Who are snake-oil salesfolk, selected by the spiteful and inconsistent population, and placed in a position where they have terrible incentives to do whatever it takes to stay in power. If the people are as bad as you say, how can we trust those they elect?

Two problems with “the will of the people” come to mind straight away.

Firstly, people are spiteful. Given half a chance they will prejudge, discriminate and gang up against the weak and the different. If we slavishly followed the public will we would have all the foreigners in jail, religious minorities suppressed, torture, sterilisation, concentration camps. This is why we have human rights legislation.

And secondly, people are inconsistent. They want lower taxes but higher healthcare budgets, more surveillance but more freedom, greater international cooperation but fewer foreigners telling them what to do. This is why we have professional parliamentarians.

I certainly would not want to be the politician that said to the Swiss people “you have made the wrong choice, so you won’t get another referendum” like the French and Dutch did.

The decision to give the French and Dutch a referendum was just as arbitrary as the decision to take it away again. At least in Switzerland and Ireland there is a statutory basis for such decisions.

http://tinyurl.com/yfqpd8w

Of course, turnout is an issue. The danger is that you get student union democracy: 101 extremists on one side, 100 on the other and 10,000 who don’t care and don’t vote. Easy enough to solve: compulsory voting, or a mandatory level of turnout for the referendum to count.

The next problem is the electorate itself. I don’t want to sound like Brecht talking about electing a different people, but direct democracy will work better if the people are strong and independent-minded. California has too much welfare dependency (not just the poor, but also favoured companies, public sector unions, NGOs, etc) and too much “victimhood poker”, thus the entirely rational choices (within that system) for individuals and/or particular special interest groups are damaging to the people and the state as a whole. If the politicians treat us like toddlers with ADD, we will act as toddlers with ADD.

Finally, your point that “referendums, like local elections, are only ever about kicking the government in the nuts” is easily solved by providing an alternative means of doing this, e.g. by allowing the people to literally do it.

Of course, even representative democracy can produce bad, kneejerk law (the UK’s Dangerous Dogs Act, for example).

Abolish? Or replace? One needs to have a second house, whose purpose is to make it as difficult as possible for the government to pass any laws. Different debate…

outlawing the payment of public money to any religious organisation.

I’m in two minds on this. OT1H, charities may be better at delivering certain functions at a local level than remote government departments, and this rule would prevent the likes of Christian Aid and the Salvation Army from participating. OTOH, the very act of becoming dependent upon government money makes them “fake charities”, and thus corrupts their purpose to serve the political whims of their new paymasters, e.g. by astroturfing.

In the case of welfare/tackling poverty, my preferred solution would be for government to eliminate ALL means-tested benefits, to have a flat rate citizens basic income for everyone (so no-one starves), and leave everything else to private charities, insurance, mutual/friendly societies, etc. This would both eliminate the disincentives to working caused by benefit withdrawal, and force those who need extra help to act in a way that persuades others to voluntarily give to them, instead of feeling they are “entitled” to have everything paid by government. Education? I would go for a voucher system (i.e. government funding to be bottom up, rather than top down), and get the government out of the business of owning thousands of schools and directly employing hundreds of thousands of staff.

they were all built and maintained using taxpayers’ money in the first place,

Maybe so, but who legally owns them?

the only proper thing to do would be to donate them. Call it “compensation” if you will.

In this case, one can definitely argue this. However, one must be extremely wary of allowing government to seize private property without due process of law. Once that starts, where will it stop?

who averted their eyes should be fired and prosecuted too

Absolutely, in the church and all relevant government agencies.

This would serve not only to draw a line (one would hope) under the historical abuse of children in care homes and elsewhere

Draw a line on this particular history of abuse. However, a secular care system is also vulnerable, albeit on a smaller scale, more localised basis.

And why are politicians like this? Because it works! The voters ARE voting based on ‘I know his parents’ or ‘I like FF’ not on ‘I have thought about it, and I like FF’s view of the world better’.

So the fault here lies with the electorate. You get the politicians you vote in people, and they will use the types of arguments that work. So next time you vote, ask the right questions, and vote for the right reasons!

The single most effective thing the State can do (at this stage) is to ensure that those ultimately responsible for the mess are fired. That means removing the Church authorities from schools, care homes etc. with extreme prejudice and installing a “clean hands” management structure in its place. The State can no longer sit back and allow its responsibilities to be carried out by third parties with a proven track record of failure. I don’t see why the wholesale transfer of the education system into State hands would by itself cause any collapses. The teachers would still get paid, but the middleman would be cut out.

(Yes, and those boys and girls in blue who averted their eyes should be fired and prosecuted too)