[dragonwriter]

> If we believe in democracy, we necessarily must believe that the crowd - the mob, if you're feeling less generous - is better at making decisions than any small group of people

Well, no.

If we believe in democracy, we believe that government must ultimately serve and be accountable to the people.

It's possible along with that to also believe that it is a bad idea for the crowd to have day-to-day responsibility for the detailed decisions of government (if nothing else because of the dynamics of extra-large groups a d the communications problems involved), which might motivate us to prefer that democracy be representative rather than direct, with a relatively small group, that it is accountable to the crowd, making decisions.