Are our societies ready for a real democracy, that is a direct vote on all issues type of self-governing rule where anything can be put up to a vote including votes for execution of members of the society?
Or did you mean something else?
Or did you mean something else?
One issue is that current states have accumulated too much power . A second one is that individual rights need to be untouchable. But otherwise i think our current representative systems are just fertile grounds for corruption.
And if you think this is some unreasonable edge case you must remember that humans are beings guided by emotion as much as reason, the whole COVID panic and hysteria that happened just two years ago has enough examples that emotion will trump reason even in situations that aren't even that dire.
It was a stroke of genius to call what we have now in most of the world "democracy", as in "government by the people", when it's anything but that.
However, until we get there, the current system is quite good at maintaining a stable society with increasing gains in technological development and social welfare. It is far from perfect or ideal, and it is full of lies, but until we have something better that is tangible and real, and not just theoretical, I wouldn't touch it.
Sadly we don't have anything to replace them with at the moment, and we're just a hair away from some societal and political event to convince people that this very charismatic leader has all the answers and we should vote for them.
It's hard to see it (and admit it to oneself) because of recency bias and thinking this time it'll be different, that we're smarter than our ancestors but history tends to repeat itself.
Another thing is that people must feel that their participation does have an effect.
One more aspect is that most of the decisions is not a popularity vote but must be based on knowledge and science. Average people can’t make that choices unless you have extremely well educated population.
Overall, a simple introduction of a technology which will enable more direct democracy is not enough. We need more ground work which will promote individuals with certain values and behaviors.
However, I also do believe that introducing such technology might accelerate that ground work.
Most people would reject the idea of a city voting what everyone's compulsory dinner will be. But when it comes to zoning and building codes, that's already grey area.