[Ombrageux]

I remember postings every once in a while updates on PoFo of our changing ideological outlook. I've generally been pretty stable, being between 2004-2011 a fairly typical antiwar liberal/social democrat. I've changed a little recently, notably flirting with Europeanism when I came to Brussels and seeing the incredible power of WikiLeaks/Occupy/Anonymous. I figure it is a good time to take stock.



Democracy & Internet: I’ve a new awareness of the need for national democracy (to some extent the only kind possible) and its corollaries: debate, transparency, free media, the rule of law, etc. This may sound trivial but it’s the only way to both effectively and legitimately affect politics. This has been a fairly sterile topic. Forms of democracy have spread since 1945 and 1989 to all parts of the world (Latin America, Russia, Africa, Turkey…) but if anything its quality declined in the West.

With Internet (which I used to think politically insignificant), there are truly amazing prospects for the radical democratization of our politics: Establishment media are unnecessary (see HuffPo, TPM, rightwing freakshow, blogs), totally transparent government action is possible (see WikiLeaks/Assange, Assad email hacking), and we can engage in direct, unmediated debate (Twitter, Occupy/Indignados, etc).



My general instinct is that government should be as transparent and democratic as possible, with “elites” being as controlled as possible. With the Internet, there is potentially no limit to this tendency. We can literally create neo-Athenian direct e-democracy, with constant citizen participation, yearly election of leaders and generals, and constant referenda on fundamental issues (such as wars, taxes, welfare, constitutional issues).

Having read and learned a bit about Ancient Athens, I feel some nations should experiment with this kind of democracy. It is amazing how a powerful and successful State such as Athens could be so democratic (about 10% are legal citizens), given the constraints of that time (primitive technology, illiteracy, rural society). States who were such democracies would be qualitatively superior, and probably stronger in many ways, to those which are not.

More generally, we are moving to a society where individual autonomy and spontaneous collaboration (even in apparently small ways, CouchSurfing, carpooling..) are spreading and the role of corporate/governmental bureaucracies is declining. That old dream of freedom which motivated Orwell, and as many Marxists as Libertarians...



Social democracy: Redistribution, real progressive taxation, real meritocracy, free education, aggressive monetary/budgetary policy to stimulate growth and employment. Keynesians have been entirely vindicated in the eurozone crisis in particular, which has forced the ECB to tear up the Germano-Ordoliberal rulebook to prevent Depression. More generally, egalitarian capitalist societies are simply superior – in terms of crime, health, democracy, equality of opportunity, social cohesion/breakdown, etc – to less egalitarian ones.



Peace, Gaullism & anti-imperialism: I remain entirely convinced that in general imperialism and militarism are disastrous for both the victim nations (death, destruction, anarchy) and the criminal nations (loss of national wealth, weakening of democracy and law, strengthening of abusive elites). Today the world is still overwhelmingly dominated by American imperialism and its vast, limitless and lawless operations in the Islamic “arc of crisis”.

We should work towards a world defined by peace, international law, and balance between great nations. For Europeans, this means halting all active subversion of these principles and reviving the antiwar spirit of 2003 against the Iraq invasion, generalizing it to Afghanistan, Libya, Israel/Palestine, and ensuring our governments cannot commit such aggression (against public opinion) again. We have completely failed in this respect.

Like De Gaulle did in much less favorable circumstances, we should verbally resist, abstain from all collaboration wars of aggression, and perhaps even actively undermine the American Empire. This would in the short- and long-run be in Europe’s self-interest: As American power declines we should be actively cultivating good relations with other world powers, and in particular with our Russian and Arab neighbors (the latter in particular should not be sacrificed to American or Israeli ambitions, a self-evidently idiotic policy).

According to us, Frenchmen, Europe must be European. A European Europe means that it exists through-itself and for-itself, in other words that in the centre of this world it must have its own policy. Yet, precisely, it is that which some reject, consciously or unconsciously, who claim to want to achieve it. Deep down, the fact that Europe, having no policy, should remain submissive to that which comes from the other side of the Atlantic seems to them, still today, normal and satisfactory.

