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Comment by kyrra | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that proper legislation is a balance of interests and working through the details of the policy. If you put "abortion" on the ballot, what would that mean? There are a ton of different possible policies on what is or is not permissible.

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Haven't the Swiss solved this?

Maybe you Americans should figure out the first step of engineering, which is to look at existing solutions and learn from them :-p

The Swiss have a representative democracy with a slightly different way of ‘representing’.

We can move the goalposts as much as we like, but the Swiss have the closest approximation of a direct democracy in the world, right now.

So before dreaming about 100% democracy, maybe the US could slide away from "flawed democracy", first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index#...

Sure, but who is going to be elected who would do that?

And as has been quite apparent, since the most folks will do is peacefully protest if outside the voting system - and be ignored - how else is it going to change?

And if either of those were working, we wouldn’t be complaining about this online anyway eh?

I highly doubt the US system can be fixed peacefully. I really wish it were, since the US affects a lot of the rest of the world (including where I live).

The main thing the Swiss have that Americans don't are referendums that can seriously challenge federal action. And then there are the state versions of that. And they don't have to wait for "the cycle". Or have results made null by arbitrary veto powers.

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