I believe that the best society can be achieved with “referendum democracy” – a rule in the Constitution, that a law can be accepted only with an online referendum (except maybe situations of war). At first glance, it may seem that such a system will not work, since an ordinary citizen is a layman in matters of governing the country. But this will not be such a big problem, since the referendums will be initiated by the authorities, i.e. experts, and they only need to convince the population of their position (by raising the level of education of the population for this).
However, for this system to work well, one more step is needed: a law on compulsory post-school education. For example, each citizen will have to spend half an hour a day studying materials that help understand how to govern country, and in case of non-compliance, pay an increased tax. Possibly the following principle should be implemented: each citizen can choose what information he will study, but he must justify why, as he believes this information will help him vote more correctly, and this explanation should sound reasonable (this idea develops 20 article of the United Nations Convention against Corruption). Another approach is electing via the internet the people, who will decide, which books and other materials should be suggested for such education.
And then a
new problem arises: since the resources of the brain are limited, it is
difficult for a person to be versatile, and if he spends a lot of time studying
the issues of running a country, he will earn less in his main job.
Accordingly, a society in which the state forces everyone to study the issues
of governing the country will be more reasonable and less likely to make erroneous
decisions, but at the same time, it may militarily and economically lose
competition to societies in which such norms do not exist. Therefore, such a
society must export its way of life, perhaps even by military means. This is
similar to the idea of exporting democracy by military means, which I fully
support (“so that the barbarians do not conquer Rome, we must make Rome
everywhere”).
I believe
that in a perfect democracy, the nation will not only make errors, but also study
with its errors. Besides that, for minimizing the profanation, two more
measures can be uses:
1) When an online referendum is initiated, a group of randomly chosen citizens should be selected, and some money will be offered for them for studying materials, important for this referendum. This group will vote, and the results of its vote will be a good information for other citizens. It should be noted that a sufficiently big sum of money should be offered for the members of this group, so that the majority of selected people will agree to participate (otherwise this group will not be an representative sample of the population);
2) For referendums initiated by the people (not by the government), two save equal referendums must be performed instead of one, with an interval of a year; only if both referendums accept the initiative, it will become a law.
Next: most referendums will not have a legal force, because, for example, if people vote "Stop a war with this country", this will be not a law but an "Order" to the president, and there will be no ways to punish the president in case of refusal, until the next elections. However, if the president does not fulfill this "order", he can be judged by the society in future, after leaving the power. And possibly the most important thing in my suggestion is to start accepting the referendums relating all branches of power, including the judicial branch.
This will be an optimal choice for implementing the freedom of speech. I don't fully understand the "theory of the freedom of speech", in particular I have realized that some calls can be forbiden, like the banning to deny the Holocaust in Germany.
I belive that a common principle must be the power of the majurity. If the majority of the population votes on a refendum to ban a mass media - let it be so. On the contrary, if the majurity votes to fine some people who slander this mass media - let it be so.
