I don't really think you can say it's natural for us to give it up completely, though.
Here's what I said two posts up: "I never advocate that everyone should be vegan or whatever: only that there is a good reason for individuals to reflect on the consequences of their diet." How does that convert to "give it up completely?"
Separately, who cares what is natural? I certainly am not arguing that we be completely natural. If we acted naturally, yes, we would kill animals as opportunity afforded. We would also rape and murder humans when we could get away with it, and we would sleep on dirt and die of old age in our thirties. "Natural" is not something to aspire to universally. "Healthy" sometimes has something to do with what is natural, but it's certainly nuanced.
All that behavior by chimps you describe is being performed by creatures we generally do not expect to spend a lot of effort on ethical contemplation. If humans aspire to have the ethical standards of chimps, then they should act like chimps. If we aspire to perhaps be something more, then maybe we could give a little thought to the quantity of meat in our diet. It certainly need not be a core focus of every meal.
The op said that our canines prove we need to rend flesh for meat. I gave a counter-example of a creature with even larger canines which does not rend flesh.
We're closer to chimps, but quite divergent from both. There is a lot of evolution between us and chimps. But if you want to go there, note that meat makes up a very small fraction of the chimp diet.
It's amazing what hostility I am seeing for suggesting that people merely think about the consequences of their diet.
Here's what the American Dietetic Association ("the world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals") has to say:
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life-cycle including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence and for athletes."
And more specifically:
Vegetarian diets are often associated with health advantages including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure levels and lower risk of hypertension and type 2 diabetes, according to ADA's position. "Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins C and E, folate, carotenoids, flavonoids and other phytochemicals. These nutritional differences may explain some of the health advantages of those following a varied, balanced vegetarian diet."
I have no doubt that we are omnivores by nature. Also, by nature, we should die of old age in our 30s. I don't care what is "atural." I am just talking about giving some thought to the quantitiy of meat in the average diet.
Concerning our canine teeth, this is by no means evidence of omnivorism. Gorillas have much, much larger canine teeth than us. They look like fiendish meat eaters. Yet practically the only "meat" they eat is bugs like termites (for which the canines seem a bit overkill, no?). The vast majority of their diet is plants. Our deep-back primate ancestors may have developed these teeth for us and for gorillas, but it is no proof that we need meat.
Concerning a meat-free diet, I don't think you will see anything in my original post saying everyone should be vegan (nor that I am). What I said was: "We have deliberately set up an infrastructure which kills billions of animals annually, just for our pleasure and convenience. It seems rational to give that industry a little ethical examination."
I never advocate that everyone should be vegan or whatever: only that there is a good reason for individuals to reflect on the consequences of their diet.
Perhaps you can get by with some less meat in your diet. The result? Fewer animals would suffer and die for you, and (if you altered your diet properly), you would most likely see a health benefit as well. Win-win.
I can't comment on what your particular doctors were thinking, but there is now a general consensus that a low-meat or no-meat diet is best. I have heard it most from cancer experts, diabetes experts, and general nutritionists.
There are of course dissenters, and there are advocates of the Atkins diet, etc. There is no certainty with these things. But if you do a web search for "plant based diet" and say "cancer" or "diabetes" you will see that the research is now very well established.
You are absolutely right, if it can be assumed that a piece of spinach is equivalent to a pig.
Pigs are some of the most intelligent creatures on the planet, they have highly advanced nervous systems, and they can communicate with us on some levels.
Spinach has none of these traits. Yes, I am sure you can go on and on mocking me for saying that pigs are a "higher form of life" than spinach, but in fact that's the basis of all ethical decisions. There is no absolute black and white, and ethics involved making comparative choices. It can be said with relative certainty (from the viewpoint of a human animal) that killing a pig is a greater harm than picking a leaf of spinach.
So killing a pig for its meat when that is totally unnecessary and actually rather unhealthy is then only for the pleasure of the taste and perhaps the convenience of the protein.
And I don't know about northwest Scotland, but around the world it is much more common for meat to be a luxury item and for plant-based human food to be the easy, inexpensive course. In most cases, meat animals compete with humans for plant-based food sources, and eating meat is a less efficient use of land than just eating the plants.
In every instance, no. But in places like the U.S., where grocery stores are abundant, then yes, meat is almost exclusively for pleasure and convenience.
