These bad laws happen with elected representatives too, but worse. At least with direct democracy, laws will not be made which are against the majority’s best interest, and laws have a legitimate mandate.

For example it’s hard to imagine a direct democracy starting a war of convenience, like representative democracies frequently do and are doing right now. All the most egregious crimes of government would stop.

But the quality of all the little laws is debatable. I would argue it’s higher under DD but I can see why some people disagree.

But it’s hard to discuss very specific examples, because they are always cherry-picked.

Finally, there are several forms of DD and the Californian style is probably the least beneficial.