Moosicles

I’ve been following a lot of news stories and researching a lot of political problems that The United States is facing these days, and I’ve noticed that an insane amount of our troubles come from partisan disagreement. Simply put, the country is very polarized. There tends to be a strong Democrat and a strong Republican opinion, yet relatively few moderates and independents speak out for compromise or in-between solutions.

With the passing of the recent health care bill, partisan disagreement is at the worst I have possibly ever witnessed. Republican John McCain flat out said that “there will be no cooperation for the rest of the year.”

The truth is that there is an easy solution to the chaos. The United States citizens should vote on the issues rather than have politicians make all of the decisions. Currently the argument does exist that if you vote for the president, then he can do what he thinks is best, even if unpopular, simply because he was voted for. This philosophy is completely valid, because they were indeed elected for the purpose of making critical decisions. But while this philosophy is valid, it is a very indirect way of taking care of these important issues that affect the lives of every American citizen.

This is the 21st century. Before we know it, it will be the 22nd century, and the 23rd. We have the technology, the organization, and the resources to allow citizens to vote on issues. Why do we still have politicians making all of the decisions? The health care bill that recently passed may very well have been voted in, or it may just as easily be voted against by citizens, had it been voted for at all. If it had been voted for though, at least we wouldn’t have to put up with the bitching and complaining that we are hearing because it would have been directly voted in or out. If you don’t like it, then at least you will know that you are the minority and hopefully you will accept that fact.

I understand that voting is a huge process, but there is no excuse not to allow citizens to vote per-issue rather than per-candidate. We have the internet and we have computers. Stop taking useless online polls and use the computers to vote! I know: you are going to say, “but not everybody has a computer and internet.” The reality is that laziness and lack of time stop more people from voting than the fact that some people have no computers and internet. Additionally, people without computers could still make their way to public places such as a library or fire station that have do have public computers. If America is not ready for computerized web-voting, then there is still the option of absentee voting, which is quite simple: you mail in your vote. Voting on issues does not necessarily have to be done on a single day in the way that voting for candidates is done, so a mail-in absentee system has more potential to succeed. Either way, there are plenty of solutions.

As far as how often to hold these issue-based elections, there are multiple ways to go about letting citizens vote per-issue as opposed to per-candidate. One solution is to have annual or semi-annual voting days in which citizens will vote on the issues that have been brought up in that period. Perhaps citizens will vote against an issue. It might then have to be revised and then voted for three more times before the citizens of the United States accept it. If we have quarterly voting days, the reality is that we would still be creating legislation and solving problems at about the same speed that politicians do the same task today. Another solution would be to only have voting days when a truly important issue is at stake, but this would be more difficult as it is hard to spontaneously schedule a voting day.

I am writing thoughts in response to this article that was published on BBC.

There needs to be a consensus on the purpose that government has in order for us to better define objectives. This article brings up the idea of overall happiness for the largest amount of people. I cannot help but agree. Spin egalitarianism into this and it is evident that there is no reason to allow a minuscule minority to become excessively rich while a larger minority suffers; the rich won’t be any happier than the moderate-income group. But if we reinvest in educating and teaching the poorest how to help themselves, we might be able to maintain a happier overall population.

It’s about time that the United States grows up. The endless fight between liberals and conservatives is insane; it’s as if we are a bunch of small children arguing over who gets to ride in the front seat or who gets to be “it” in a game of tag. Much of Europe is moving on; they have higher life-satisfaction rates according to Satisfaction with Life Index, and the World Database of Happiness. They are far more environmentally conscious, and they have realized that the fear of communism, socialism, and dictators is irrational. A country like Iraq, Iran, or Cuba has perfectly acceptable, rational reason to worry about government power getting out of hand. The United States has no reason to fear too much government power. The United States, however, has every reason to fear corporate power getting out of hand. So many people jump on leaders in the United States for being “socialist.” I ask you, so what? I tell you, grow up. The most successful nations in their most successful years became so by maintaining a good balance between government regulation and private resource management. People had just the right amount of personal freedom to feel comfortable, yet enough guidance to feel that the country is being taken care of in good hands. The United States prospered after World War II because the government stood up and took a stand. It was not a pussy as it tends to be now. It was not afraid to take action.

Mature up, study sociology, study capitalism, study socialism, study economics, study environmental science, study politics, philosophize a bit, read some statistics, and then take action.

We need to start changing our society… the way it is organized politically, the way it operates, and the way it is viewed. We need to morph our culture into a more open-minded, wiser, optimistic, and active culture.

We need to stop putting up with bullshit and fix our problems:

• Obesity and Starvation (the fact that we have both of these simultaneously is nauseating),
• Global Warming,
• Pollution,
• Oil Dependency,
• Moral Disagreements (Abortion, Death Penalty…),
• Automobile Dependency,
• Lack of Education,
• Polarization of social classes…

And the list could go on for pages. I think the best solution to a problem tends to be the most passive solution. For pollution, global warming, and oil dependency, I think we need to cut down on travel. Yes, the world is globalized now. We have the mindset that just because we live in America doesn’t mean we have to manufacture our products here and grow our food here. This is very true; we don’t have to. The reality is that it is far more economically feasible and efficient to do what you are good at. The US may be good at designing electronics, and China may be good at manufacturing them, so we trade. Maybe Brazil is good at growing Soy and we are good at growing Wheat, so we trade. This is a good idea, and it makes things cheaper. But there is a problem with this: we have to spend a ton of oil (and therefore money) and shipping these things back and fourth. This creates pollution and global warming, it fills our oceans with boats, and it fills our roads with traffic.

