I'm afraid that mr Buckley would be shocked if he actually met and had a conversation with the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone book.

Mr. Buckley may or may not be shocked, but he's certainly a vocal opponent of a competent effective government, so all of his thoughts on how he'd prefer to be governed should be ignored with extreme prejudice.

Generally, inverting them would be superior to ignoring them, but the last thing you should do is take them as good ideas.

According to YOU. What a very poor all or nothing statement. And the reader should never listen to someone who claims all or nothing here or there. Nope. Perhaps throw a bridle on your unbridled "kindly fuck off nuance" view.

Would you rather be treated (medically) by the first 2000 people? Do you think code will be written better by the first 2000? I get being unhappy about current political class, but this kind of claims is wild to me.

Politicians aren't making technical choices. They make value judgments.

Not it's raining should I wear galoshes but, should I wear blue or red pants? Not should I buy a sports car or an SUV but do I want to do the things you can do with a sports car or the things you can do with an SUV?

It can get confusing because experts can help inform value judgments but they don't have anymore weight on making them then any other person.

When it comes to those choices having a random selection of a large group instead of a small selection of a group of "experts" is at least an arguable point of view.

I have confidence in the US electoral system to select representatives of more than usual charisma, but not competence or integrity.

In my opinion even charisma implies higher than average intellect which is already something.

We should put more pressure on elected politicians around competence and integrity, sure, but it doesn’t mean random person is going to be better.

In the original comparison second category of people have much higher intellect than average.

> In the original comparison second category of people have much higher intellect than average.

I think that intellect may sometimes be weakly and unreliably associated with some kinds of competence, but not with integrity, which is as important. I think power seekers are self-selecting to be more self-serving.

Issue with your original statement is that it implies negative correlation between intellect and being good politician. All the issues you describe (both being self serving and power seeking) apply to anyone regardless to their intellect (and I still think they apply less to people of high intellect just because they see bigger picture, but I might be wrong).

We need to optimize for less self serving and more integrity but we should strive for smarter people up there too.

That's called 'Government by Aardman'

The average person can barely read and knows nothing about world history and politics. No thanks.