[geeks] can't wait for Vista

[der Mouse]

>> Actually, like communism, [direct democracy] works OK until the
>> population gets too large.  Lots of political systems work well
>> among small populations but start to fall apart once you can no
>> longer know everyone personally.
> Well, it seems to fail even with only a few hundred thousand judging
> from history.

That's large enough that direct democracy is not really even
implementable, much less workable; even a big stadium holds only a few
thousand - you can't really form a meeting in which a few hundred
thousand people *can* participate, much less *will* particilate, much
less will *usefully* participate.

> What size were you thinking of?

About a thousand or so, tops.

>>> It usually resulted in civil war, largess until civic collapse, or
>>> a combination of both.
>> Really?  Consider the Quaker communities in New England.
> I don't call the Quaker community a significant "nation" or even a
> city state.

Neither do I.  It wasn't clear to me from your post that you were
talking about only nations (or even city-states, though I suspect some
of the city-states of antiquity could have worked).

> Even some called a democracy, are really a republic, or in some
> cases, a dictorship/cabal.

Like the USA, which is often miscalled a democracy.  Or for that matter
most "Western" countries, which are often miscalled democracies even
though they're not (and the ones that are aren't direct democracies, of
course, but some attempt at representative democracy).

Well, with the possible exception of the tiniest, such as Vatican City
(though in its case I doubt for other reasons that it even tries to be
a democracy).  Maybe some of the smaller islands - is the Isle of Man
considered a country of its own?  The Faroe Islands?  Maybe some of the
Pacific islands are small enough....

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