@bonifartius That's the problem. Yes, there are some people who are dumb through no fault of their own due to a disability or from an accident that caused brain damage. But these people usually have a carer help them to navigate decisions, someone close to them one hopes who has their best interests in mind. That's the community approach anyways.
But if you treat everyone as too dumb to make decisions for themselves, it creates a level of dependency that is unhealthy. They never learn how to fail and improve on their decision-making. They don't learn personal responsibility and accountability. They don't learn consequences. You have to give them the space to learn all of this.
Isn't that the thing? They've created the conditions that lead people towards ignorance, deferring consequences to somebody else. We don't even hold businesses accountable now because somebody else soaks up the costs that the business would usually have to. The government takes away from the future, so some future generation has to pay the price of their expenses. Individuals can indulge in whatever bad habits they like and somebody else pays for it. It's interesting to think about how we entice this way of thinking now.
Also, the education system no longer teaches us about the world we're in or how to navigate it so that we can be aware of the forces working on us... without that knowledge, what hope do we have to make fully informed and intelligent/reasonable decisions? We're left in ignorance by design. It's a lot easier to control the ignorant. Just defer all political decisions to politicians to vote on our behalf, defer learning about important issues and news to the media and let the entertainment industry teach us and our children about culture and all the important things in life.