Oh OK, I see. That's certainly possible, however, it wouldn't help me in that particular case.
I don't save old copies of Linux I am not dependent on (I have no reason to, and keeping track on that would take a lot of effort), and the application I wanted to try was only binary older than usual Linux distribution of that era.
I wonder how, seriously. Few years ago (2004?), I tried to run an old version of MuPAD once (from 1998 or so, it was freeware as in beer at the time), and it required libc 1.6 or something like that. In Debian unstable I had, there was only libc 2.
So if there is some repository of old _binary_ versions of shared libraries, it would be quite helpful actually.
I didn't try to compile correct version of libc, however, because I didn't wanted to mess with that so much, and I actually have doubts I would be able to compile it cleanly.
My memories can be wrong; still, it would be good to know.
I actually like it when I cannot accidentally move my files in the open dialog.. (especially into a subdirectory, from which it is not possible to get them back)
Yes. I would go even further - there is a rational decision behind your choice of license.
If you plan to (or think that you will want to) make a closed product from the software you write today, you would use BSD license, so it wouldn't prevent you in doing it. That's why I think a lot of university projects are under BSD license, so that the students or universities wouldn't close the doors to get commercial profit on that.
On the other hand, if you don't plan or don't want to release a commercial version, you will probably opt for GPL license, because it will increase contributions from people who would otherwise use it in closed software. So it's an advantage.
So there really is nothing "magical" or "philosophical" about the GPL vs. BSD argument, just rational decisions.
Actually, most people are surprisingly resistant to propaganda. They are in fact behaving very rationally, but the system is skewed against them.
For example, take the two party system in the U.S. A lot of people would vote for a 3rd candidate, but they don't, because they are afraid of losing their vote. Is it a bad outcome? Yes. Is it rational? Yes! Because you are exercising more power if you vote for one of the parties. See also classic prisoner dilemma for another example how can completely rational outcome can be very bad at the same time.
Or why are people not interested in politics or issues? Again, it's rational. If you have a party system, you have to invest lot of time and effort to actually be able to change something. If you had a direct democracy, where people could just jump in and decide, without so much effort, maybe then they would actually start to care about the issues. In fact, Switzerland shows this effect quite well.
Or they may be afraid. Lots of people are afraid to voice their opinions, for many reasons. They may have children or mortgages, so they don't feel they have that much freedom. Again, it's a completely understandable reason.
Of course there are manipulations in the media. But people like you assume, because media are trying to manipulate people, that people are automatically accepting it. It's just not true. I grew up in a communist regime, and people simply didn't believe at all what was in TV. Also, the fact that there is not much real data what people are thinking plays a role (of course there are polls, but they are usually framed as media choose, so they are more or less worthless).
You know, sometimes people have good reasons why they behave how they do. It would be good if you would question yourself too, and tried to understand their reasons. But maybe you are just not strong enough to do that.;-)
There is no contradiction. In the words of Linus Torvalds, "people can trust me because they don't have to".
It's the downward spiral that is the problem. Once people cannot trust that voting is not checked, they will fear retribution, and will more and more tend to vote for those in power. It's a positive feedback loop that ends with dictatorship.
I am from Czech Republic. During the communist regime, voting existed, and there was even a screen behind you could cast your vote (not that it would matter, the parties were preselected). If you didn't go to vote or went behind the screen, you got a black mark (which could mean problems at work for example). So now there is actually statutory duty to go behind the screen.
Trust among people (also called social capital) is a very important inner variable in any society. It can be earned by having trustful, fair and respected laws, and lost by big differences in power among people. So there is no contradiction, because to ease such laws will decrease the trust.
Yes, they may make individually bad decisions, but collectively not quite.
Only if the stupidity, in some way or another, cancels out. That's a big if. These are people, not atoms in a gas.
If you completely don't know (you are completely stupid), then the chance of voting correctly in the yes/no proposal is 50%. If you are a bit clever, than the chance is more than that. Aside from getting manipulated by someone (case I will deal with shortly), there is no reason why your probability shouldn't increase monotonously with your smartness, that is, why on any level it should be lower than 50%.
