1. Are you rich?

In the context of an economic system, no I am not. However, is money and possession the only gauge for richness?

2. Are you more likely to trust a stranger than not?

Yes, I am.

3. Are you happy with your life?

This question creates a falacious paradigm. I am a human being, my only birthrights are my thoughts and feelings, and on any given day I experience a wide range of both.

4. Do you think your political vote counts?

No.

5. Do you think you count?

Yes, of course. We are all children of this universe.

6. Do you think that violence is ever acceptable among human beings?

It is never an acceptable expression for myself but how could I realistically comment on its acceptability amongst all human kind? Clearly it is acceptable for many, many others. I see no solution to violence that will not perpetuate violence except to renounce it in my life.

7. Do you think your representatives have your families' best interests at heart?

I must represent myself in this place and time.

I wish it were as easy as " yes and no ", but it isn't for me.

1. Am I rich? No, but then, I'm not a bankster, allowed to sell money (rent or 'loan it out') not to mention, at ten to fifty times the money I actually have ('fractional reserves') - you know: to have my mouth write checks my wallet can't cash.

2. Trust a stranger? NO. All humans have been taught to be adversarial criminally negligent and aggressive, to attack each other first, usually by selling victimology to buy-you-low in order to sell-me-high; we are all ruled by salesmen, who advertise fear in order to sell us the greedy hope of relief from their own initial threats.

3. Am I happy? No. The salesmen who rule us all have a motto or greed-creed: "There's no money in solutions!" So they refuse to simply solve problems with easy, permanent solutions, in favor of exploiting the symptoms of all the unsolved problems into eternal crises and endless "causes" in themselves; they believe there can be no impulse-buying greed, without first inducing fear in the populace all the time. And the fear of pain IS the 'greedy' hope of no pain, aka: "happiness!'

4. Do political votes count? NO - not yet! So let's just FIX DEMOCRACY! Here's how: If we just hold 2 quick, back-to-back elections each time (the first, as usual, to hire the worker's pool of our Public SERVANTS from our districts, and the second where WE ALL appoint them DIRECTLY to their cabinet portfolio positions) then we eliminate their self-interested conflicts of loyalty-dividing political "parties," (which always only "party" at our direct expense, anyway,) forever!

;-)

5. Do I count? If you've read this far, yes, now I do! Thanks!

6. Violence is always necessary to repel and dissuade (prevent) others from using violence to attack the innocent first. To pretend otherwise is insanity.

7. Do my representatives have my family's best interests at heart? NO - of course not! No one would spend millions to get a job that only pays a few hundred grand, unless they were planning on stealing it all back somehow! And that somehow always follows this pattern: First, they ignore a problem in order to exploit it's symptoms AS their own "causes;" then they build up a huge, business-friendly infrastructure no business would pay even a dime for, then they downsize & outsource the labor needed to maintain it, in order to make it appear "bloated & inefficient" so they can sell it all off at fire-sale prices to those corporazis who funded their election campaigns in the first place, in order to retire on their corporate boards of directors for huge cushy salaries doing only make-work jobs. Same old, every time. To remedy this ongoing crime, please see #4.

This article has raised good questions and elicited good comments - such as (but not only) those of Sapereaude.

Thanks to my experiences in local activism, I now (unlike some other commenters) see a huge need not only to 'restore' an inadequate past but to adopt (and in feasible stages implement) a truly new and better approach for how we make public decisions in every jurisdiction. Making public decisions after all is the main affirmative purpose of government.

(We can and must toss all that entrenched philosophical garbage - both from classic ages and from recent centuries - about alleged needs for government as our 'ruler', or for a special ‘ruling class’ or for a ruling oligarchy – elected or appointed - of special ‘representatives’.)

In every jurisdiction two key features now lack in public decision-making but are quite feasible to begin to implement once we recognize the crying need for them. They are: (1) REASON in the process of decision-making, and (2) REAL DEMOCRACY in the choice of each decision's decision-makers.

For some details, please read on.

(1) REASON calls for due (a) pro-action, (b) deliberation and (c) pre-caution.

(a) Pro-action: there must be an independent body or bodies which is free to address current issues and agendize proposals - but not decide them.
(b) Deliberation: Any given decision must be made by an ad hoc deliberative body whose procedures follow scientific-age concepts and procedures, including those of open hearings to gather evidence, and modern decision analysis to evaluate alternatives.
(c) Pre-caution: An independent body or bodies must provide real-time accountability by pre-cautionarily reviewing decisions made. Whatever body makes a decision must publish a rationale which - along with the decision itself - can for the sake of due precaution be challenged (and confirmed or vetoed) in real-time by the review body.

(2) REAL DEMOCRACY (and deterrence of corruption) calls for de-concentration of decision power, and its equal-as-possible sharing among concerned citizens. Overly big decisions must (and pro-actively can) be broken into smaller ones, to be made by independent deliberative bodies.

