On 2/13/2010 1:39 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Where did I say they would make $10K a year?  I said make sure their
> needs are provided for.  Don't pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars
> a year.
>
> There are more ways than "cash in pocket" to pay someone for public
> service that don't compromise the integrity of the system.
>
> Jim

I think you are missing a major issue here. Its not just about what they 
are payed. If you select for only those who are unbribable via 
corporations, you *assume* you are going to end up with those that 
support the people. All you have to do is look at the nutcases fighting 
over who the *real* Republicans, or even *real* Tea Baggers, are, to see 
what you could end up with instead. Many of these people truly believe 
that their side holds the truth, the other side is all liars, and that 
their tactics of harping on 1-2 key issues, to get elected, is a way to 
"get around" all the evil roadblocks, media bias, and liberal control, 
that might otherwise keep them from representing "the people". They 
could live in a bloody hut in a frozen snow field, and they would 
**still** imagine that the majority of Americans where anti-gay, 
anti-liberal, bible thumping, creationists, and that 90% of everything 
taught in history and civics classes are lies, unlike their 
**certainty** that the constitution references God, and probably even 
once had the Ten Commandments in it, before liberals hid this "fact".

What you, potentially, end up with, when you elect people who claim to 
represent the people, with **no** other alterior motives, is complete 
wackos. At least someone in the pocket of, say, a pharmaceutical 
company, is **marginally** less likely to cut their own, and their 
special interests, throats, by declaring that research on Stem Cells 
should completely halt and biology classes should stop, even badly, 
teaching about Evolution. Get someone whose only interests is either a) 
believing, without cause, that the country **wants** that, or worse, b) 
got elected by a state filled with idiots that actually think its true, 
and... the result would be an even worse damn mess than we have now.

Certain assumptions are flat out naive. Jefferson's assertion that his 
neighbors beliefs where not a threat to anyone, no matter what they 
might be (while ignoring the obvious fact that the neighbors neighbor 
might want to both rob and murder you), is one example. Another is this 
assumption that you can "cure" corruption in governments. The very thing 
you propose almost *guarantees* that are larger than normal number of 
people will have ideas that are disengaged from reality, the public 
interest, or anything else that might produce a useful result. And, 
ironically, the very thing that could stop such people, outside 
interests apposed to how those ideas might upset their wallets, is, by 
nature of your solution, absent. Its certainly not going to be some 
loser, who got into it to help people, isn't good at speeches, has no 
audience presence, and never had a job, or stocks, etc., that conflicted 
with doing their job. Such people are rare. The sort with personal 
agenda, huge stage presence, and a total disregard for right and wrong, 
in any sense, including the willingness to lie their way into power... 
those are **way** less rare, since they spend most of their lives 
practicing how to con people.

Bets on how many of which we would end up with?

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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