If there indeed is some party that is trying to manipulate the voters, then such a party probably disrupts representative system even more. In representative system, you have less information (you have to rely on the future behavior of the people you voted in) than in direct democracy, so your decision-making capability is even more limited.
That's why we vote - to get rid of any outliers.
No it isn't. It's because everyone is equal before the law and should have an equal say in governance. Or (foil hat on) because the man wants to give that impression.
Yes, but the reason why we select voting instead of randomly selecting a person which will decide the outcome (both are perfectly fair systems) is to get rid of the outliers, whether we realize that or not.
A strawman is when you attack apoint that was never made, namely when you brought in the moral issue and accused me of wanting to ban stupid people from voting. Even if I'd meant that (and I didn't) then frankly your tangential rantings are making a better case for it than I ever could.
To question voter stupidity means to assume there exists objectively measurable quality of the outcome. I brought the moral issue in because most of the issues (if any at all) have no such objective measure. If there is objective measure, then we can all agree on it, therefore there is no reason to vote.
In any issue, there is usually the normative part (what to do) and positive part (how to do). You can leave the positive part on the experts, but the normative part you want to decide by yourself. In case there is disagreement what is normative and what is positive, you decide, not experts.
The reason why people should vote about complete proposals of laws, even though they can contain positive part too, is that it's quite easy to objectively tell that the law was broken. It's not so easy to objectively tell that politician has broken his promise. It's analogous to a written contract. We have contracts to prevent this kind of disputes, and we should vote about complete proposals to prevent disputes about broken promise to voters.
It is a very common argument, that people are stupid, therefore the outcome is stupid. It's not true.
So, in what way is it not true? On one hand you certainly can't say that group of people X are stupid so when they take a specific decision Y they're 100% guaranteed to make a stupid choice Z.
But in the long run, if you bet that way, you'll be right more often than wrong.
I don't think you understood the argument with the central limit theorem. If people are completely stupid, they still have 50% chance to do the right thing in the yes/no choice.
THat depends on how the group is selected. Say the question is about stem cell research or nuclear power. You really think 7,000 streetsweepers and 900 priests would make a better decision than 30 appropriate scientists?
No, I am saying that 7000 streetsweepers and 30 scientists will make a better decision than 30 scientists. That's a difference.
As you said, it's a matter of your belief. You can change it, you know, if you are not afraid of facts.
About gay rights and death penalty - funny, I always considered them as minor issues that politicians have popularized. Politicians emphasize issues that are divisive, so they could stay in power (it's actually the side result of political parties adapting to the opinions of people and trying to outsmart each other).
On the other hand, politicians try to keep people in dark when it comes to opinion of others, because it could contradict their cause.
Anyway, if we look at the facts, there were quite a few referendums on death penalty in the U.S. The results are quite mixed, and people mostly voted like politicians - in blue states against death penalty, in red states for death penalty. So if you would let this issue to people, to your surprise, you would get more-or-less the same result.
And as I noted above, in my country, gay marriage was supported by a lot more people than the members of parliament (but on the other hand, more people supports death penalty than members of parliament). So neither in this case you can say that the "mob is fiercely illiberal" - this is a big simplification.
I wonder, is really gay marriage and death penalty more important for you than for example universal health care? For me yes, and in our country, politicians are currently dismantling it (and want the american system, which is twice as expensive as average EU system and gives often worse results). They are dismantling it against the will of most people and healthcare professionals. And once they have done it, it will be very very difficult to put it back, much more than get rid of death penalty or instate gay marriages.
I think you should think twice about what things in life (and ultimately in politics) you really care about.;-)
Germany in the early 1900's versus forty years later.
This is a bogus argument. Nobody really knows what the general public thought in this period. Opinion polls were not known until 30s, and I would expect any opinion poll in Germany after 1933 to be strongly biased towards Hitler (because of fear). You know, you shouldn't try to guess the German sentiment from the rallies - I know quite well from my (former communist) country how these events were organized. Also, it makes no sense to compare different time periods, only to compare opinion of public and politicians (or other elites) at the same time.