In case you hadn't noticed, doctors and nutritionists generally recommend a plant-based diet. So what is necessary about meat consumption?
It tastes good (pleasure) and it's an easy way to get a nice packet of nutrients (convenience).
This can be said to be: 1. just explaining nature 2. amoral
I'm not saying it is immoral: just that it is devoid of moral content.
Animals kill to eat. No big deal. But we don't expect animals to express any ethical thought.
When people kill, there may be reason to at least think for a moment about the consequences of our actions.
We have deliberately set up an infrastructure which kills billions of animals annually, just for our pleasure and convenience. It seems rational to give that industry a little ethical examination.
Extending it to fueling our autos just entrenches it further in our minds and our economy. The weird part is grinding up animals to move our inefficient vehicles around. Just seems twisted somehow.
> 1. You are stuck on one platform. It is like getting a Sun Solaris platform but worse because apple never really had a strong enterprise department. They're Intel boxes. Run whatever OS you want on them. Also, they're UNIX, so run whatever software you want on them.
> 2. You didn't get any real extra functionality over a Linux/BSD even Windows servers. Setup times are far less time-consuming than Linux. Per-user cost is far less than Windows.
> 3. There is 0 fore-site on what will happen for the next version. What new features. Apple is too closed Absolutely true, and a real deal killer in the enterprise.
>4. You had limited options. So that means you are paying for stuff you don't need Somewhat true, but the Xserve is 1u. Most of the options are externalized.
>5. Limited server tools. Sure the Apple stuff is good but you need that one extra tool that apple doesn't support. Then install it. The Xserve is UNIX. Also, most data centers have more than one machine, and hardly any have all the same brand throughout.
>Like Apple or Hate Apple, it really isn't a good server platform. Well, they still make servers, just not rack-mounted ones.
Xserve aside, OS X Server provides some very, very powerful tools. Many of them are based on open-source, but for the ~$1K price, a well-paid employee would be hard pressed to roll them all in less than $1K worth of time. And all these tools have no per-seat cost, unlike Microsoft solutions.
The question remains, of course, how seriously can people take OS X Server now that apple discontinued the Xserve?
OTOH, it makes a really nice home server, if it is a bit over-powered and pricey for that application.
100 miles. When I saw it, I reported it to Google using right-click->"Report a Problem." And wouldn't you know... now that I look, it is no longer there.
Indeed. I almost rode my bike to a seemingly nearby park I had never explored. Then I double-checked it on the park authority's site and found it was over 100 miles away from where the Google map showed it.
So I 100% feel what this Nicaraguan commander felt. I mean; out situations were basically identical.
The problem is that something like IRV can't happen from inside the system. It would require that the people in power pass a law to enable it, and they have a very strong disincentive for that. Solutions that lead to better democracy generally are not solutions supported by politicians. Makes sense, since currently democracy is merely an annoyance they have to pander to in order to maintain their power.
Metagovernment doesn't have anything to do with runoff voting because it does not have elections. Elections are for representatives; while Metagovernment is a new way of looking at direct democracy. Well, really it is numerous ways of looking at it, since the various member projects take different approaches.
Consensus, as opposed to a majority, is a wonderful idea. Honestly, Wikipedia is probably the best model but, look at it. It's a very creaky process that breeds bureaucracy. There's simply now way we can get that applied on a national level. Hell, the Democrats can barely get consensus when they control two branches of government. Consensus is nice, and for small communities it works, but it cannot apply on the large scale.
This is very true in the status quo, but it does not necessarily have to remain that way.
The current system is radically opposed to consensus, because it is a two-party, politician-run system. There is no political benefit to consensus. From a politician's standpoint, agreeing with "the other side" means there is nothing to distinguish you as someone worth voting for. So our politicians focus on hot-button issues where they can create real division.
It is really rather amazing how well they can do this. If you think about a really polarized issue like abortion, the vast divide there is almost entirely politician-created. Hardly anyone wants wanton abortions as part of our society. And hardly anyone wants the government to have regulatory control over our reproductive systems. There are many ways we could build a consensus that would work for almost everyone. But instead, we have people actually resorting to violence in their vitriolic passion over this non-issue.
No, consensus cannot scale to a national level at this time, because we are like little children who haven't learned proper manners. But if collaborative governance gets a foothold in small communities and we get used to creating syntheses to build consensus, I do believe that we will find workable ways to do it on increasingly larger scales.
