athens with risky schemes to glorify himself.
Story of Alcibiades
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Alcibiades*.html
What did Plutarch have to say about him.
“…He had, as they say, one power which transcended all others, and proved an implement of his chase for men: that of assimilating and adapting himself to the pursuits and lives of others, thereby assuming more violent changes than the chameleon. That animal, however, as it is said, is utterly unable to assume one colour, namely, white; but Alcibiades could associate with good and bad alike, and found naught that he could not imitate and practice. 5 In Sparta, he was all for bodily training, simplicity of life, and severity of countenance; in Ionia, for p65 luxurious ease and pleasure; in Thrace, for drinking deep; in Thessaly, for riding hard; and when he was thrown with Tissaphernes the satrap, he outdid even Persian magnificence in his pomp and lavishness. It was not that he could so easily pass entirely from one manner of man to another, nor that he actually underwent in every case a change in his real character; but when he saw that his natural manners were likely to be annoying to his associates, he was quick to assume any counterfeit exterior which might in each case be suitable for them…”
http://www.ancient.eu.com/Alcibiades/
One thing not widely known is King Agis of Sparta hated Alcibiades because Alcibiades had a child by the Kings wife.
I have a theory that the period of time for the downfall of Empires is related to how long it takes psychopaths to move up the ladder of leadership. If a way is not found to restrain them the country disintegrates.
Isegoria has an article somewhere on here about a bunch of history students wargaming the peloponnesian war. In short the Sicily venture turned out to be calculated and a good option.
From Wargaming in the Classroom: An Odyssey: