Seriously ...
I don't believe that Jefferson said that. I looked into it and the quote is more commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin and also generally dismissed as false lacking any original citation.
that metaphor really doesn't make much sense and it seems to be arguing that a minority dominating the majority is better than the alternative, which doesn't seem like such a good thing to me.
Actually, Franklin has many books, and I recommend reading them. Not merely for the quotes, but more importantly,
for their all-important context!
Franklin (among countless others) warn, repeatedly, about relying on government to solve problems created by its people. That the responsibility of, by and for the people are by the people, not their elected governments.
Franklin sided with Virginians, not so much his own Penns (and other New England representatives), during the arguments of both our independence, as well as during the creation of our union and its organization. It's a crucial and key difference to understand where the alleged "Founding Fathers" actually
differed, and greatly!
Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and select others were "moderates" at times, but then often found themselves at "odds" with each other, while still having great respect. Franklin would clearly side with Jefferson's Republican (which founds the basis for both Democrat and Republican parties today) ideals more than Hamilton's (among other New England) Federalists, although Washington and Adams both often caught themselves in between the basics they agreed upon, but the fiscal aspects that were often of great argument.
The biggest problem I've had with both Republicans and Democrats is that they've
lost all of the
best ideals that came from Franklin, Jefferson and the lot, many of which even Federalists agreed with. We've sunk ourselves into the lot that believes government should control everything -- the Republicans believing it is to tax and give back to corporations (essentially monopolies aka facist economic model) to control, the Democrats believing it is to tax (even more) and build major, social institutions (also guaranteed funding and control aka socialist economic model).
Both destroy the simple balance that any "organization" can and must fail if it fails to be "efficient" and "productive." Both facist and socialist systems fail because institutions become "us for our sake" and just eat up money building towers of administration and "oh, we need more funding." In capitalist systems, if you are not producing at a cost expected by a consumer, they don't buy, and you go down the tubes -- or worse yet, you price yourself out of the market, when another company can do it better and cheaper (usually due to less overhead).
In the engineering world, the classic case was the Japanese v. American manufacturing in the '70s-'80s. Despite common assumption, it was
not labor costs (and definitely not by '82-83), but both management (way too top-heavy in US companies) and administrative "towers" being built. Engineers actually like the concept of "socialism," but our strong understanding of microeconomics and the "private v. public incentive" have taught us that capitalism tends to balance.
In the Soviet Union, engineering was taught without microeconomics. After all, again, engineering finds socialism very efficient -- no business manager "overhead" -- if you've never studied microeconomics. Like many things engineering, it's the input of many factors -- both technical and social -- but in a way that can be described, analytically (with equations) -- as a system of interactions.
