Turn on any news channel and you’ll quickly get fed a dizzying amount of information on why our government can’t stop wasteful spending or help the growing number of unemployed workers. The experts – simply ‘talking heads’ – criticize and point fingers at what the government is doing wrong and what needs to be changed. The fact of the matter is that we are a 21st century society operating within the confining structure of an 18th century system. It’s no wonder we are having problems!
The concept ‘Taxation without Representation’ is no longer a common one in today’s society. But to our forefathers living in colonial times, it was an unfair regulation of British rule. The early Americans fought against this tyranny for freedom – the freedom to government themselves. Upon winning that freedom, our forefathers set up a new system of government. This system would ensure that each and every citizen would be represented.
In order for the newly United States to give equal representation for all, they had to devise a system where each state was equally represented as well as each citizen. This called for the use of state-level representation because it was absolutely impossible for the entire population to be able to have their voices heard in Washington. Obviously, country leadership couldn’t aptly hear the majority opinion. And while it was easy for each state to have a voice but what about the states that had larger populations? Simply assigning one person per state wouldn’t be fair if the populations varied from one state to the next. Thus the dual use of Senators and Representatives was born. For each state, a Senator was elected to be the singular representative: 13 states meant 13 equal voices . Conversely, Representatives were elected based on the number of people in each state: states with large population ratios got more Representatives than those with smaller populations. Fairness on a twofold scale!
These Senators and Representatives were true voices of the people, taking matters from their home states to Washington in order to convey the citizens’ desires of their leadership and of their country. And for the time being, the system worked. However, this system was grounded in a time where the means of communication revolved around the postal system and newspapers. Where the only way you could take your issues up to the highest levels of government was to literally take it to your Congressman. Where getting your issue into the newspaper was the only chance you had to get federal level attention without having to convince your Congressman that your cause was worth their attention. Where society operated at a time way before the advent of a groundbreaking thing called the ‘Internet’.
Fast forward to 2011 – we have the ability to immediately see and hear news from around the globe, we can access infinite amounts of information simply by sitting down at a computer and clicking on a web browser, and most importantly, we can communicate instantaneously with the highest levels of government by sending an email. And we’ve had the ability to do this for years. Yet we continue to waste valuable tax dollars on these Senators and Representatives. Middlemen. Middlemen who live on inflated salaries and get expensive benefits for the duration of their lives. Middlemen who no longer represent the American people and instead focus on special interest groups. Frankly, we no longer have the need for elected individuals to represent the state-level populations because we have the technology which allows us to represent ourselves.
So why continue using Senators and Representatives? Well, if you happen to be one, you’d argue for your job because you’d want to keep that big paycheck and all of those plush bonuses that go along with the position. But if you are a struggling taxpayer trying to make it in a lousy economy, shouldn’t you rethink the current validity of these middlemen? After all, not only are they extremely expensive but they spend too much time focusing on special interest groups and not the everyday citizen. Instead, why don’t we just abolish the need for these politicians? Their entire reason for being is now obsolete.
Today, the possibilities – and technology – allow us to run our government at an entirely different level. Votes can be entered online, people can voice their opinions online, and we can bypass the middlemen. Plus, the enormous amount of tax dollars spent on their inflated salaries and retirement packages would no longer need to be budgeted.
While I do feel leadership at the local, state, and federal level is still a requirement in order to maintain some semblance of civility, the use of senators, representatives, and the entire concept of the electoral college is obsolete. Let’s move into the 21st century already and maximize the use of our technological advances. American innovation has changed the world as we know it – why not use it to change our archaic systems?