Another problem is the DEA –an agency who's sole existence depends upon the legal status of drugs– is responsible for determining their status. Such a clear conflict of interests.

Direct democracy for every issue individually is not the best overall system. It prevents the political favor-trading between representatives which has a valuable purpose - that is, voting against your immediate interest on topics unimportant to you in exchange for votes for your important interests. If every vote is independent and there's no way to coordinate things, then you can't do something like getting national healthcare reforms passed at the cost of providing corn subsidies.

Furthermore, legalization of cannabis requires more than just saying "okay, it's legal now". There's a ton of unresolved questions: what are the rules around driving high? Who can buy cannabis legally? Which jobs are allowed to be worked high? Which businesses can sell cannabis? What license do you need? What are the penalties for flouting age restrictions on sales? Can you smoke cannabis in a bar? Can you vape cannabis in a restaurant? How is cannabis taxed, and at what rate?

I disagree, direct democracy has none of these problems in Switzerland. It's very easy to find flaws in systems not implemented.

People will make bad decisions and societies in general will fuck up, but that is part of the process and voters will adjust accordingly.

Methodical and sound polling on a single issue routinely comes within %'s of actual votes. Yet there are numerous issues overwhelmingly favoured in society which politicians knowingly ignore.

> There's a ton of unresolved questions: what are the rules around driving high? Who can buy cannabis legally? Which jobs are allowed to be worked high? Which businesses can sell cannabis? What license do you need? What are the penalties for flouting age restrictions on sales? Can you smoke cannabis in a bar? Can you vape cannabis in a restaurant? How is cannabis taxed, and at what rate?

Those are mostly pretty easy questions.

For driving and working high, it's just the same as working or driving in any other impaired state. It's slightly trickier than alcohol because it isn't as easy to measure the level of impairment, but that's also true of many prescription and probably even some over-the-counter drugs, so it's not a new problem.

For all of the other questions, you could just copy the rules for tobacco verbatim and end up with a workable set of rules.

>Direct democracy for every issue individually is not the best overall system.

Straw man in the wild. Nobody here advocates direct democracy on every issue.

However, one simply can't argue that a government that acts against the interest and preferences of 90%+ of the population it supposedly represents and serves is doing a good job.

>Furthermore, legalization of cannabis requires more...

You speak of these questions as if they haven't been answered already in several countries and multiple states in the US.

And in any case, this is another strawman. The problem is not the slow rate of legalization, it's that the Federal government is not moving at all towards that goal (in particular, by keeping marijuana on Schedule I), when simply letting the states regulate the issue would have satisfied many people.

>However, one simply can't argue that a government that acts against the interest and preferences of 90%+ of the population it supposedly represents and serves is doing a good job.

I'll bite the bullet and say that it can, in some specific cases. "Acting against the interests and preferences" of someone has a magnitude, it's not just a yes/no question. A governing system that mildly inconveniences 95% of the population to safeguard a vital liberty for 5% is doing an excellent job, IMO.

Sure, sure, but we all know this does not apply here.

I think it is theoretically possible to build systems where you can coordinate things on independent issues (and for bringing up and addressing questions) on a direct level.

I don't think there is much incentive to build such systems now outside of say voting systems for user feedback/issues on product systems (which also have lower barriers as for the ultimately philosophical issue on deciding who is allowed to vote, and face virtually no push back from those who benefit most from the incumbent systems).

I'm not sure what sort of mechanism you're thinking of. My example has a majority preferring X & Y over ~X & ~Y, but with simultaneous majorities preferring ~X over X and ~Y over Y. This is fundamentally tricky to resolve. And furthermore, the power to propose "X & Y" is incredibly useful, since you get to shape the negotiation options for compromises. Even with a direct democracy system, you'd still want to be able to vote in or out some kind of elected representative for proposing various bills.

As someone living in Canada, where we're going through that literal same process, you seem to be right on the money.

Although admittedly, I'm not as well-read as I'd hope to be, so take this with a grain of salt. But the way the media I've read has portrayed marijuana in Canada has been "Pot's legal in 1 year! ...okay, how are we going to implement this? [provinces rush to come up with plans]"

>At this point, why does the United States Government even pretend it represents the will of the people?

people say that when it's something they disagree with...

If the majority of the pop had populist ideas which went contrary to their position, then this "will of the people" is cast as "coarse populism".

I still have to regularly remind people that Trump did not win the election with a majority of votes. I am flabbergasted by how frequently I hear Americans say of Trump "... well he was chosen by the people".

He was, in fact, chosen by the people in accordance with our voting system. Both parties win with it, and nobody who's won ever tries to change it... leaving suggesting it's "unfair" to the realm of people who are just upset that they lost.

I definitely would like to see it improved, I think the two party system sucks, and our voting system guarantees it, and the fact that my vote doesn't count for much because I live in a blue state annoys me a bit.

But the people did, in fact, select Donald Trump to be President. A penalty, that at times, is exactly what our society deserves. :/

> Both parties win with it

As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, only five elections have ever been won by someone lacking a plurality of the popular vote. Three of those cases happened before 1900. If we look only at the more modern examples, the Republicans have won the presidency but lost the popular vote twice (2016 and 2000) and the Democrats have never done this. In fact, this is a true statement over all of time, but once you get back more then a century the political parties are so different as to make the comparison meaningless.

That is to say: the Democrats have never had a presidential election that they won without winning the popular vote. I do not love the two party system either, but in this case it doesn't feel fair to say that both parties are currently equally benefitting from the Electoral College.

Yea, and that's not a statistical fluke, either. So long as the political allegiances are close to what they are today, a Democrat will never win without the popular vote. Via our electoral college system, a vote in a lower-populace state will have more power. There's a lot of low populace flyover states that consistently vote Republican. So a Republican winning the popular vote almost automatically leads to them winning the electoral college.

Our electoral college and Senate system is designed to occasionally let the minority get stuff they want. The coastal cities have all the money and all of the media, they aren't hurting for power. The slight tip to the "flyover" states is an attempt to balance the mega-steamroller of coastal wealth and power.

The two party system moves slowly which at times like this looks like a feature to me. In a parliamentary system it is easier for extreme views to advance their agenda.

This is probably the one big upside to our system being glacial. I am glad Obama couldn't do more than he did, and the damage Trump could do with less controls is terrifying.

Trump read the rules and was selected by the will of the people as we define it in our electoral system. If plurality of votes was relevant the strategy would have been completely different and so we cannot know the outcome in that case.

Are aware Lincoln didn't win the election with majority of votes?

> Lincoln didn't win the election with majority of votes

He did, however, win the popular vote in both the 1860 and 1864 general elections (39.8% to the runner up at 29.5% and 55%, respectively) [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_Abraham...

The electoral college, like it or not, is the law of the land. I don't think anybody is truly claiming he was chosen by the people- it would be hard to make that argument in good faith given the obvious facts.