> It's a common use of the term by experts in the field.
Sure, but it's clearly something different than people assembling in the town square to flesh out their issues with each other, as democracy was originally seen. Semantic arguments are dumb.
In theory, which is why the name is as such, it need not be any different as the elected employees are only supposed to take the message from their local town square to a central meeting place where, with all the other town square results, things are compiled – to be tarred and feathered if the message changes in transit – but in practice nobody shows up in the local town square and leaves it upon the employee to make guesses about their wishes, thus becoming dictators out of necessity.
> I don't really see how the Internet has changed how our voting works or the structure of our government, anyway.
Why would it? As before, it has reminded us of why we resorted to picking (and maybe not even that) employees to tell us what to do in the first place.
Sure, but it's clearly something different than people assembling in the town square to flesh out their issues with each other, as democracy was originally seen. Semantic arguments are dumb.
In theory, which is why the name is as such, it need not be any different as the elected employees are only supposed to take the message from their local town square to a central meeting place where, with all the other town square results, things are compiled – to be tarred and feathered if the message changes in transit – but in practice nobody shows up in the local town square and leaves it upon the employee to make guesses about their wishes, thus becoming dictators out of necessity.
> I don't really see how the Internet has changed how our voting works or the structure of our government, anyway.
Why would it? As before, it has reminded us of why we resorted to picking (and maybe not even that) employees to tell us what to do in the first place.