And the voters reelect those legislators after that? Seems to me many US legislators have been around for years or even decades.
America is a winner-take-all system. This means that if there is a viable third party candidate who (for example) leans left, then the left-sided votes will be split between the two more-left candidates and the sole right-leaning candidate will always win. In all other instances, third party candidates are seen as "throwing one's vote away" since the two main parties are so thoroughly entrenched. (IIRC, it took the Civil War to break from the original Tory and Whig system.)
So the only choice Americans have is to every few elections vote out most of one party and vote in the other. Even though they know this isn't going to solve the root problems.
Otherwise, how do you explain the incredibly low Congressional confidence? I didn't make that up, it is a Gallop poll, and it shows that confidence remains preposterously low no matter which party is in control.
Don't they already have a system in California where voters can vote on all sorts of stuff? Is that working well for California?
That system is absolutely nothing like Metagovernment. 1. It is majority (really plurality) rule. 2. It is only on hot-button issues where special interests can get millions of signatures to get it on the ballot. 3. There are only singular votes every few years, not a continuous process. 4. The voters get no say on the wording of the bills nor the ballots. All of these add up to a system that in no way has any resemblance to collaborative governance.
Sorry if I was unclear. By votes, in this sense I meant the votes of legislators. Yes, the people vote for the legislators fairly well. Then those legislators sell their policy votes to the highest bidder.
Concerning your statement, "Just because your party didn't win doesn't mean the system isn't working the way the majority of the voters want." 1. I do not support any party, since political parties inherently coopt politicians away from the interests of the people. 2. The majority of voters did not get what they want. Congressional Confidence has been below 40% since at least the 1970s. No matter what party is in charge, they are letting the people down. http://www.gallup.com/poll/141512/congress-ranks-last-confidence-institutions.aspx
Your critique is entirely correct, and is very much taken into account by the Metagovernment project.
"The voter doesn't understand the legal code." 1. People don't have to participate in every decision, just the ones they care about and understand. 2. Since Metagovernment is a ground-up re-do of governance, it is a re-do of legal code as well. It is not intended to replace the US federal government just yet, but rather small communities' governance. Over time, people will get a better understanding of how to participate in large-scale governance as the system evolves.
"It was thought that electing "elite" officials who have our interests at heart but more direct knowledge of law would make better law makers." 1. This amounts to saying that we need to be protected from ourselves by a superior class of overlords. Do you really want to admit that is the best we can ever do? 2. These elites demonstrate again and again that they are just as idiotic as everyone else. 3. People don't get involved in issues because in the end their voice is ineffectual. If people can actually make a direct difference, they will have an entirely different incentive to learn and delve into issues.
"If you live in state that allows referendums this concept becomes very apparent." 1. Referendums are majority-rule decisions, while collaborative governance usually works on a consensus model. 2. Referendums are only on a few hot-button topics, meaning they lead to demagoguery. Having a "referendum" on every topic all the time would be completely different. 3. The authors of referendums are individual politicians or more frequently lobbyists. They are often written to be confusing or overly-simplified. Collaborative governance inherently means people write the laws together. Further, it pushes the process toward synthesis. Check out the amazing innovation in Vilfredo, for example.
All of this and more is on the Metagovernment site. It just takes some thinkin' to wrap your head around it.
Better voting systems still won't fix the root issue: the people who get elected into power are corrupted by that power.
Metagovernment isn't perfect, and it will take a long time to get up and running, but... how does it compare to what we have now, where votes are sold to the highest bidder, idiots are in charge, and our participation is limited to 30 seconds in a booth every two years?
So is ignorance of security technologies an excuse for publicly broadcasting your password to people around you?
There is nothing illegal about receiving and interpreting radio signals which are unencrypted. So if some schmoe is tying a password into a non-SSL page over a non-encrypted radio network, they are actually (though ignorantly) broadcasting their password right at you.
If you write your password on a wall inside a room that you think is private, it is illegal for me to look at it through a window?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really think you can say it's natural for us to give it up completely, though.
Here's what I said two posts up: "I never advocate that everyone should be vegan or whatever: only that there is a good reason for individuals to reflect on the consequences of their diet." How does that convert to "give it up completely?"
Separately, who cares what is natural? I certainly am not arguing that we be completely natural. If we acted naturally, yes, we would kill animals as opportunity afforded. We would also rape and murder humans when we could get away with it, and we would sleep on dirt and die of old age in our thirties. "Natural" is not something to aspire to universally. "Healthy" sometimes has something to do with what is natural, but it's certainly nuanced.
