Originally Posted by
ImmortalPig
Freedom is a binary, there is no degrees of freedom. Either you have freedom of speech or you don't. Having more influence is not the same as having more freedom.
When freedom of speech = money, as Justice Kennedy suggested, then yes, some people (or groups of people) do have more 'freedom' than others. And yes,
their 'freedom' stifles ours.
Originally Posted by
ImmortalPig
Democracy was always going to fail.
You could say that about any political system, ever. It means nothing.
Originally Posted by
ImmortalPig
Just like any other specialist field on the planet, most people have no clue about how it works. Maybe they know the basics or they have an abstract understanding about how it works, but to have a direct democracy would be as bad or worse than a representative democracy.
People are too dumb to vote is your argument against direct democracy. What if we enforced a sort of 'civic literacy test' to ensure a minimum standard of knowledge among voters? The Greeks did something similar. They required that you had to own land, because that means you're 'better' (for lack of a better word) and you were more likely to be invested in producing good governance.
Originally Posted by
ImmortalPig
An authoritative government is the way forward. Who should be making decisions about the economy? Economists. Who should be making decisions about the budget? Accountants. Who should be making decisions about global warming? Scientists.
These authoritative representatives needs to be elected by peers of their respective fields, not by laypeople who know nothing about the subject, let alone who would be a good representative.
There should probably be a pool of elected experts for each subject who will make decisions.
Remove the people entirely from decision-making. I can't think of a better impetus for a populist revolution.
Originally Posted by
ImmortalPig
It is a huge mistake to think that hundreds of millions of people can reach a consensus with any kind of cohesion or meaning.
You wouldn't need a consensus and I'm sure there's plenty of measures that could be implemented to facilitate this process.
Originally Posted by
protonitron
As immortal pig said, the people don't always know what is best for them as a whole. It is easy to assume that an online counsel of millions of people can make decisions which are a thousands of times more intelligent than a counsel of ten elected representatives could make, but it is important to remember that they could also make a decision thousands of times less intelligent.
Perhaps bad decisions being made from time to time is the price you pay for living in an egalitarian society where the people make the decisions, as opposed to corrupted politicians co-opted by whoever gets money for them?
I'm not responding to other parts of your post since a lot of what I've said to Pig applies to your post as well.
Originally Posted by
protonitron
I am sure there is an alternative to the current representation system but it would not be a simple one. I hope that you realise that.
Of course. I'm not saying I know the answers - that's why I've put this thread up in Discussion.