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dominiclether

User Profile Image dominiclether
Member since : Jun-03-2009 (Verified)
1 Ideas, 2 Comments, 3 Votes

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Ideas Posted

what has always upset me about this government has been a lack of transparency and one of the reasons why we lack transparency frankly is due to the institution of representation itself. Within political science research has shown that highly centralized forms of governance tend towards corruption for a myriad of reasons I won't get into here. On important issues like health care, though, I know that the American public feels ignored and that many feel that captains of industry (who would be affected by any future form of health care reform) are being given too much air time in the national debate.

My idea is why don't we have a Citizens Assembly (CA) like the one that the Canadian province of British Columbia used in 2004 to allow citizens a chance to decide what electoral system best suited the public's needs? I would implore you, Mr. President, to read a book on the subject title "Designing Deliberative Democracy" edited by Mark E. Warren and Hilary Pearse, which goes into great detail over the strengths and weaknesses of the CA and how it can be improved in the future were it to be used again.
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dominiclether 9 months ago
One more note... the way our foreign policy is structured in this country, and many others, actually is designed for PREVENTING the public from having a say in the debate because many in foreign policy circles believe that the public doesn't have the know-how or expertise to engage in foreign policy decision making. its one of the reasons why magazines like foreign affairs exist, to cut most people out of the discussion and leave it to experts.

I would like to mention, however, that none of these claims made by supposed experts have ever been empirically tested. Also, if it's lack of an educated public which is the problem then the simplest solution would seem to be to educate the public on foreign policy issue (in the real sense meaning teaching them about Geopolitics) meaning stop feeding Americans crap information and propaganda about international events...
dominiclether 9 months ago
While I note the merit of this idea is wonderful as any increased in participation by the public is healthy for democracy, however, it's important to remember that the form and structure of a discussion is just as important as who is allowed to participate. Imagine 1,000,000 people having an unstructured debate on an issue like abortion... it would be chaos. Furthermore, we can accomplish the same thing with smaller numbers by using randomized selection techniques(to ensure unbiased selection) combined with demographic data to ensure that those selected match the makeup of the country.

In addition, a public debate of this scale would require a public educated on the issue under discussion at this scale and, sadly, this is not the case. Americans are still too heavily influenced by ideology which cripples any kind of honest debate. I partially blame an education system which fails to teach students to be critical thinkers (i.e. understanding the difference between opinion and fact) and a media who is too overtly influenced by political, or other forms, of ideology itself (honestly, look no further then FOX News to figure that one out, but they are by no means the only one guilty of doing it).