Cross posts

Lots of activity between me and Paul these days.

my comment re: the effect of information on citizen participation in government:

information empowers some of us (like well-washed Macon :-) to be better informed. and if the current technology was deployed in such a way we could register our opinions officially (broadly speaking). we could have a pure democracy where people vote in the Internet.

i think that's what McLuhan is saying, that access to information (including the tools to parse it conveniently) should allow informed people to make a bigger impact.

and plenty of netizens are starting to dream in this direction (cf, my comment and link about 'emerging democracy' on Walter's previous post in this vein (the pop thread?) [1] [2]

what about those who aren't wired (or wi-fi wireless)? they're out of luck. what about those who don't use their wires to learn and participate? they're out of luck, too. they don't get counted.

seems like a bad idea.

still, i think there's a good chance that society will move toward post-national compacts (eg, multinationals) and am fascinated by that possibility.

what if some paltry nations were to take in these post-national compacts to give them a geographic address? it wouldn't be that different from tax-havens. the compacts would pay the 'real nation' some agreeable amount of money for them to be 'official citizens' there (maybe never having been there). that's what their passport would say. but they'd do their own thing globally.

off the top of my head new idea flight of fantasy... what do you think?

my comment on MSAs:

this MSA idea sounds like a good one to me, Paul. giving incentives to cut costs is good. also, better free-market operation would be helpful.

we have cadillac care in this country that many people can't afford. and it's just going up. that's my concern. i think basic care for (almost) everyone is more important than cadillac care for some.

the idea i've most heard touted is universal health care a la Canada. that puts some controls in place. i sure would be interested in y'all conservatives' (ie, Paul and Macon) take on that. anybody else, too.