All that behavior by chimps you describe is being performed by creatures we generally do not expect to spend a lot of effort on ethical contemplation. If humans aspire to have the ethical standards of chimps, then they should act like chimps. If we aspire to perhaps be something more, then maybe we could give a little thought to the quantity of meat in our diet. It certainly need not be a core focus of every meal.
The op said that our canines prove we need to rend flesh for meat. I gave a counter-example of a creature with even larger canines which does not rend flesh.
We're closer to chimps, but quite divergent from both. There is a lot of evolution between us and chimps. But if you want to go there, note that meat makes up a very small fraction of the chimp diet.
It's amazing what hostility I am seeing for suggesting that people merely think about the consequences of their diet.
Here's what the American Dietetic Association ("the world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals") has to say:
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life-cycle including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence and for athletes."
And more specifically:
Vegetarian diets are often associated with health advantages including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure levels and lower risk of hypertension and type 2 diabetes, according to ADA's position. "Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins C and E, folate, carotenoids, flavonoids and other phytochemicals. These nutritional differences may explain some of the health advantages of those following a varied, balanced vegetarian diet."
I have no doubt that we are omnivores by nature. Also, by nature, we should die of old age in our 30s. I don't care what is "atural." I am just talking about giving some thought to the quantitiy of meat in the average diet.
1. Google Sponsoring In-Flight WiFi This Holiday Season. Easy to offer something that's getting banned. Next: free bottles of water from the fountain of youth (in convenient 3oz sizes)?
2. Pilots protest of TSA's pat-down rules. But only as concerns pilots. Everyone else should still be treated like cattle.
Concerning our canine teeth, this is by no means evidence of omnivorism. Gorillas have much, much larger canine teeth than us. They look like fiendish meat eaters. Yet practically the only "meat" they eat is bugs like termites (for which the canines seem a bit overkill, no?). The vast majority of their diet is plants. Our deep-back primate ancestors may have developed these teeth for us and for gorillas, but it is no proof that we need meat.
Concerning a meat-free diet, I don't think you will see anything in my original post saying everyone should be vegan (nor that I am). What I said was: "We have deliberately set up an infrastructure which kills billions of animals annually, just for our pleasure and convenience. It seems rational to give that industry a little ethical examination."
I never advocate that everyone should be vegan or whatever: only that there is a good reason for individuals to reflect on the consequences of their diet.
Perhaps you can get by with some less meat in your diet. The result? Fewer animals would suffer and die for you, and (if you altered your diet properly), you would most likely see a health benefit as well. Win-win.
Seems worth a few minutes' contemplation.
I can't comment on what your particular doctors were thinking, but there is now a general consensus that a low-meat or no-meat diet is best. I have heard it most from cancer experts, diabetes experts, and general nutritionists.
There are of course dissenters, and there are advocates of the Atkins diet, etc. There is no certainty with these things. But if you do a web search for "plant based diet" and say "cancer" or "diabetes" you will see that the research is now very well established.
You are absolutely right, if it can be assumed that a piece of spinach is equivalent to a pig.
Pigs are some of the most intelligent creatures on the planet, they have highly advanced nervous systems, and they can communicate with us on some levels.
Spinach has none of these traits. Yes, I am sure you can go on and on mocking me for saying that pigs are a "higher form of life" than spinach, but in fact that's the basis of all ethical decisions. There is no absolute black and white, and ethics involved making comparative choices. It can be said with relative certainty (from the viewpoint of a human animal) that killing a pig is a greater harm than picking a leaf of spinach.
So killing a pig for its meat when that is totally unnecessary and actually rather unhealthy is then only for the pleasure of the taste and perhaps the convenience of the protein.
See reply above.
And I don't know about northwest Scotland, but around the world it is much more common for meat to be a luxury item and for plant-based human food to be the easy, inexpensive course. In most cases, meat animals compete with humans for plant-based food sources, and eating meat is a less efficient use of land than just eating the plants.
In every instance, no. But in places like the U.S., where grocery stores are abundant, then yes, meat is almost exclusively for pleasure and convenience.
In case you hadn't noticed, doctors and nutritionists generally recommend a plant-based diet. So what is necessary about meat consumption?
