So I’ve got a great way to solve government. Make each government project funded directly by citizens. For example, if the Navy wants a new Aircraft Carrier they would start something like a kickstarter to fund it. Politicians would be responcible for convincing Americans that the Navy needs something like that and people who agree would fund it. Perhaps there could be certain rewards for putting in money such as get to ride on the carrier or even ride on jet off the carrier if you invest enough. That way no one would ever be forced to pay for something they don’t support and a project would only get as much as the actual support of the people will provide for.
Soooo…things that are absolutely necessary but people are totally ignorant about would get no funding whatsoever, unless shitloads of our tax money is wasted trying to convince the taxpayers to fund it?
Brilliant!
This seems like a bad idea.
One of the reasons why government bureaucracy is a necessary evil is that we require experts to tell us what our requirements and spending priorities should be, so the politicians can be well informed and then ignore them anyway.
Publicly funded foam dance club - √
Centers for Disease Control - X
This is the worst idea ever. It should be funded on Indiegogo.
If people don’t care about something why are we funding it?
Why should the safety and well-being of my country depend on how knowledgeable you are about what it takes to keep it going, or (more likely considering your scenario) what bright and shiny ad campaign caught your eye?
The US is not a democracy; it is a republic.
The other reason is progressive taxation. I want X, but I am not willing to pay for it. But Joe Moneybags can afford it - tax him and buy X. (Or borrow and buy X - that’s where deficits come from).
Most US federal spending is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense, and interest on the national debt. How much are you willing to pay for all of those? If your answer is “what I am paying now”, you get the buzzer - we are running a deficit, so somebody is going to have to pay more.
You cannot run a government on GoFundMe requests.
Regards,
Shodan
Why don’t you tell us what you wouldn’t vote for? I’d like to get a sense of how you think the government could be “fixed”.
I want x but can’t afford it so I’ll threaten some rich people with jail to buy it for me.
??? What is this in response to?
Yes, because the main problem in American politics is how rich people can’t catch a break.
The funding decisions you speak of are currently decided by officials (elected and unelected) who are informed by experts in the relevant fields. Said expertise may include many years of schooling, internships, and experience in matters such as law, international relations, military strategy, international finance, world history, diplomacy, hard sciences, and so on. The average voter isn’t going to have the experience, expertise or information needed to make a truly informed decision about whether we need another aircraft carrier (or Air Force One), and those things can’t be communicated through a series of 30-second TV ads. Indeed, there are a great many such decisions that are informed, in part, by classified information that cannot legally be disclosed to the voting public. So the first problem with your proposal is voters inevitably making horribly uninformed decisions about projects that will frequently be critical to the long-term well-being of the country.
The second problem is the tragedy of the commons. Imagine you were allowed to pay as much or as little income tax as you wanted. You immediately realize that if you stop paying income tax, you benefit hugely, but your fellow 299,999,999 Americans don’t individually suffer much at all. The bad news is that your fellow Americans all thinking the same way, and before long nobody is going to be paying very much taxes, and everyone will suffer greatly. Such is the tragedy of the commons, and it applies equally to the situation you describe: any given individual suffers very little if he chooses not to fund a project, but we’ll all be screwed because everyone will be thinking the same way.
There’s a difference between not caring about something and not wanting to pay for something, care about it or not.
When you get more life experience and learn more about human nature you may understand why your proposal is unfeasible to the point of being ridiculous.
The trouble with the OPs scenario is that the majority of the people do not have the inside knowledge nor the analytical power to be able to make the correct decisions about spending or any other priorities. Aside from being so easily led astray by special interest groups and fear-mongers. Which is the broad defect of democracy in the first place.
The plain truth is that no matter what form of government you ingest, it will begin on day one to evolve toward oligarchy.
How many different items do you think you would have to vote for in any given year? Would these decisions be decided all at once, once a year, or as they are needed(the usual method)?
How much do you think it would cost to print up the ballots for ALL the items that would need to be voted on, send them out to ALL the voters, then hold those elections as they were needed? How thick do you suppose the “voter’s pamphlet” for such an endeavor would be, and what it would cost to mail those out?
What you are proposing is creating a “Congress” of a couple hundred million people, without the ability to vote any of them out for incompetence.
Psssst, Czarcasm…I’ve heard of paper ballots, and I’ve heard of “mailing”, but…uh, computers? Internet?
Uh uh. Until that is free and available to everyone, and there is a way to tell who exactly is doing the computer voting, we have to have the paper version available. Besides, its only fair and proper that we receive the same info the Congresscritters get before they make their decisions, and that is mostly paperbound.
Many voters don’t have computers.
Many people with computers aren’t exactly brilliant when it comes to securing passwords. Why bother to hijack the supposedly ultra-secure voting machines when it would be easier to hack a crapload of unsecured machines, leave a little buggy behind, then got nuts on election day?