Europeanism: 1) Europe should be democratic. 2) Europe should be for peace, law and independence. 3) Europe should be united. I believe in those tings in that order. European integration is worthless if it violates principles 1) and 2) (which it does constantly). The eurozone is effectively an anti-social, bureaucratic tyranny, and an economically disastrous one at that. It will need radical reform, likely a revolution of thought in Germany, for it to be worthwhile.



Radical ideologies: I stand by what I have long argued on this board, concluding that Communism/Libertarianism/Fascism all remain some combination of irrelevant and/or stupid (and have been stupid since at least the 1960s triumph of liberal democracy, the social market economy, mass society and consumerism, etc).



Environmentalism: Important, but I have a hard time getting worked up about these issues. Factory farming, most GMOs, over-consumption, oil dependency, obesity, carbon emissions, etc, are all bad. In the long run we need to move towards sustainable consumption, resource efficiency, renewables, etc. Developed nations like the U.S.A., Canada and Russia will need to move to basically Euro-Japanese levels of consumption/pollution (or even less). Nuclear is not only defensible but absolutely necessary from a climate perspective.

[Dr House]

Race-IQ differentiation is, as far as I can ascertain, fact. And from firsthand experience (being as I'm from a Latin American country myself) I have to say people in lower-IQ societies behave pretty much like one would expect: compared to the average European (though certainly not to lower-class Europeans), the average Latin American appears downright infantile (if you've ever watched Jerry Springer or something like it, you know what that looks like). Honestly, I feel uncomfortable with most people in my own country; it almost (not quite, but almost) makes me want to convert from my pseudo-racial particularist viewpoint to an IQ elitist one.

However, I'm not convinced that that in and of itself is the be-all end-all of the development gap -- rather, I think that is one toxic ingredient of a negative feedback loop holding back development in those countries, which might be able to be broken. While a low median IQ presents an obstacle to skilling up the population, it is possible, with exceptional effort, for low-IQ people to be able to perform tasks normally done by people with slightly better cognitive development. Further, some things investors look for in a given workforce when investing are dependability and discipline -- obviously you get more value from machinery if your workforce knows to take care of it (I heard of one Japanese businessman complaining about this about Filipinos).

Generally speaking it seems to me, thus, that organization, discipline and good economic policy are more responsible for economic development than the intelligence of the population; which is why for example Israel (IQ 94) is one of the most economically successful countries in the world, despite having a massive defense industry and being surrounded by poor and hostile states (not to mention being resource-poor). Historically this has been most reliably provided to poor countries by more well-organized societies in the developed world, but poor countries can possibly break the vicious cycle by themselves, through authoritarian rule.

I've adopted a more pro-imperialist stance, which interestingly enough has also made me more friendly to multiculturalism. Segregationism and racial hygiene policies are appropriate only to countries that are large enough they can afford to project power without having to expand their physical boundaries. For countries smaller than the big three (USA, Russia, China), projecting any significant amount of power requires expanding far past their borders in search of resources and manpower; and a racial supremacist stance is incompatible with large-scale empire building -- you need to earn the loyalty of your colonials, and that's at best exceedingly difficult if you treat them like second-class citizens.

Now, that doesn't mean I buy the multicultural stew makes everyone happy bullshit that liberals want to foist on us all. Inter-ethnic mingling causes tension, which is a problem that needs to be tackled. One way that could be done is through forced ethnic quotas plus united nation brainwashing a la Singapore, but that may not work without a (large) critical mass of peninsulars to locals. Another is to simply allow locals to keep to their own, and generally speaking treat them generously. Puerto Rico is a great case study on how to create a colony that has no desire at all to leave its colonial status, despite having an independent national identity.

As for the other side of that equation (actually being a colonial power), while it's a less than flattering situation it is worth remembering that aside from the world's superpowers no nation in the world is truly free: every country is within the sphere of influence of its local power, and at the whims of its own ideological and geopolitical interests (failure to comply with the ruling ideology results in geopolitical isolation, or destruction). Colonies are just more so. Provided that locals actively benefit from colonial status, and provided a certain amount of autonomy, I'm happy with my country being a colony. The main reason I advocate independence is that, unlike in the 50s, colonial status is no longer in Puerto Rico's best interests.

