Soren,

Switzerland is obviously an extremely well run country, but is not frequently used as an example of a great democracy. The reason for this is that women, a majority of the electorate, did not get the right to vote or run for parliament until a referendum in 1971 which passed by a 2:1 margin. Prior to that, a previous referendum to allow women to vote was rejected in 1959, also by a 2:1 margin. For comparison purposes, women got the right to vote in the US in 1920 and in the UK in 1928.

Regards,
Alan

I really don't see anything wrong with proportional representation--but that's very definitely not what one would call a pure democracy (in which case there would be no need for representatives, as voting on major decisions would take place with the people, not their representatives). 

As for the welfare states, while these might have a lower percentage of what one might call "poor", they also generally have noticeably less opportunity for entrepreneurship.  It's a question of whether one thinks that it's the responsibility of the people to make something of themselves or that of the government.  In societies where it's the responsibility of the people, there is much greater opportunity for really great success.  In the United States, which is kind of a partial welfare state, the incredibly vast majority of the poor are people who simply never took the opportunity to try to either get an education or to do something with their education.  It's true that we have people who have had bad luck in their work, but those people tend not to remain poor for very long.  The way the welfare system works in the United States is such that people often tend to be motivated not to find work because they know they can live off of welfare, but that as soon as they get a job, they'll suddenly have to start working really hard and they'll lose their welfare.  At the same time, there is great encouragement for businesspeople trying to make a living and especially to expand the corporations so as to try to make more money and at the same time create more jobs.  In the "large" welfare states such as France, on the other hand, there are unemployment rates similar to what existed in the United States during the Great Depression.  If such unemployment rates existed here, no members of Congress would ever be reelected.  Anyway, I've seen you mention that from "Eat the Rich" before, and I agree with the need for an independent press (which we currently have, though there are some members of Congress, including some presidential candidates, who are talking about strongly regulating that) and an independent legal system on the local and state levels.  However, there is still a need for a national legal system associated with the government, which we have in the form of the Supreme Court, to declare constitutionality or lack thereof of federal laws or federal decisions (though controversy has often arisen when decisions have been made on issues such as abortion that many people feel are better left up to the individual states to decide).

Meanwhile, on the chess side, my chess knowledge now is definitely better than when I was at my peak playing performance, and much of it is due to watching games from engines like Rybka and trying to digest what's really going on.  However, due to the fact that I hardly ever actually play, the probability of blunders is much higher than it was when I was younger; this is even more problematic because my style has changed--I like to play a bit more aggressively now, while I played much more positionally when I was younger.  It's kind of like reading a math or physics textbook but not actually attempting any of the practice problems or proofs.

""I once read that Kasparov only considers players with an elo of 2300+ as players that are able to play something that resembles chess.""

... and that's why, on the 6th day, God created Rybka ...

""Thanks to Rybka, I think I have a much better grasp of the game""

Thanks to Rybka, and other chess engines, opening book authors, computer-chess as learning tool = agree agree agree agree 1000000%