The same idea applies on the local level. Perhaps we want to put our businesses in one location and our houses in another so that we can live in peace and quiet when we want to, and focus on work when we want to. Again, this clogs the road with cars, it uses fuels, costs money, creates pollution, and causes us to be dependent on energy – whether it petroleum or some other form to power electric cars. Either way, it requires energy. The most obvious solution in my mind is to stop separating everything. If we can mix things up so that we can walk to as many places as possible, then we will alleviate many of these problems. Not only will we have to spend less money on gas, have cleaner air, spend less time commuting, spend less money financing the Middle East, stop contributing as much to global warming, and but we will also be fixing the problem passively. We don’t have to build some new technology to do this. We just have to change the way we organize our cities. [Read about New Pedestrianism.]

The food and manufacturing problem mentioned above can be fixed in a similar way. Yes, maybe it is cheaper to grow food and manufacture it in another country, but it is cleaner, simpler, and more environmentally friendly to grow it close to where we live. Then there is the fact that we have many times more control over local resources. It is difficult to control a multinational corporation than it is to simply boycott one local farmer if he does something you disagree with. It’s easy to keep track of a local company or corporation and hold them accountable. For this, I want to see us investing and researching in vertical farming [Read about Vertical Farming], urban community gardens, and buying local. We gain something back that our civilization has been steadily loosing when we go local: a sense of community. Nowadays cars and the internet have destroyed our sense of community. To actually know the people we live near and to form a strong local culture does not happen anymore. When a local culture does form, it is never a strong one.

And in regard to how we handle the ugly realities of human civilization: It is so easy and natural to simply distance ourselves from what we do not like; but this is such a fundamental problem that America has, and it never helps in the long run. You could even argue that the reason most of the European settlers migrated to America in the first place was to escape problems rather than to fix them. Overpopulation, economic, and religious problems in Europe pushed people to the Americas. When you can run, why should you fight? But now, we are here, and we have our problems. We need to stop running from them. Let me give you some modern examples of the same old behavior: we put our power plants far away from our cities, we put our paper mills and stinky, polluting factories where we don’t have to see them or smell them, we put our houses as far away from the smelly, crime-infested downtowns that we have [Read about Gentrification.], and we put our landfills and junkyards on the outskirts of cities. Let me point out that while this makes life pleasant for us in the now, it distances us from the fact that we have crime, pollution, and an excess of physical waste.We need to re-focus our efforts on fixing our problems rather than running from them. If the power plant is too disgusting to live next to, then maybe we ought to use a different type of power plant and not use so much energy. If the highway is too loud and crowded to put a house next to, then maybe we should not spread out so far that we need to have highways going all over our cities. If our landfills are so big and smelly, maybe we should compost more and not waste so much material. You get the idea. I’m not trying to say we should go out and literally move each of these undesirable necessities into our backyards, but I am saying we need to start making political policies that encourage us to face our problems, not run from them. We need to stop putting up with bullshit and speak up.

With a rising population and a falling amount of available resources available to us, we are more or less screwed if we continue operating society the way we are now. Sure, maybe we would be okay for as much as fifty more years this way, but I assure you that we will begin to feel the effects of our mismanaged resource use eventually. And fifty – or even 100 years from now is not much. The Middle Ages were just one of many periods throughout history and they lasted a millennium. We entered a new historical period in the mid-19^th century, and we are still at the front end of this period. We must not think only a few years ahead as we are now – we must look out for our long-term survival. We must believe that we can and will last for many historical periods to come. To all of those people that have lost hope in society: STOP IT! You are half the problem. Apathy and the idea that we cannot change is half the problem. The 1960’s was a revolutionary time when regular people changed our culture simply by making public speeches and starting grassroots movements. American history is filled with grassroots movements. The United States began as a grassroots movement. The US is beginning to fall behind; we are coming out of the recession more slowly than many other developed nations including China, and the reason is that we are having a hard time re-adjusting ourselves. We need not to be afraid to point to a problem and fix it, and stop getting stuck for years at a time on the minor details of how we will satisfy each person, organization, and corporation along the way.

One way that we can act out is by getting people involved. With modern technology and communications, why the hell are we still letting our politicians make so many of the decisions while half of their interest is simply in promoting their career like the next guy? We need to make improvements in the way we vote. We need to get more people to vote in the first place. We need to make our society more open and engaging. So many lower-class people are politically apathetic because they feel like they have no say in things. We need to stop putting up with their apathy and address it. Why are they apathetic? Why do they feel like they have no say in things? How can we get them involved? How can we get them interested in education? We need to stop forcing education on people that don’t want it and refocus our efforts on getting people interested in education so that they can take advantage of it if they want it. We need to address people’s alternative learning styles so that they can stop flipping burgers and help solve our problems.

Come on America, stop slacking off. We have 99 problems and no excuses not to fix them. We can start locally.