100% correct. Democracies cannot fail, even if they turn into fascism through legal quirks. People in democracies fail.

The guy you responded to is a perfect example of how democracies can fail not just by the lack of education but trust too. And in the end, the decades long power shift from the public to the private sector costs us the only system of governance where ground-up revolutions can be peacefully by design.

> the population's lack of experience with actual democracy is what hampers any attempt at it

We can’t design systems for people who aren’t us. The track record of pure elected governments, or pure democracies, is destabilising majoritarianism and polarised tribalism.

Agreed. This is my view on Brexit (as a Brit). There was a democratic referendum plus somewhere between 1 and 27 general elections, prime ministers and parliamentary rebellions (it all got confusing). We as a country made a decision - not one I agreed with but still. Somehow taking that back and saying "no try again" is going to make the next decision just impossible.

You concentrate on your balance without a safety net.

Personally I think the big advantage America has is they vote for everything - sheriffs, mayors, dog catchers and presidents. It matters, because it happens a lot. Is it perfect. Hell no. But we get good at what we do most often.

I don’t believe your first paragraph for a second. We would go practically extinct before we learned. We don’t get good at things at scale that fast and raising the stakes will not change some fundamental behaviors - heck they took thousands of years to change when we were going extinct

I think at best you would end up with a much much smaller population that is an easier problem anyway (ie we can already solve it now), or we kill ourselves off before we learn. I agree with your last sentence entirely, but it's funny to frame it as a wealthy few bludgeoning others. One reason we are in the current situation is because the wealthy pay for the majority of expenses but everyone keeps trying to get them to not have more say in what gets done with their money. Whether it's a good idea to do this or not, human nature doesn't work like this, and they want say commensurate with what they contribute. It's very easy for both "sides" to villify each other and they do.

That is at least one thing you have to claim would get fixed in your first paragraph and I don't buy it you could get it to happen.

Since the wealth part really triggers people imagine you are just a random small business owner, and one day people come in and are like "hey we know you put in 60% of the effort and work and money in your business but we're going to have these 50 other people who put in less than 1% each also have equal say to you in the business choices"

Humans don't really accept that, and if you want direct democracy to work out they would have to be able to.

In fact it's the opposite, most people really get off on being able to feel superior to others in various ways, whether money or status or power or whatever.

That is great to change but ain't gonna happen fast