I think it's true-ish in the same way that representative democracy doesn't work everywhere either. Many post-communist countries like Russia are an easy exampl

I think it's true-ish in the same way that representative democracy doesn't work everywhere either. Many post-communist countries like Russia are an easy example. Obviously the working of a system depends on the social contract being considered legitimate by the population. Concretely this means that for direct democracy to 'work' you'll need a population that has experience and a self-confidence to be the ones that turn up and vote about a bunch of issues they'll need to understand. That's something that can't be implemented overnight. But similarly even representative democracy can't be implemented overnight. That's the dynamic nature of the social contract. Something I admire about the Swiss btw.