| >This idea that governments are democratic is a myth. I didn’t vote for tethered bottle caps in the EU. I didn’t vote to send money to fund wars... If we could choose to pay taxes on a line-item basis, that would be the most democratic thing ever. The last thing we want is the common people, unaware of the intricacies of all the things a government pays for, voting on what and how government is funded. That's a great way to get some huge budgets for circuses while forgetting to allocate for bread. The most important aspects of life are not glamorous, but they need to be funded for. There's some merit here (maybe people can choose where 5-10% of the federal budget goes), but before we can even think about that we'd need to get the national debt under control. There's negative money to allocate as is. >In the U.S., one can vote, but the policies that actually happen are the result of what lobbyists spent the most money buying the relevant congressmen. That's more of a lobbying issue than a democracy issue, no? Ideally a democracy would uncover a large gift and the PR would completely tank chances of re-election. But alas, the people aren't caring or well-tuned enough. >The most democratic thing there is is the free market. THe endgame of a free market is monopoly. So a small government would give the exact result we have here with lesser chances of an antitrust. |