[rubberstamp]

all the more reasons why there should be a structure to not let our representatives make all the decisions for us. I'm sure we all had times when our representative is not actually representing our interests.

think tank mode: what if the current system is restructured in a way so that we will let them take decisions for us. But when we don't agree with his/her view point we can readily bypass it if the majority wants a different thing, like may be diagree button near to a decision and proposed alternative, which everyone can vote on or propose another alternative(only one alternative can be picked by a person). Its democratic, practical and doable right now. The alternative with which highest number of people agree is a clear win. This can be applied in all countries and any form of govt.

Its way better than any alternatives we currently have, like having to spend big time and effort on making petitions, or rally for cause, etc. Now a days even peaceful gathering gets violet due to govt mishandling the situation.

[geofft]

California has statewide referendums, which are generally pretty awful: state law is (for better or worse) pretty complex, and referendums never handle that complexity well. If successful, they'll impose some requirement without much regard for existing law in the area, and certainly without any regard for future laws. They're heavily lobbied, perhaps more so than regular laws, because easy appeals to regular people's sense of how government probably works are effective, regardless of the accuracy. Referendums can't be overturned except with another referendum. And you can fairly easily have conflicting referendums, which has given rise to court cases about which one prevails.

Here's the Economist complaining about it in 2009: http://www.economist.com/node/13649050 I can anecdotally confirm that my reaction to most of the referendums, a few years later, was "How should I know?"

This is not to say that such an approach won't work. You just need some mechanism for managing complexity. That could involve trusted organizations that like-minded people delegate these decisions to (sort of a cross between lobbying/activism organizations and political parties), which could work very well or could just turn out like an actually corporate version of the current party system. You could alternatively try to limit the inherent complexity of governing, but that seems very experimental.