Non-Congress

I'm not used to blogging my opinions, but I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore (to coin a phrase).

When the Congress votes down a measure that ninety percent of the public favors, then it's time to take a hard look at whether Congress represents us anymore.  After that look, we find that not only does it not represent us, but also it's been hijacked by a bunch of fundamentalist extremist tyrants (remind you of anybody?) who would rather that the work of doing what's best for the country simply grind to a halt.  Let me say it again: Congress does not represent the people of the United States who elected them.

Therefore, we need to begin talking of revolution.  Read the Declaration of Independence again.  The gist is that we as a people should not and will not tolerate being ruled by tyrants, and a tyranny is what the Congress has become.

The revolution that I favor is the abandonment of Representative Democracy (RD) in favor of Direct Democracy (DD).  The reason that we have RD in the first place is that in the 18th century traveling to where the governing was done was not possible, unless one had the willingness and the means to do government full-time.  That time is over.  We now have the means to implement DD in our lifetime.  What is required is to design a system secure enough that no tyrant can seize control of it.

It's time for all of us to do the research on what ideas people who have been thinking about this for a long time have been discussing.  I invite you to start with Wikipedia ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy ), but there are other sites that are equally informative.  Switzerland already has DD in place, and we could undoubtedly learn much from studying their history with the idea. 

It's not likely to be easy to get this done.  History tells us over and over that entrenched power structures are resistant to change: Congress is not likely to vote to abolish itself.  Therefore, I'm calling for a new Constitutional Convention to take place in cyberspace where all can participate.  I think Memorial day would be an excellent time to start.  Perhaps we can find a way to vote ourselves into power on oh, say, the Fourth of July!

Political Views

I've been bothered by the answer I gave to the Political Views section of my Facebook profile.  At first I called myself a Pacifist, but I couldn't get to the belief that violence is never an option.  Sometimes you might have to defend yourself.  I changed the answer to Anarcho-Syndicalist, but that wasn't quite right either, since it still seemed to involve money as an underlying factor. 

Then I realized/remembered that political views can't really be separated from economic views, so since there doesn't appear to be any category that I fit into, I supposed that I'd have to create one.  I thought perhaps the term "Communitarian" would be close, but I found out that it already exists as a kind of political philosophy.  So I've settled on Paraeconomian.because what's being discussed here is best described as Beyond ("Para") Economy in the common use of the term.  It isn't really beyond, since if I haven't mis-remembered my Ancient Greek studies, "oikos" (the root of "Economy") means "house", so literally "Economy" means "study of household affairs". 

If we extend "household" in the manner of Marshall McLuhan, the larger unit would be community.  Operating without money would necessitate a deep involvement in a community, since any enterprise beyond a one-person one would necessitate involving other people who, of course, are not getting paid.  The only way they will work for you without compensation is if they know and respect you as part of the community. They trust that you will help them later when they need it.

Communities used to be defined by geographical area in pre-petroleum days.  Likely you knew all your neighbors, most of them being within a day's ride by horse or coach.  Nowadays communities are mingled geographically because of transportation and communications technologies commonly available.  I suspect that as petroleum becomes scarcer and vastly more expensive, communities will have two aspects: a more contracted geographical one and a more expanded electronic one.  I'm presuming here that in the future it will become vastly more efficient to move information electronically than to move people physically.

 As an individual, then, you're going to need two reputations: a local physical one and a wide-area info-tech one.  Given that they are not entirely separate, the best recipe for success would depend on ensuring that those two reputations do not conflict.