There are many more reasons the Founding Fathers created a republic rather than a democracy. Sometimes the majority can't always be trusted. People are too human. This is why we have elected officials.
My original question still remains. How can we use the internet to strengthen our government? Surely it can be used to help congressmen be closer to those they represent. Nowadays we have senators that Tweet and others that keep blogs. But there are other ways to bring us even closer to those in Washington. A couple ideas I had were:
1.) Frequent, non-binding votes online sent out by members of the House to those they represent. This would give the representatives a much more precise and current idea of what the people want. They wouldn't necessarily have to agree with the people (that would ruin the whole point of having representatives), but they certainly could take it into consideration.2.) I'm kind of doubting of this one myself, but possibly live streaming of congressional sessions? (When there's nothing confidential involved of course.) I honestly don't really know much about what goes on in the Capitol Building, but it would be interesting to see if those we vote for really do what they say they will.
If you have any other ideas or opinions let me know. I'm still sorting my thoughts out myself so there's a chance you may be seeing another post on this in the near future.
I like this idea of using the Internet to update our government--if we have this much capacity for social connectedness, why not use it in the political arena? I think that feedback given "early and often" to elected officials could be useful; the problem lies in getting feedback representative of the constituency, but I suppose that's a problem with any voting method. Do you think that the ease of this kind of feedback would encourage more of the younger voters who are more tech savvy to get their say? (Does this make any sense at all?)
ReplyDeleteI think that would be a great way to get younger voters involved. That's true, there are a lot of ways to exploit vulnerable online information. But with today's technology I'm sure there are ways to limit people to just one, possibly anonymous, vote.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I want to say I disagree with the guy in the video saying there has been no such thing as a monarchy. There have been several examples in history of kings or emperors who, even though they had a group of advisers who he went to for council, still had the last word, no matter what the decision of the councilors was.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of online votes could be effective, and very simple. I don't know if these already exists, but a representative would simply need to make a group on facebook, or other similar social networks, and those who are interested could join. The representative could then post their proposals on there and the members would be able to vote whether they liked it or didn't like it, and add their comments. This would be a simple and convenient way for those represented to give their opinions on the proposals. There would be some problems with this system though.
First of all there would be no limit to who joined the group, so even those who were opposed to a representative could join their group and negatively affect the voting, or comment on the proposals posing as one of his supporters, which would probably just end in both sides arguing internet style over every single proposal. There would also be no anonymity. I personally think this would be a good thing, since the internet has proven that anonymity can bring out the worst in people, and if the voting was anonymous it would be much easier to mess with the system and vote multiple times. The only upside that I can think of to having anonymity is that people would be more honest and more willing to state their opinions because there would be no fear of being singled out.
But I do think these problems could be solved. If there was a social networking site made solely for this purpose it could be designed to work for this kind of system. Subscribers could choose either a party to follow or specific representatives, and could receive information about the representative's proposals and vote yes or no or comment on it in the same convenient manner that it happens on facebook. I do think it would have to be more strictly controlled than facebook for it to be effective. Comments could be monitored so that things like useless angry comments yelling at the representative can be filtered, and only those comments that maturely and effectively show their opinions could be left on. However this would have to be done by people who don't have a preference to any representative or view for it to be effective, so they are not just filtering out anything that is said against their idea. You could also make an option for those that wanted it to be able to post anonymously, or be able to post comments on proposals of the opposing party.
I think this all could be a very effective and convenient way for people to get more involved, but in order for it to work like it should people would have to be mature and reasonable about it, to keep it from turning into arguments.
As for the second idea I think it would be really popular for a very short period of time. I'm sure there are plenty of people that are interested in seeing how things really do work in congressional sessions, but after seeing one or two I'm betting the vast majority would realize that it's about as boring as reading a legal document, and would go back to watching monkeys scratch their bums or people hitting their head on various hard objects.
However I do think this would be an excellent resource for education purposes. It could provide students who are pursuing a career in politics a very convenient way to gain some experience in seeing how things actually work.
Sorry this is so long. I just figured I would give my opinion on it. Love you bro :)
Wow, nice comment! I agree that there has been such thing as a monarchy. For example, I wouldn't consider Egyptian pharaohs to be part of an oligarchy, they were virtually considered to be gods to the their subjects. The main reason I showed that movie though, was to show how the United States isn't a true democracy like many people believe.
ReplyDeleteAs far as having a way to limit votes on a social network, I was thinking use something along the lines of a social security number or driver's license number. I'm not exactly sure about the details but in Korea (I'm assuming it's just in South Korea) they have a free online computer game, and each Korean citizen is only allowed a certain number of accounts they can make. I should find out more about it but I think it's along the same lines as a SSN. (I hope I'm not completely wrong on this). But something like that and, like you mentioned, having people declare their party when they create their profile might be quite effective.
The problem with that however is that it solidifies the current two-party system. There would have to be some way to accommodate for third-parties, fence-sitters, and those who change their views.
The social security number would probably work, but if that were the case it would just have to be a VERY secure website to protect from identity theft.
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant by choosing a party wasn't so much that you would have to label yourself as one or the other, although that could be an option. What I meant was that when you subscribe to the website for those that don't know who their specific representative is or if they wanted to follow more than one they could just choose to follow all republican representatives or something like that. They would still be able to access other representatives if they wanted, it would just be more of a convenience for those who didn't want to find all the names specifically or who didn't even know the name of their representative
Yeah I think that would be really helpful for the coming-of-age generation that's just getting into the main flow of politics. I know that if my dad wasn't around to help me out I probably would have had no idea how to even register to vote. It may just be teenage laziness but this generation doesn't seem to want to go too far out of its way for most things. I guess that could apply to all humans though.
ReplyDelete