While the democratic period is the height of Greek cultural achievements, democracy is not easy. If the state is ruled by the people, people should care to do

While the democratic period is the height of Greek cultural achievements, democracy is not easy. If the state is ruled by the people, people should care to do the ruling, and have to be competent. It's a job; it takes time and effort. To do such a job, a person needs to understand things related to it, keep their eye on it, and has to know people around well enough to vote for / against them at elections. This works best with local issues and small communities that interact daily. The poster child of democracy, Switzerland, which holds national referenda multiple times a year, is about the size of Maryland, with a population about the size of NYC (not the greater New York city area). And it has 3 major languages (4 official), 26 cantons with local laws that are sometimes materially different, and very strict immigration and integration rules. In other words, democracy is hard to scale. What passes for democracy in larger Western countries is representative democracy, when citizens don't get involved in the state affairs as much, but select and hire other people to do that, sort of like shareholders elect a board and a CEO for the company they collectively own. It's way better than despotic monarchy, of course, but introduces an obvious agency problem. It also introduces the problem of showing off instead of competence, because the voters have rather vague idea about most candidates, having never met them in real life, interacted in business, etc. Look at the US presidential elections, they are a colossal and sad show of just that, every 4 years. The miracle is that this system still works acceptably well 2.5 centuries after it was instituted. It's already longer than the Athenian democracy.