I don’t like to dive into politics. I find politics to be a dreadfully obnoxious topic. Since it is convoluted and misrepresented by the media, it feels like a waste of my time. Anyone with any sense knows enough to think through the issues and come to a conclusion on their own. Those without sense are incapable of being taught, and in the end it always feels like preaching to the choir and nothing ever seems to change.
With the election approaching later this year, I figured that it would be good to know what the potential candidates are actually saying, that way when it is time to vote, I can make an informed decision.
But as I was looking over the positions and stances that these politicians hold, I can’t help but think that there isn’t enough apathy in our Government.
Let me explain.
The Math
First, we do some math. According to the US Census Bureau there are approximately 303,658,558 people in the United States. To make our life easier, let’s round that down to 300,000,000. So we have 300 million people living in the US. These 300 million people all come from different backgrounds, which ultimately means that there are 300 million different opinions on how government should operate. It is literally impossible to come up with a set of laws and regulations which will please all the people, all the time.
However, it would be possible to set a handful of rules and regulations which everyone could agree upon. Perhaps you could call these “inalienable rights” and they could involve things such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It would also be beneficial to have a system of defense for everyone as well.
So now we have a system set up for protecting human rights, but life is still pretty chaotic, because nobody agrees on any other laws or rules. Logically, if we can’t define a set of laws to please 300 million people, we need to shrink the population size. If we divided up the 300 million people into smaller subgroups, we would have a better chance of finding a set of rules to which everyone could agree too. If we divide 300 million into say… 50 different parts, we have about 6 million people per part.
It’s still pretty hard to come up with a set of rules and policies that 6 million people can agree upon though, but it would be much easier than trying to please 300 million. With a group of 6 million people you could probably come up with a good set of rules concerning things like: punishment for violations of “inalienable rights” or save driving speed limits.
Now the neat thing about dividing up the 300 million people into 50 parts is that the end result is 50 different sets of laws and rules. This means that if someone is unsatisfied with the laws or rules that their “part” has decided upon, they can simple move to one of the other 49 parts which has a different set of rules. This allows for people to choose what laws they live under.
To truly make everyone happy, though, we have to shrink yet again. 6 million is a huge number of people to please, and there are still aspects of life which need some sort of regulation. If we break down 6 million people into, say, 500 subsegments, we end up with groups of about 12000 people.
I would claim it would be significantly easier to find a set of rules that 12000 people could agree with, as compared with 300 million people. Now these rules could easily cover things such as education standards and how to settle various domestic disputes.
Again, this is a really neat system, because we have 50 “parts” all divided into 500 “segments” which gives a total of 25000 different segments, all of which will inevitablely have a different set of policies. This means that if someone is not satisfied with the set of rules he is currently living under, he/she may move to a location where-in he/she is living under the set of rules he/she prefers.
Even 12000 people can be hard to manage, especially since this covers all groups of people both culturally and age wise as well. But breaking down this set of 12000 people into small groups of 2-7, we can be sure that they will all develop a set of rules they can all live by happily.
I think this is a really good idea, I think this could actually work. We could call the segments of 300 million, 6 million and 12 thousand, federal, state and local government respectively. (Groups of 2-7 people could be called “families”).
The Lack Of Apathy
It’s easy to see that the system of government in the United States has huge potential. The problem lies in trying to take duties that should be handled by state or local governments and hand them off to the federal government. Working with a smaller group of people can achieve a more efficient and productive results than trying to cram everyone into a “one size fits all” cookie cutter.
The Federal part of our government needs to be more apathetic when it comes to making laws that would affect the day to day lives of everyone in the nation. State governments need to stop handling issues that should really be locally governed. Families, especially parents, need to start taking charge or rules that they govern themselves by.
There are state senates trying to make laws concerning the sale of video games. I can understand why young children shouldn’t be exposed to violent and explicit games, but I don’t believe that it is the job of the government to enforce this. Even though I think that keeping young children (or even teenagers) from some of these games is a good cause, I don’t think it should be the responsibility of some older person I don’t even know who lives hundreds of miles away. The responsibility for why I as an adult watch should be mine. The person responsible for keeping my children (when I have children) from getting involved in bad things or terrible games is mine.
Government should not be SimCity. No one human in power should be micromanaging the lives of others. That’s the whole concept behind the “freedom of speech” and “pursuit of happiness.” It all comes down to the division and delegation of tasks to smaller groups. The whole concept of “global” (global village, global economy, United Nations) is very scary. With technology the world has become a great place where everyone can interact, all 6 billion of us. But making one set of laws to govern 6 billion people is not only impossible, but really stupid, because no one is going to be happy with the result.
Unfortunately there is no simple cure for this. Some people will disagree with my opinion, case and point, you can’t please everyone. The goal of the people who govern us is to please as many people as possible. Ideal this should be because they are there to serve us, but usually it’s because they want to get re-elected. But they can’t serve us, unless they know what we want. As a United States citizen it is a great privilege to be allowed to contact my representatives and tell them what I want. Voting is another great way to tell officials what I want. If no one says anything, then no one is going to be helped by the government.
It’s a big responsibility, to know what the issues are and to know where a politician stands on the issues, but it’s a big decision that needs to be made, and well worth the time and energy. Every vote counts.
