I completely reject the notion that direct democracy is bad because Politicians Know Better. It’s borderline if not completely authoritarian and frankly disgusting.

Maybe consider that Switzerland is one of the best if not the best country in the world because people can choose what they want it to be.

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Avicebron 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

This issue with direct democracies is that the they can get out of hand pretty fast unless your population is somewhat homogenous and reasonable. Aka Switzerland. If you're too young to remember twitch plays Pokémon, that's direct democracy and it was wild.

A direct democracy could decide tomorrow that we wanted to fuck China sideways with nukes because it's funny and based all because a tiktok went viral.

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1718627440 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think people rule differently depending on how much impact it has. People claiming "We should nuke them" knowing it will never happen is very different from them really deciding on that matter.

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sofixa 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> This issue with direct democracies is that the they can get out of hand pretty fast unless your population is somewhat homogenous and reasonable. Aka Switzerland

Sorry, but that's just a racist dogwhistle. Switzerland has four main ethnic groups, and has had multiple rounds of migration (e.g. after the Yugoslav wars). Look at their various national sporting teams. Just because you can't look past people's skin colour that doesn't make them "homogeneous".

You need an educated and engaged populace that understands their civic duties.

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Avicebron 2 days ago | parent [-]

I left out race specifically to plumb for people whose mind jumps and fixates on that

> educated and engaged populace that understands their civic duties.

This describes a homogeneous group. An environment that cultivates this unilaterally (relative to an arbitrary standard), is by definition more homogeneous than one that does not. It's a politics, standard of living, and equality economics dogwhistle that has nothing to do with race.

	▲	sofixa a day ago \| parent [-]
		> This describes a homogeneous group No, it doesn't. People being educated doesn't make them homogeneous.

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sofixa 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I completely reject the notion that direct democracy is bad because Politicians Know Better

Not politicians, experts and administrators.

And yes, most people are limited in knowledge and vision. Look no further than Brexit, where the average UK citizen couldn't comprehend the complexity of the situation or the question, yet voted. The most asked question on Google the day after the vote was what is the EU... And it took years to begin to untangle the mess.

And again, look at Switzerland and their human rights travesty of not allowing half their population to vote because the existing voters said no.