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Comment by ddw | Hacker News Reader

I'm racking my brain to think of a way to make a government "listen." Nope, can't think of any.

yes, listening is not the strength of governments. Especially about things they do not understand and are made to fear. There are many computer privacy/copyright/net-neutrality bills that have been signed into law where I was wondering whether the people supporting the bill actually knew what it was about or its implications. We should instate a test on the content and application of each bill, if you pass you can support it and fail your vote doesnt count

Vote intelligently.

Even if your state elects the smartest senator there has ever been, he still becomes part of the massive lumbering machine. And the machine is only as smart as it's dumbest person. The US Government has so much baggage now that it's nigh impossible to make anything but superficial changes.

I agree with you, and so does Lawrence Lessig[1]. If more people got behind the cause he started called Fix Congress First[2], that might be a bit more effective than the approach of 'anonymous'. Or, perhaps, the combination of the two would be best.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig#Constitutional_... [2]http://fixcongressfirst.org

An uninformed electorate isn't helping, but I don't see how voting is going to fix this.

I'm starting to believe that the smart people just don't want to be politicians. It's a good way to become rich and famous, though.

To get elected you usually need a lot of money and to get the money you usually need to cooperate with people with bad intentions.

I thought I did, and now I'm not so sure.

What if the election mechanism has been (psychologically) engineered in a way to make real change as difficult as possible and where the only possible changes are pre-scripted like a video game to the benefit of whoever is at the top at the moment?

Your "intelligent" vote is worthless if only a small, insignificant number of people are intellectually able to vote intelligently. The hurdles for making change should be low enough to be not only theoretically, but also practically possible.

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