Methinks you are conflating "elected representation" with "democracy".
   Election of tenured representatives is only one (failure) mode of
   democracy, one so terrible the old Athenians likened to oligarchy.
   Other modes exist: some have been extensively stress tested, such as
   sortition (Athens). Others haven't seen as much testing because they
   aren't really possible to implement without modern networking, and even
   so require very careful implementation, such as liquid/direct democracy
   without tenure.
   Saying "democracy doesn't work" is meaningless. Democracy means, in
   ideal, "rule by the governed". If your examples don't fit that
   criteria, they're not really democracies, just as the USSR wasn't
   really socialism, England isn't really monarchism, and The Republic of
   Ireland (not currently concerning itself with matters of the res
   publica/ public interest) isn't really a Republic.

   "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com> wrote:

On 2013-11-27 10:26, Al Billings wrote:

     If democracy doesn’t work, what are people suggesting? Is this when
     the
     Libertarian masks come off?

     Monarchy, anarcho capitalism, anarcho piratism, military
     dictatorship.
     Or perhaps a republic with the franchise limited to property owning
     heads of households with good credit records.
     Observe that police in wealthy neighborhoods are much better than
     police
     in poor neighborhoods. Do you think that is the result of voting?
     You presumably agree that the people's popular democracies were not
     all
     that democratic, because they made sure that everyone voted
     communist,
     and a party member always got elected, and it did not matter who got
     elected anyway since actual decisions were made elsewhere.
     Well that is pretty much the system we have in the western
     democracies.
     The actual decisions are made by the permanent and fireproof
     bureaucracy. If the elections come out wrong, they ignore the result
     and
     work to make sure the next elections come out right.
     Brainwashing in school, population replacement, and if that does not
     work, the permanent and unelected government just ignores the
     outcome of
     the vote, as for example the various votes on affirmative action and
     immigration.
     One demotic regime, turns out in practice to be remarkably similar
     to
     another demotic regime.

   --
   Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.