Comment by gbin

> Think about this one, start a populist stupid referendum like: "Should the gov give you $10M?", I could bet it will end up at 90% yes and the entire country ends up in ruins.

I think people might agree with that if they alone were going to get the money, but far too many people vote against their own interests to keep "the wrong people" from getting anything. They'd never allow a "give everyone 10M" referendum to pass.

Making mistakes is a critical part of learning. What legitimate authority stands above the will of the people?

Such bullshit hypotheticals are used to justify the dismantling of democracy and keeping it only in name.

In actuality, most of the stupid decisions that drove countries to the ground are made by "respected statesmen".

We want the population to be well informed. But when you consider the history of literacy, journalism, and what media most people have access towards, that assumption was never really true in the first place. People were always getting propagandized as soon as they had the power to vote or even merely chose among suppliers. Probably long before that too.