And I am aware of a few kinks that would need to be resolved. If you keep the current districts, there would need to be more seats as now there are multiple representatives per district. And what if 20 people run for a district and get votes, should all 20 get seats? Probably not.

Some possibilities:

- Reduce the number of districts.
- Limit the number of representatives allowed per district.
- Perhaps, just get rid of districts. If someone from across my state represents me better than someone local, then perhaps my appointment should not be limited by borders drawn for an election system that would no longer be in place.

Why do we even need to elect our representatives? Consider this: if a rep gets 51% of the vote in the district, then nearly half the people are not represented. On top of this we have gerrymandering. If 80 out of 100 districts are 51% for party A and 49% for party B, and the other 20 districts are 100% for party B, you can easily see that despite having a real majority, party B has no actual power. Pretty sucky if you ask me.

No... I have a different answer:

Appointing our representation. In this system, each representative carries one vote for every person who appoints him or her. Taking the above scenario, if 51,000 people appointed rep A and 49,000 appoint rep B, then rep A gets 51,000 votes in congress and rep B gets 49,000 votes. But consider what that does to the 100 districts... now party A has 4,080,000 votes and party B has 5,920,000 votes on every issue... exactly what it should be.

Appointment-based representation is fair, and it removes the power of gerrymandering.

Think about the thickness of a dollar bill. Imagine stacking dollar bills on top of each other... $100 is a bit less than half an inch, and $1 million is about 30 stories tall. $1 trillion reaches a little over 1/4 of the way to the moon.

Take that $1 trillion stack and imagine shrinking it again, back down to the height of a single dollar bill. Take 1 trillion of those, again creating a tower 1/4 of the way to the moon.

Go back and imagine the size of that original dollar bill now, shrunken so much. If the new tower represents 5000 light years, that original dollar bill represents a single mile.

I wasn't aware this is how it worked. I'm not disputing you, just that I didn't know.

I've recently been in favor of having volunteer "watchdogs" to count votes as they came in to the precinct. Having the two main parties count votes as you described is good, but I'd like to see anyone who is interested have a chance to be an additional official vote counter. If these people come up with different counts, they would all recount together. Finally, each one would sign a notarized document that is copied to each party and delivered to the state to tally.

Maybe this is how it already works, I just don't know.

Of course, all they need to do is not get caught. Same thing happens with slot machines and other random chance electronic games... it's easier than lobbying:

1) Casino boss invites high ranking government official.
2) Boss says, "We know you'll have fun, but I think you'll have more fun on machine number 57 if you grant consideration to improving legal conditions surrounding our fine establishment."
3) Official wins jackpot
4) Boss wins jackpot (figuratively)

You're a fool if you don't think this happens. This is why I'm against electronic gambling. Not because of some moral "gambling is of the devil" thing... but because it would be trivial to rig these machines and then erase all evidence that anything fraudulent happened. Politicians can literally transform your hopes and dreams into money lining their wallet.

I don't think you're saying what you think you're saying. You are mixing GDP-based and asset-based valuation in the same comment.

The GDP is, oversimplified, a measure of all the income in the country. So basing the rate on GDP is pretty close to the same as basing it on income. (It's not identical, though, as I'm sure some people with more time on their hands will be happy to point out.) So taxing percentage of GDP at a flat rate would be similar to taxing income at a flat rate, which would be the opposite of progressive. (Again, only very roughly equivalent.)

I think what you might have meant is a wealth tax, i.e. based on assets. So if someone owns 12% of the assets in the country, they get 12% of the taxes.

The one we want, but seemingly have no way to obtain.

They might do better to focus on issues like this. "You are killing the earth's food supply, including your own" probably goes farther with more people than "It will get a degree or two hotter over the next 100 years".

I'm curious, do autonomous robots count as foreign or domestic?

I'd venture to guess, most kids who say that don't actually believe they are Superman or a Ninja Turtle, and don't believe that it is currently possible for anyone to become one of those. But becoming criminal investigators or cyber-security gurus is a different story. Even kids generally know the difference between imagination and reality.

This may be 10.1. Windows codename "Blue" was 8.1.

By definition, "illegal" means "not allowed by the law" according to Webster's dictionary. You cannot have "illegal" without "law". This contradicts your argument:

Many people believe it is wrong to lie. Yet, lying is not strictly illegal except where the law prohibits it (such as lying under oath, fraud, etc.).

I'm actually very fond of the concept of separation of powers. I feel it needs to go further, in that Washington should have less absolute authority and states should have more. Go support the Article V convention process.

okey doax

Murder would still be illegal if there were no law against it? How so?

And if legality depends on the law (which, I highly suspect, it does), doesn't that mean that "fighting crime" is a blanket statement meaning enforcing any and all laws and regulations? Even those you disagree with, or feel are overstepping?

I'm not saying you are wrong to think that the government is too big, or too overreaching, but I am saying that what you've brought to this discussion is inconsistent and not really helping your point.

hoax