Wikinomics Economy

Well, watching the fools in Washington trying to figure an end to the country's financial trouble makes me wonder how technology can save us....or anything for that matter. Of all the organizations that should be open, peering, sharing, and acting globally I can think of none better than our government. Maybe if all the decisions in this country were made by the mass population things wouldn't be so bad....well, they couldn't get much worse can they? If some chemist can cook up an invention in his basement lab to make millions for some chemical company, why can't some concerned citizen think of a way out of a financial crisis in his underwear on the living room couch? Why not? It beats a bunch of rich snobs in the nation's capital doing it.

We don't have to enact every idea of mass coolaboration, just the ones that make sense....right? Instead of a group of 50 or 100, how about a team of a million or two? Now don't give me the bull about writing or e-mailing my ideas to my elected representatives....been there, done that, and got the cheesy form letter with the fake signature. That's all that town is good for, preprinted ideas with phony signatures. Maybe we should spend the time we are taking to fix this crisis and come up with a way to create a department that does nothing but accepts and enacts ideas written for the people and by the people. No more weak legislation from the politicians. Heck, we could even get to the point where we vote online for our legislation, and get rid of the waste of time, effort and money we call Washington.

I know we need some sense of structure as a country, and we need a figure head to represent us to the world. I can handle that. But do we really need the system we have in place when we are capable of so much more? Great ideas aren't just for making money, they are also for saving a nation. Time and time again we prove to ourselves that our system is flawed, and changes need to be made. However, instead of taking the bold steps necessary to correct our problems and making this system better through technology, we continue to run the givernment the old fashioned way....slow and ineffective. Do elected officials need to travel to Washington when teleconferencing will do? Maybe while we are looking at the financial structure of our system we should look at the governmental one as well.....