can stupidity be legislated away or just shifted to other places of exposure?

Answer 1

Legislation has provided for free speech, abolished slavery and given women the right to vote. How's that ?

Answer 2

Legislation can not get rid of stupidity. Most legislation passed these days protects stupidity and helps breed more of it.

Answer 3

Human stupidity is probably the only infinite resource in this universe. Legislation will do nothing to fix that.

Answer 4

The only possible means by which stupidity might be "legislated away" is by virtue of elected official's ability to apportion greater funds to public education. Of course, this means, a) U.S. citizens must begin voting-especially those who value the quality of their society/culture more than protecting their own bank accounts from the taxes necessary to fund such increases, and who make up the majority of the nation's population, and b) they must be intelligent enough to understand this, and other problems, in order to vote at all.
While those who care more for the quality of the national populace than their own pocketbooks are likely to comprise the majority of the voters -as those with less to protect tend to place a lower priority on protecting the same due to a threefold motivation: 1) they would be taxed little in comparison with the wealthy in any event, according to progressive U.S. tax codes 2) had they been motivated primarily by money, they would have amassed a greater amount to begin with, and 3) a large number are "underprivileged", and consider an improvement in the quality of public education essential to the betterment of their children's position, while the wealthy few not only care little for public education due to the fact that their own children attend private schools, but moreover, may expect large inheritances. These facts coupled with the aforementioned significance of the progressive tax "burden" to the wealthy (as wealth increases, percentage of taxes increase) ensure that those voting for officials with some influence over the funding of education will not only be wealthy, and intelligent enough to appreciate the above, will therefore vote for those officials who will "lower taxes". This is the single foundational plank on which the platform of the Republican party has stood, historically, giving rise to the term "Conservative" (though at times other popular issues are trotted out to capture public attention at both a local and national level, in order to inspire voters to fan the flames of public passions to a greater extent than could such a dry, and transparent, a subject as tax rates-the latest of these being issues related to "fundamentalist" Evangelical Christianity.*See Ralph Reed's denegrating remarks to Jack Abramov concerning the Christian Right Constituency which he at the time purported to represent on the basis of his own faith).
In the last 30 years, a Democrat has held the office of President for only 8. Republicans have held a large majority of governorships for a similar length of time (and are responsible to an even greater degree for apportioning funding to state public educational systems, of course. Though monies made available to states through Federal funding are inevitably drastically reduced during the Presidential terms of Republicans.
Look up the extent to which funds for public education have been cut during the last 30 yrs.
The "catch-22" (bind) we now confront with regard to the "problem of stupidity" can be reduced to the fact that, a) after 30 years of decline in the quality of the public educational system, citizens are no longer (for the most part) intelligent enough to understand the issues at hand in order to even be concerned, much less vote, b) It serves the purpose of those who wish solely to protect their own wealth to ensure that the quality of public education remains poor or deteriorates further, not only for the purpose of retaining their own wealth in order that it may not be taxed in order to support education, but because if the populace were to become better educated, they would be able to understand their plight and vote out the officials who are preserving the wealth of the wealthy minority by reducing their taxes at the expense of the quality of public services available to the majority of the population.
And of course, the most frightening obstacle we now confront
is the problem of explaining this to the huge numbers of people who now comprise the majority of the majority of voters, those who received their public educations during the previous 30 yrs. (as those who received their public education longer ago than 30 years ago begin now to die off in increasing numbers)-those who are simply not intelligent enough to appreciate dire nature of the current situation--that is, if they know enough to even care at all.
Can stupidity be "legislated away"?Not when legislators are predators, seeking only personal gain by representing those interested only in their own gain.
After all, predators feed on the stupid--in the eyes of the predator, the bigger the "stupid" crop, the better. Why would they want it any other way?