this piece by niall ferguson, arguing that now that we have literate populations and the internet, we don't need rulers, is extremely interesting. now i want to point out that a remarkably similar argument was made with regard to the printing press by a radical and radically underappreciated jeffersonian democrat: john taylor of caroline in an inquiry into the principles and policy of the government of the united states (1814). 

the first and most pointed section of taylor's inquiry is an attack on john adams's (and not only his of course) notion of a natural aristocracy. taylor strives to prove that inequalities in all the suggested dimensions are enforced social structures and do not reflect natural differences, or in other words that political hierarchies are not inevitable.

Superior abilities constitutes one among the enumerated causes of a natural aristocracy. This cause is evidently as fluctuating as knowledge and ignorance; and its capacity to produce aristocracy must depend upon this fluctuation. The aristocracy of superior abilities will be regulated by the extent of space between knowledge and ignorance. As the space contracts or widens, it will be diminished or increased; and if aristocracy may be thus diminished, it follows that it may be thus destroyed

No certain state of knowledge is a natural or unavoidable quality of man. As an intellectual or moral quality, it may be created, destroyed, or modified by human power. Can that which may be created, destroyed, and modified by human power, be a natural and inevitable cause of aristocracy?

It has been modified in an extent which Mr. Adams does not even compute, by the art of printing....The peerage of knowledge or abilities, in consequence of its enlargement by the effects of printing, can no longer be collected and controlled in the shape of a noble order or a legislative department. The great body of this peerage must remain scattered throughout every nation, by the enjoyment of the benefit of the press.

 

thanks henry!

p.s. i cannot believe what happened to tuscaloosa, a town i lived in for a couple of years and that i thought was a very good place to be.