fadedpsychosis wrote:
my whole point is this BBS... We the People of the United States have by our own complacency allowed control of the country to slip from the grasp of the public into the hands of the wealthy few. the means used to keep this state of affairs in place is not by any means the same used in China, nor are our people in the same position culturally nor economically... but the end result is that the direction of the country is being pushed by a minority that does little more than pay lip service to the people they are supposedly representing. if congress were to suddenly change their tune and begin actually listening to the general populace I would gladly recant (and I'll be the first to admit it's far more likely to happen in the US than in China)
Politicians have behaved like this for centuries, and I wouldn't expect them to become 'benevolent despots' (i.e. to change their tune). They're self-interested humans, just like you and me, so it's not a change in the politicians that's really required.
There are two or three problems:
(1) Monopolization of public policy at federal level
It's a reduction in their power/monopoly status that's required. Over the centuries, government has become more federally centralized, so over time this induces less political competition among the States. The best mix of policies for the best mix of people becomes increasingly more difficult because more and more people want more policies to be crafted and implemented at the federal level. Therefore, the ability to 'vote with one's feet' doesn't matter as much as it did back in the day (because you can't run from the problems of federal policies)---at the interstate level.
(2) Ideology, Ideas, Education
It's a problem of education--in that the general populace has largely forgotten how to govern themselves, and that they grossly exaggerate the benefits of increased centralization while ignoring/discounting the costs. They've generally become progressives/statist as compared to the limited government/classical liberal variety--which is very small today compared to 'back in the day'. The shift in ideology explains much of why the government has increasingly become a Leviathan. This shift largely began in the 1930s under Hoover and FDR, and ever since then it has become reinforced; 'government as the solution' increasingly becomes a popular view. The Cold War, the War on Crime, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terrorism are clear periods of this scaling-up effect.
(3) Voter Participation Rates
Also note that most citizens do not vote (when aggregating all levels of elections), so most are apathetic. Perhaps they feel powerless, or perhaps it's simply the case that the benefits of voting do not offset the costs (because the chance of your one vote swaying the election is miniscule). But why do so many voters feel this way?
(In my opinion, elections at lower levels have increasingly become marginalized, so that municipalities and States oversee increasingly minor issues, so the gains of voting have become less. All roads lead to D.C., and with it nearly all the important public policies, so why bother voting at lower levels? Who cares about matters of municipal sewage compared to Social Security checks, Medicaid goodies, and Defense?
In short, it's not that politicians have grown less interested in their constituents. Rather, it's the constituents who have become more statist and less in favor of the market and civil society (the religious, the charitable, etc.). This shift occurred during the past century; it's a shift in ideology, and throughout that time people gradually forget more and more about what it means to be an American--about what it means to actually self-govern. The diminishing competition in public policies among the States has led to a gradually increasingly incompetent, corrupt, yet powerful National Government. When you centralize power, it becomes less costly for special interest groups to capture the public policy process (politicians, bureaucrats, etc.) because the concentrated gains are captured over a larger areas--over which the costs are dispersed.
That's the problem in my opinion, and I'm not too concerned about low voter participation rates either. If the States were allowed to become more competitive, then people can simply vote with their feet, or avoid certain States as they get older and look for better jobs (in short, this is idea is called federalism).
BBS, in the years we've been debating at each other, when have I 
I'm a registered voter, yet have not voted in over 8 years, I'm a member of the military and thus a govt employee, yet one of the few that gets paid while the govt's shut down... I've bettered myself in every way off the dime of taxpayers (which I love the irony that I still pay income tax on funds paid for by taxes), I can say with perfect honesty that I simply do not know enough about governance to be effective in governing... in short, I'm as much part of the problem as anyone else (and by this I mean both those in power and those governed are equally to blame)
