"Citizen-Led" Decision-Making

[bilby]

It's not a "job" for anyone. There should be no such thing as someone "running a country," unless that "country" is some private fief, perhaps a privately-owned island, or a privately-owned gated community of a few thousand residents who can easily move somewhere else if they need something different.

For someone who clearly has absolutely no idea what he is talking about, you certainly have some very strong (and unreasonably longwinded) opinions.

Good luck with that. I have lost what little interest I ever had in trying to explain anything to you, as you are clearly determined not to learn anything, lest it cause your beloved (and monumentally simplistic, despite their massive word-count) opinions to become less strongly held.

 

[BH]

Over the years I have written letters to congressmen and the president. I wrote George Bush a letter about an issue and got a two page letter back and a picture of him and Dan Quayle. I wrote Clinton a few times and always got a letter back explaining what they were doing about an issue or if they disagreed with me said why. I even got a letter back from Bush jr explaining what the state dept was going to do to get an atheist professor out of prison just for bring an atheist in Pakistan. But starting with Obama this changed. I never got replies to letters, even acknowledgement of the letter and thank you and so forth. both Trump and Biden never emailed anything back orher than we got your email and thanks.

To me this is a sign of disrespect and contempt. I do think the average citizen should have a say through more direct voting. Maybe the threshhold for a plebicite should be high, like ten million signatures to go on a ballot but it seems the politicians flat out dont listen or put out the facade they listen anymore.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Referendum vote (give citizens a direct voice)

Over the years I have written letters to congressmen and the president. I wrote George Bush a letter about an issue and got a two page letter back and a picture of him and Dan Quayle. I wrote Clinton a few times and always got a letter back explaining what they were doing about an issue or if they disagreed with me said why. I even got a letter back from Bush jr explaining what the state dept was going to do to get an atheist professor out of prison just for bring an atheist in Pakistan. But starting with Obama this changed. I never got replies to letters, even acknowledgement of the letter and thank you and so forth. both Trump and Biden never emailed anything back other than we got your email and thanks.

To me this is a sign of disrespect and contempt. I do think the average citizen should have a say through more direct voting. Maybe the threshold for a plebiscite should be high, like ten million signatures to go on a ballot but it seems the politicians flat out don't listen or put out the facade they listen anymore.

ten million signatures requirement is too high. But there needs to be a new way to have referendum votes ("plebiscite") where we can all vote directly on an issue. This can be done. There are many possibilities, and this should be discussed.

A good approach is to allow lots of "initiative" measures to be submitted and then voted upon, maybe by a small percentage of the electorate, the few who care (all those who care and take the trouble) and want to show up and go through the many initiatives which are submitted, and any initiative measures would have to go through a series of steps, getting approved by many voters over time, to finally come to a final point where a few could get officially adopted. Maybe they should all be long-term (in their subject matter), so that none would get finally passed until a period of a year or 2 (or 3 or 4) would go by before some would finally reach the official point of approval. There are plenty of practical possibilities for this.

It should not involve large expenditures to pay signature-gatherers. The little guy who can't afford signature-gatherers should have power to submit an initiative measure. And if it's a crackpot idea s/he's promoting, it won't make it through the process to final approval, but it will at least get voted on.

 

[bilby]

I wrote George Bush a letter about an issue and got a two page letter back and a picture of him and Dan Quayle.

Well, I understand he was probably annoyed with you, but there's a constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, so you probably have a case.