No, no it did not. Direct democracy means the legislative branch doesn't use a proxy. There are still two other branches. How is this so hard to understand?

Elected representatives are supposed to fully represent their constituents. There is not supposed to be a difference between the rep. and who they represent. What direct democracy says is that the proxy of a representative has been corrupted and is no longer necessary. That is all.

P.S. The whole notion that representatives are "smarter" than their constituents is both false (Michelle Bachman?) and elitist. Who the fuck are you to decide that people are too dumb to have a democracy? It's the same line throughout history and people have consistently proved it wrong.

I am pretty sure 99% of the lawyers in US would do a better job than me defending anyone in a trial. Every car mechanic in the world would do a better job than me fixing some mechanical problem in my car. Does this mean that I am dumb? No, it just means I devote my time to other areas of expertise.

I really cannot see why this shouldn't apply for politicians as well.

That's what representatives do, actually -- they have people who read the bills and give advice on what they think. I'm saying, like with so many areas, by using the internet we can skip the middle-man.

Socrates might not be executed (depending on the constitution in question), but he might still find himself prisoner for life because the law had mandatory sentencing provisions.

You may not like it, but it's not really up to you (or me) to decide. The people can choose to eliminate that ineffective, rotten layer.

Right.

If you look elsewhere, you'll see my notes on the particulars of the US system. We have rent-seeking here in Australia, but nothing like the scale of the US.

The difference is that US Members of Congress are basically independent agents. No party discipline, and no executive constraints, prevent them from that kind of deal-making. It's down to the peculiarities of the US system, not representative democracy in general.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(Plus there's the standard libertarian argument that reducing the power of Congress reduces incentives to fiddle; but that doesn't do away with merely petty corruption).

Open government, e-democracy. The time has come.

But even those fall into strife. Politics is part of human nature; the encrustations of western civilisation and elsewhere are not arbitrary.

Maybe. But I think if you look at history, distributing power has always been the most successful strategies. Unfortunately, it's also the least popular with those who currently hold power, so it's often a knife fight.

I'm not quite sure it's as radical as you seem to think it is. Is voting for a Michelle Bachmann to vote on laws, or just voting directly on those laws, so different? Really? I'm not so sure. The internet has transformed every other industry. Can we not apply it to politics and leverage its power there?

homogenous politics

I've been arguing the U.S. perspective, and it is so divisive there that I don't think it could be worse.

Jacques, this will be my last post so: thanks for the great dialog. All the best.

Switzerland is a federation of cantons with a patchwork of different electoral systems with some mechanisms for citizen-initiated referenda.

Citation needed? Some pretty stupid ideas get through and lots of corruption (e.g. "bridge to nowhere").

>The people deciding political issues wouldn't be the reasonable and smart people who hang around here.

What kind of people do think are in the Senate/Congress? They're not the reasonable and smart people who hang around here either. And in any case, those people you so happily deride are choosing said representatives anyway.

Any problems you see with giving everyone a say exist with giving a subset of those people a say. In fact I would say the problem is exaggerated with the smaller group because the kind of people who would be good for government are the kind who would never be willing to do that job. I bet they would be willing to voice their opinions though.