Who says you're entrusting your whole vote to the same person?If I support Bernie on healthcare and women's rights but the NRA rep on gun control, that's a more nuanced position than "Straight ticket vote" even though it's still representative.
Participation however is way down, typically 25-50%.
Just to put in my word before this thread get canned: Yes, you can setup your own personal representative. Personal digital assistant is already on the horizon, it's not hard to imagine by the time Mars is colonized, you can have an personal wearable AI monitoring your every move/speech/online posting and deduce your political leanings from your behavior and vote accordingly for you, once a while it can let you confirm the vote in order to calibrate its actions.
Engineers should stick to Engineering.Politics is for those who like people and understand that all surprises cannot be engineered out but should be embraced as inevitable and to some extent be welcomed.
Direct democracy on every issue is impractical. Every person cannot read every single bill and vote on it. Thus representative democracy or a democratic republic is much more practical. Maybe initially on Mars with less than a few hundred people, but a million people will need representative government.
>But... Remember that The Orville episode where they have a kind of direct democracy where everyone is voted on? It's like our social media platforms taken to the extreme. >
Quote from: Robotbeat on 12/26/2017 05:07 am>But... Remember that The Orville episode where they have a kind of direct democracy where everyone is voted on? It's like our social media platforms taken to the extreme. >Orville S01E07 “Majority Rule,” a cautionary tale for direct democracy and conformity/PC advocates.
I suspect you didn't read ENOUGH Heinlein, actually. Or didn't pay attention.