Your Fellow Citizens

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a piece I wrote about using the Internet to improve the user interface for our government, so citizens would be better informed. Readers of this blog will recognize some of the ideas. That's not the interesting part. Check out the comments if you want to lose all faith in humanity.

Some commenters say the Founders of the country intentionally designed the government to be inefficient and perpetually near gridlock so it can't easily become a gaping black hole for the nation's wealth. I agree. But how's that working out so far?

Other commenters believe that smart people cause all of the big problems in the world and therefore the solution is to have decisions made by people who don't even understand the question.

Some commenters believe that the Constitution shouldn't be changed because it was designed perfectly. (Coincidentally, these commenters are all white males who own property.)

And some people misunderstood my article entirely and thought I was suggesting changing the republic to a direct democracy. What I actually suggested is that government could help citizens become better informed.

After reading the comments to my article, I think this would be a good time to trot out my catch phrase: "And then they voted."