Wikileaks showed that the United States often hides its' dirty secrets in classified information rather than anything too sensitive. And what's to say the best minds the military would have to offer wouldn't have to engage more with the taxpayers that pay them, if the taxpayers had even more control? It's about time the military stopped getting its' cash flow doled out generously, and time for it to earn its' keep. If there is a compelling enough argument, it still can be made without having to resort to threats in specificity. Hell, Congress was dragged to war with false WMD reports, at least with this plan some citizens could escape that drudgery.
It's brilliant. Throw a man half a fish his whole life, and tell him it's a whole fish. When the man wants to learn how to fish >> He himself says: WE CAN'T DO THAT... we don't know how to fish. We can't even tell the difference between half a fish and a whole fish.
... ... I'll openly admit this one tidbit from personal experience, which will basically sum up my perspective on this utterly stupid issue. I like dealing with lobbyists and politicians in politics far more than I like dealing with ordinary people, and I'll openly admit that as much **** as everyone gives lobbyists, I trust them more than ordinary Americans. A lot more.
right, it's not like a bunch of lobbyists in self-interest have ever led America down self-destructive paths in blinding ignorance: read: The Big Short. The blind leading the blind, and both groups only have their interests at heart. One group just happens to be much smaller, and more insular.
IMO this is how all govt. budgets should be written. All allocations are percentages of revenue available rather than raw dollar amounts. Force priorities to be set. Anyone who wants more spending on X should be compelled to identify less spending on Y. It would make for awesome philosophical debates and drive efficiency and soul searching from the public about what really matters to them. Unfortunately our entitlement programs are on autopilot and raw spending is mandated by laws that care not what revenues are actually available to spend.
Oh, they aren't omniscient. Most of them come with ideas of questionable worth - but they're ideas. You can debate the merits and downsides of raising or lowering taxes, passing one bill or another, and so on. At that point, it's a matter of policy and discussion, which is generally rational. Arguing that the Congressman should support Michele Bachmann to take down John Boehner because he isn't conservative enough is not. Arguing that Obama should be impeached because of Benghazi is not. Arguing that Bush should be executed is not, nor that he should be tried for war crimes ( and don't give me **** on that, leftists, we know that isn't ever going to happen). Saying lobbyists are smarter than ordinary citizens or that I trust them more isn't exactly glowing praise. But organization matters Coherence matters, and so does unity. This country, more than ever, needs to be unified, not split apart by the idiotic libertarian ideal of every man for himself. You cannot take a country of 300 million plus people and have the time for the detailed opinions of all of them, especially in budgetary matters. We are seeing a rise in democracy for the sake of democracy, which needlessly hampers the day to day effects of governing.
We're at an age where I can go to an agency and pinpoint your exact tastes, and coordinate mass-scaled marketing campaigns for tastes in an area in aggregate (and the f**ked up thing would be, unless you were a social media hermit, this would be more or less completely legal). The NSA can aggregate meta-data on basically every phone call and email in America and discern patterns in a matter of minutes (the f**ked up thing is that this is totally illegal, but almost no one cares). Big data is rising faster than ever. You might have been able to make an argument that this was unwieldy or impractical before 1980, 1990, hell 2000. You can't really make that argument anymore. From a practical point of view, I don't see how this system could not work, and it would not be a major hindrance. The only strand of argumentation you should be holding onto is the questionable intelligence of the average citizen when confronted with substantiative issues. I would retort in two ways; first off, basically our entire modern age is based on the assumption that individual idiots cancel each other out in large aggregated pools, and the pool of taxpayers is quite large. Secondly, maybe the reason why the average citizens are such idiots on certain matters is because they never have really had a reason to think about them. Let's give them a reason.
Even if all of this were true, you are a lot more optimistic than I am that most people would dedicate enough time to make informed, rational decisions.
Capitalism and the theory of modern capital markets are based on the idea that through the dedication of 100 idiots, something akin to the work of a genius comes to light. Aggregated pools behave differently than the individuals that form them, and there are few bigger pools than that of the American taxpayer. I also believe that if you give people the incentive to dedicate the time to make informed decisions, they will. There is little incentive to really inform yourself about what harms your tax dollars since you are not responsible for them. change that, and I think you change the dynamic.
See, my argument has nothing to do with practicality. My argument is basically this turns America into a direct democracy - not even the Athenians had their people determining precisely where their individual taxes went. And direct democracy isn't bad just because it leads to poor governance - it's bad because democracy with its individualistic leanings destroys the common bonds which forge a people together into a great nation. This is the thing you completely miss - people don't have the time. At all. From my perspective, asking what's the difference between you and a politician when it comes to matters of affairs isn't that much different from asking what's the difference between an Asian dude who goes to the gym to play hoops with his buddies about 3 times a day and Jeremy Lin. It is the job of politicians to know **** and to have a staff that can help them know it. It is not the job of a chemical engineer who doesn't care about politics.
I work with the public every day. I completely disagree. Most people work long hours just to make ends meet. The last thing they want to do on their precious off hours is to try to make heads or tails of complex governmental issues.
