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The theoretical down-site of direct democracy is that if the population is stupid, you'll get instant stupid decisions forced onto politicians.

A population can be educated and still pass controversial laws. Switzerland, through a referendum, voted in favour of banning the building of minarets a few years ago. It was a completely democratic decision by the populace (57% in favour of a ban). Mosques can still be built, just without minarets.

What surprised me as someone viewing this from abroad was how this could become a political issue worthy of a referendum. Even more surprising was some of the campaigning around the issue, particularly the menacing and controversial posters in favour of a ban [1]. The impression I was left with (and tell me if it's an unfair one) was that Switzerland, a thoroughly democratic country, had a rightwing and reactionary streak to it (one which it's perfectly entitled to have).

[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/files/2010/11/ch-1.jpg

> Also, Swiss people tend to use "us" when they talk about their politicians whereas Germans use "they". This really shows how Swiss stand behind decision made by their government whereas Germans - in comparison - act like infants being totally at the mercy of their leaders (who are elected every four years and basically do what they want during that time).

I'm Swiss and I'm having a hard time agreeing with this sentiment.

You're right, it doesn't work at scale. California (four times more populous than Switzerland) is plagued with plebiscites on every imaginable topic. Often they get passed into law while being in direct conflict with other previous or even concurrent referenda.

California, from what I've heard, has a major issue because it doesn't effectively have a constitution or an effective legislative structure that can stand above the People's mood at the moment:

Unlike other jurisdictions, California's history has been shaped by simple-majority citizen-initiated constitutional amendment referendums, with a low threshold for getting on the ballot and precedence over any statutes passed by the legislature. These are so common and easy to sell that judges have been required to interpret the people's will when they pass conflicting referendums - and this was happening often enough that their Supreme Court felt the need to create a vote plurality standard to decide which to follow.

Conventional constitutional democracy has supermajority elements; California is one example of what might happen if they were all simple-majority and you treated the constitution as the frequently-rewritten book of laws, and the only people who could practically write this type of law given a divided legislature, were citizens.

I've heard the big problem is that a referendum can't raise taxes, but can require the state to spend money.

It would be cool if each proposal had to be financed (e.g. "sponsoring this thing will require raising state income tax by 0.024%"), though I guess that's impractical?

That's not true, a referendum can raise taxes. However on account of a previous referendum these tax-raising propositions need a 2/3rds supermajority to pass, while spending projects require only a bare majority.

That's not really an issue with scale so much as uneducated Americans being unable to function.

In the grand scheme of things, I doubt the education differential between Americans and the Swiss is enough to explain why direct democracy works in one place and not the other.

Maybe californians don't have a sense of ownership towards their state as much as swiss people have.

I don't think you can really compare between systems drawn differently. The nine-county Bay Area is as populous as Switzerland and you can bet that the Bay Area by itself would pass wildly different referenda than does the state of California as a whole. Consider what would happen if you threw together Switzerland with Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. That would be about the same size as California and I'm sure the plebiscites would be hilarious.