These days I think that direct democracy is better than bureaucracy.
Why won't it? Provided that it's deployed slowly and tenderly.
Maybe Average Joe doesn't understand your area. Then you have two options:
- Educate Average Joe about the issue.
- Make sure that Average Joe doesn't vote on the issue and only concerned citizens do. This usually requires that issue poses no nuisances for Average Joe.
But right now, when legislators don't understand anything and create bad policy, we have ZERO options. Zero is less than two.
Joe does not have the time to be informed about the pros and cons of every decision that the government needs to ask him about. It's simply not practical.
Direct democracy would be handing over the machinery of government to marketing companies fed by lobbies.
If you give out voting credits, influencers will call for votes on many small, but hot, topics to expend all votes and then ram through what they want. It's too easy to hack.
In most western democracies, not necessarily America. Representatives can be held accountable and any corruption is usually exposed with dire consequences for their party.
It's also easy to counter. I can think how and so can you.
What's the point of "ramming through" if it gets repealed in terror at the start of next cycle? Very potent point is that laws should be tried and then most of them should be repealed. Only a minority of laws should survive to permanence.
Right now we pretend that we're capable of writing good laws from the first attempt.
> What's the point of "ramming through" if it gets repealed in terror at the start of next cycle?
You just characterized the see-saw retributionary populist democracies that trashed Latin America's economies over the 20th century. Policy instability is anathema for lower-level civic and economic self-organization.
I'm not sure you are right. Many Latin American countries fair just fine when you adjust for their inherent handicap.
Maybe they had bad policies, maybe whey didn't, I'm not sure they'll be massively better off under any other system. If we're not talking about Cuba and Venezuela which have exactly opposite problem of failing to turn evidently unsuccessful decisions.
> Many Latin American countries fair just fine when you adjust for their inherent handicap
Policy volatility is about as significant a driver of Latin American per-capita economic growth as income inequality. Capital inflows and debt are insignificant; only U.S. interest rate volatility is comparable to domestic factors.
"Regarding macroeconomic policies, the higher the volatility of discretionary fiscal policy, the lower the growth.
...
Despite several episodes of reform reversals, most countries made progress in market-oriented structural reforms during 1970–2004, except Venezuela. The intensity of reversals was highest in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Venezuela. Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Uruguay made the most progress during the 35 years. Greater market-oriented reforms and fewer reform reversals were associated with higher growth."
Why won't it? Provided that it's deployed slowly and tenderly.
Maybe Average Joe doesn't understand your area. Then you have two options:
- Educate Average Joe about the issue.
- Make sure that Average Joe doesn't vote on the issue and only concerned citizens do. This usually requires that issue poses no nuisances for Average Joe.
But right now, when legislators don't understand anything and create bad policy, we have ZERO options. Zero is less than two.