for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools

When the state is governed by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. When Evil rules.

The word, Kakistocracy, was coined by English author Thomas Love Peacock in 1829, who was an official of the East India Company. He was also a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley's theories of economics and morality had a profound influence on Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, and Mahatma Gandhi. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley née Godwin best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).

kakistos (κάκιστος; worst) and kratos (κράτος; rule), with a literal meaning of government by the worst people.

Greek equivalent is kakistokratia (κακιστοκρατία), Spanish kakistocracia, French kakistocracie, and Russian kakistokratiya (какистократия).

Kakistocracy is the opposite of aristocracy (aristos in Greek (ἄριστος) means "excellent").

"What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of Democracy? Is ours a 'government of the people by the people for the people,' or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?" -- James Russell Lowell 1876

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