The existing political oligarchy comprises a relative few long-term entrenched officers (elected or appointed). Such oligarchy is sadly ineffective in its rushed and whimsical and readily corrupted dealings with today’s myriad problems (which arise largely from today's large populations and advanced technology).

It must be replaced (or anyhow bypassed) by use of short-term decision juries (some for pro-action, some for deliberative decision, some for precautionary review) comprising ordinary citizens, chosen at random, from among those willing to devote a manageably short term to public service (maybe a few weeks annually, not a year, not a career).

In Summary: Our being effective citizens should not have to mean being among a relative handful of oligarchs or special career activists. Rather, each of us should from time to time have a notably positive chance to devote manageable time to serve on a decision jury on a public matter of personal concern, and we should always be welcomed as public to testify and contribute in other decision juries' open hearings on such matters.

Thanks for reading.

OK, here is a comment form the other end of life's spectrum. I'm 76 years old, have lived most of my life in Southern California. I studied at USC as a youth and spent my entire working life in business. Small business. Mr. Jacobo's comments are well taken and mostly correct. Except that I've learned not to expect too much from my neighbors. They are all nice people, don't get me wrong, but they mostly think of themselves and think that "libral" is a dirty word. Thanks to all the money poured into political activity the public has been convinced that poor people are lazy, that imigrants are to be feared, that persons of color are dishonest and that we are all stupid. Well, on that last point, they may have something. Tell me why the GOP can go on national TV and tell blatent lies and get away with it. Why can they tell the same lie over and over again and not be told to,"Stop". We have this wonderful thing called the internet with sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo and still folks believe the outlandish lies they tell. In less time than it takes me to write these words, you can check out the truth of every false statement Paul Ryan made at the convention. Mitt Romney would have us believe that the Obama administration has failed at every turn when the truth is that, dispite the obstructionism, they have turned the economy around, saved the auto industry, cut federal spending, reduced the deficit, created 29 consecutive months of job growth - not withstanding the loss of over 600,000 public sector jobs- and restored America's standing in the world. Even after the Republicans in Congress forced S & P to lower the nation's credit rating, the U.S. debt instruments remain the safest and most desired in the world. Don't believe me, take a look at your morning newpaper and you'll see that 10 years US Treasury notes are yielding only around 1.6% and 30 year paper yields less than 3%. The Tresury Dept. has no trouble selling all the paper it issues every month.
By the way, did you know that Obama did not eliminate the work requirement in the "wellfare-to-work" program? Are you aware that the $716 Billion saved in Medicare by eliminating the subsidy to insurance companies on Medicare Advantage and reducing some hospital reimbursements (which the hospitals agreed to) is not being taken out of Medicare? No, is is being transferred to other areas of Medicare to provide cancer screenings and to close the "donut hole" in the perscription drug program (Medicare Part D). Have you figured out that the revised Romney/Ryan plan for Medicare - the one with an option of Regular Medicare or private insurance- is exactly what we have today? Honest, that's how it works right now. All they wants to do is reduce the funding level, a lot.
Want to know what is wrong with our political system? Unlimited money! Money from sources whose objectives are to take control of the government so as to further their own interests. And they are succeding.

There never was a time in which America's government actually worked. We need to rid ourselves of this nostalgia and realize that what we are experiencing now is not some collapse of a once-great thing. America was founded on slavery, its supposed democracy was intended to be anything but a true democracy (which, by the way, does not grant absolute power to a majority -- that would lead to a tyranny of the majority -- but rather attempts to find mediations between conflicting interests with a strong bias toward leaving people alone and letting them do their own thing). Democracy was precisely what the representative system was set up to avoid -- because for the founders, as well as the tradition of political theory they came out of -- democracy meant rule of the poor. And when you have the poor making decisions, "the individual" (meaning, the rich guy with property) tends not to have his ever so precious "rights" respected -- that is, his right to own slaves and exploit workers and control the fate of land. The sooner we all get over illusions about the American past, the better.

Further, and very importantly, violence is not at all a "thing of the past." Violence maintains the world we live in. Law operates by violence and the threat of violence. That is what the police are -- the embodiment of the violence necessary to maintain a system that is exploiting people. Could there be a world without violence? Probably not. But there might be a world without the need for constant threat of violence just to make it run -- this would be a world of mutual aid and voluntary association -- a world without "states," in the modern sense (and without the so called "markets" that are imposed on people by the legal structures those governments create). To say that "there is no room for violence in the modern world" is to betray a frightening naivete about both violence and the modern world.

Big Money, lack of transparency, corruption and religion have no place in a democracy.
“Unless you become more watchful in your states and check the spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that...the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations.” President Andrew Jackson

Our Founding Fathers knew that the Tree of Liberty needed to be refreshed from time to time with the Blood of Patriots and Tyrants -- it is its natural manure. -- (Thomas Jefferson)