[PoachedSausage]

The best sports and social clubs I've been a member of generally try to avoid too many political games although they are nominally democratic.

Club politics is generally tiresome, few people join a tennis club or hackerspace to play politics, they want to play tennis or make things.

[Animats]

"The trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings." -Wilde

That's the problem with democracy. It's hard work.

[adrianratnapala]

One of the things that Tocqueville approved of in America is that everyone had some experience of government via jury duty. Which is compulsory (at least in principle, and in those days, probably in practice too).

I've often wondered if random juries should play a larger role in day-to-day government. Forcing people to work like this is a huge tax and not to be taken lightly, but taxing peoples attention rather than their wallets might actually be what we need.

[todd8]

Being on a jury is not an elevating experience.

I was on a jury deciding a driving while intoxicated case. The first vote was basically two of us against the rest of the jury. The reasons I heard justifying the guilty verdict votes were things like "Well, I'm a mom and I think drunk driving is terrible. That's why I think she is guilty".

Fortunately, there was one other educated person on the jury, and eventually, after discussing the actual facts of the case the rest of the jury understood and we acquitted the accused.

It was scary, during the selection process, the candidates mostly fell into two categories. Those looking forward to the $40 (as I remember it) allowance they gave us for each day of the trial and those that valued their time at more than $5/hour. The latter group all seemed to have some excuse for getting out of the trial. If it wasn't for the two of us on the jury, I believe the accused woman would have have been found guilty.

[CaptainSwing]

Important to remember that, despite jokes like these, Oscar Wilde remained a committed (if ideosyncratic) libertarian socialist.

[pdonis]

> That's the problem with democracy. It's hard work.

I think that misses the point. The problem is not hard work, but rather hard work dictated by a preconceived belief that a one-size-fits-all collective solution is the best approach to all problems.