People shouldn't choose their leaders.

I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership and I’ve come to a view that I know isn’t popular: I don’t think people should choose their leaders. I think leaders should be followed when they are bestowed upon society through structure, responsibility, and competence — not popularity. To me, leadership is not a privilege. It’s a burden. When leadership becomes something you campaign for, compete for, and win through votes, it starts to look like a prize. But real leadership isn’t about winning approval — it’s about carrying responsibility. It’s about making difficult decisions, sometimes unpopular ones, and steering people in the right direction even when they don’t immediately understand or agree. At the most basic level of society — the family — leadership is not voted on. In many cultures, the father or head of household isn’t elected. The role comes with responsibility: to provide, to protect, to guide. Whether he does it well or poorly is another matter — but the structure itself isn’t democratic. That makes me question why we assume the larger structure of society must be based on popularity contests. When leaders depend on votes to gain and keep power, they are incentivized to: Please rather than guide Promise rather than discipline Focus on short-term approval over long-term benefit But leadership, in my view, should be more like stewardship. A leader should feel entrusted with responsibility, not empowered by majority approval. Philosophers like Plato criticized democracy for this reason — they worried that it rewards charisma over competence and crowd-pleasing over wisdom. I’m not saying this guarantees better leaders. Bad leaders can exist in any system. But I question whether voting truly produces the kind of responsibility-driven leadership societies actually need.