I think it would be hard to implement an anonymous system as to who votes or doesn’t vote, especially when there is a some testing to prove competencies to get the right to vote.

How would the public know that the right people were actually voting?

— -

I have encountered a few anarchists (the philosophical kind) in my internet travels. In principle, I would agree with them: people should work together to resolve their difference rather relying on arbitrators of power.

But if I don’t like my neighbor’s rooster crowing at 5:00 a.m. and the smell of chicken shit in my backyard and he tells me to “go to hell,” my only recourse if don’t want roosters waking me up — without a government — is to shoot my neighbor.

So the anarchist comes back with “well your neighbor needs to learn how to be more civil and understanding that you have needs as well.” Which is exactly my point. He is not there — and does not want to be there.

Humanity is at a point where we really can’t put ourselves into an anarchy. We need arbitrators of power to resolve our differences. No my neighbor cannot have a chicken coop in his urban backyard, but he still has lots of other freedoms to enjoy his property.

In a like manner, Mr. Lees’ version of direct democracy is a system of governance we are not ready for. It could work, but not in this century. And it will require a retraining of society, something which Mr. Lees did not go into much detail of how to do this.

Representative democracy has done a pretty good job at resolving many of differences such that we still have a lot of freedom. In this century, we need to build from that experience.