On Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 6:40 PM David Barrett <[1]dbarrett@expensify.com>
   wrote:

   Maybe just skipping ahead a few steps before getting pulled into a
   debate about the US government, do you agree with the concept of
   representative democracy involving different branches with checks and
   balances being a philosophically strong foundation for governance?  Is
   your complaint that the US government is an imperfect execution of a
   fundamentally sound concept, or that the entire idea underpinning our
   government is irredeemably flawed?
   I'm not eager to get into a conversation where you end up saying "But
   democracy sucks, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is
   strength."
   -david

   I might be a little too cognitively weak to have a single opinion that
   works in all scenarios,
   But I believe that everything can be made to work in a variety of ways,
   and we're clearly not there yet, but nor have we turned all of our
   countries into a giant homogenous hell yet.
   Cut to the chase, here's where I am this week, it'll change:
   - For a democracy with schooling to work, people need to be educated or
   incentivised to effectively participate in it.  It should be the
   popular video game, rather than kill-zombies, and its weaknesses and
   properties need to be well-known and accessible so it can be used to
   resolve them.
   - For representation to work, representatives need to fully represent
   their people.  This means more of them, and it means regular accessible
   meetings that get real results, and it means rotating them as soon as
   people aren't satisfied.  This is called spokescouncil in the left.
   - For a democracy to work at all, people need to have uncensored
   productive communication.  If instead you have everybody staring at
   advertisements and voting, it's not the communities doing the voting,
   it's the advertisements.  Good choices are made with dialog, not
   repetition.
   This democracy can work.  It relies on powerful unsung endangered heros
   who can influence it when something is wrong.  I suspect many people
   here have tried to be such heros and discovered the dangers.
   Something everybody should know about is Citizen's Referendum.  In many
   areas any citizen or group of citizens can pass a new law.  It takes
   footwork, but you can be a huge hero.

References

   1. mailto:dbarrett@expensify.com