> If it is trivial, can you disprove it? Quacks like a plutocracy...

Quacks like a democracy with a unitary executive and high level of electoral disproportionality, see Patterns of Democracy, Arend Lijphard (1999).

> We need better democracies.

We have better democracies (i.e., most modern democracies), and we can only understand how they are better and what the defects are in the US system when we understand the US as a democracy, and understand the features that make it a poor one in terms of effective representation.

Hyberpolic polemic like claiming the US behaves "nothing like a democracy" might sometimes have value in drawing attention to the problems (but probably not if it is coming from Chomsky), but it doesn't help understand or fix the problems, and if actually taken seriously it inhibits understanding and progress.

Proof: We have regular, non-violent, non-coercive elections where the results are typically very close to aggregated pre-election polling. Now you can talk about the influence of money and corruption and people blinded by the media and disenfranchised demographics or whatever, but if we had nothing like a democracy, we wouldn't even have that. Also: see snowwrestler's sibling comment on the mere existence of progressive taxes and a public school system.

What percentage of people vote? The majority don't even vote.

> We need better democracies.

Yes. But for that we need better people

Or, perhaps less corrupt and more broad minded actions from government/business. Positive change can begin with enforcing transparency and social and environmental concerns that presently all but escape the first world's de-facto economic rationalist system, which is rapidly infecting all corners of the planet, crowding out any space for existing or proposed, often functional and noteworthy alternatives. Recommended read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

People working on a better democracy would do too :) Rather than early 90s web guest book, we need late 90s slashdot, or even better... 2013 HN/reddit.