If majority of people in a country want to persecute an outnumbered subgroup, then what prevents the majority of delegates wanting the same as well?

You have an implicit assumption that the delegates are going to be smarter and better people that are going to lie to the majority to get elected and then will valiantly protect the subgroup.

But that have not happened anywhere. In fact in every case it is the delegates who organize persecution of various subgroups, even in situations when the share of population truly wanting to persecute subgroup is far from being a majority.

▲ thomassmith65 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I refuse to believe that anyone reading this is incapable of remembering at least five historical examples in which the public was happy to treat an unpopular group unjustly.

There is no foolproof system that can guard against it, however declaring 'rights' and delegating the responsibility to protect them to the judiciary at least is a mitigation.

▲ chr1 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Direct voting does not replace judiciary or even senate, it only augments the house of congress.

Can you bring one example where the public wanted to treat a group unjustly and parliament elected by that same public have defended the group?

▲ thomassmith65 an hour ago | parent [-]

  Direct voting does not replace judiciary or even senate, it only augments the house of congress.

If that is the Direct Democracy you had in mind, than we have no disagreement.

What I originally commented on was this:

  So do you believe in democracy or not?

I take issue with the implication that it's all or nothing. If we characterize anything less than a direct vote on every issue as anti-democratic, then the only people left standing will be kooks.

	▲	chr1 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I hope you will agree that the overall goal is maximizing freedom and autonomy, that is allowing every person or group to pursue happiness the way they want make mistakes or good choices and bear the consequences. The representative democracy has a problem with delegates not faithfully representing the people they are supposed to represent. It allows politician to be elected by campaigning for issue X which is popular with majority, then do Y and Z that almost no one wants, and then campaign again on other party undoing X, leaving people no way to communicate that they want X and not Y Z. Social media have greatly increased the impact of this instability, the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government. No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting, and yet many people vehemently argue against that. Meanwhile there is a much more interesting discussion: how to make cooperation between people more efficient using the new technologies that we have.