> we (Californians) actually do live in a fairly direct democracy

California has direct democratic elements. It is not a direct democracy.

There is a lot of writing and research on why direct democracies are probably not a good idea for all questions, from antiquity to the modern era. One field that dies with proximity to democracy is law, e.g. the ancient Athenian system of trial by popular assembly. Another is the management of commons, e.g. fisheries, forestry and, I would argue, our atmosphere.

Note that such delegation doesn't mean usurpation. It just means the elected leaders negatively consent to, and constrain, rule making. This is the basis of the agency-driven civil service model, which first–to my knowledge–flourished in China before making it West by way of the Middle East.

Why do you believe management of the commons would fail under direct democracies? That seems like an arbitrary claim but maybe I don't understand the reasoning. I feel like any flaw that is claimed about direct democracy can be claimed about high-turnout representative democracy as well (and therefore broadly about democracy in general). After all, we elect representatives effectively on popularity contexts, echo chambers squeezing out marginal leads, and poor/manipulable information flows.

A related question: wouldn't a representative democracy always perform more poorly than a (benevolent) technocracy?

Pretty sure the original concept of representative democracy didn't involve campaigning on issues at all, it was more like "the people decide who they want to represent them by picking the wisest and most honorable citizens, and then the representatives decide what to do about the issues."