History has a few too many examples of when one system of governance replaces another, there is usually a lot of violence to effect that change.

And history has also proven that such revolutions often do not produce the results we are looking for. It's not hard to imagine that the people who will be successful in the next big gun fight will really not bring in Mr. Lees' version of direct democracy into play.

The key is to bring in a new system without much violence.

In Chapter 6 of my book, I describe the process of moving from western democracy to Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG) with little violence. It will take about 20 years.

Part of that lengthy time will be to learn the new skills to make this TDG work.

On the surface, the TDG appears to be "representative democracy." The basic electoral units--neighborhoods of about 200 people--will be electing one of their own residents into the lowest level of governance. Many of these voters will be trained to look for "good character and capacity for governance" rather what the representative promises to do for the neighbors.

Some ambitious people will indeed make such promises, but there really isn't a lot they can do to effect those promises at the neighborhood level. Such people, only looking out for their demographic, won't rise much higher than the neighborhood level. The TDG has a few more self-correcting features for this kind of politics.

Mr. Lees and I have differing opinions on the next system of governance. However, we both agree that the world needs to discuss alternatives than western democracy.

And this discussion is not happening.