I love democratic style Government, but I also have to recognize the massive 2-part problem it causes.

#1. Mob Mentality

#2. Bureaucracy

So let me go into detail what I mean by these two problems.

Mob Mentality, is not just the inherent collective IQ drop people have when they clump together. I also mean the mentality of how it's influenced in a modern society; media, social networking, etc.. There is ever less credibility put forth in information, and an increasing drop in credulity among our populace (a problem created by our education system perhaps). But very few people nowadays know how to what used to be taught in almost every public school (atleast when/where I went), that is "Fact Checking".

We have a society that's easily manipulated by fear, superstition, prejudices, and personal preferences. When one woman at home watches a news story about how baby food will kill your family with a machete (whatever random fear-mongering news story), she'll usually end up talking to someone who buys the story as well and forms an approval loop, of sorts, and the idea of questioning it goes right out the window.

Combine that with the social networking revolution (one I do not partake in), you have thrown in the viral nature of the internet to this sort of mob mentality. In a sensible society this would be quite excellent, but we live in a country with one very dumb average.

When people agree get together and start agreeing with one another, the problem gets ever worse. Because now when someone says they are wrong, they will usually fall back on that "approval loop" in one form or another. As Friedrich Nietzche put it "At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." and to be certain that much is very true, much to the pains of progress in thought.

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Bureaucracy, while nowhere near as bad as a problem; it is none the less a problem. The problem with representative democracies, particularly in a ethno-culturally diverse nation is the level of opposition on virtually all things. Inaction is a dangerous standard, and inaction because of the inability to reach a consensus is plain ol' stupid.

This problem is also further complicated by the former one, you can take a look at the US Congress and notice that it is it's own culture onto itself. One that is similarly stupefied by group think and influenced in similar fashions. It's prejudices are not the same ones, but it has prejudices that in practice operate in the same fashion.

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I'll give you an example of these two problems in action.

We live in a country that has two idiotically opposed groups on Abortion.

Conservative - Abortion = Murder, so no Abortion

Liberal - Abortion = Right of the Mother to her own body

Now neither of these two core positions are really all that good, atleast to me. But the real problem isn't that the positions are bad, or the people behind them mean ill-will (I sure hope they have no malice). The problem is that nobody makes any honest or sensible arguments for their own positions; instead all you have is sensationalism (perhaps more so on the Conservative side, but I'll get into that). Btw, I'm going to forego

The Conservative Pro-Life movement is made of campaigns that show pictures of dead fetuses/babies and/or make implications to those, also using people's religion (in the US that would be Christianity) to make them feel compelled to take up arms on their side.

The Liberal Pro-Choice movement makes a similar campaign appealing to feminism, and other things; although it's generally less ideological and more "this will help society out in the long run", it's just virtually impossible to take ground and make the movement progressive on sensible thought.

Just an example, I suppose I could have picked a better one; but if you ever pay attention to the Abortion debate going on, it's pretty easy to see how what I just described pretty much poisons any actual progress on the issue.