Pela democracia directa

For Starbucks politics, por Chris Dillow:

Imagine how bad coffee providers would be if the only way we could choose between them was to select every four or five years whether we'd get our coffee from Starbucks or Costa, with the winner setting prices and deciding what we'd get every day.

Why should we have to buy only job lots? Why can't we pick and choose policies through referenda?

(...)

Bagehot continues, claiming that where direct democracy has been tried, such as in California, "the results have been chaotic."

This too is crude. It ignores evidence (pdf) that direct democracy does work. It also omits to consider whether California's problems aren't instead the result of giving weight to cheap preferences, a problem which could be solved by demand-revealing referenda.

And anyway, give me the people's chaos over politicians' order any time.