Like many people today, I have my eyes on the guys who occupy Wall Str. and other places. I see wonderful things there and terrible things also. The former are mostly on the part of the protesters, and the latter are mostly on the part of the police. I won’t go into details; it’s quite obvious what I’m talking about.
What I would like to say, though, is that, I think, they are going at it the wrong way. They have identified issues, and they are demanding that the government solve them. And I think they’re wrong. That doesn’t work. Maybe they will score a few victories, but they will be meaningless in the long run. Power will still be in the hands of the same people. They won’t change.
In my opinion, the protesters should demand one thing and one thing only: a tool.
What should that tool be? It should be a very simple tool, one that every citizen in every civilized nation should have, and it should let them do two things:
- give citizens the right to pass laws via referendum ;
- give citizens the right to dissolve the assemblies and call for elections.
That way, if the politicians fail to solve an issue, the people can take their tools and use them to fix the nation by themselves. Either that, or fire the slackers and choose new politicians who will do their job.
Some will tell you that if citizens had such a tool it would be anarchy or we would all live in fascist states. Truth is, if citizens around the world had that tool, it would turn the Earth into one big Switzerland. I think we’d survive that.
