Size is definitely a problem. Bertrand Russell touched on some of the issues it creates (e.g. signal - votes from the people effected by an issue - gets swamped by noise - votes from people who don't really care).
Personally, I'm a big fan of a couple of approaches that I think would work well in concert:
* Federalism. Devolve as much power as practical down to the State (or, as I suspect will happen, the City-State, level). Taking the USA as an example (I'm not American myself), you'd pare back all of the unconstitutional three-letter-departments (FCC, FDA, EPA, ...) and leave those up to the States.
* Sortition. Don't select the Government by voting, select it by random poll of the citizenry, in much the same way as jury duty is arranged in many countries.
* Libertarianism. Legislate to protect rights and in the case of collective problems (e.g. atmospheric pollution, which may surprise people by being the go-to example Rand reached for as a case where environmental legislation may be justified by human costs), but nothing else.
Personally, I'm a big fan of a couple of approaches that I think would work well in concert:
* Federalism. Devolve as much power as practical down to the State (or, as I suspect will happen, the City-State, level). Taking the USA as an example (I'm not American myself), you'd pare back all of the unconstitutional three-letter-departments (FCC, FDA, EPA, ...) and leave those up to the States.
* Sortition. Don't select the Government by voting, select it by random poll of the citizenry, in much the same way as jury duty is arranged in many countries.
* Libertarianism. Legislate to protect rights and in the case of collective problems (e.g. atmospheric pollution, which may surprise people by being the go-to example Rand reached for as a case where environmental legislation may be justified by human costs), but nothing else.