>How true. Democracy takes many forms and the "ideal", which may exist as a concept could not exist as long as humans are involved. Most democracies take the Republican form that is we elect someone to represent us. Once elected these representatives seem to forget why they are in office and acquire an agenda only known to them. Seems to be an almost universal concept and allows us to share something in common with others who enjoy the democratic process.
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>Tom

I've often described the UK system as a democratic dictatorship - we elect a government that is accountable to no-one & even our own members of parliament are accountable only to their party & not to the people who elected them.

Another part of my point was that in the majority of cases in a democratic system, the majority do not want that which is voted for. Especially in elections, if there are more than 2 choices, more often than not, someone will be elected with less than half the vote, which means the majority did not want that person to win.

Democracy is a wonderful ideal, but then again the ideal of anarchy has a lot going for it - no centralised government, just localised (even down to the individual), but with that freedom goes the necessity of taking responsibility for your own actions. With democracy, the majority can normally sit back & say that it wasn't their fault, just those that voted that way - now if that's what we want, then a dictatorship absolves everyone from responsibility.

Oops, this is getting a little political (not allowed, I believe) & well away from the original discussion, my apologies to all.

(I forget, did you tell me where chaos & anarchy fitted into my comments on 'best practices' ).