Re: [ALSC-Forum] Voting eligibility

[Stephen Waters]

On Wed, 2001-09-05 at 20:18, Jeff Williams wrote:
>   Quite the contrary Steve.  I was talking about Federal Income Tax.
> NOT sales tax.  Most sales tax is paid to the state, not the federal
> Govt.  So as such, that revenue does not, and never has, paid for
> any of the internet infrastructure.

I think my point was unclear. I meant that all people pay taxes directly
or indirectly, except those who live in a box out in the tundra (or
something similar). :-) I of course realized you were speaking of
federal taxes alone which seemed a bit near-sighted to me... but that's
not the point. The point is that the labor of individuals necessarily
supports all tax burdens... it's a tautology, but an important one. It
expresses that all nodes participate in the system and thus, I believe,
all nodes deserve say in the system beyond their monetary contribution.*

I don't want to set about a discussion arguing over what
"infrastructure" means, but it seems clear to me there is some
distinction between the trunk, branches, and leaves of the Internet
tree... All of which ought to have some say in the tree.
 
>   No the US did not have great voting procedures at it's inception.  But
> this is not 1776 or there abouts, and we should have learned allot
> about how to create or otherwise provide for great voting
> procedures by now from those hard earned lessons some 200+
> years ago...  So it is difficult fro me to find this as a viable or
> reasonable argument for not doing the right thing.

My argument was for the moral responsibility of doing it right, even if
the technical capability fell quite a ways short of guaranteeing good
election results. Jefferson and co. helped ensure the constitutional
rights of a large number individuals in spite of the real possibility of
fraud. They didn't chicken out of their responsibilities in the face of
technical infeasibilities.

If traditional US voter turnouts and results and the actual bills that
are passed are any indication, a fully At-large elected BoD would most
likely still lean toward benefitting the largest sections of the tree...
but with the real caveat of not being elected again if they sacrificed
the needs of the leaves completely to the short-term interests of the
trunk and limbs.

Ergo, I want an all At-Large elected BoD.

Cheers,
-s

* the tautology does not require a zero sum game situation... otherwise
it would be a rather irrelevant model. :-)