As for the rest of my positions, they aren't all that different.

[Ombrageux]

Wrong thread dude.

[Rilzik]

Wrong thread dude.

I think he thought you meant for the thread to be for people (PoFo) that wanted to post their ideological updates. You just want to talk about your own update?

[Daktoria]

My general instinct is that government should be as transparent and democratic as possible, with “elites” being as controlled as possible. With the Internet, there is potentially no limit to this tendency. We can literally create neo-Athenian direct e-democracy, with constant citizen participation, yearly election of leaders and generals, and constant referenda on fundamental issues (such as wars, taxes, welfare, constitutional issues).

Social democracy: Redistribution, real progressive taxation, real meritocracy, free education, aggressive monetary/budgetary policy to stimulate growth and employment. Keynesians have been entirely vindicated in the eurozone crisis in particular, which has forced the ECB to tear up the Germano-Ordoliberal rulebook to prevent Depression. More generally, egalitarian capitalist societies are simply superior – in terms of crime, health, democracy, equality of opportunity, social cohesion/breakdown, etc – to less egalitarian ones.

Interesting.

I remember you preferring real aristocracy and fearing expert bias before. What changed your mind?

[Soixante-Retard]

We can literally create neo-Athenian direct e-democracy, with constant citizen participation...

I think the question you ought to be asking, Ombrageux, is why is there such a thing as representative democracy?

...yearly election of leaders and generals, and constant referenda on fundamental issues (such as wars, taxes, welfare, constitutional issues).

Sounds like constant turmoil to me. Tyranny of the majority?

[Ombrageux]

Rilzik - The long post on IQ/race made me assume it was related to that stalker's thread but indeed it looks to actually be an ideological update, which is supposed to be here. Kind of surprised race/IQ makes up a full half of it

I think the question you ought to be asking, Ombrageux, is why is there such a thing as representative democracy?

Because direct democracy in any large society, pre-Internet, was simply not practicable. It is perfectly feasible today and the Ancient Greek democracies prove that it was indeed feasible to some extent in the past as well. (In fact, given that we now have universal education, leisure and telecommunications, if anything I think it much more feasible today than in the past when it was actually achieved.)

Admittedly this is experimental, I believe more and more nations should experiment with depriving their unaccountable elites of power and simply exercise it themselves.

Sounds like constant turmoil to me. Tyranny of the majority??

The tyranny of the majority is not necessarily any worse than in a representative democracy. It may be "turmoil" but I look at our existing political systems: the corporate-captured U.S. system, the secretive National Security State at war in a limitless war in innumerable countries, the incompetent bankster-bureaucrats of the eurozone. How exactly would you qualify this rule-by-elite other than "turmoil"?

Daktoria - Preferred real aristocracy and feared expert bias? Doesn't sound coherent. Source?

[Daktoria]

Daktoria - Preferred real aristocracy and feared expert bias? Doesn't sound coherent. Source?

It's not word for word, but you explicated here:

Elites not only have no immediate incentive to act in the public interest, but their so-called "experts" can be just as stupid, prejudiced and ideological as the ordinary citizen

The "experts" supposedly know better and power must be entrusted to them. It is always a disaster. It doesn't matter if its the Generals of World War I, the nuclear arms builders and strategists of the Cold War, the National Security State of the War on Terror, or the expert technocrats of Frankfurt and Brussels.

A few posts down:

Daktoria - That was a quickly-typed post, a few typos, I was arguing strongly against pseudo-aristocracy.

-----

Sorry about the PM. That took shorter than I thought.

[Soixante-Retard]

Because direct democracy in any large society, pre-Internet, was simply not practicable. It is perfectly feasible today and the Ancient Greek democracies prove that it was indeed feasible to some extent in the past as well. (In fact, given that we now have universal education, leisure and telecommunications, if anything I think it much more feasible today than in the past when it was actually achieved.)

The point of my asking was time. Direct democracy may be feasible, though is it desirable?

