I LOL'd when I read this.

From now on, "Prove me wrong" wordfilters to, "I'm never right."

Look
I hope you guys aren't thinking of to simple a model.
I wasn't intending getting rid of government altogether.
You need some kind of legislative, economic, judiciary,education, ect ect.
The point I am trying to get across is. The people have the final say. Each branch can purpose whatever they want. But without a majority vote from the populous, it does not get passed.
There are a million finer points you can make, I can not explain every single one. Think common sense.
I am in no way suggesting we go lock the doors to congress and fire them all. What I am saying is take away their ability to make decisions that the majority do not agree on.
What was Congresses last approval rating 9%.... you telling me that we cant do better than 9%?
Do you know what 9% means?
It means I don't give a f@#$ what you think

Originally posted by jamie83
As a side note, the banks are in trouble because the people who borrowed money did not repay the banks -the banks didn't steal from them.

If I may add. Lenders, who are supposedly "experts" in the field of making loans to people, did a horrible job. They took shoddy appraisals, shoddy income verification and allowed ratios for many loans that you could see the trouble comming a mile away.

Let's see, stated income (which you basically "told" them what you made) or a no income verification loan, an appraisal that inflated the value of a house and some tweaking of the "numbers" to get your ratios right to get your loan appproved without much oversight. I wonder why the loans defaulted!?!?!?!?!?!?



Let's not even get into the non conforming mortgage backed security aspect...... I just ate and don't want to vomit.

I would say - it si worth discussing what other alternatives besides delegating decisions to corrupt politicians do we have?

What technologies could be used and how to insure fraud is minimized?

Nice start

While I applaud you thinking outside the box on this I am forced to disagree.

The US is not a Democracy it is a Constitutional Republic. It is set up this way to ensure that the will of the majority cannot impact the rights of the minority. If the simple majority is allowed to make all the rules, this country would not be the place it is now. Just imagine what may have occured immediately after 9/11... Allowing control of laws to the majority would lead to a mob mentality. Im not saying that we would have death camps the next day, but, IMHO, things would quickly go south and many of our freedoms would slip away in the name of security, safety, etc...

Not saying that Congress is doing a good job, they stink.

EDIT- Also, many of your examples, namely allowing the majority to approve measures could have the same effects. As example, many civil rights movements would have been squashed fairly quickly... just my 2 cents

[edit on 26-7-2008 by XTexan]

Originally posted by XTexan
While I applaud you thinking outside the box on this I am forced to disagree.

The US is not a Democracy it is a Constitutional Republic. It is set up this way to ensure that the will of the majority cannot impact the rights of the minority. If the simple majority is allowed to make all the rules, this country would not be the place it is now. Just imagine what may have occured immediately after 9/11... Allowing control of laws to the majority would lead to a mob mentality. Im not saying that we would have death camps the next day, but, IMHO, things would quickly go south and many of our freedoms would slip away in the name of security, safety, etc...

Not saying that Congress is doing a good job, they stink.

EDIT- Also, many of your examples, namely allowing the majority to approve measures could have the same effects. As example, many civil rights movements would have been squashed fairly quickly... just my 2 cents

[edit on 26-7-2008 by XTexan]

Yes true
But again I point to the fact that we were lied to in the first place about 911 by that exact type of corruption. And again I would like to point out how important it is that we have a true unbiased fair not for profit means of information gathering.
I am sorry but I just cant see how anyone considers main stream news as real news

[edit on 26-7-2008 by foremanator]

Originally posted by XTexan
While I applaud you thinking outside the box on this I am forced to disagree.

The US is not a Democracy it is a Constitutional Republic. It is set up this way to ensure that the will of the majority cannot impact the rights of the minority.

[edit on 26-7-2008 by XTexan]

Damn good point by the way.
I must admit I did not consider that

Originally posted by foremanator
Yes true
But again I point to the fact that we were lied to in the first place about 911 by that exact type of corruption. And again I would like to point out how important it is that we have a true unbiased fair not for profit means of information gathering.
I am sorry but I just cant see how anyone considers main stream news as real news

[edit on 26-7-2008 by foremanator]

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly that our current situation is a sham, and that the MSM is a joke. I just dont think that giving all the power to the majority is the answer, at least not without STRICT oversight of the majority to ensure the Constitution is upheld. Thats my fear of your idea... a majority rules attitude can lead down a dark path if left unchecked.

I mean, even now, if the majority would just speak up and hound these dirty politicians and hold them accountable a lot of problems could be solved... unfortunately they havent...

EDIT- thanks for the above post, ive heard that stated on ATS by several people before, I didnt know it until I read it myself...

[edit on 26-7-2008 by XTexan]

You know it could even start off with something simple.
Say a month prior to every election, you send an email to everyone in each specific duerestriction of each congressman. Detailing exactly what they have voted for and against.
Provide the congressman the opportunity to explain why in each instance his rational for voting the way he did.

Originally posted by foremanator
You know it could even start off with something simple.
Say a month prior to every election, you send an email to everyone in each specific duerestriction of each congressman. Detailing exactly what they have voted for and against.
Provide the congressman the opportunity to explain why in each instance his rational for voting the way he did.

I'd go for that, though good luck getting congress to sign up for it... That information is out there though, except for the why part of course... Id love to get something like that in the mail, however i dont think they'll agree to it, it would give us power and oversight into their inner workings.

I would definitely vote for term limits for these guys, i think that would do a lot for us to get some of these fossils out of there...

In a perfect world I could see us all voting by computer.
But we aren't living in a perfect world.
In this world full of liars, thieves, murders, cheats, rapists and politicians (who in my opinion fit all the above catergories), it would be impossible to vote by computer, too much corruption.

Ok dude, firstly, the main thing about this and the fact that it's a bad idea is:
1. Too easy to hacl a system and sway votes (honestly though, the hackers have only there best interests in mind, but there interests closely match our civil rights).

2. Too much stuff to vote on, people would lose interest pretty quick on it.

3. If there are very, very few votes, what then? Lets say there are only 16 votes, does the bill really matter that much then?

4. What about foriegners? Agian, hackers could easely slip past a system nomatter how many codes or whatever it has and sway votes.

5. I didn't know Jesus_Christ was a member of ATS, he never told me that.

-Jimmy

There are so many problems with this:

1) As we know with voting, only certain demographics of people are likely to vote. The impact of the voting population not being representative of the country is lessened because we elected, ultimately, generalists who are responsible for carrying out the duties of all their constituents. Our voting system has some security backups because any elected person who sufficiently angers any voting demographic will spawn a grass roots election campaign to throw them out of office.

2) Who gets to decide what is worthy of being put to a vote? What isn't worthy? If you make people vote on every national/state/local government decision people would be doing nothing all day but voting.

3) There would be no way to institutionalize collaboration or bargaining. The majority would win, and the minority would not be able to form a coalition. This makes tyranny very easy.

4) It costs an eye-popping amount of money to hold elections, multiply that by 365 - it would cost more to run the system than the budgets of most governments.

5) We have a relatively small amount of decision makers at the moment, which makes tracking bribers or underhanded dealing easier. If everyone becomes the decision maker, there is no way to track and punish all of the "cash for votes" and corruption that would emerge, you couldn't even try to fight it.

And on, and on, and on...there are too many reasons to list.