I can't usually watch Pat because he likes to use the same tactics as Bill O'Reilly, where smugness is used like air freshener, and making people feel inferior is more the goal than the betterment of mankind. Many sift talks end up going in this sudo-intellectual, elitist route. Many have been consumed by its trollness, myself included. So before I get into what I want to say, I just want to say every conversation than ends up in draconian foot pounding here on the sift, even more so when I am the perpetrator, causes me weeks of anguish and usually sends me away for a week in trembling anguish for the loss of an opportunity to have real, meaningful conversation.

I like Pat's point, though, I think he muddles it a little; in the first half, he seems to rail against the notion that representative democracy works well, and in the second a rant about unelected representatives are destroying Ireland. Even so, I think the point of layers of democracy via representation seems to eliminate your representation through dilution. When you have a state, federal, continental, and world representative, it is hardly possible for your view of the world to be completely represented, or every fractionally. The policy of direct diplomacy had its failing, which was mob rule. I think an interesting problem that Pat is pointing out about representative democracy is very real...that you end up not having any representation because of the conflict between all the different levels. So while you got a vote a person into office, he wasn't the right person in the right office to affect the things that you wanted him to affect. A complicated maze where any change you want is impossible to get via a vote for your representative.

So for pure democracy, you get a direct voice that can get overruled by many shouting over your own. In representative, that same muddling happens when more and more systems of democracy are layered in. I would be interested to hear your opinion on this @dystopianfuturetoday. I think last time I dabbled in these waters I was called a fascist, trying to avoid a similar occurrence

I am not saying that representative democracy is systemically flawed absolutely, but has an undesirable entropy. I like trying to brain up better systems, it is how my brain works. Rep Dem has many benefits, though, some of the largest in the history of man...so trying to capture those same successes would be hard, but perhaps possible. Is there something better than Rep Dem...I surely hope so...lets vote on it!