You mistake direct democracy for literally just majority decision making. You're presenting your absurd ideas and saying their mine. There are many, many ways of going around this. Mind you, states are somewhat independent within a federal system.
> ...get some representatives whose job is supposed to be to do the caring for you, but then they become the privileged elite...
Political parties are actually the BEST way to achieve this. A political party that consists of councils of workers who represent an industry. A socialist workers party whose aim is to increase worker control of the economy.
> If nobody actually owns anything then that isn't your house or your phone, it's everybody's.
This is the most childish take of socialism I have seen in a while, I'll still address it. Socialism is about productive property NOT personal property. Productive property being property that serves others. A house is personal property, even a mansion or a castle is personal property but a retail company that feeds 180 million people should not be personal property. But it is.
Take a retail store, the way I generally see it is these persons who work at these places of production would form councils and run it, generally, like any other retail store, but not for the service of private profits.
My most sincere take is that Socialism is about increasing production by unchaining it from private profits.
Production is limited by the profits of a few and ONLY socialism can unleash productions best side. With everyone employed we can satisfy most material human needs. Right now.
> it's why the USSR was a dystopia.
This is simply propaganda that can be dispelled by a simple look through CIA wires. And there's plenty of them. It's propaganda made for you as an American citizen. The CIA themselves claim the USSR wasn't a dictatorship in analysis they made in the late 60s. They then lied to the American people, such as yourself, because of the threat their ideology presented to the megacorps who rule america.
I do not believe the USSR was rainbows and sunshine tho. Do not misinterpret me. My point is not that I want to imitate a USSR, not even in the very slightest. It had flaws that caused its take over by capitalists. The USSR was a real country like any other with real flaws.
My point is that production can only be accelerated by socialism to go past the confines of capitalist ownership and into a realm of self satisfying production.
You don't strictly need money in order to produce, you need willing and able people.
These are, really, gestures towards socialism that I'm giving you. I'm just one guy, I don't represent much past me. But I know this, with the current technology that we have there should be much less needs in the world than there are now. And i know some people make money off others' needs.