I think we don't do democracy because we think the masses are informed and make good decisions, but rather because it's the best system for ensuring peaceful transitions of power, thereby creating social stability which is conducive to encouraging investment in the future.
So uninformed people participating isn't an unfortunate side effect, but rather the point: making everybody feel included in the decision making processes, to make people more likely to accept political change.
"I think we do democracy not because we think the masses are informed and make good decisions, but rather because it's the best system for ensuring peaceful transitions of power, thereby creating social stability which is conducive to encouraging investment in the future.
I think people argue this but I don't think its true.
The lack of warlords leads to peaceful transitions. Trump can feel all he wants about the 2020 election but his sphere of influence was too small to take control.
This isn't the case for all those power struggles when a monarch dies. Each Lord had their own militia they could mobilize to take control and leads to stuff like War of the Roses.
We had this same issue going into the Civil War where the US army was mostly militias so it's pretty easy to grab the southern ones together and go fight the north. This isn't going to work so well post-1812 where a unified federal army exists. Of course, if you start selectively replacing generals with loyalists then you start creating a warlord.
So uninformed people participating isn't an unfortunate side effect, but rather the point: making everybody feel included in the decision making processes, to make people more likely to accept political change.