What society has ever been successfully run by academics? Many are personally dysfunctional. Virtually all of them would starve if left in the wilderness. They regurgitate what other academics have regurgitated, with no redeeming social value. They live for the meaningless little monographs they publish and the government grants they can suck from the pockets of productive workers.
For a while I was really fascinated by education policy, and read a lot of white papers which were heavily notated. Then I started actually finding the notated papers to see where the notated concept came from. It turns out Ancestry.com has nothing on the genealogy of notations, and most of them just go in a big self-referential circle.