<One of the worst internal contradictions of Democracy is the ability of factions to vote themselves power and wealth at the expense of others.>
That is why election systems are so interesting.
Plus their ability to build, participate in an open, informative,educative,etc system.
The most important task of elections will then maybe actually become "adult education, a
couple of weeks, months of intensive lecturing,debate,exams every 4-5th year, checking up on
earlier projects, going through what now is, will become important,etc..
This is where the "media" comes in, but also others, hopefully some non-media and non-politics
"professionals", like academians, historians, etc,etc.. (that is, any political-state-media system must
ensure that there can exist a minimum amount of as neutral, "free", "independent" individuals as
possible, participating in the debate, that is, mutually educative process)
The way I see it, this is additionally where PBS,NPR come in, although they need to fight for funding,
and also CSPAN, although they cannot really say something themselves.
Neither one can really do something "controversial", the reason some like Chomsky are needed.
(Still waiting for by what mechanism it might be possible for him to "appear" on for example
CSPAN)
Ilmarinen
Btw, one mechainism of proportional representation, already if mixed with one-seat-districts, is that
persons like Chomsky, which never could get the majority of the votes in one district, can be
elected through the PR system, from larger districts.
Same as for , what's his name, the consumer-guy, as well some others who have supporters
spread out "nationwide" but cannot have the majority in any one district.
Btw,btw, an old (outdated) system was to have part of congress representing academia, the industry, etc
(also the church and military). HongKong is doing this during the "introductory" phase of democracy.
But, once again, not easy to change the US system, without disrupting "the balance" (for example,
2-3 "odd" congress persons could tilt everything this or that way, cmpr UK where there already is
three parties in the parliement, a couple of additional oddballs will not cause possible disasters) |
