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Public Net-work
Steven Clift writes "I've written up an article titled E-Democracy, E-Governance, and Public Net-work. It illustrates how governments can do more with the Internet to meet public challenges. While the big bad government should be viewed skeptically in terms of censorship and regulation, it also does a million good things related to the non-techie parts of our lives. The question is not whether the government should use the Internet to involve people in meeting their public mission, but how to apply technology in the most effective way."
Envision government running like "The Price is Right," with the audience screaming out the policy decisions. =)
I haven't finished the article yet, but I don't have much hope that there is a proffered reasonable solution.
Part of the orginal justification of representitive democracy was that it was logisticly impossible to have everyone vote on every topic. But now that electronic voting is an option why do we still need representatives?
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
If your local governments started putting public information online in a searchable format. Do a simple search on your local govt web site to get minutes of committe meetings, forclosures, law changes, heck, just put all the local laws and requlations in a database that is easily searchable. That would make it much easier for people to find laws and regulations. In my town at least, you either read about the town meetings in the local, and very crappy newspaper, or you have to trudge down to city hall and ask to see it. Not to mention putting on these websites who these elected and appointed leaders are, and what they have voted for and against. Nationwide, any state, county or city.. Would make it much easier to decide who to vote for, and what they have stood for in the past..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
precisely because it is not feasible for everyone with a vote to be informed on every decision.
your representative has a team of highly specialized and highly dedicated aides whose job it is to know the entire issue.
they have the training and the time to do so. you or i, do not. not reliably, and not for every subject. are you going to pretend that having citizens directly vote on every contract extension for every union is a good idea? or how about directly voting on the budget, or social spending plans?
the collective doesn't have the same burden of responsibility. yes, representative democracy has a flaw (susceptible to corruption) but it also has enough benefits that it's a worthwhile system. it also has a large check (term limits, reelection) to ensure that the citizens have a measure of control over the graft.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Unfortunately, one goes with the other. You let government do "a million good things" for you and its natural instinct is to do even more. For your own good of course. That includes censorship and regulation. Government thinks you can't handle your own affairs, so it'll just have to do it for you, you stupid clod.
For all of the flaws in our particular system, it provides a decent compromise. If the majority of the citizenry could be bothered to research and pick out their representatives with a bit more care, I might believe that they could responsibly legislate. But if they did that, they wouldn't really need to, would they?
Why not billions and billions of good things? How about Trillions? The Government should only do one thing well, you know, like good Unix design philosophy. This was known in the 19th century: Bastiat pans Socialism
The constitution sure did define basic human rights. It defines a black man as worth 2/3rds of a white man. This wasn't considered "evil", it was completely natural and normal.
If e-voting on every issue, how do you figure there'd be no DMCA or PATRIOT act? I'd wager there'd be a much stricter PATRIOT act, if you weren't paying attention, the general populous was pretty blinded with rage after 9/11. I'd be the majority of americans would have passed the "make the middle east a nuclear wasteland" act if it were put on the table on 9/12.
The majority of citizens think copyright infringement is theft, Napster was a criminal enterprise, and that it should be illegal to modify your xbox. I remember a poll that showed a majority who thinks the speed limits on public roads should be LOWERED.
Your premise is everyone feels about everything the same way that you do. They dont. The majority of the voting populous is much older than you and fairly conservative in their views.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Good:
It would allow the goverment to quickly pass information to the public and give them a almost instant response to that new information. This could save money, speed up goverment projects, and make goverment more democratic and better for the people.
Bad:
It would leave a disproportionate percentage of the poor out of the picture. Its is much harder for a poor person to buy a computer and surf the net, and there are not always computers avaible at public labs and librarys. It might increase the divide between the well off and the not so weel off.
I love my wife!
At one end of the scale, we have everyone voting on everything--total participation. At the other end, we have zero participation--no one cares. By assigning the task of governance to full time employees whose job it is to represent the interest of a block of voters, we can hopefully find a happy medium in there, where everyone is adequately represented without having to be a full time voter.
Once the novelty of direct democracy wore off, I think we would find that the only people who voted on any given issue were the ones who felt that they had a direct stake in it; everyone else would default to their judgment: tyranny of the majority at its worst. It would be another kind of representative government, really, except that the reps would be self-selecting.