RE: Big government (Was: Re: Anthrax addendum.)

From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 17 2001 - 20:11:08 MDT


>
>Replaced by pure administration. No central debates. Subcontract everything.
>All voting from home via the internet. Decisions based on individual issues
>and no party dogma. Every voter legally obliged to vote on X issues in any
>one year. Every issue has a discussion site. Nowhere for the lobbyist to go.
>No power broking. Create a 'voting morning' where adults do their voting and
>make it a real cultural event. We have a general manager to be head of the
>administration and a President to be the public face and plant trees etc.
>The politician becomes extinct.
>
>Having got to here I've realised I've just created "country X, Inc." with a
>board of directors = the public. Well why not? For the first time in history
>it is viable to vote on inidvidual issues in a practical sense.
>
>regards
>colin

I think that the idea has merit, and I thought of something similar once,
too. The one problem I see is that making voting mandatory will result in
people who vote to fufill a requirement, not because they understand the
issue enough to have a good opinion. Also, we'd have to think of a good
method of deciding what "the issues" are that get voted on. Are there any
organizations that currently use this method? One of the reasons that I
like approval voting is that it seems to work pretty well when I've tried it.



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