Your Definition of Non-Violent Protests

[Philly]

That's different than what you've been talking about. This means we retain a representative system but make all policies subject to a public referendum.

[exploited]

Lol what. I said like seven times that people could delegate tasks. And it isn't just a public referendum, they are also able to propose legislation as individuals or groups, delegate some tasks and not others, and allow for representatives in some policy areas but not others. Did you even read what I said or posted?

[Philly]

You haven't explained how we would delegate anything in your previous posts.

I think it's an interesting idea that we could force a vote on legislation if it hits a certain threshold of popular support and might be for that.

Not in favor of subjecting everything to public referendum.

[exploited]

I didn't think I'd have to explain how a direct democratic system would delegate stuff. Because, you know, it is kind of, well, obvious.

Why would you be opposed to people being able to shoot down or pass legislation directly? Don't like the idea of people having a say over their government?

[Philly]

Back end referendum has a history of resulting in some pretty awful policies. For example some places subject any change to the tax code to a public referendum and therefore can never raise taxes.

And yes you'll have to explain how we delegate power and responsibilities to smaller group of people and remain a direct democracy.

[Professor]

[Philly]

To be fair you could do single payer in less pages than the ACA took. Probably a lot less pages if you just expanded Medicare to all. But some policies do require a lot of dry technical language that will go on for hundreds or thousands of pages and no one would read it.

[exploited]

[Professor]

Also, a direct democracy would not have some of the protections that we have now. Namely, the protection that the minority has from predation by the majority. Also, the protection that a politician has where he can do something that is unpopular (but for the good of the people) and have it weighed against the popular things he did?

For instance, what was that statistic that said something like 47% of Americans believe in creationism? What if that were just a bit higher at 52%? And then that 52% decided that creationism be taught in schools?

What if 55% of the people decided to get rid of the IRS and all income taxes?

Right now, politicians know that these types of things, while popular, would not be good for America. They can afford to make the unpopular decision by voting on it, and then attempt to mitigate the damage during a campaign.

Sorry - but there is a reason that America has the single-oldest form of government in the world. It works. Or rather, it works better than anything else, even if it doesn't work perfectly all the time.

[Philly]