You are right. It was a nice utopian central planning idea. It sounded good. If we could transplant Jeffersonian democracy there we would be safe From terrorists who fly planes into buildings and burn up and kill our fellow citizens.
Much like every top-down central planning idea, it sounds good in theory, but it just doesn’t work because of unintended consequences that a human mind cannot fathom.
Jeffersonian democracy is “top down”?