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Comment by friendlygrammar | Hacker News Reader

Direct democracy doesn't work.

One problem is who is actually represented. The dozens or hundreds of families that are priced out of the town, can't vote, because they've been prevented from living there. By definition, local elections are going to favor the people already living there.

I agree with this. The correct way would be to make the entire metro area a 'city' (or maybe a 'megacity') and absorb (and remove) all lower levels of governance.

This way voter representation is on the scale of the locality. It would encourage factoring in the needs of all citizens within that economic zone, instead of factions of shards that battle each other.

Yeah, look at the chaos that is Switzerland: one of the best life expectancy and education in the world, with so low taxes that rich French move there to pay less.

1 success out of how many failures? The people of California are not nearly as intelligent or forward thinking as the people of Switzerland.

Well, Switzerland had centuries of focus on education.

But California seems to do OK according to my metrics: higher GDP per capita and life expectancy that the average in USA. What makes you feel California as a failure?

Switzerland has had many propositions that would have worked in favor of the majority but were actually voted down. Meanwhile, in California, everyone votes in their self interest without caring or considering the consequences.

A lot of things that work in the small don't scale.

This is exactly what the opponents of democracy said during the 18th century, and exactly what China says now "we are too big for democracy".

But well, we have a proven implementation at 8 million people. Let's promote it to all countries of that size or smaller then.

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