Do any of these people know what they are talking about? And if anyone does, how can we know which ones to listen to?
I must confess to bailing out here.
The purpose of democratic government is the consent of the governed, not to find the best experts to make the best decisions. People have to agree on stuff, and that means people who don't understand issues have to agree on them anyway. That's much more important than intelligence and competence. In fact, I'd argue for many of the complexities of the modern nation-state, nobody knows what they are doing in many areas, not even people who have paid lots of money to be trained on these issues. Simply because we can imagine that there is some sort of hierarchy of intelligence and competence in a certain field does not mean that there actually is one. Every generation, no matter how ignorant, has always had a somewhat ordered list of intelligentsia. Many times they have had little to do with how much is known and much more to do with how well somebody is respected by their peers.
Another way to think of it: democracy is a way to convince the losing side in a political dispute to back down (at least temporarily). This has benefits whether or not the decision was right when the drawbacks of escalating a dispute (rebellion, civil war, etc) outweigh the original issue.
How is having people agree on bad decisions a good thing? Would it not be better to have governments make the best decisions they can for their people, and also teach the people why these decisions are best?
Yes, many of the issues facing governments are complex and difficult to solve. You seem to be arguing that because it's difficult to learn what course of action is best, we should not even try.
Humility is a good thing, but it is completely absent in popular opinion.
> Would it not be better to have governments make the best decisions they can for their people, and also teach the people why these decisions are best?
Why are you assuming that governments are capable of making good decisions?
I'm serious - name three politicians who you would trust to make important decisions about your life? On the off chance that you're the first who has a list that long, what makes you think that said politicians will be in charge?
How is having people agree on bad decisions a good thing?
Because the decision affects everybody. Even more so, everybody has a greater stake in the system of decision-making than they do in the decision itself.
Look at it this way: suppose ten people are in a lifeboat stranded on the ocean. There are no supplies, and everybody is starving to death. Logically, killing and eating one of the people would allow the rest to survive. However the group votes not to do that, and they all starve. Later it's discovered that had they lived a few more days they would have been rescued.
Or you could play it the other way: they all unanimously decide to draw straws - the "law of the sea" -- and yet it does no good.
In either case, having consent of those involved is more important than optimizing around one individual's opinion, even if that opinion represents an outcome that's in the best interest of the most people involved.
You don't have to believe me. Play various scenarios out a few times yourself and work through it. And it's not unanimous agreement, not at all. The trick, as the other commenter pointed out, is to create a simple and understandable system where the minority still participates when they lose arguments. (Obviously eating the minority in our example would prevent such participation, which is why only unanimous consent would work, and it would only work in coming up with some selection criteria, not actually applying it.) I think you'll find that people deserve the dignity of being wrong, even when faced with their own death.
I'm also not saying that "we should not even try." Far from it. True learning takes place in a group setting from the bottom-up, in a peer-to-peer fashion. Once critical mass is reached, persuasion is used to convince the majority. That's the way systems of people operate, which is much, much different from the way we might like them to work, or the way a mathematical proof might work.
An excellent book about this topic, which also gives some suggestions on how the majority and minority should actually conduct themselves to make sure this happens, is Danielle Allen's Talking with Strangers.
Ann Coulter is famous for saying that fascism is optimal locally. Something tells me you aren't happy you agree with Ann Coulter about the benefits of fascism.
I must confess to bailing out here.
The purpose of democratic government is the consent of the governed, not to find the best experts to make the best decisions. People have to agree on stuff, and that means people who don't understand issues have to agree on them anyway. That's much more important than intelligence and competence. In fact, I'd argue for many of the complexities of the modern nation-state, nobody knows what they are doing in many areas, not even people who have paid lots of money to be trained on these issues. Simply because we can imagine that there is some sort of hierarchy of intelligence and competence in a certain field does not mean that there actually is one. Every generation, no matter how ignorant, has always had a somewhat ordered list of intelligentsia. Many times they have had little to do with how much is known and much more to do with how well somebody is respected by their peers.
Humility is a good thing.