...in a community of any size, especially if it displays the phenomenon of division of labor, it would be highly inconvenient for every individual citizen to have to get into contact with all the other citizens on every issue in order to do his part in ruling or governing. It will be more convenient to reserve only the most important decisions for the individual citizens to pronounce upon—say by referendum—and to deal with the rest through a committee appointed by them—an assembly or parliament whose members will be elected by popular vote. This committee or body of delegates, as we have seen, will not represent the people in a legal sense but it will do so in a less technical one—it will voice, reflect or represent the will of the electorate. Again as a matter of convenience, this committee, being large, may resolve itself into smaller ones for the various departments of public affairs. Finally, among these smaller committees there will be a general-purpose committee, mainly for dealing with current administration, called cabinet or government, possibly with a general secretary or scapegoat at its head, a so-called prime minister.

Not everyone has the time to research every issue that they are voting on. So that is why the irrational voter is being rational. It also explains why people always vote for a certain political party like die hard supporters of a football team - because it is likely that they don't know the issues that they are voting on. They're voting on "faith". A good reason why in the UK, old labourites who voted for new labourites, like Blair, feel betrayed - the old labourites were voting for the new labourites simply because they had always voted labour, they didn't bother to find out what Blair's plans were.

But it depends on what results you want. Each system has their pros and cons. If you like changes to be quick and to "get things done", then representative democracy is for you. If you like filibustering and uncertainty, then direct democracy is for you - Switzerland (which has direct democracy) gets nothing done (and that is why its model is a favourite amongst conservative MEPs - Daniel Hannan for one).

[Dr House]

Rilzik - The long post on IQ/race made me assume it was related to that stalker's thread but indeed it looks to actually be an ideological update, which is supposed to be here. Kind of surprised race/IQ makes up a full half of it

Well, race relations is the only thing I've had a major paradigm shift on (plus the whole "imperialism fuck yeah" stuff). I probably had some more minor adjustments in other areas, which I may post later.

[Social_Critic]

i agree with Ombrageux for the most part, but I think Brussels sucks. I hate European street signage, it takes a PhD to figure out all the little squiggles, so I just drive forward until I hit somebody, and then backwards to make sure they're dead and can't complain about it. You may think this is cruel, but I got it all figured out, most of the ones who do manage to get hit when I only drive at 20 kmph are drunk tourists. It's Darwinian, you know.

[Ombrageux]

Daktoria - Right, I'm basically considering what passes for "expert rule" to be "pseudo-aristocratic rule".

Schumpeter there is not giving a particularly strong defence of representative democracy. "Again as a matter of convenience..." he backs representative democracy. Fine, it's always a spectrum. With the Internet, direct contact between citizens and direct democracy becomes a great deal less "inconvenient" or impractical. That Schumpeter quote at least suggests we should move towards more direct democracy to the extent that new technologies make this more practicable.

DH - Fair enough, wholly disagree, but whatevs.

SC - Brussels is not ideal. That won't be surprising anyone It's a pretty good compromise in terms of size, liveability, location. My main gripes would be the weather (horrific), the decidedly French attitude to opening hours and the massive unemployment.

[Paradigm]

So, I guess since have shifted over the last year or so, I should do one of these as well:


Anarchism: I've come to see that representative democracy is a contradiction in terms, and that the only true democracy is direct. I've also come to see how consensus-based democracy trumps winner-take-all democracy. I advocate decentralized consensus-based democracy based on voluntary association. In other words, anarchism. For a long time I've leaned in a general left-libertarian direction, but within the past 5 months, I finally came around to the idea that people really can govern themselves in a way that doesn't involve dominator hierarchies. Before becoming an anarchist, I had already come to oppose wage labor, and viewed myself as anti-capitalist, but it was my involvement with the Occupy movement that showed me first-hand how a decentralized consensus-based system could actually work, and that really made it all come together for me. I think I was always an anarchist at heart. It just took a while for me to see that it was possible.

