80/80 rule: Why the Masses are too stupid to govern

Australia is set to implement a carbon tax in 400 days or so. The interesting part is the present Labor/Greens coalition was elected on a promise of no carbon tax. Yet it seems that was the core of the coalition agreement, so there will be a carbon tax.

The purported aim of the tax is to help save the planet. Australia's efforts, if totally effective, reducing global CO2 emissions by a whopping 1%.
Except the PM, Julia Gillard is now solemnly saying that it wont hurt the poor, or industry, or energy companies; somehow all these will be kept whole and job-producing coal exports won't suffer a bit.
Amazingly enough, the 'rough crowd' doesn't buy it.

Tim Blair, a columnist-blogger, who amuses greatly just by pointing out things things like this, focuses our attention on a great piece by thinker/writer/PhD in Architecture,
Elizabeth Farrelly: Democracy is blocking intelligence

It may be, as one correspondent wrote last week, that advertising works on the "80/80 principle", the assumption that 80 per cent of Australians have an IQ average of 80. Now I'm fine with stupidity in advertising. Indeed, I expect nothing less - isn't that why God gave us the mute button? But what makes the 80/80 thought especially gripping - as in, by the throat - is how much it explains that branch of advertising we call politics.

Everything is dose related. Whether it's arsenic in your diet or radioactivity in the sea, small amounts now and then are OK, even beneficial, but large amounts, repeatedly, are bad and even terminal. It's the same with almost everything else - cars, houses, chocolate, holidays, even happiness.

For one person to live in an acre of grass and trees is perfectly harmless, even lovable. But for the numberless hordes to do it means an end to wilderness, clean air and polar bears.

By the last, I assume the verdant one-acre domicile is meant for those who truly appreciate and will protect it, like herself and her peers. Certainly not for a jobsworth, barely getting his ticket out of high school, who owns a couple of pizza stores.

She sets all this up by invoking Thomas Jefferson and the beloved 'pursuit of happiness' phrase. And the summary is that either the pursuit or the happiness - maybe better, BOTH- must be rationed and regulated for the good of the whole.

I wonder if maybe the government might issue a license to pursue? Hmmm..
Or just POSSIBLY.. that license to pursuit of happiness is inherent in completing post-graduate studies.
You know, I think that's it! After all it IS a 'Doctorate of Philosophy' isnt it.
And Elizabeth Farrelly has one in Architecture! Leads one to think it isnt so much continuing education in engineering and architectural sciences as it is meant to further appreciation and application of architecture in civilization and society.

So that PhD, really not mattering what field it's in, is indeed a pass into the hallowed halls of the intellectual. Giving the bearer full rights and privileges of the governing elite / protector of the stupid masses.
Which is probably what Jefferson had in mind in the first place, right?
And which, taken to the utmost, explains Noam Chomsky {Dr of Linguistic Mechanics} so beloved by the progressive intellectual elite that he needn't even bother debating his awesome philosophies.

The whole point is that when you read opinions like hers, you should start thinking about what the attack on the previously benign, harmless, beloved of all plant life Carbon Dioxide, really means.