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.

The majority of population isn't in place to make honest, rational choices unaffected by feelings, culture, religion (I wanted to state educated, but education doesn't necessarily mean that the choice would be on the rational side) and media influence.

>The majority of population isn't in place to make honest, rational choices unaffected by feelings, culture, religion

In a real democracy, they're not supposed to either. If their culture, religion, etc is important to them, it should definitely affect their decisions, and that's the democratic way. Same for their feelings.

Democracy is not about voting what's "right" (who is to say? you?) but about getting what the majority wants. And there's nothing unhonest about letting culture, religion and feelings affecting your vote.

What you describe as your ideal democracy where people only make "rational choices" is rather the old republican idea of sages who know better than the people (like the "founding fathers" in the US) and encode some norms forever.

"Rational" used in this sense, is totally normative -- "what I think is rational" or "what those experts say it rational and good for you", and in the end undemocratic.

And do you think Switzerland is different?

This is controversial, but I think any nation can have direct democracy adapted to the nation's culture. It's just that the Swiss have more than a hundred years experience with direct democracy and have learnt for the most part to be diligent in their decisions.

No I don't need to, they've shown they're different.

Can I turn the question around : do you think this would work in USA, India and Brazil (random countries, nothing specific)?

I honestly think e-democracy would work everywhere after a few years of total chaos.