Economics: I think Marx had it right for the most part, with a few qualifications. I'm not sure if I fully agree with his formulation of the labor theory of value, though I do see it as fairly self-evident that all surplus value comes from labor in one form or another. I also think that Henry George's theory about wages being set at the margin of production is a useful corrective to Marx's theory of wages as being set by the "socially necessary" amount for the reproduction of labor. Anyway, I think Marx's ideas about surplus value and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall are dead on, and I largely came to these conclusions by reading other economists(even Keynes seemed to stumble upon the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, with his comment about the "euthanasia of the rentier"). David Harvey's book, The Enigma of Capital, was immensely helpful in getting me to understand Marxist economics.

I think post-Keynesians, particularly the Modern Monetary Theorists, have the best understanding of money, but not capital(which is why they're not Marxists). Part of what led me toward anarchism was David Graeber's book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, much of which resonated with MMT, but was written from an anarchist perspective. Where Modern Monetary Theorists talk about the necessary role played by "vertical money"(government spending) and "horizontal money"(credit), Graeber described times in history when there was only "horizontal money," which he calls pure credit economies, and points out how credit functioned as a form of mutual aid. That reminded me of Proudhon's idea of mutual credit, which I support as one form of mutual aid, though I would like to see a shift toward as much of a pure gift economy as we can get.

Capitalism: I've come to a view of capitalism which is not just economic but also sociological. I see not only the role of capitalists and workers, but also the police, the military, and the politicians. This holistic understanding of capitalism has led me to abandon reformism in favor of a revolutionary approach. I've abandoned Georgism not because I don't think it would work, but because I don't think the capitalists would allow it to be implemented to an extent that would actually threaten their privilege. I also think it is only made necessary by the competitive conditions of capitalism, whereas the alternative economy I'd like to move toward would be one of cooperation. So the way I see it, Georgism is impossible to implement under the system that makes it necessary, and moving beyond that system would eliminate its necessity.

Racism and Sexism: I'm ashamed to say that Dave and House almost had me buying into race realism for a while. Not the part about intelligence -- just the idea that race was a valid biological category. A little bit of research cleared up that confusion for me, and now I see it for the foolishness that it is. I'm now more militantly anti-racist than ever, and also a staunch feminist. I'm been striving to check my own privilege, which in the process has opened my eyes to just how pervasive white and male privilege really is in society.

[Soixante-Retard]

That Schumpeter quote at least suggests we should move towards more direct democracy to the extent that new technologies make this more practicable.

It is not Schumpeter's suggestion that "we" should move towards direct democracy because (at the time of his writing) it is simply infeasible. Today, as you said Ombrageux, it would be extremely easy to vote on every issue via the Internet. The point of Schumpeter's quote is that direct democracy would be highly undesirable. If we were to spend a lot of time, researching every issue then voting on every issue, we wouldn't get a lot of other things done. Time is scarce. For that reason, Schumpeter argues that we adopt a representative democracy for most issues and reserve referenda (i.e. direct democracy) on the most important issues. He is arguing from the division of labour premise. By delegating political decisions to representatives, "we" (i.e. non politicians) have time to pursue other activities, like surviving.

Imagine if "we" did adopt a direct democracy and voted on every single issue. What would be the result? Well, we must have time to sustain ourselves and our family - we need to survive first. What do we do with the time left over? Well, the amount of time will vary from individual to individual (since time to get sustenance varies) and as such each individual will spend varying amounts of time researching the issue to be voted on - from spending a zero amount of time to a very large amount of time.

What would be the result of this? You'd have some people voting on issues they don't even know about (those who've had zero time to research), you'll have some people who'd be voting on a few select issues that they really do know about (they've put the time in because the result may affect them hugely and so they have a vested interest in the issue) and you'll have a large cohort of apathetic people who simply won't vote or might vote once or twice. Why would the last section be apathetic? Firstly, they don't have the time and secondly the issue (as they perceive it) doesn't affect them. The are being rationally ignorant.

From wikipedia:

Rational ignorance occurs when the cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds the potential benefit that the knowledge would provide.

So in short, you'd have an even smaller fraction of society voting under direct democracy - even greater apathy among the many. And those who do vote would be factious (nothing get's done in Switzerland).

