Direct Democracy

This direct democracy thing is not my idea, and it's not Kevin Bleyer's original idea either. I don't know who thought it up, but it's been around for awhile. I came across it shortly after I first started on the internet, about 2001 or 2002, and I don't know how long it had been around before that. To my knowledge, there is no organized movement currently pushing for this thing, it's just a utopian vision for the future.

Implanting the microchips in everybody, however is my idea, it just came to me the other day while I was thinking about Bleyer's book. Of course, great ideas occasionally are thought up by two or more different people who know nothing about each other, like Isaac Newton and that other guy who simultaneously invented calculus, so I can't guarantee that somebody else isn't working on it as we speak, but I am not aware of it if they are. A far as I know, the chips they are currently using in animals are "read only" chips. They are programmed before implantation and are usually used to identify the animal's owner in case the critter gets lost or stolen. That doesn't mean some hacker won't figure out how to get into them, but somebody else should be already working on that. I can't think of everything, you know. The purpose of the chips in the first place would be to solve the problem of voter I.D., which is probably why we aren't already voting on the internet.

With direct democracy, there would be no congress, we the people would be our own congress, which is kind of what Bleyer proposed. He didn't go into it any further than that, but I know from my previous discussions how it would work. Laws would be proposed by initiative petitions, the same way they already are in many states. That could be done on the internet too, although we would still need something like a board of canvassers to keep the process from getting chaotic. Once a proposal has been approved and publicly announced, it would be debated on the internet, TV, bars, coffee shops, and street corners by anybody who wants to. After a predetermined period of time, say 90 days, the proposal would be voted on by the general public. You wouldn't have amendments and other parliamentary maneuvers, just an up or down vote. Amendments could be proposed after the fact by the same initiative process, as could total repeal.

When I first heard of this concept, I was against it because it sounded a lot like pure democracy, which is basically mob rule. The more I think about it, though, it wouldn't necessarily have to be that way. We could still have a constitution, bill of rights, court system, and president. The only thing made obsolete would be congress, which nobody likes anymore anyway. This reminds me of a story:

One day there was this big traffic jam on one of the roads leading into Washington D.C., total gridlock it was. A motorist saw this guy who was walking along the line of stalled cars, stopping briefly to talk to each of the drivers. When the guy came to him, he explained that a group of terrorists had kidnapped the entire U.S. Congress and were holding them for ransom. If the ransom was not paid, the terrorists were threatening to soak all the congressmen with gasoline and light them on fire. He further explained that he was taking up a collection among the motorists and asked if this guy wanted to contribute. "Well", he replied, "How much have all the others been contributing?" The solicitor looked at his clipboard and said, "Oh, about two gallons each."