A society is full of people who care about the government. They vote, they get involved, they contact their senators and congressmen. Sometimes they propose laws for their towns and sometimes they start a website to support an issue. Hooray! Democracy at its best!
But then again, society is also full of people who don’t care! They don’t bother to vote, they don’t know the name of their senators and they couldn’t care less about whether the government is spending their money on helping the homeless, or on subsidizing big oil companies.
I propose that we create a system, where involvement in society and government is rewarded.
We would create a special currency called “citizen coins”. You can earn citizen coins in many ways:
– vote in elections, you get 10 coins
– attend town-hall meeting, you get 2 coins
– help at the local VFA, you get 5 coins
– volunteer for a government-sponsored activity, you get some coins relative to a level of your volunteering.
Each year, government sets up various ways to earn the coins.
You can then use the coins to get benefits from the government:
– you need an installment plan for tax payment: use 50 coins and you’re all set! (Instead of current law, where you can do that only once every 5 years or something like that)
– postpone a jury duty – 30 coins
– you’re in a jam and want to postpone tax payment for a month – 10 coins
– you need an express passport renewal – 5 coins
– you want a free ticket to Smithsonian? – 2 coins
– tour of the white house? – 2 coins
You get the point. Basically there would be a marketplace for the citizen coins, where you can earn them by helping government and spend them on services that government provides.
Coins are non-transferable and are tied to each individual citizen forever. They don’t expire either. They can’t be inherited. And they can’t either be purchased with money or sold for money.
I believe system like that would improve the one value in a society which would help our democracy best: citizen participation.