sms@exodus.UUCP (12/14/83)
Certainly no one would say that we have a true democracy. Elections are party personality contests, and with current technology, the closest we can come is local cable/900 voting. What we have is a republic. Now if this was a true Republic, the government would accurately represent it's public: a certain percent would be unemployed, black, single. As the current scheme of mainly white male lawyers is likely to continue, hows about if they were rewarded based on their actions: put the correct fraction of congress on welfare, etc... What I would really like to see is that casualties in wars be taken out of the government: if n% of the armed forces is killed in a action, `kill` n% of their representatives. kinda like holding your own government hostage/responsible, stephe people generally get the kind of government that they deserve
andree@uokvax.UUCP (12/19/83)
#R:exodus:-11900:uokvax:5000041:000:219 uokvax!andree Dec 16 12:39:00 1983 My roomate has an interesting suggestion along the same line. Do away with fixed salaries to elected politicians. The salary of any elected politician is set to the mean of the people he represents. I like it. <mike
rigney@uokvax.UUCP (12/19/83)
#R:exodus:-11900:uokvax:5000044:000:603 uokvax!rigney Dec 16 17:03:00 1983 The difficulty with such a scheme is that it makes it very difficult for people without outside incomes to become Congress*men. The mean salary for most regions would not be enough to support their representative. The lower the mean, the more the representative would need an outside income, and the larger that outside income would have to be, which leads to the paradoxical situtation that the poorest regions are those most unable to elect a truly representative person. How about letting each region vote for what they'd like their representative's salary to be? Carl ..!ctvax!uokvax!rigney