If by “true democracy” one mean’s Lesser Bull’s idea of “voting as your actual system of governance and not just as a symbolic ritual that conceals the real system”, then there is a very simple criterion as to whether country X has true democracy. That critierion: does country X exist? If so, then the answer is no.

I agree that the distinction between democracy and “popular opinion state” is meaningless.

What criteria do we use to say if some country has “true” democracy? Incumbents are always going to be hard to oust, and when it happens, it’s compared to being struck by lightning.

I forget who said it, but one rule is, “If lightning is going to strike, it needs to be allowed to.”

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence； those of economists, a great deal more.

The Four Winds of Reality Accountability:

North Wind: Exit From Within (Investors and Employees)
East Wind: Predation From Without (Hostile Takeover, Corporate Raiders and Vultures, DIP-financiers and Turnaround Specialists)
South Wind: Exit From Without (Customers leaving for Competitors)
West Wind: Disease From Within (Potential Collapse of Governance and Management)

You say it “should be possible to have voting as your actual system of governance and not just as a symbolic ritual that conceals the real system.” On what basis, what evidence, do you make this rather extraordinary claim? Many would hold the opposite, that it isn’t, in fact, possible.

“We don’t live in a democracy. We live in a ‘popular opinion’ state…”

If a true “democracy” is something different than a “popular opinion state”, then true democracy does not exist, has never existed, and can never exist.
See also the Iron Law of Oligarchy.

Even though corporate governance is vastly superior to politics in performance, it would be a mistake to think this is an institutional mechanism that can ever be reliably adaptive without a vigorous selective process from without. Entropy dissipation requires culling.

Characterizing the situation as popularity contests is clarifying. Popularity contests exist where there isn’t voting, like in high school. And where they exist, they usually aren’t reflective of mass opinion. One of the late John Reilly’s dictums was that the “people” usually consists of cafe society. For the French Revolution he argued that the “people” that constituted “popular opinion” was pretty much just a particular plaza where radicals liked to hang out. You see the same thing in high school. The most popular person may be heartily disliked by most of the students–but they are arbiter of fashion and morals for the high status kids.

Rule by popular opinion really means rule by the cathedral. It should be possible to have voting as your actual system of governance and not just as a symbolic ritual that conceals the real system.

We don’t live in a democracy. We live in a ‘popular opinion’ state, which means that its rule by elite consensus, but with the added feature of often focusing on what the elite find admirable and enhances their self-regard (i.e., rule by elite opinion, not rule by elite self-interest, though there’s plenty of self-interest admixed). But it’s a mixed state that has some actual democratic features. The democratic features serve to legitimate the elite consensus whenever the voters happen to line up with the elite consensus (“one man, one vote, as many times as it takes until you vote the right way”), they serve as a pressure valve and feedback mechanism to the elites for when they’ve pushed too far, and finally they serve as a way of channelling elite competition (into elections) and siphoning off the strivers and the ambitious from the provinces.

Publicly Traded companies at the mercy of pyschopathic nerds, that is no mercy or long term outlook. Had this been the case in the 19th century – or indeed anytime as our time proves – we would have never built the nation.

Or built anything. Ever. Anywhere.

Nor will they get us into space, or anywhere.

Nor will they maintain.

Nor can these creatures and the rest of man live under the same sun.