[SllX]

A democracy is just government by its people. People will try to pass any sort of law they fancy will do the thing they want it to do, whether or not it actually will is besides the point. The quality of the government is still going to be a factor of the quality of the people that a government can be drawn from, and legislative branches are often the most powerful in a free society precisely because if they could speak with one voice, there’s effectively no law they could not pass. That’s why they are bodies of distinguishable and accountable people instead of individuals.

[nostromo]

This is why the Bill of Rights is important in the US. I wish we would expand it.

Democracies without explicit limitations on government power too often just become tyranny by the majority.

[leppr]

> A democracy is just government by its people.

In theory yes that's what Democracy originally meant.

In practice the "democracies" we know are "government by some group of popular noblemen" not by "its people".

[SllX]

Dunno about South Korea or your government, but that’s short selling all the democracies that give a wide variety of people enough rope to hang all their neighbors and then themselves with. My envelope of ballots are often 3 or 4 pages front and back, mostly offices to be filled but generally a good stack of ballot initiatives to go with them, covering two or three elections. Sometimes twice a year.

And that’s just the electoral process. Self-government extends far beyond the ballot box.