The biggest telltale of a confused leftist (i.e. hangs around the current conservative counter-culture) is that he is still brainwashed with the modern form of phony democracy being the ideal of free society. This contrasts with Ancient Greco-Roman [1] conception of citizenship akin to nobility and bourgeois/middle-class, with a middle/working-class of freemen sitting between the former and slaves. While not purely meritocratic, ancient democracy meant having stakes in the game. [2]
In libertarian circles, there's also the concept of market-democracy, where having stakes in the game means individuals answer better questions, and makes more accurate collective decisions . The Wisdom of Crowds (pdf) book cites plenty of examples, such as the stock-market quickly identifying who was responsible for the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster. Political commentary is mostly outside the scope of the book, particularly with the inconclusive last chapter [3].
Without a useful term, discussing this concept or anything related to the uninitiated is unnecessarily verbose, even though it is an intuitive, populist concept.
Edit: Bad democracy is unqualified civies irresponsibly voting on people or ballot initiatives. Switzerland is passable, since ordinary citizens have better opportunity to be directly involved with state matters, for better or for worse. The only accurate phrasing I've come up with is active vs. passive democracy, but that doesn't exclude mob/clique/committee rule, which countermands spontaneous order and independent decision aggregation. I'll share this on the blackandgold Matrix channel and hopefully get a non-leftist answer that I can share here.
Edit 2: Market democracy in quadrant format.
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- Athens, the progenitor of Democracy, had more in common with the Roman Republic or it's rival Sparta than modern societies or feudal Europe.
- Heinlein's Starship Troopers refines this concept on classical liberal principles.
- Shame that the author is a New Yorker suffering from TDS.
I subscribe to the Heritage Foundation's conclusion that this stopped being true some time in the 20th century. The faltering of our republic would be much easier for me to explain to normies, or debate shitlibs, if I had better vocabulary for the various methods of bottom-up participation. Same with economics; any discussion with IRL randoms involving minimum wage, unemployment, protectionism (tariffs, grocery store alcohol restrictions, occupational licensing) devolves into cliches and low-grade gametalk. Good populism (i.e. not trend chasing) stands a better chance if we can coax more regular Americans into thinking about substance instead of getting pawned/manipulated by low propensity baizuo issues (not to suggest that the culture-war shouldn't be fought).