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I was thinking while reading Jon's article about how our population as a nation has grown since 1800, but has the population of our congressional representatives grown? I know the senate has always been 2 per state, but what about house representatives? What I'm getting at, is that the congress has become much less representative simply because of the numbers involved, and the power of each individual congress person has grown way beyond what was originally set up.

Good point. The original way was that every state got one Representative per 30,000 (including the infamous "three fifths" rule, whereby slaves counted as 0.6 person for the purposes of calculating seats in Congress). Minimum 1 per state, of course.

This was superceded by Amendment XIV, Article 2, which states that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers". That number is currently set at 435, although since it's not hard-coded into the Constitution, in theory Congress could pass a law raising the number of Representatives to, say, 650. As this would dilute the power of each current Representative, I'm not holding my breath.

Note that Senators were originally seen as representatives of the individual States, not as "popular" representatives. A common practice was for the Governor to appoint each Senator. Popular election of Senators was not mandated until Amendment XVII was ratified in 1913.

Both the characteristic modern parties believed in a government by the few; the only difference is whether it is the Conservative few or Progressive few. It might be put, somewhat coarsely perhaps, by saying that one believes in any minority that is rich and the other in any minority that is mad.
-- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

The problem with represenative democracy in our country is that it is lacking one essential element - informed voters. Intelligent votes are literally washed away by a tidal wave of ignorance.

While the USA has certainly had its share of dumbing down, have you even entertained the thought that withdrawal from the system might be rational behavior?

It is very, very difficult to effect change without

• large gobs of $$$$$
• massive investments of time

It can be done. But it is painstakingly difficult. And the results can be wiped out with the next election, or by simply turning your back on the rat-fink who is supposed to be "representing" you for too long.

Both the characteristic modern parties believed in a government by the few; the only difference is whether it is the Conservative few or Progressive few. It might be put, somewhat coarsely perhaps, by saying that one believes in any minority that is rich and the other in any minority that is mad.
-- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World Today

Given the level of activity on both KOffice and the GNOME Workshop, I don't think that there's any question that office applications suites can certainly attract free software developers.

The question remains, will StarOffice under Sun's "Community" license attract developers? I'm doubtful -- how may outside developers actually work on projects that Sun has already applied this license to? AFAIK, it's even less than the number of non-Netscape programmers working on Mozilla.

So I don't see this as a "test" of the open source concept. Put StarOffice under GPL/LGPL, or even the MPL, and this might qualify as a test. But right now, this looks more like "free beer" than "free speech." Not that free beer isn't nice, but it's not the same...

"Cleverness kills wisdom"
-- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

This debate is simply not limited to technology. At its core its the heart of the liberal/conservative debate. (I rule out all the truely rabit bozo's on both sides.)

While you are quite right that this is about more than technology, there are more options than the "liberal/conservative" dichotomy (and duopoly).

I suggest plugging "Distributism" into Altavista, following some links, and then doing some research into what a sane economy might look like.

If the infrastructure is in place to allow people reasonable access to learning (e.g. schools) the government has done is job. If you choose to not take full advantage of public education and the current set of programs that are offered by society, the end result should not continue to be someone elses responcibility to continually give you further options.

This would ring less hollow if we didn't live in a society that deliberately maintains a certain unemployment rate "to avoid inflation" through monetary policy.

Acheiving fame and fortune isnt a right.

No, it isn't. But being able to put food on the table and clothes on your kids is. Or ought to be, in any civilization worthy of the name.

Both the characteristic modern parties believed in a government by the few; the only difference is whether it is the Conservative few or Progressive few. It might be put, somewhat coarsely perhaps, by saying that one believes in any minority that is rich and the other in any minority that is mad.
-- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World