As a citizen I want our government to help us by making decisions that help everyone involved.
Yeah that’s the problem. People just want to trust someone else to work out the details of whatever general outcome they would like to see in the world.
Trouble is a healthy democracy depends on devoted, diligent participation from citizens to steer society towards their goals and away from the opportunistic and power hungry. But that doesn’t happen unless\until a critical mass of voters accept the responsibility to take the wheel and see themselves as co-leaders rather than waiting for a savior.
Unfortunately there’s just not enough voters out there that believe in self-government to actually self-govern so we’re just going to choose who rules us for a while until we just don’t get to choose anymore.
I think that’s not necessary. Having some insight is good. But I don’t want to have to study laws and all sorts of crap just to vote. I want to live my life. I think should be able to pay attention and have enough information to decide who should lead. Dedicating my life to knowing all of it is not something I want to spend so much energy on.
Yeah it’s a a tough balancing act. Ideally you shouldn’t have to study every legislative proposal but you should also know you can’t blindly ‘trust’ some dude that recites your team slogans to actually do what those slogans imply. Representative democracy is supposed to be the best of both worlds, but it still needs voters devoted to self-governance.
Sorry self-government isn’t easy but the quality of any democracy is directly related to the quality of the participants in that democracy. If you’re not willing to devote yourself to the quality of democracy you want to live in you cannot expect anything more.
Yeah that’s the problem. People just want to trust someone else to work out the details of whatever general outcome they would like to see in the world.
Trouble is a healthy democracy depends on devoted, diligent participation from citizens to steer society towards their goals and away from the opportunistic and power hungry. But that doesn’t happen unless\until a critical mass of voters accept the responsibility to take the wheel and see themselves as co-leaders rather than waiting for a savior.
Unfortunately there’s just not enough voters out there that believe in self-government to actually self-govern so we’re just going to choose who rules us for a while until we just don’t get to choose anymore.
I think that’s not necessary. Having some insight is good. But I don’t want to have to study laws and all sorts of crap just to vote. I want to live my life. I think should be able to pay attention and have enough information to decide who should lead. Dedicating my life to knowing all of it is not something I want to spend so much energy on.
Yeah it’s a a tough balancing act. Ideally you shouldn’t have to study every legislative proposal but you should also know you can’t blindly ‘trust’ some dude that recites your team slogans to actually do what those slogans imply. Representative democracy is supposed to be the best of both worlds, but it still needs voters devoted to self-governance.
Sorry self-government isn’t easy but the quality of any democracy is directly related to the quality of the participants in that democracy. If you’re not willing to devote yourself to the quality of democracy you want to live in you cannot expect anything more.