Athenian democracy was only possible because it was a slave economy. The enfranchised men could spend time deliberating because slaves were doing all the real work. Not too much democracy for the slaves.

In the real world, most of us have to find a job to sustain us and our families. We don't have the time or resources to investigate all the nuances of public policy. Hence, the rational for representative democracy. The people elect a few representatives to work full time on public policy--while the rest of us do the work to keep society going.

In this article and his book, Mr. Lees makes many excellent points about the flaws of political parties. However, he uses these flaws as the reason to throw out the baby with the bath water.

For sure, we need to get rid of all political parties. But that should not mean that we cast aside representative democracy.

I invite readers to investigate another kind of democracy: Tiered Democratic Governance.

https://medium.com/discourse/tiered-democratic-governance-3f36a8f45660