That's very insulting, since I consider myself to be quite the average guy.[...]
Sorry, you are right, that was a very strong exaggeration.
Many of us DO make distinctions. It's more often the extremely-political who are the tards messing things up. Just take a look at how California's run sometime, if you want an example. There are a lot of "activists" in this state.
I'm not saying that "activists" are "good" as I think that "activists" are often those who want their opinion to be enforced on all. Be it the no-smoking discussions we have recently here, or the Greenpeace guys being not happy that you are allowed to drive 100 mph on a certain freeway and than blocking it in a very dangerous action.
So I can not look on your "activists", but we have enough here I guess.
On that part I agree with Adam Smith who means that those who say they want the good often realise the opposite.
On the average Joe: Many of those "Joes" I (!) know, especially the ones of younger age, have the "It has nothing to do with me" and the "Why should I know this"-attitude. And that is bad.
As politics have a lot to do with everyones life.
They decide what income tax you have to pay, what VAT, how fast you are allowed to drive, if you have to pay your medical attention or not, if your house has to reach certain standards or not, if there is compulsory military service, what laws are implemented, what minimum wage there is, if the companies can fire you easily or not, if the companies have to reach certain security standards for the saftey of their employees or not ....
All that depends in fact on how strong your state is and how much influence it has, eg. a night watchman state won't has much influence as welfare states have.
So saying that has nothing to do with themselves is ignoring the plain truth, and I never managed to convince them, but on the other hand as soon as something was not to their favour they *****ed about it.
I also find that viewpoint extremely scary, since it's about half a step away from views that Stalin, Hitler or any two-bit tin-pot dictator in the last 100 years holds regarding the "little people."
Take the common man/woman out of politics, and you get tyranny. Plain and simple.
Not quite, it is the way politics work in most cases. It is not the average Joe that gets the power, it's the elitist. In most countries there are networks of people knowing each other for ages, insider relationships everywhere you look. And then you have pressure groups, looking that they do not have to pay the unavoidable tax or whatever, but others should ...
In fact there are "newcomers" etc. but most aren't, at least that's what I experience by reading the news.
Re: Letting computers run things... Umm, they'd be a lot less corrupt than our current "leaders," but I still wouldn't bow and scrape to a box full o' wires. I would probably start stocking up on magnets, though.
As computers are created by someone I think things wouldn't change that much and imagine there would be a bug.
