The Daily - Saturday, October 13, 2018

WHEN GOVERNMENT STOPS WORKING

For sometime I have advanced the notion that many parts of our government no longer work. They no longer work, that is, for the average citizen. They work just fine for the wealthiest and for corporations, but not for the rest of us. Congress works for corporations and the rich; the Supreme Court works for corporations and the rich; #45 is a corporation and a wealthy oligarch.

When government no longer works for citizens, then citizens must act. After all, government exist to serve citizens. At no point should citizens serve a government that is serving anybody other than the majority.

What can citizens do when their government stops working for them?

Historically, citizens have revolted and overthrown failing governments. In other cases, representatives are voted out and different representatives are elected. Unfortunately, the new representatives often become corrupted and the cycle starts again.

One solution, as in the case of the Chicago Police Department officer that massacred a teenager with 16 bullets, is to use the legal system to seek justice. Sometimes that works, most often it does not.

In this week's episode of "The TED Radio Hour" called "Hacking The Law" (the podcast is issued on Friday's and then airs on Sundays on NPR stations), the show producers introduced a variety of ways to hack governments to make them work for the majority of the citizens. Two of the examples presented:

The Bail Fund

In the United States, those of limited economical means are often jailed, sometimes for years, because they cannot make bail. A group of public defenders started a program to provide bail for defendants, thus substantially reducing incarceration time and also allowing many of the accused to go free when their cases were thrown out or they were acquitted. The statistics provided were astonishing and well worth investigating. This program has been so successful that is now expanding into 40 cities. It is bringing justice where justice did not exist because justice is not cheap, and many poor people cannot afford justice in our country.

Here is the talk: Robin Steinberg: How Can We End The Injustice Of Bail?

Election Elimination

In Ireland, there is an experiment to eliminate the archaic institution of elections for public office. Instead, focus groups are asked to serve to solve problems. The concept is simple (but difficult to implement). Essentially, common citizens would take over jobs currently held by politicians. There are established term limits, an attractive salary, elimination of long term corruption, etc.

Here is the talk: Brett Hennig: Should We Replace Politicians With Random Citizens?

It is definitely time to hack our governments everywhere, do away with the old, corrupted methods, and try something new. There will be mistakes, there will be failures, and there also will be successes and real progress. It is certainly a better alternative that the stench of incompetent, corrupted governments that serve the masters and oppress the people.