It tastes good (pleasure) and it's an easy way to get a nice packet of nutrients (convenience).
This can be said to be:
1. just explaining nature
2. amoral
I'm not saying it is immoral: just that it is devoid of moral content.
Animals kill to eat. No big deal. But we don't expect animals to express any ethical thought.
When people kill, there may be reason to at least think for a moment about the consequences of our actions.
We have deliberately set up an infrastructure which kills billions of animals annually, just for our pleasure and convenience. It seems rational to give that industry a little ethical examination.
Extending it to fueling our autos just entrenches it further in our minds and our economy. The weird part is grinding up animals to move our inefficient vehicles around. Just seems twisted somehow.
Gee... it don't cost nuthin to get your wiki degree.
My impression has always been that the Mac mini is intended for the home user.
Lots of people now have many computers (and other devices) in the household. It would be nice to have one ring to rule them all.
> 1. You are stuck on one platform. It is like getting a Sun Solaris platform but worse because apple never really had a strong enterprise department.
They're Intel boxes. Run whatever OS you want on them.
Also, they're UNIX, so run whatever software you want on them.
> 2. You didn't get any real extra functionality over a Linux/BSD even Windows servers.
Setup times are far less time-consuming than Linux. Per-user cost is far less than Windows.
> 3. There is 0 fore-site on what will happen for the next version. What new features. Apple is too closed
Absolutely true, and a real deal killer in the enterprise.
>4. You had limited options. So that means you are paying for stuff you don't need
Somewhat true, but the Xserve is 1u. Most of the options are externalized.
>5. Limited server tools. Sure the Apple stuff is good but you need that one extra tool that apple doesn't support.
Then install it. The Xserve is UNIX. Also, most data centers have more than one machine, and hardly any have all the same brand throughout.
>Like Apple or Hate Apple, it really isn't a good server platform.
Well, they still make servers, just not rack-mounted ones.
Xserve aside, OS X Server provides some very, very powerful tools. Many of them are based on open-source, but for the ~$1K price, a well-paid employee would be hard pressed to roll them all in less than $1K worth of time. And all these tools have no per-seat cost, unlike Microsoft solutions.
The question remains, of course, how seriously can people take OS X Server now that apple discontinued the Xserve?
OTOH, it makes a really nice home server, if it is a bit over-powered and pricey for that application.
100 miles. When I saw it, I reported it to Google using right-click->"Report a Problem." And wouldn't you know... now that I look, it is no longer there.
Indeed. I almost rode my bike to a seemingly nearby park I had never explored. Then I double-checked it on the park authority's site and found it was over 100 miles away from where the Google map showed it.
So I 100% feel what this Nicaraguan commander felt. I mean; out situations were basically identical.
But do they really have to shred all the books just to scan them?
The problem is that something like IRV can't happen from inside the system. It would require that the people in power pass a law to enable it, and they have a very strong disincentive for that. Solutions that lead to better democracy generally are not solutions supported by politicians. Makes sense, since currently democracy is merely an annoyance they have to pander to in order to maintain their power.
Metagovernment doesn't have anything to do with runoff voting because it does not have elections. Elections are for representatives; while Metagovernment is a new way of looking at direct democracy. Well, really it is numerous ways of looking at it, since the various member projects take different approaches.
If we have elections, we have empowered leaders, and we therefore have, well... here, this page sums it up pretty well:
http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
Consensus, as opposed to a majority, is a wonderful idea. Honestly, Wikipedia is probably the best model but, look at it. It's a very creaky process that breeds bureaucracy. There's simply now way we can get that applied on a national level. Hell, the Democrats can barely get consensus when they control two branches of government. Consensus is nice, and for small communities it works, but it cannot apply on the large scale.
This is very true in the status quo, but it does not necessarily have to remain that way.
The current system is radically opposed to consensus, because it is a two-party, politician-run system. There is no political benefit to consensus. From a politician's standpoint, agreeing with "the other side" means there is nothing to distinguish you as someone worth voting for. So our politicians focus on hot-button issues where they can create real division.
It is really rather amazing how well they can do this. If you think about a really polarized issue like abortion, the vast divide there is almost entirely politician-created. Hardly anyone wants wanton abortions as part of our society. And hardly anyone wants the government to have regulatory control over our reproductive systems. There are many ways we could build a consensus that would work for almost everyone. But instead, we have people actually resorting to violence in their vitriolic passion over this non-issue.
