Responding to the many comments here about 5bil being "absurd", consider what this means to MS or any other corporation. If all that happened when they do something wrong was being forced reimberse the offended for whatever amount they lost, that would be a very weak detterent.
The government has very few ways of enforsing legislation against a corporation (they can't give Bill Gates 5-10), they usually have to resort to fines. The fines have to be high enough to be as much of a deterrent as going to jail would be for an average person.
sure it looks good on paper, candidates say what they believe, people pick the one they support, and voila, social utopia results.
first real problem is that a true popular vote system, given time, could quite conceivably degrade into something awful. Candidates have to advertise to the public, right? So what's to stop the most successful candidate from being some supermodel who stripteases on her campaign commercials?
second, the "American system" isn't limited to politics, it's really however things get done in the country. Facts are, the "private sector" i.e. corporate interests have the final say in a disproportionate number of affairs. Say log-o-corp wants to bulldoze happysquirrel forest and build a warehouse complex? I'd imagine the popular consensus would be against that, so theoretically it shouldn't happen. But in reality the actual decisions that get made have very little to do with the popular consensus.
Case in point, the popular consensus was by 500,000 votes to elect al gore, yet within a couple of weeks dubya will take up the oval office throne. But suppose the majority of people actually voted for Bushy. Does that mean that everything he says or does reflects the popular consensus? Many undecided voters ended up voting for bush due to his seemingly "moderate" stance on abortion, yet with his initial cabinet posts, especially Mr. Aschroft, it's quite likely that the actions concerning abortion during the bush administration will be anything but moderate.
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Responding to the many comments here about 5bil being "absurd", consider what this means to MS or any other corporation. If all that happened when they do something wrong was being forced reimberse the offended for whatever amount they lost, that would be a very weak detterent.
The government has very few ways of enforsing legislation against a corporation (they can't give Bill Gates 5-10), they usually have to resort to fines. The fines have to be high enough to be as much of a deterrent as going to jail would be for an average person.
perfect system eh?
sure it looks good on paper, candidates say what they believe, people pick the one they support, and voila, social utopia results.
first real problem is that a true popular vote system, given time, could quite conceivably degrade into something awful. Candidates have to advertise to the public, right? So what's to stop the most successful candidate from being some supermodel who stripteases on her campaign commercials?
second, the "American system" isn't limited to politics, it's really however things get done in the country. Facts are, the "private sector" i.e. corporate interests have the final say in a disproportionate number of affairs. Say log-o-corp wants to bulldoze happysquirrel forest and build a warehouse complex? I'd imagine the popular consensus would be against that, so theoretically it shouldn't happen. But in reality the actual decisions that get made have very little to do with the popular consensus.
Case in point, the popular consensus was by 500,000 votes to elect al gore, yet within a couple of weeks dubya will take up the oval office throne. But suppose the majority of people actually voted for Bushy. Does that mean that everything he says or does reflects the popular consensus? Many undecided voters ended up voting for bush due to his seemingly "moderate" stance on abortion, yet with his initial cabinet posts, especially Mr. Aschroft, it's quite likely that the actions concerning abortion during the bush administration will be anything but moderate.