Ahem what is the distinction between the two? Afaics, there is none. Martin Armstrong seems to be under some delusion that if people could vote directly on each issue of governance (i.e. each law, etc) then we would avoid the evils of the representative government we have now. Yet of course it is impossible to have a direct democracy function on anything larger than a tribe (and even for a nuclear family unit it rarely works!). And you seem to be unde some delusion that the representative government we have in the USA is functioning well. Or you have sold yourself down the river of tears that there is some rainbow of a perfect fix. Sigh. Never has been in the history of man and never will be. The Iron Law of Political Economics is immutable and insoluble. Please refute if you can (but you can't).

Or perhaps you merely accept that representative governance fails, but it is the least worst (or the only option)?

If we are just here to put some shiny new block chain ribbon on existing corruption of representative (or any other form of) democracy, then I will quit. I don't see the point. If there are efficiencies that can be gained in spite of not dealing with the fundamental issue of trustless governance, then maybe I can be convinced. But the original ideal of Satoshi's white paper was trustless governance (consensus) of the block chain.