You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. What's wrong with democracy? Why is it in crisis? Why do we feel so disillusioned by this form of government? About which Winston Churchill famously said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms.

Author and researcher Max Rashbrook has an answer. His talk at TEDx-Ockland from 2019 is a framework

for understanding why democracy isn't working as it should and how we should update it.

I want to talk to you today about democracy, about the struggles that it's experiencing,

and the fact that all of us together in this room might be the solution.

But before I get on to that, I want to take a little detour into the past, a place called

the Pinnix, which is where about

two and a half thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Athenians, gathered to take

all their major political decisions together. I say the ancient Athenians, in fact it was only

the men. Actually, it was only the free resident property-owning men. But with all those

failings, it was still a revolutionary idea that ordinary people were capable of dealing with

the biggest issues of the time and didn't need to rely on a single supposedly superior ruler.

It was a way of doing things, it was a political system.

It was, you could say, a democratic technology appropriate to the time.

Fast forward to the 19th century when democracy was having another flourishing moment.

And the democratic technology that they were using then was representative democracy.

The idea that you have to elect a bunch of people to look after your best interests.

And if you think about the conditions of the time, the fact that it was impossible to gather

everybody together physically. And of course they didn't have was impossible to gather everybody together physically,

and of course it didn't have the means to gather everyone together virtually,

it was again a kind of democratic technology appropriate to the time.

Fast forward again to the 21st century,

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