Direct democracy
The electronic revolution now before us threatens to cause massive changes in how we govern ourselves.
There are those who believe representative democracy by politicians has had its day and it’s time we moved to direct democracy where individual citizens have a vote on major issues such as economic policy and taxation.
This is Switzerland’s concept, but as the British magazine The Economist points out, even the enlightened Swiss often pass up the opportunity to vote.
Unless it is a humdinger issue, the number of Swiss voting one way or the other can be as low as 10 percent. This does raise the question: Would we gain much by changing?
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We can’t call a meeting of 30 million people scattered across 3.8 million square miles. So, is the solution to locate computerized voting machines in communities across the country to bring the instruments of power within reach of all citizens?
Let’s see now, manufacturing and servicing voting machines, returning officers to supervise voting offices, people to warn us about the needs of the nation and others to warn us about the idiocy of doing what the first group advocate, scads of public relations people to develop “informative” advertising, electronic mail clerks.
That should knock down the double-digit unemployment rate.
