Personally I think Democracy could be nice. I think there are systems of governance that can allow everyone to have agency on their life without necessarily having to be rich enough to passport-shop.
Calling our democratic Republics simply "Democracy" is another cool helplessness-inducing newspeak trick. That language implicitly positions the system on the extreme-end of citizen-agency, so logically everything else must be more authoritarian.
In fact, assuming you live in one of these so-called "Democracies", think about how much your country's laws and policies impact you, and then think how much effort and input you provide to deciding those laws and policies. The ratio is most likely ridiculous.
We always say "direct democracy doesn't work because people don't care about every issue", but there's an universe of possibilities between Democratic Republic ("chose between red and blue every five years") and simplistic direct democracy ("country-wide majority vote on every government decision").
I'm open for alternatives and improvements on what we currently have. I still don't feel very clear after reading what you just wrote. I don't think the US has a pure representative democracy (citizens vote directly on many issues) and I also don't think representative democracy inherently leads to a binary red/blue decision, as I think number of political parties is often determined by the particular rules of the election process.
Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the system?
Not the original poster, but whenever the topics comes up I tell one of the following semi-jokes ( semi, because I am more and more convinced we should try at least one ):
1. Automatic jail time for anyone, who held public office after they leave on the assumption that must have done something. Side benefit: prisons would improve drastically.
2. Absolutely random election for every office in the land. This should spice things up. Side benefit: we would quickly find out what exactly they higher ups want to do about overpopulation of the planet.
3. Term limits for congress. It will never happen, but it is nice to dream.
Haha, I'm not sure about #1, however I like #2 and #3. I think sortition (#2) could provide new perspectives and help us know whether we like our current system or not.
I think overall I would prefer more short-term legislative experiments—the impression I get is that people (especially at the US federal level) try to write law or create programs ostensibly for the long-term, and I'm curious what a short-term experiment with reflection and re-evaluation would look like. E.g., trying sortition for one two elections, or a law that establishes term limits but has an expiration date.
Liquid democracy is designed with the idea that people don't want to worry about every issue, but should be allowed to change their 'proxy' for whatever issue at any time they please not only election cycles. My representative should be registered to me and if I want another one I just pick one. https://liquidfeedback.com/en/
Calling our democratic Republics simply "Democracy" is another cool helplessness-inducing newspeak trick. That language implicitly positions the system on the extreme-end of citizen-agency, so logically everything else must be more authoritarian.
In fact, assuming you live in one of these so-called "Democracies", think about how much your country's laws and policies impact you, and then think how much effort and input you provide to deciding those laws and policies. The ratio is most likely ridiculous.
We always say "direct democracy doesn't work because people don't care about every issue", but there's an universe of possibilities between Democratic Republic ("chose between red and blue every five years") and simplistic direct democracy ("country-wide majority vote on every government decision").