You're both wrong. Libertarianism would be the complete lack of a trust system, everyone fending for themselves and doing their own research, caveat emptor. A pure democracy would leave theymos as the only DT1 member. We have 100 representatives (DT1) all with differing number of votes, from a wide variety of voters. It's much closer to a representative democratic republic than either of you are crediting.
I agree with the view on Libertarianism, but fail to understand how a pure democracy wud leave theymos as the only DT1 member?
Also the current DT1 is representative democracy and if you take into account the laddered DT2 and DT3; then IMHO it looks like a Preferential Voting Democracy.
The trust system doesn't prevent anyone from fending for themselves and doing their own research. DT is optional. Trust lists are optional. If someone wants to go full Amish they can just wipe their trust list and have at it.
Although, it is True that the Trust system doesn't prevent anyone from researching for themselves; but it cannot be denied it does provide a semblance of security for dealers on the forum, especially noobs. Thus, to relegate it to a position of utmost irrelevance would be quite a misnomer IMHO. The Trust system is broken and beyond repair as long as we are unable to deny the human element in its assertion (which can't be denied). So, at the end of the day it is To Each His Own.
The trust system is broken because Theymos refuses to restrict the trust system to purely objective uses and ignores the human element. He had an opportunity to change that with the introduction of the flag system, but he wasted that perpetuating the same flaws that caused its failure to begin with. I warned that the ability to use the system for ambiguous reasons would result in its failure, but he persisted. Unfortunately this thing is such a mess now I am not sure it can be salvaged.