The value of democracy is not that every year or two or four we get to go to a booth and pull a lever; as Bryan Caplan has shown, that's probably it's least desirable attribute. Democracy is not just about voting, it's mainly about voice - the right to petition and protest against government policy. It's about the right to express dissenting views to the current leadership or status quo to bring up another set of facts or opinion. This isn't important just because everyone has some valuable information to express - most of it's nonsense. It's important because maybe the dissenting views are actually correct and the views of the current power grab or the status quo are not.
So the value of democracy is that it keeps all perspectives open, not just those of the current leaderhip or the status quo. We want free expression so that people with what at the time seem like kooky ideas can still be heard. Who knows, they may be correct after all. People like Galileo and Copernicus, or Einstein.
Think about that as you watch this video.
