Restarting the Revolution

A reporter was talking to a major Chinese politician about countries (like China) based on a revolution. The reporter asked, “Well, do you think the French Revolution was a success?” to which the Chinese politician replied, “It’s too soon to tell.” That makes me think about our revolution, about how the founding fathers started a country based solely on ideas (not with a king, ruler, despot, dictator, or based on some religion). And, truly, each revolution continues. In fact, I could make a good argument that our revolution has, to a great extent, lost its way and our government no longer serves the people. How do we re-start a revolution that has gone cold?

Certainly, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and the definitive study (mentioned in Science News 2011 or 2012) that 178 families around the world control the vast majority of its wealth, clearly indicate that a Democracy, as envisioned by our Founding Fathers, is no longer one man (or one person)-one vote. Clearly the rich control so much that they maintain their disproportionate wealth while others suffer.

What if we changed our system so that no money was allowed to be spent on any elected office. Or perhaps, Presidential candidates who could generate 1,000,000 signatures (electronic signatures by this point) would be awarded $1,000,000 which is all they could spend on their campaign. This would mean that their campaign would be run entirely by volunteers, making such a campaign truly one from the people.

I have a friend who ran for Mayor of Lincoln, California. He only spent $12 on a list of the registered voters in town and proceeded to knock on each and every door. He had only one issue which was the proposed expansion of the town without any thought to the expense of infrastructure. His only opponent was handpicked by the woman who owned the property for the expansion, and huge amounts of money were provided to that opponent. My friend lost by only a few votes.

This makes me think that such a system, where those who are willing to do the work are elected, is indeed viable.

Let’s Re-start the Revolution.