But if that doesn't convince you and you think what I just wrote was a load of bull and sophistry, then lets compare the empirical data - the evidence to discriminate between opinions.

Let us compare the voter turnout of the last 5 parliamentary elections between two different countries with two different forms of democracy; representative and direct.

Voter turnout in the UK; a representative democracy:
From: http://www.idea.int/vt/country_view.cfm?id=77

2010 - 65.77%
2005 - 61.36%
2001 - 59.38%
1997 - 71.46%
1992 - 77.83%

As compared to voter turnout in the Switzerland; a direct democracy:
http://www.idea.int/vt/country_view.cfm?id=42

2007 - 48.28%
2003 - 45.22%
1999 - 43.22%
1995 - 42.25%
1991 - 46.04%


But this doesn't eliminate the argument for direct democracy. What the evidence does say is that you can't use the argument "there would be greater voter participation in a direct democracy as compared to a representative democracy" because the evidence is against you.


For the theory that explains why this is true, google Public Choice Theory.

[Ombrageux]

SR - There is a spectrum between completely indirect and completely direct democracy. I am merely saying that today the practical limits on direct democracy are far more than in the past: There is increasing free time, literacy, as well as direct access to information, citizen interaction, potentially voting, etc.

Obviously we will always have civil servants and politicians. The point is that if you are arguing, as Schumpeter does, that we should be representative democracies because it is more "convenient" (and he was writing over a half-century ago), then the rationale is simply less compelling today. According to the reasoning in the passage you cited, we do not need to be as indirect a democracy as the Western nations were at the time of writing.

Your entire post deals entirely with an absurdist, ad reductio version of my argument, an argument I did not make. I said we should shift towards more direct democracy, that more nations should experiment with it, and that there have been very concrete, successful examples in the past to base ourselves on (namely Ancient Athens).

I don't even know why you mention Public Choice Theory, which I am familiar with. If anything it shows conclusively why elites - the civil servants and politicians you want to entrust power to - systematically serve their private interests whenever they claim to act for the public good.

[Soixante-Retard]

It is very enjoyable, Ombrageux, watching you squirm out of that one with your ad hoc explanations as to why direct democracy is more desirable today than yesterday yet little has structurally changed. As to regards for information, how do we differentiate between correct and incorrect knowledge, it consumes time for each individual. The "convenience" argument that you seemed to be disparaging, is hardly that, the "convenience" is delegation of decisions to representatives is a argument from the division of labour.

Rational ignorance occurs when the cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds the potential benefit that the knowledge would provide.

I find it funny you that describe yourself as a "Liberal" - I take it you're a radical (i.e. you want change)? - Though it is only Conservatives (i.e. those who want to arrest change) who have been seriously pursuing direct democracy as a desirable alternative. What does that tell you about the results of each system of democracy?

Would you rather delegate your decisions to your legislative representative so that you can pursue your own happiness or consume your time voting on every issue? Do you want a liberal democracy, which is ipso facto representative, that acts as a bulwark (certainly the Madisonian version) to protects civil liberties and exclusively reserves referenda on constitutional issues, or do you want a direct democracy which acts on the whims of special interests (as they are the ones who will consistently vote (Public Choice) in a direct democracy)? I'm not setting this up as a universal dichotomy, but as the system you want (as I perceive) and the system I want - the liberal democracy.

See Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (especially part IV, ch 21 & 22) by J. A. Schumpeter.

And, if you're so clued up on Public Choice Theory, then you should know the line of thought central to its thesis is rational ignorance - something which would be more prevalent and therefore result in greater voter apathy under a direct democracy as the evidence from Switzerland shows. Switzerland which, on the Canton model, is like your Ancient Athens that you're fond of.

[Ombrageux]

SR - Of course there needs to be a division of labor. I am saying that as we work less (which we are), as people have become fully literate, and as the process of voting and debate becomes less cumbersome (which it is), then we should move towards more direct democracy.