No, consensus cannot scale to a national level at this time, because we are like little children who haven't learned proper manners. But if collaborative governance gets a foothold in small communities and we get used to creating syntheses to build consensus, I do believe that we will find workable ways to do it on increasingly larger scales.
And the voters reelect those legislators after that? Seems to me many US legislators have been around for years or even decades.
America is a winner-take-all system. This means that if there is a viable third party candidate who (for example) leans left, then the left-sided votes will be split between the two more-left candidates and the sole right-leaning candidate will always win. In all other instances, third party candidates are seen as "throwing one's vote away" since the two main parties are so thoroughly entrenched. (IIRC, it took the Civil War to break from the original Tory and Whig system.)
So the only choice Americans have is to every few elections vote out most of one party and vote in the other. Even though they know this isn't going to solve the root problems.
Otherwise, how do you explain the incredibly low Congressional confidence? I didn't make that up, it is a Gallop poll, and it shows that confidence remains preposterously low no matter which party is in control.
Don't they already have a system in California where voters can vote on all sorts of stuff? Is that working well for California?
That system is absolutely nothing like Metagovernment.
1. It is majority (really plurality) rule.
2. It is only on hot-button issues where special interests can get millions of signatures to get it on the ballot.
3. There are only singular votes every few years, not a continuous process.
4. The voters get no say on the wording of the bills nor the ballots.
All of these add up to a system that in no way has any resemblance to collaborative governance.
See answer in thread below, from OP
Sorry if I was unclear. By votes, in this sense I meant the votes of legislators. Yes, the people vote for the legislators fairly well. Then those legislators sell their policy votes to the highest bidder.
Concerning your statement, "Just because your party didn't win doesn't mean the system isn't working the way the majority of the voters want."
1. I do not support any party, since political parties inherently coopt politicians away from the interests of the people.
2. The majority of voters did not get what they want. Congressional Confidence has been below 40% since at least the 1970s. No matter what party is in charge, they are letting the people down.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/141512/congress-ranks-last-confidence-institutions.aspx
Your critique is entirely correct, and is very much taken into account by the Metagovernment project.
"The voter doesn't understand the legal code."
1. People don't have to participate in every decision, just the ones they care about and understand.
2. Since Metagovernment is a ground-up re-do of governance, it is a re-do of legal code as well. It is not intended to replace the US federal government just yet, but rather small communities' governance. Over time, people will get a better understanding of how to participate in large-scale governance as the system evolves.
"It was thought that electing "elite" officials who have our interests at heart but more direct knowledge of law would make better law makers."
1. This amounts to saying that we need to be protected from ourselves by a superior class of overlords. Do you really want to admit that is the best we can ever do?
2. These elites demonstrate again and again that they are just as idiotic as everyone else.
3. People don't get involved in issues because in the end their voice is ineffectual. If people can actually make a direct difference, they will have an entirely different incentive to learn and delve into issues.
"If you live in state that allows referendums this concept becomes very apparent."
1. Referendums are majority-rule decisions, while collaborative governance usually works on a consensus model.
2. Referendums are only on a few hot-button topics, meaning they lead to demagoguery. Having a "referendum" on every topic all the time would be completely different.
3. The authors of referendums are individual politicians or more frequently lobbyists. They are often written to be confusing or overly-simplified. Collaborative governance inherently means people write the laws together. Further, it pushes the process toward synthesis. Check out the amazing innovation in Vilfredo, for example.
All of this and more is on the Metagovernment site. It just takes some thinkin' to wrap your head around it.
Better voting systems still won't fix the root issue: the people who get elected into power are corrupted by that power.
Metagovernment isn't perfect, and it will take a long time to get up and running, but... how does it compare to what we have now, where votes are sold to the highest bidder, idiots are in charge, and our participation is limited to 30 seconds in a booth every two years?
It is interesting. A common mantra of law enforcement is that "ignorance of the law is no excuse for illegal behavior."
So is ignorance of security technologies an excuse for publicly broadcasting your password to people around you?
There is nothing illegal about receiving and interpreting radio signals which are unencrypted. So if some schmoe is tying a password into a non-SSL page over a non-encrypted radio network, they are actually (though ignorantly) broadcasting their password right at you.
If you write your password on a wall inside a room that you think is private, it is illegal for me to look at it through a window?