[yakubin]

Almost no voter has the expertise to accurately allocate resources in a country. Why would a popular vote, where expertise means nothing, result in anything better than we already have? There are plenty of issues people don't even know exist, but are nonetheless essential. People also in general do not know how much is necessary to maintain infrastructure of a whole variety of things. I'd expect a catastrophe.

[elil17]

Almost no politician has the expertise to accurately allocate resources in a country. Why would a legislature, where expertise means nothing, result in anything better than a popular vote? There are plenty of issues politicians don't even know exist, but are nonetheless essential. Politicians in general do not know how much is necessary to maintain infrastructure of a whole variety of things. I'd expect a catastrophe.

More seriously, I don't think our current decision-makers are informed and the average person wouldn't be either. But I trust the average persons values way more than I trust those of a politician. Maybe we still wouldn't get enough funding for roads and bridges. We don't get that now. But perhaps the average person would put more money towards education and food and less towards war.

[theptip]

> Almost no voter has the expertise to accurately allocate resources in a country.

That's true as far as it goes. However if we had the ability to individually vote on allocations, presumably most people would delegate the details to an expert of their choosing, while taking a stance on high-level classes of expenditures, for example "I will vote for the <insert expert> budget because it reduces military spending and increases healthcare spending", or whatever your policy preference is. Basically Liquid Democracy[1] of some sort (whether the partial delegation is built into the system or implemented outside the allocation voting system).

I do agree with your general point that direct democracy can be problematic, particularly when a binary choice is presented rather than a continuum of options. E.g. see the CA ballot measure system which often results in "choose A&C or B&D"-type choices which exclude certain preferences from being expressed. I think a more granular direct democracy might enable better decision frameworks though, specifically by enabling more options for delegation.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

[MC68328]

Yeah, it's not like wisdom of crowds or market efficiency are real phenomena.

The non-experts elected by non-experts know better than the non-experts.