Actually, some of the supporters of direct democracy argue for a similar model, where such jury would only have advisory role before referendum. Several such groups would be created, and would independently weight various arguments and technical details (from invited experts) for several days. The people then could decide on the basis of their final recommendation.
I agree that it is a good idea (in advisory role), but not that crucial as referendum and initiative itself.
I am also well off, well educated middle class professional.
I don't know about you, but I don't get offers to managing boards in the industry every day, just like members of parliament do. On the other hand, I want cheap energy, good services, low taxes, justice and human rights just much as low class working people want them.
Politicians (and specially those with real powers) are a special class. That means you have very different interests than them.
It actually helps them that you believe you are special. If you are special and deserve more than others, then you don't share interests of others. Therefore, you will not be able to defend your interests, because you can only defend your interests in the connection with other people who share them.
In some comment above I gave a link to two studies that show this on budget policies. It has been shown, both in Switzerland and U.S., that common people enforce more strict budget policies than politicians. I guess that efficient budget is in your interest, no?
I assume that unintelligent people might not make very good choices. You dispute that?
Yes, they may make individually bad decisions, but collectively not quite. That's why we vote - to get rid of any outliers. We don't, for example, pick randomly one person and let it select the outcome.
By the way, that was not a strawman. It is a very common argument, that people are stupid, therefore the outcome is stupid. It's not true.
The point is that the gain from having all people to vote is bigger than if only a selected group votes. Even if you would assume that selected group is always right (good luck), it votes with their own interests, which is ultimately worse.
How does that apply to something - like voting in a candidate - which has a small number of discrete choices that don't lie on a quantifiable scale?
There cannot be any objective criterion for selecting a person, unless you are a psychic and can read his mind and see the future. That's why I want direct democracy, where you vote about specific proposals and not (unreliable) people.
Anyway, if the issue is multiple choice, you can use range voting, which has been proven to maximize voter satisfaction. Central limit theorem will apply here as well.
That the there exists an objective criterion about something was the parent's assumption, not mine. I argue that in absence of objective criterion we should all have same rights, which leads to democracy.
I don't know about the book, but from the review on amazon.com:
"Caplan discusses... why it's in politicians' interest to foment that irrationality"
My point is, if you compare representative democracy with direct democracy, the former is no worse than the latter. And the author seems to agree, if he really says this.
You can find bad decisions under any system (although, in particular, I don't agree that NAFTA is a good thing; the assumption that it is objectively good for everyone is pretty strong). There is no perfect system.
Well, there's more scope for allowing a "veto" of some kind - whether that's a veto to remove politicans from power, or a veto for new laws. That would be better than simply putting full control of every issue into the hands of a popular vote.
If I can decide whether to veto the law or not, why shouldn't I decide about particular law directly? What's the reason for this additional obstacle? I see only one reason - you have an irrational belief that politician will somehow decide better in your interest than the majority of people (with which, by the way, you share more interests than with the politicians).
I don't know why are people so afraid of "will of the masses". That's exactly what democracy is about.
This is not an argument. I might as well say "I don't know why are people so afraid of elected politicians. That's exactly what [representative] democracy is about".
As someone above noted, "the will of the people" is the very definition of democracy. I am afraid of elected politicians, because they are an unnecessary element I have to trust.
In other words, if can choose between the tyranny of majority and tyranny of minority (politicians), I will go with the first, because it's more likely aligned with my interests.
My veto power in a direct democracy is little more than in a representative one where I can choose to vote for someone else - it's one-in-however-many-millions.
That's why I don't want just veto power, I want full decision-making capability. I don't want to rely that some politician will come along and implement the solution I want.
First, democracy is about interests. People have moral right to voting, even if they would make the wrong decisions. You are assuming here that you can make objective determination of what is right and what is wrong. But this is generally not true.
