On 2011-01-05, at 9:20 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> SA: "Great! So the citizen has to be conscripted, taken away from his life,
> from the work he really cares about, to participate in interminable meetings
> like the one below. Count me with the CIO bureaucrat - as an ordinary
> citizen, I myself would "fall in a fit" if I were obligated to do this with
> my "free time":"
>
> [WS:] One does not need to look very far to find examples of these attitudes
> toward "public duties" - the jury selection in the US courts.
I'm finding this discussion of direct democracy with reference to ancient Athens somewhat bizarre. The population was less than a half million, and while the system was a remarkable challenge to despotic rule, it still excluded the majority composed of slaves, women, and foreign residents.
It hardly seems necessary to ask how it could serve as a model for today's vastly larger and more complex societies, apart from the caveats mentioned by SA.
Democratic systems are necessariy representative rather than direct. Even the workers' councils/trade unions favoured by Marxists and anarchists as the foundations of genuine democratic rule made provision for representative bodies higher up to plan, coordinate, and settle the inevitable disputes arising at the local level.