Misrepresentation

Misrepresentation These days of instant worldwide communication have brought with them an opportunity for a new type of government that needs to be seriously considered. Our current situation requires that we seriously ask what senators, presidents, and representatives are good for. This question brings a wide variety of answers from the general public, but it is good to question the core of every concept. So, to answer it, first ask yourself another more basic question: Why do we have representatives in the first place? The answer is simple; at the time these systems were established, communications were limited to physical transportation. But with the presence of the Internet, and the ability for anyone with a library card to e-mail the president, what real need have we of representatives? Here's how it was supposed to work; I as an American citizen live far away from the place of government, I do my thing, but I have political needs and can't be involved with my leadership while at the same time maintaining my life because I can't afford to travel all the way to Washington every time there is a decision to be made. And neither can the rest of the citizens of my town, village, city, or state. So, we select a person to go there for us, stay there, and to speak for us since we cannot speak for ourselves for purely logistical reasons. Later, we were wrongly convinced that we must be somehow “qualified” in order to speak our opinion on given issues. Our first representatives were just like as, but over time as the specialist American politcin was born, a sort of arrogance developed. An idea that decision making was a skill one had to cultivate, and in the direct logical sense, this is true, but since our leaders do very little logical thinking about anything other than their reelection, this point does not apply. In short, contrary to the opinion we’re told to have, we do know what’s best for us. Now, there you have the need of representatives and such in a nut shell. That is why we vote on people and not laws. A question for which I got all sorts of non answers as a child. Tradition, and socio-psychological inertia, and nothing more is the real answer, once one understands three things, the original need for representatives, the simple fact that said need has evaporated, and that those we’ve selected are doing a very bad job. The point I am trying to make here is that congressmen and the like are needless now. They are by and large corrupt, inefficient, middlemen, that could be easily replaced with something as simple as a web page. And before you spout the tripe the media tells you about electronic voting being impossible I have simply to point at the electronic banking and stock systems to refute that contention. Sure the guys that run DiBold rig elections but that could be repaired with a tiny bit of oversight. Clearly it is possible to make accountable and anonymous records of

electronic decisions. One would simply have to treat the vote as a dollar and the voter spends it on one policy, one dollar, per SSN, per decision. The capacity to communicate instantly over thousands of miles has removed the root need for a representative style government. I think the populace should be given the opportunity to vote on inception and repeal of laws directly, as well as propose them. I would also suggest a time limit on all laws demanding that they be re-ratified every so often unless they are constitutional amendments. Kind of like license renewal. We as citizens of the United States, and of the world, are so accustomed to being represented by people we'll never meet that we've not even considered what it would be like to actually have some say in our government. Imagine actually having a bit of real power. I think the overall apathy and lethargy expressed by the masses with regard to the entire field of political influence is caused mainly by this very clear separation of us from the law. If the whole country was given the opportunity to vote on issues directly -no matter their age-, rather than a handful of people, I feel that people as a whole would take a more active stance on things. I'm a 24-year-old male -at the time of first draft, 28 now- and I think it’s fair to say that those of my generation feel almost powerless to change anything. Getting our point across on the coat tails of senators and congressmen seems overly aristocratic and feudalistic to me in this the age of genetic engineering and light speed communications. I submit for your examination a hypothetical question which I hope will illuminate the core problem with representative government and the problem of implementing fundamental revisions: What if congress had before them a ‘perfect’ bill, one which did something monumentally good for all mankind, one that expressed the very nature of human hope and capability with its perfection of goal and function, one they all could agree on but for the tiny problem here stated; that passing it meant the removal of congress. Do you think they would they pass it? I think we all know the answer and this is why I think a drastic restructuring of the way we rule ourselves should be at least discussed, and I don’t mean politically, I mean among ourselves. We clearly aren't doing all that we can with technology. We should focus these, our most advanced capabilities, Imagination and Technology, to the one skill, which guides all others, Imaginative Leadership. We are clearly stagnating. Take the advent of computer communications with regard to paper use: Think of all the paper you've used that could have been replaced by an electronic document of some sort. This is but a small example of the widespread problem I'm speaking of, that problem is not using what we have and

not trusting what we use. Also, all these little things that annoy all of us are subordinate to the main problem of not being able to make changes to our way of life; our forced economic and sociological dependence on "the way things are". How many times have you heard someone tell you “Well, that’s just how it is.”? In response to your pointing out some social flaw, as if making that statement somehow removed the speaker’s responsibility to do anything about it. Instead of concentrating our power as citizens in a rather limited selection of rich old white male politicians, those overpaid under worked buffers and middle men of the old representative system, why don't we give it to ourselves? After all, just whom are they supposed to be representing anyway? So here it is my petition to the American people. A request that we discuss and conceive a way to set up a nationwide system, that makes use of internet communications, for the express purpose of removing the middle men that are tasked to represent us, but clearly represent themselves and only themselves, that we restructure our current "Democratic" system into one which is more befitting the name. I would ask that we put this to a vote, after we establish a mechanism to do so. Sincerely, A disillusioned patriot.