>Direct democracy is still pretty awful though, especially for anyone who falls into any kind of true numerical minority category
That's a generalization its opponents make, but it isn't true.
In most places where it was practiced (ancient Athens, short-lived anarchist areas in Spain, egalitarian communities, etc.) it was shown to be more benevolent and inclusive to "true numerical minorities" than most representative democracies. Heck, the US had segregation in practice up to the 70s, with blacks being a 20% or so of the population (and more in some areas), and gays were persecuted throwout Europe representative democracy or not.
Even more, the most horrid persecutions of minorities have happened under elected representatives (like Hitler), or authoritarian regimes (e.g. Stalin), as opposed to any "direct democracy".
There's no "tyranny of the majority" that's inherent in direct democracy, any more so than it is in representative "democracy". The tyranny lies in an orthogonal axis (namely: the prevalent passions and ideologies of the era), and can be applied regardless of direct or representative democracy.
> it was shown to be more benevolent and inclusive to "true numerical minorities" than most representative democracies
Source? Athenian direct democracy was only for males, legally sanctioned slaves and allowed for a simple majority to ostracize people. Sparta's direct democratic elements oversaw a large Helot slave population.
>Source? Athenian direct democracy was only for males, legally sanctioned slaves and allowed for a simple majority to ostracize people
That's irrelevant to the discussion though, as that was simply the norm then across regimes, not a special characteristic of Athenian direct democracy.
Not to mention that the US representative democracy was only for males until the 1920s, had slaves until 1865 and segregation until the 1970s. And that's 2.5 millennia later than that pesky Athenian direct democracy.
You claimed "in most places where [direct democracy] was practiced (ancient Athens... etc.) it was shown to be more benevolent and inclusive to 'true numerical minorities' than most representative democracies." I'm disagreeing with that claim. I'm asking for a source for the the general claim because I'm confused about what separates "true numerical minorities" from other kinds of minorities.
I'm pushing back on the assertion that is has been shown direct democracy works well for minorities. It hasn't. (It has been shown that representative democracy works, or at the very least can be stable.) The tyranny of the majority has not been conclusively proven (nor disproven). This is an open question, and one that evolves as technology (and the population's education) progresses.
>You claimed "in most places where [direct democracy] was practiced (ancient Athens... etc.) it was shown to be more benevolent and inclusive to 'true numerical minorities' than most representative democracies." I'm disagreeing with that claim.
You can disagree, but not because ancient Athens had slaves or women didn't vote. That were common places until millennia later across systems of government, and not some inherent product of direct democracy (as opposed to representative democracy).
If you want to disagree, let's stick to differences in how the citizenry included or excluded in both is treated.
By definition, something found in both types of democracy (such as slavery or women not voting) wont tells us anything about how they differ.
>I'm asking for a source for the the general claim because I'm confused about what separates "true numerical minorities" from other kinds of minorities.
Nothing. I didn't chose the term "true numerical minorities" -- I just used the grandparent's (ff317) term.