But even if we assume there is objective criterion of what is right and wrong, and this criterion is somehow related to intelligence, you are very mistaken. You assume that if people vote, the result is average of their intelligence. This is NOT true.
Even if the average person is very stupid, if they vote, the outcome can be very smart. The reason is central limit theorem. Consider a simple yes/no vote. If people just vote randomly, they will vote yes and no with the same frequency. If they are slightly smart, they will vote for yes with higher probability. But the voting is nothing more than averaging these results. And probability that this average will tend to "yes" will go to 1, because, according to central limit theorem, the distribution of the average will tend to normal distribution with decreasing variance. So if you have a lot of people with very little chance to vote "yes" over "no", it will result in "yes" with _very_ high probability.
But don't worry, lot of other people who consider themselves smart are making a similar mistake.
I'll give you example from my country (Czech Republic). Most people here (70%) supported gay marriage before politicians supported it. Last year (I believe) it passed, but just so-so.
Anyway, Switzerland has 150 years of experience with this. So there are some empirical results. And they show, for the most part, that voters are very conservative, and usually resist any change. Switzerland had voting rights for women until very recently, for example. On the other hand, they have pretty decent human rights record.
I don't know why you assume that elected government is somehow able to protect minorities better. In fact, I would challenge you to come up with a historic example where the elites protected some (non-elite) minority better than the majority of people would.
Oh, I see why you think that. You believe that politicians protect minorities because they will gain their support. But it's an illusion. If the protection of minorities is unpopular, why would they risk doing something unpopular and lose the majority? If you think about it, there is no way they could support a minority view and gather more support than by supporting majority view. Unless, of course, the majority doesn't really care about the minority, which is in fact most commonly the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh OK, I see. That's certainly possible, however, it wouldn't help me in that particular case.
I don't save old copies of Linux I am not dependent on (I have no reason to, and keeping track on that would take a lot of effort), and the application I wanted to try was only binary older than usual Linux distribution of that era.
And yes, *I* can run old Linux software.
I wonder how, seriously. Few years ago (2004?), I tried to run an old version of MuPAD once (from 1998 or so, it was freeware as in beer at the time), and it required libc 1.6 or something like that. In Debian unstable I had, there was only libc 2.
So if there is some repository of old _binary_ versions of shared libraries, it would be quite helpful actually.
I didn't try to compile correct version of libc, however, because I didn't wanted to mess with that so much, and I actually have doubts I would be able to compile it cleanly.
My memories can be wrong; still, it would be good to know.
I actually like it when I cannot accidentally move my files in the open dialog.. (especially into a subdirectory, from which it is not possible to get them back)
Even better is it's generalization, range voting.
No, geeks apparently have 'em smaller.
And then the other one will get into jail.
Yes. I would go even further - there is a rational decision behind your choice of license.
If you plan to (or think that you will want to) make a closed product from the software you write today, you would use BSD license, so it wouldn't prevent you in doing it. That's why I think a lot of university projects are under BSD license, so that the students or universities wouldn't close the doors to get commercial profit on that.
On the other hand, if you don't plan or don't want to release a commercial version, you will probably opt for GPL license, because it will increase contributions from people who would otherwise use it in closed software. So it's an advantage.
So there really is nothing "magical" or "philosophical" about the GPL vs. BSD argument, just rational decisions.
Because you may also sell it for your life?
Seriously, somewhere in the comments above I explain. What if, for example, you would lose your job if you didn't vote a specific way?
The problem is the positive feedback. If you will allow small scam, it will grow bigger next time, because more and more people will "vote" for them.
I tried to convince masses of Slashdot (supposedly smart) of positives of direct democracy, and wasn't very successful.
As someone smart once said: "It's difficult to manipulate people so they aren't manipulated."
Actually, most people are surprisingly resistant to propaganda. They are in fact behaving very rationally, but the system is skewed against them.
