Consonant

Would you go as far as to say "culpably" irresponsible? Would some kind of lawsuit help, or are Oracle too big for the law?

That's the only thing that might make me consider this.
Actually, I'm joking: even if it did, I wouldn't be interested!

Yes: then their arguments have no basis and they cannot continue.

Society under-utilizes gifted people because otherwise gifted people would become some kind of "elite" ;-)

I suspect that this is not easily done.
If someone's going to try, I suggest comparing the spending power of a $ in the hand of someone at the top or bottom of the chain for any given commodity...

Ok, I'm being lazy - but what were they logging and why?

Er, sorry, got lazy: another story about person x blocking person y from improving something because he hasn't been paid. Don't know how this can be stopped.

for a strategy other than protectionism?
Yeah, I know: "free" (not as in beer) - but how can we make that "pay"? And who gets paid?

Yes, work in progress ;-)
I'm trying to avoid the problems highlighted in this clip and wondering how to put people in power who are answerable to citizenry but not completely subject to our irrational viewpoints.
I imagine that the ideas I'm "cookin'" are more suited to a continuous, "organic" (but digital cos it'd require some kind of real-time monitoring and communication) kind of management, rather than the "boom and bust" pattern of general elections.

Thanks for pointing this out.
In fact, it was the publisher who provided the misleading title and description instead of quoting or paraphrasing the original submission (or, god forbid, the original article, since that submission was a bit terse). At least the original submission was provided as "You may also like to read" at the top of this page, enabling me to discover the above...

Are you describing the process whereby candidates are selected? I thought that happened within the scope of a particular political party, e.g. Democrats selecting Obama instead of Hillary. Sorry, I'm not a US-ian or in US, don't know the subtleties. Where I come from, they do the "single transferable vote", which means that you can spread your votes across several candidates and political parties in a preference of your choosing (no guarantee that any preference except for your 1st will be actually used), other countries tried even more bizarre schemes.
What I was (vaguely) suggesting was that:

• Voters rate/weight issues, not people
• If a voter doesn't trust their own judgement on an issue, they can nominate a voter as proxy in relation to that issue. "The system" might be required to intervene (suggest/select a better proxy match) if voter's selected proxy disagrees with the voter too much on some other issue the voter "rates"
• Voters' priorities are matched against candidates' "values" at election time
• If all candidates ended up with the same "values" because they followed the polls, some other method must be used to select a "winner": "rock, paper, scissors", maybe?

Maybe it's clearer now how different my half-thought-through idea is from the present way of doing things? I'm trying to visualise how citizens could manage their managers online ;-)

Thank you for describing in another way something that has always bothered me: nobody can do everything, everyone has weaknesses - and yet we only have 1 class of vote. This can't work: we are not selecting on the basis of competency. We are tentatively selecting on the basis of possible association between a candidate and an opinion expressed by a clique to which the candidate belongs.

I like the idea of votes being cast on issues and candidates correspondingly declaring their positions on said issues: "elected" candidates would then be "best fit". Of course, this idea erodes the relevance of political parties, making me look a bit of a Communist! (or do Communists only have 1 party?)
Additionally, voting could be made even more relevant if votes were allowed to be transferred - not among candidates but among voters. If I can't expect to ever know enough about issue x to vote correctly on it, maybe I should be entitled to allow person y to vote on my behalf on issue x alone. This allows for people with irrational combinations of opinions (i.e. everybody) to nominate proxies who support conflicting issues (e.g. fair wage for poor workers vs. immigration): a computerised voting system would need to be able to detect such contradictions and alter their selections (being encouraged to consider the underlying issues in the process).
What idealism! Don't worry, I'm sure that this idea allows for corruption, still (just at "local" level, though - which is why it'll never happen ;-)

Thanks, interesting read!

So you could care less ;-)