General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why not start direct democracy cities? [View all]NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)First of all, that sort of system wouldn't operate in a vacuum. There's no shortage of outside forces in economics and ideology that would happily swoop in at the first sign of any sort of weakness and tear it apart. And that's not even counting private citizens who would exploit such a system for their own ends.
Second, if we can't get more than half the country out to vote for presidential elections, I'm not seeing how the residents an even medium-sized city or town could be counted on to vote for what would be every single order of business for the city.
Third, people are stupid and irrational. Even if you find people whose interests are more altruistic than selfish, that doesn't automatically make them qualified to attend to the daily functions of a city. The functions would essentially be decided upon by people who don't understand basic economics, administration, planning, and all the other functions required to run a city; even if there are people who do, a direct democracy ultimately means those few people are outweighed by the majority.
That's why, for right now at least, society needs to be part-democratic and part-technocratic.