Tag Archives: communication

Questions that Matter

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A friend cc’d me on an email about a 2011 Pew poll that included:

a majority of people under 30 prefer socialism to capitalism

First off, it wasn’t true. The poll asked people whether they had a positive or negative reaction to words. The poll did NOT ask: “Which is better, a socialist country or a capitalist country?”  Nor did it ask other worthless questions, like, “Which do you like better, socialism or capitalism, or a mixture?”  Or, “Should America become more capitalist or more socialist?”  Or, “Which are more important, America’s socialist aspects or America’s capitalist aspects?”  Basically, this poll doesn’t ask questions that matter.

These are all worthless questions because most people think BOTH that the government should do more in some areas and do less in others.  Most people think police and fire departments should be run by us collectively and that stores should be owned by private parties.  Most people think capitalism is bad when it allows monopolies to make competition impossible, and most people think that socialism is bad if it means the government spends 20% of its budget on a peace-time military.

Perhaps many are saying we have enough capitalism and need a bit more socialism. Perhaps they’re saying that the dirt of capitalism is soiling the world a lot more than the dirt of socialism.

We could speculate all day on why young people have positive vs negative connotations to certain words, but it doesn’t matter.  Without a doubt, people would have a variety of reasons.  And also without a doubt, we’d need a much different poll to get information that could be valuable in knowing what people want.

A 2012 poll asked if people thought Wall Street made an important contribution to America.  “Important” compared to what?  Farm products?  Fairness?  Liberty?  Their incomes?

Many polls like these deliver incoherent communication.  While this is great when your goal is to generate blogs, it’s not helping us where we need it, to give our representatives direction so they carry out the will of the people instead of arguing about philosophy and posturing to satisfy the zealots in their parties.

If you want some choices that matter, that could make a difference, register and vote on issues on PeopleCount.org.  Or start with our invitation.

Let’s give ourselves some real choices and have meaningful communication.

What’s Missing: Effective Political Communication

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In the past 12 years, politics worsened.  Unnecessary wars were waged, often poorly, rights were violated, climate change denied, huge economic mistakes had global repercussions, the national debt soared, unemployment surged, and wealth became increasingly concentrated.  And all of it happened as citizens became more and more disempowered and political discourse became more divisive.  How can this be turned around?

Systems have behaviors.  Problems are usually caused either by an anomaly or the design of the system or both.  Though we have plenty of anomalies, what I see is that the results we have are a natural consequence of the design of our system.

Our system of government was designed during a time when travel and communication were slow, the country was sparsely populated and industry was primitive.  During the past 200 years, people have always tried to game the system and use it to their advantage.  People fought back.  In the past 30 years, the practice of influencing government has been honed and refined.  It’s time to fight back again.

Today, with modern communication and organization technologies, large, wealthy organizations have gained political power.  Our government is almost completely manipulated by these organizations- the parties, corporations and special interests.  While our constitutional foundations are sound, they weren’t designed for today’s world.  Our current system cannot deliver a responsive, effective and accountable government capable of supporting a thriving society.  It can only deliver what we have, a divisive, dysfunctional government that often not only can’t avoid problems, but can’t even react well to them and often can’t solve them.  Some kind of government reform or political transformation is required, but what?

This state of America is roughly inevitable.  Little power is left in the hands of the people because we, the people, are not organized.  We retain the ultimate power, but it’s almost useless to us because we don’t know what we all want, and we can’t communicate effectively, either with each other or with our politicians.  Without effective communication, we’re left with broadcasting and ads, shouting into the political din.  A natural side-effect is that elections are expensive.

The problem with America is that we, the people, don’t have effective political communication.

And we can remedy this.  If Americans vote on issues at PeopleCount.org, we can know what we want and we and politicians can know what they’re accountable for.  After attracting users, PeopleCount’s next goal will be to show the results, so we and our politicians can see what we want in our districts, states, and in the country.  We’ll then add to this site an accountability system, a revolutionary communication layer allowing politicians to communicate effectively with us.  This inexpensive system will both enable officials to be accountable and allow more challengers to communicate with us, giving us real choice in elections.  Our promise is that, with your participation, within four years we’ll have able people representing our interests, with solutions in place to our deficit and debt problems, global warming, campaign finance and much more.

PeopleCount.org is a system that enables millions of people to communicate effectively so we can design our future together.  It’s the missing piece to bring America back to having a government of, by and for the people.

What works in America can go global, for global issues, to solve conflicts between countries, and to empower democratic communication in other countries.  The world is ours.  If we work together and can constructively and clearly communicate, we can achieve anything.  Come begin this journey with us.  As part of your civic participation, vote today on PeopleCount.org.