For example, take the two party system in the U.S. A lot of people would vote for a 3rd candidate, but they don't, because they are afraid of losing their vote. Is it a bad outcome? Yes. Is it rational? Yes! Because you are exercising more power if you vote for one of the parties. See also classic prisoner dilemma for another example how can completely rational outcome can be very bad at the same time.
Or why are people not interested in politics or issues? Again, it's rational. If you have a party system, you have to invest lot of time and effort to actually be able to change something. If you had a direct democracy, where people could just jump in and decide, without so much effort, maybe then they would actually start to care about the issues. In fact, Switzerland shows this effect quite well.
Or they may be afraid. Lots of people are afraid to voice their opinions, for many reasons. They may have children or mortgages, so they don't feel they have that much freedom. Again, it's a completely understandable reason.
Of course there are manipulations in the media. But people like you assume, because media are trying to manipulate people, that people are automatically accepting it. It's just not true. I grew up in a communist regime, and people simply didn't believe at all what was in TV. Also, the fact that there is not much real data what people are thinking plays a role (of course there are polls, but they are usually framed as media choose, so they are more or less worthless).
You know, sometimes people have good reasons why they behave how they do. It would be good if you would question yourself too, and tried to understand their reasons. But maybe you are just not strong enough to do that. ;-)
There is no contradiction. In the words of Linus Torvalds, "people can trust me because they don't have to".
It's the downward spiral that is the problem. Once people cannot trust that voting is not checked, they will fear retribution, and will more and more tend to vote for those in power. It's a positive feedback loop that ends with dictatorship.
I am from Czech Republic. During the communist regime, voting existed, and there was even a screen behind you could cast your vote (not that it would matter, the parties were preselected). If you didn't go to vote or went behind the screen, you got a black mark (which could mean problems at work for example). So now there is actually statutory duty to go behind the screen.
Trust among people (also called social capital) is a very important inner variable in any society. It can be earned by having trustful, fair and respected laws, and lost by big differences in power among people. So there is no contradiction, because to ease such laws will decrease the trust.
If you completely don't know (you are completely stupid), then the chance of voting correctly in the yes/no proposal is 50%. If you are a bit clever, than the chance is more than that. Aside from getting manipulated by someone (case I will deal with shortly), there is no reason why your probability shouldn't increase monotonously with your smartness, that is, why on any level it should be lower than 50%.
If there indeed is some party that is trying to manipulate the voters, then such a party probably disrupts representative system even more. In representative system, you have less information (you have to rely on the future behavior of the people you voted in) than in direct democracy, so your decision-making capability is even more limited.
Yes, but the reason why we select voting instead of randomly selecting a person which will decide the outcome (both are perfectly fair systems) is to get rid of the outliers, whether we realize that or not.
To question voter stupidity means to assume there exists objectively measurable quality of the outcome. I brought the moral issue in because most of the issues (if any at all) have no such objective measure. If there is objective measure, then we can all agree on it, therefore there is no reason to vote.
In any issue, there is usually the normative part (what to do) and positive part (how to do). You can leave the positive part on the experts, but the normative part you want to decide by yourself. In case there is disagreement what is normative and what is positive, you decide, not experts.
The reason why people should vote about complete proposals of laws, even though they can contain positive part too, is that it's quite easy to objectively tell that the law was broken. It's not so easy to objectively tell that politician has broken his promise. It's analogous to a written contract. We have contracts to prevent this kind of disputes, and we should vote about complete proposals to prevent disputes about broken promise to voters.
I don't think you understood the argument with the central limit theorem. If people are completely stupid, they still have 50% chance to do the right thing in the yes/no choice.
No, I am saying that 7000 streetsweepers and 30 scientists will make a better decision than 30 scientists. That's a difference.
..when they're copying other products, people complain they are not being innovative.
The article says it has drag coefficient of 0.16. That's better than Tatra T77 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_T77).
I wonder what have been engineers doing all those years, if it's so hard to beat a car from the 50s.
As you said, it's a matter of your belief. You can change it, you know, if you are not afraid of facts.
