Abraham Lincoln said in his famous Gettysburg Address ,” Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. Well I am afraid he may have been wrong. We may be in the beginning of a second civil war. Part of our government (congress) has been slowly taken over by people who will sell out our country for their own personal gain. While this time it is not north versus south it, like the civil war, it has a lot to do with economics and holding down some people so that other people will get more than their fair share. Least, I be misunderstood, I am a capitalist. But what we have now layered on top of our capitalist system is something I term “curuptionalist”. And it appears that congress, especially the Senate is willing to distroy the future of our country just to maintain the ability to stay in office. That is why I have suggested term limits in past posts.
But I have given a lot of thought to how we can have a more representative government. Here is my idea: We now have the technology to vote directly on any issue. Most of us can use the Internet and even more people can use cell phones and text. But the problem with having everyone vote directly is that we don’t have the time or even the knowledge on most subjects. That is where the Proxy comes in. We can give our vote on a topic or specific bill to a Proxy. The Proxies are subject matter experts. For instance, you could give your vote on matter’s to do with Climate Change to Tom Friedman if you felt he would represent your point of view. Anyone not serving in branch of government could become a Proxy. Proxies could require a small donation for them to represent you or not. It would depend on their circumstances. It would be up to the Proxies to market themselves to voters but virial marketing will work well. The whole system would be run by a non profit organization, called ByThePeople. that would be established with a clear mandate to just administer the process but not take a position on anything else. All this would be set up outside of our existing governmental and election structure. Then a new party would be created called the Proxy Party. Candidates of this party would agree that they would vote with the majority of Proxies on any one bill. ByThePeople, would operate the system that would provide the elected individuals with the results of the Proxies. Proxies would also provide points of view on what should be in bills etc. Eventually, we will even be able to change some of the senate rules etc. Members of the existing parties can also sign up to follow the Proxy vote.
OK, I know there are a lot of details to be developed. And maybe this concept does not really work. But we certainly have the technology to make it happen. If any of you have better ideas, please comment. We need to take back our country. We need to care about our future and the future of our children and grandchildren.
