The thing is, the last few times I recall when some have tried more direct democracy (Brexit, a few referenda in europe, california ballot measures) it seems to lead to decisions that seem rather sub-optimal. I am not sure the random citizen might actually be better at governing that a professional politician.
I think that is a completely fair assumption, you may be right. Partly why I think we should dramatically increase the numbers of representatives is to mitigate this problem somewhat. On average, I think a lot of regular citizens would do just fine. So we limit the damage by limiting the amount of power a single vote has.
It's kind of the same reasoning I use for extending the vote to children. In a country of 330 million, each individual vote is nearly meaningless on it's own so I figure the risk is much lower than the benefit of getting people involved at a younger age in a future that they should care deeply about. HN did not collectively appreciate this suggestion when I made it, however :).