Our elected representatives, by the way, do not act anything like your ideal of "knowledge-seeking, rational" individual, honestly and free-thinkingly trying to discover what is the policy for the Nation. It is nothing like that. The representatives of a typical Western democracy serves the Party line. Discipline is strictly enforced and the number of MPs with any real independence tends to be very limited. The actual thinkers and decision-makers of a party tend to be limited to an even tinier subset, that of the Party leadership or, if in office, of the Cabinet. The U.S. is somewhat different in this respect, but there too, action is far more guided by ensuring good relations with corporate donors and partisan games than it is any open-minded attempt to "figure out" what is best for the country. Think tanks, those entities most supposed to be doing this kind of forward-looking, semi-disinterested public policy thinking, tend to be the most subservient of all.

I use the word "convenience" because that is the one Schumpeter uses. I also note he says "only the most important decisions for the individual citizens to pronounce upon—say by referendum". I don't know which decisions he is referring to, but in our Western democracies, we do not typically have referenda on war, tax levels, welfare levels or ceding sovereignty (say to the EU). Those would be "important decisions" which should be taken by citizens, not by corrupt, self-serving elites.

This does not imply a total elimination of all public office. Even Athens, a functioning example, had public officials. It just so happened that citizens elected their generals and leaders every year.

Finally, even to the extent the objections you raise are valid, there are potentially creative solutions. For instance, instead of delegating legislative authority to an MP through an election, one might delegate one's individual vote to a given person whom works on politics full-time and one largely agrees with (a delegation which could be removed at any time).

[Soixante-Retard]

Our elected representatives, by the way, do not act anything like your ideal of "knowledge-seeking, rational" individual, honestly and free-thinkingly trying to discover what is the policy for the Nation. It is nothing like that.

I didn't say that. Complete straw man. It is because politicians don't know everything I want their power (the power to do good is also the power to do harm) limited. I reminded by two very apt quotes from two of my favourite thinkers:

"How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing much damage?"
- Karl Popper

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
- Thomas Sowell

But it does not follow from these two quotes that "direct" or "pure" democracy would be better (Mill's dictum of the tyranny of the majority). And as James Madison showed, you can contain man's flaws and still be able to do good - checks and balances - constitutional liberal democracy.

The representatives of a typical Western democracy serves the Party line.... corrupt, self-serving elites.

You're pushing at an open door with me.

My beef with direct democracy is a problem with a) the dissemination of knowledge among the electorate, b) the consumption of time each vote must necessitate if the voter is to be rational, c) the apathy that results from a) and b), d) the cumbersome nature of the system (I'm an unapologetic radical)

I think you and I agree more than you think. I was once a dogmatic advocate (that is not to say you are) of direct democracy until I pursued that train of thought which led to the irreconcilable conclusion of "the tyranny of the majority". The constitutional liberal democracy does not exclude referenda.

To quote F. A. Hayek,

To the doctrinaire democrat the fact that the majority wants something is sufficient ground for regarding it as good; for him the will of the majority determines not only what is law but what is good law .

The tyranny of the majority. I think Hayek's "The Constitution of Liberty" chapter 7 "Majority Rule" gives an excellent defence of constrained liberal democracy and brilliant exposé of what doctrinaire democracy means.

Again to quote from Hayek

The current undiscriminating use of the word "democratic" as a general term of praise is not without danger. It suggests that, because democracy is a good thing, it is always a gain for mankind if it is extended. This may sound self-evident, but it is nothing of the kind.

That is to say, just because direct democracy may be a purer form of democracy is does't necessarily mean that it is better if we extend it. It is the false assumption that greater democracy means better governance.

[Ombrageux]

Well, I believe in government, the welfare state, the mixed-market economy, environmental regulation, war on occasion, etc. Government is inevitable and necessary to human existence and, to the extent that we have government, it should be as democratic and transparent as possible (and certainly much more democratic and transparent than it is today).

[Soixante-Retard]

Government ... should be as democratic and transparent as possible (and certainly much more democratic and transparent than it is today).

Again, you're pushing at an open door with me. The locus of decisions should be with the Government, a committee formed from elected representatives, and the processes of decisions within Government should be as democratic and transparent as possible (James Madison).