He postulates that this is an inherent part of democratic forms of government primarily for the following reason: as people become more intelligent, their views, understandings, and philosophies will become more greatly differentiated not only from the masses, but from one another.

This makes some sense, of course: as one gains the ability to think and reason for himself, he will likely gain the ability to understand others’ points of view, but will likely not hold the exact same point of view as others. He will hold his own, uniquely-developed idea of things.

Thus, less-intelligent people will tend toward being in agreement with one another more than the more-intelligent crowd. And since elections are decided almost entirely by popular vote, the worst people running for office will usually get elected.

On the other hand, the “more-intelligent” people in our society seem to be college professors, and we all know their bias. So I’m not sure Hayek was completely right on his theory. But it is an interesting thought.