About gay rights and death penalty - funny, I always considered them as minor issues that politicians have popularized. Politicians emphasize issues that are divisive, so they could stay in power (it's actually the side result of political parties adapting to the opinions of people and trying to outsmart each other).
On the other hand, politicians try to keep people in dark when it comes to opinion of others, because it could contradict their cause.
Anyway, if we look at the facts, there were quite a few referendums on death penalty in the U.S. The results are quite mixed, and people mostly voted like politicians - in blue states against death penalty, in red states for death penalty. So if you would let this issue to people, to your surprise, you would get more-or-less the same result.
And as I noted above, in my country, gay marriage was supported by a lot more people than the members of parliament (but on the other hand, more people supports death penalty than members of parliament). So neither in this case you can say that the "mob is fiercely illiberal" - this is a big simplification.
I wonder, is really gay marriage and death penalty more important for you than for example universal health care? For me yes, and in our country, politicians are currently dismantling it (and want the american system, which is twice as expensive as average EU system and gives often worse results). They are dismantling it against the will of most people and healthcare professionals. And once they have done it, it will be very very difficult to put it back, much more than get rid of death penalty or instate gay marriages.
I think you should think twice about what things in life (and ultimately in politics) you really care about. ;-)
Germany in the early 1900's versus forty years later.
This is a bogus argument. Nobody really knows what the general public thought in this period. Opinion polls were not known until 30s, and I would expect any opinion poll in Germany after 1933 to be strongly biased towards Hitler (because of fear). You know, you shouldn't try to guess the German sentiment from the rallies - I know quite well from my (former communist) country how these events were organized. Also, it makes no sense to compare different time periods, only to compare opinion of public and politicians (or other elites) at the same time.
Actually, some of the supporters of direct democracy argue for a similar model, where such jury would only have advisory role before referendum. Several such groups would be created, and would independently weight various arguments and technical details (from invited experts) for several days. The people then could decide on the basis of their final recommendation.
I agree that it is a good idea (in advisory role), but not that crucial as referendum and initiative itself.
I am also well off, well educated middle class professional.
I don't know about you, but I don't get offers to managing boards in the industry every day, just like members of parliament do. On the other hand, I want cheap energy, good services, low taxes, justice and human rights just much as low class working people want them.
Politicians (and specially those with real powers) are a special class. That means you have very different interests than them.
It actually helps them that you believe you are special. If you are special and deserve more than others, then you don't share interests of others. Therefore, you will not be able to defend your interests, because you can only defend your interests in the connection with other people who share them.
In some comment above I gave a link to two studies that show this on budget policies. It has been shown, both in Switzerland and U.S., that common people enforce more strict budget policies than politicians. I guess that efficient budget is in your interest, no?
Actually, considering that there is more direct democracy in US than in Europe, your comment is kinda funny.
Oh, and by the way, does the separation of powers really work?
I assume that unintelligent people might not make very good choices. You dispute that?
Yes, they may make individually bad decisions, but collectively not quite. That's why we vote - to get rid of any outliers. We don't, for example, pick randomly one person and let it select the outcome.
By the way, that was not a strawman. It is a very common argument, that people are stupid, therefore the outcome is stupid. It's not true.
The point is that the gain from having all people to vote is bigger than if only a selected group votes. Even if you would assume that selected group is always right (good luck), it votes with their own interests, which is ultimately worse.
How does that apply to something - like voting in a candidate - which has a small number of discrete choices that don't lie on a quantifiable scale?
There cannot be any objective criterion for selecting a person, unless you are a psychic and can read his mind and see the future. That's why I want direct democracy, where you vote about specific proposals and not (unreliable) people.
Anyway, if the issue is multiple choice, you can use range voting, which has been proven to maximize voter satisfaction. Central limit theorem will apply here as well.
Oops, should have been that direct democracy is no worse than representative democracy, of course.
That the there exists an objective criterion about something was the parent's assumption, not mine. I argue that in absence of objective criterion we should all have same rights, which leads to democracy.
