Why democracy is messy........................

Contrary to popular opinion, us Americans probably  have a federal constitutional republic form of government as opposed to a democracy.  Arnold Kling has an interesting take on direct democracies.  Two excerpts:

I doubt that direct democracy is feasible. For example, we know that poll results depend on how questions are worded.  So who will decide how questions are worded in a direct democracy?  If it is a small group of experts, then that sort of defeats the point of direct democracy.  So before people vote on a question, they have to vote on the wording of the question.  And before they can do that, they have to vote on the wording of the question of how to word the question. etc.

 “The whole issue boils down to who is more over-confident.  If the people are over-confident, then you may want decisions made by the elite.  If the elite are over-confident, then you may want decisions made by the people.”   I go on to raise the Hayekian point that the elite are likely to be over-confident and hence markets are to be preferred.