Friday 16 September 2011

Internet Government

I watched an interesting documentary yesterday about specific help based social networking sites covering the internet; they were not specifically facebook type sites more like commonality sites. Sites where people with similar interests or situations, helped each other to gain more knowledge of their situation. One site helps new mothers on the best way to look after babies, the idea being you bring one piece of knowledge and gain many more. It seemed an excellent idea, and they proposed that maybe in the future government could be run in such a way.

It would be rather interesting if every vote in the House of Commons was put to the electorate via the internet, where every registered person could have their say, and vote on the policies of the land. It would definitely be democratic and would surely take away any singular advantage for specific groups i.e. big business and banks, etc, etc. We could vote on whether we want to have a war in Afghanistan or buy nuclear weapons, or would we prefer to spend the money on improving the health service. We could vote on anything and the hope would be that it would empower people to vote, to be involved.

One thing I find at election times is that it seems so pointless, a friend always tells me you have to vote, but I always responded with, what is the point in voting for parties that in my mind have no relevance to the present. Parties that live in the past, that do not understand the will of the people and are only interested in their own gain.

Imagine how much better the world could be, by giving every person who has the right to vote, on every subject, every law, and every consequence, without bias towards one generous donator or another.

I think it would be quite difficult to start with and you would need amazing security so it was not infiltrated and abused. I suppose now my paranoid mind kicks in and thinks further, I wonder how you would stop large secular groups from organising or even scaring people into voting as they would like. What would happen if a vote was seen to be totally against the principles of the country, like bringing back hanging or some barbaric form of punishment?

How would it work when allocating funds for say the military, or police, fire service, or NHS? Would it make us more streamlined, would it make us less cohesive, would it cause mass confusion and who would oversee it all?

It is an interesting way to look at things and maybe one day we will be ready to embrace such a system, but I doubt it will be in the near future. Unfortunately at the moment, the way the world works, the way the media, government treat its citizens, we are a long way off such a system, because many people are ignorant of society, as well as being stupid and unaware of the full facts and if they were given the full picture they may not be able to handle it or even believe it. I do not say this to be derogatory, it is not the fault of the people, it is the fault of the governments, who are there to protect the people and give them a better standard of living; which if you think about it, is not what they do.

We live in a society of secrets, a society where no one knows everything, but some people know far more than everyone else. These people are not going to willingly relinquish their power, wealth and control in a hurry. They are not going to allow the masses to actually have a say in what happens to their powerful group. They will keep the masses dumbed down and full of false promises and futile hopes, they will give you tiny snippets of information and allow the human mind to create the rest.

Until it changes, the ides of a government of the people for the people, where every policy, law etc, etc, is actually voted by the people, is a long way off, which is unfortunate because if we were educated correctly and brought up to love our fellow man and not fear him, then it may actually work.

Most people intrinsically want to help, and want to be seen as helping, we want to have friends who help us, and this makes us want to help them even more. Unfortunately for the last 50-60 years we have been told to help yourself, and screw everyone else, think of number one.

Still it will be interesting to see how far this type of internet social helping goes and whether it can flourish, I hope it does.

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