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Direct democracy is not a panacea. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. Fair and effective governance is a very difficult thing to achieve, tending either to
by toxik 5y ago
Direct democracy is not a panacea. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. Fair and effective governance is a very difficult thing to achieve, tending either to be subvertible, or totalitarian.
- herbst 5y agoNot saying that is not true. Yet living in one of the few direct democracies it is the very best we have in terms of democracy. On a bigger scale liquid democracy may is more interesting. Edit:// the EU or even the US has shown multiple times that it will act against the majority of they can.
- bondarchuk 5y agoI think representative democracy specifically does not work to stave off totalitarianism. When the issue under consideration is about increasing the power of politicians over the citizenry, many politicians will switch from voting as representatives of citizens, to voting as politicians. A binding referendum that can only retract proposed laws, like we have/had/will have (sorry, I don't know exactly) in NL, seems like it could largely solve this issue, provided it gets sufficient traction.
- tacocataco 5y agoDirect democracy is best when the amount of people voting stays small. Think local government.
- t0bia_s 5y agoDemocracy cannot work without free acces to information. However, most people wont care about it. Especially nowadays when public opinions are shaped by social networks with censorship and sensations. We can implement all kind of ideologies on masses very fast. So direct democracy could be more dangerous than you can imagine.