> Philip Witham (any relation to Steve?) Yes. (Average genetic match for
siblings is 25%, I believe, but our memetic match is probably over 50%) :-)
> : that the US gov. is still somewhat tolerable. It traps people with
> : political ambitions at the lowest, least effective level, and presents
> And direct democracy would do away with it.
Yes, a potential problem. But, if the rest of us (not desiring to
control, or be controlled) are in close agreement on how things should be
done, we would have sufficient protection against would-be politicians.
> : Few or no fixed points to the constitution, all is up for change by
> : direct voting of citizens: anything else implys that a few "founders"
> : have the right to more control than everybody else.
> But if the constitution can be amended by much less than unanimity,
> it makes the contrary implication that nobody can expect others to be
> bound by their agreements.
Er, right, an un-desirable thing. Did we understand each other here?
> : A limitation on the number of charactors or words is key, and may be
> : fixed (unchangeable by vote.)
> May be changed by unanimous consent, if the citizens' brains are
> artificially expanded to hold more.
Good point. The key, then, is that most of the citizens can understand
and perhaps "remember" the constitution in most of its details.
> Of course, that need not mean
> changing the founding document: it could just be a new covenant
> added to the first.
I see this document as being quite alterable, like a letter in a word
processing program, it gets refined in place. Amendments are messy, space
consuming, and cause arguments. Who need's 'em.
- Philip Witham