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What If Government Were More Like an iPod?

Dilbert’s Scott Adams on bringing democracy out of the age of wax candles and into the age of touch screens

Scott Adams

Wall Street Journal, 5 November 2011

If Congress had a 9% approval rating while George Washington was still alive, he would have shoved his wooden dentures in his mouth, assembled a militia and marched on the Capitol. The nation’s founders weren’t big fans of dysfunctional governments. I’ll bet we could solve our energy problem by connecting a generator to John Adams’s corpse, which I assume is spinning in its grave.

I’ve heard people say the United States no longer has the caliber of intellectual giants that authored the Declaration of Independence, defeated a superior British military, crafted the Constitution and built a robot butler that would eventually run away and change its name to Mitt Romney. But that’s OK, because individuals are not the primary vehicles for genius. When it comes to the larger matters of civilization, group intelligence is more important than individual genius. To put it another way: Do you know who is smarter than the entire senior class at MIT? Answer: no one.

Today, thanks to the Internet, we can summon the collective intelligence of millions.

Read full article.

Tip of the Hat to Damien Morton via IndieGoGo.

Phi Beta Iota: Mr. Adams provides a very thoughtful overview of the possibilities, while avoiding any mention of the corruption that is pervasive in today’s top-down elite control “rule by secrecy” environment. The Electoral Reform Act of 2012 is intended to eradicate corruption, assure transparency, restore the Republic, and make direct democracy such as Mr. Adams envisions a reality before 2016. The next President should be of, by, and for We the People, tested in the fires of the Occupy Wall Street kiln.