I think the problem is democracy just doesn't scale very well because it requires empathy and altruism and that operates at the scale of human experience. You n

I think the problem is democracy just doesn't scale very well because it requires empathy and altruism and that operates at the scale of human experience. You need some kind of commonality or shared experience to keep people together. In the 50s-80s you had the experience of the wars and cold war to keep people active. Since then, there hasn't been too much of that save maybe terror attacks. For the US specifically, I think we should be going back to letting states take the lead on social issues like wellfare, gay marriage, abortion, drug decriminalization/legalization, gun control and whatnot instead of trying to do everything at the federal level - especially via ever more contorted constitutional interpretation. The benefits from this kind of approach would be the ability to do quicker, more focused policy iterations with less controversy at the state level for the willing states before getting locked in federally and difficult to change as opposed to the opaque backroom deals and guessing games of today.