On 8/11/2009 18:53, Trent Shipley wrote:
More fundamental is his objection to the U.S. Government. In effect, he is saying that the U.S. system of government is inherently illegitimate, largely because it is run by politicians. By John William's standards ALL representative democracy is illegitimate precisely because a representative democracy REQUIRES professional politicians.
Crazy tangent: I've always wondered if it might be worth the effort to introduce a third house, a tricameral legislature of sorts, where the members are brought in through a random civic duty lottery (akin to jury duty selection in most states, perhaps). Call it the "House of Peers" or "House of the Public", for instance.
I think such a "crazy" idea would only work in the modern communications era. You can't expect a person to serve even a 1-year term if they have to pack their bags for Washington and may not be able to expect to have their existing job when they return (much less can't afford the salary differential during the term). However, with the Moderne Internet, I think that "average folks" might be persuaded to do a little bit of work for their country online every so often for even a tiny amount of compensation. You could even contemplate things like "micro-terms" of only a few weeks duration with the right technological leverage. With micro-terms and lots of paid eyeballs you might even get awfully close to a sort of "representative wiki democracy".
Even if this "House" was of lesser standing than the existing legislature it would be useful just to have a "public oversight committee" directly drawn from the public and "in the same turf" as existing legislatures.
Anyway, it's just a crazy thought experiment (that I created for use in a short story I never wrote) and I doubt that it would be easy to amend the Constitution to try it, but it might be something to play with at local or state levels and see if it survives/replicates...
-- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
