Once a month, you pick a random name out of a box,
and
you have a potluck dinner with that family. All
households
in the box will be within 10 miles of you, though people's
regions will overlap for hundreds of miles.
Anyone who signs up doubles his/her vote in public
elections, and membership
is entirely optional.
Why:
* It is harder to vote for policies that hurt people you've
personally met, and may meet again.
* It also becomes harder to maintain misconceptions
about: the poor, the rich, ex-cons, other races, other
religions, etc. if you personally mix with people outside
of
your own clique once in a while.
* Humans understand each other a lot better with
personal
contact (see link):
* It reduces the power of politicians to exploit division
between groups who don't know anything about one
another.
Notes:
* Both households are warned of the other's dietary
customs, *if* they want to share the food they bring.
* Dinner may be held in a nearby public community
center
if nobody wants to host.
* Of course the 'box' full of names is really a computer
database you could access online, by mail, phone, at the
library etc.
* Dinnerocracy is enabled along the same lines as voting
or
jury duty. No employer can penalize you for
participating,
and participation is optional.
* Dinner must last at least 2 hours, and you must prove
you attended to get the benefits.
* Perhaps the weight of your vote can be pro-rated to fit
the number of dinners you attended; 1 + 11/12ths if you
missed one month, 1 + 10/12ths if you missed two, etc.
* You couldn't change an existing country to do this, so
you
would have to be starting a new country, or a new town
somewhere, and write this into the charter when there's
still only about 10 citizens.
* A possible addition: Once a year you dine with
someone
from 100 miles away. In this case, basic travel
expenses
are financed by the government as if it were a day of
military service.