I don't know about the book, but from the review on amazon.com:
"Caplan discusses ... why it's in politicians' interest to foment that irrationality"
My point is, if you compare representative democracy with direct democracy, the former is no worse than the latter. And the author seems to agree, if he really says this.
You can find bad decisions under any system (although, in particular, I don't agree that NAFTA is a good thing; the assumption that it is objectively good for everyone is pretty strong). There is no perfect system.
Furthermore, I can counter with studies that have different results. For example:
http://www.iandrinstitute.org/New%20IRI%20Website%20Info/I&R%20Research%20and%20History/I&R%20Studies/Cato%20-%20Policy%20Report%20on%20Tax%20Limitations%20IRI.pdf
Or this one:
http://www.iandrinstitute.org/New%20IRI%20Website%20Info/I&R%20Research%20and%20History/I&R%20Studies/Feld%20and%20Matsusaka%20-%20Fiscal%20Evidence%20from%20Swiss%20Cantons%20IRI.pdf
There are more studies like that on the I&R institute web site.
Well, there's more scope for allowing a "veto" of some kind - whether that's a veto to remove politicans from power, or a veto for new laws. That would be better than simply putting full control of every issue into the hands of a popular vote.
If I can decide whether to veto the law or not, why shouldn't I decide about particular law directly? What's the reason for this additional obstacle? I see only one reason - you have an irrational belief that politician will somehow decide better in your interest than the majority of people (with which, by the way, you share more interests than with the politicians).
I don't know why are people so afraid of "will of the masses". That's exactly what democracy is about.
This is not an argument. I might as well say "I don't know why are people so afraid of elected politicians. That's exactly what [representative] democracy is about".
As someone above noted, "the will of the people" is the very definition of democracy. I am afraid of elected politicians, because they are an unnecessary element I have to trust.
In other words, if can choose between the tyranny of majority and tyranny of minority (politicians), I will go with the first, because it's more likely aligned with my interests.
My veto power in a direct democracy is little more than in a representative one where I can choose to vote for someone else - it's one-in-however-many-millions.
That's why I don't want just veto power, I want full decision-making capability. I don't want to rely that some politician will come along and implement the solution I want.
First, democracy is about interests. People have moral right to voting, even if they would make the wrong decisions. You are assuming here that you can make objective determination of what is right and what is wrong. But this is generally not true.
But even if we assume there is objective criterion of what is right and wrong, and this criterion is somehow related to intelligence, you are very mistaken. You assume that if people vote, the result is average of their intelligence. This is NOT true.
Even if the average person is very stupid, if they vote, the outcome can be very smart. The reason is central limit theorem. Consider a simple yes/no vote. If people just vote randomly, they will vote yes and no with the same frequency. If they are slightly smart, they will vote for yes with higher probability. But the voting is nothing more than averaging these results. And probability that this average will tend to "yes" will go to 1, because, according to central limit theorem, the distribution of the average will tend to normal distribution with decreasing variance. So if you have a lot of people with very little chance to vote "yes" over "no", it will result in "yes" with _very_ high probability.
But don't worry, lot of other people who consider themselves smart are making a similar mistake.
I'll give you example from my country (Czech Republic). Most people here (70%) supported gay marriage before politicians supported it. Last year (I believe) it passed, but just so-so.
Anyway, Switzerland has 150 years of experience with this. So there are some empirical results. And they show, for the most part, that voters are very conservative, and usually resist any change. Switzerland had voting rights for women until very recently, for example. On the other hand, they have pretty decent human rights record.
I don't know why you assume that elected government is somehow able to protect minorities better. In fact, I would challenge you to come up with a historic example where the elites protected some (non-elite) minority better than the majority of people would.
Oh, I see why you think that. You believe that politicians protect minorities because they will gain their support. But it's an illusion. If the protection of minorities is unpopular, why would they risk doing something unpopular and lose the majority? If you think about it, there is no way they could support a minority view and gather more support than by supporting majority view. Unless, of course, the majority doesn't really care about the minority, which is in fact most commonly the case.