Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
In its purest definition, often called a direct democracy, it's a method of governing where everyone votes on everything, and a simple majority rules. I don't think that there's any government that works that way at the moment. If there is, I expect it'll implode in due course.
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No, it doesn't work for large, modern countries.
Democracy was invented in the 5th century BC in the city-state of Athens, and there it worked pretty well. It was direct rule by the
demos - the people - but to be a member of the
demos you had a be a male Athenian citizen over the age of 30 and there were never more than approximately 30,000 such people.
The Athenians themselves recognised that direct democracy was impractical when the size of the
demos exceeded about 100,000 people.