General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why not start direct democracy cities? [View all]MineralMan
(146,192 posts)The Town Meeting thing has been in existence since colonial times, and is still in wide use in the United States. It's thoroughly tested and works just fine in smaller cities and towns. It's not as useful in larger cities, where that form of local government has been replaced with other systems.
I encourage you to investigate your idea further by learning about towns where it is well-established and has been in long use. There's no need to reinvent a wheel that is already working. I'm sure there is an excellent reason that it is only in use in small communities, which is just what you were suggesting. It was once the system of government even for Boston, back when Boston was a small community.
Where it still exists, it's a workable system. Where it doesn't, it's probably because the complexity of governing a city was too difficult for the Town Meeting concept to function well. Earlier in this thread, you chided me for arguing that your system probably wasn't feasible. My argument was based on my knowledge of Town Meeting government and other government systems for local communities. At some point, it fails to be a viable system, due to complexity. It has been replaced with representative-style government systems, simply because such systems are necessary for communities over a certain size, and for larger jurisdictions like counties, states, and the federal government.
Learning about what has already been tried for long periods of time is useful.