Sunday, September 6, 2009

Meltdown Rescue, Participatory Democracy Style

As we hit the one year anniversary of the bailout:

A participatory democracy approach to stopping the meltdown. The businesses that needed credit that could not get it, would apply to the government for the funds they needed for day to day operations. Remember that the problem was that the commercial paper market threatened collapse! The businesses would be watched by sortition juries. There were plenty of unemployed who would be available to do this. This would include crews that would film inside the business and posting a feed and for, the publicly traded businesses, the executive suite and top management would be put on round-the-clock monitoring, with veto power by the sortition juries over any action.

Then, the banks and other large institutions would be allowed to fail.

Those facing foreclosure would have their bank accounts monitored and strict laws would be passed saying that their pay or any other payments sent to that account. The individuals would stay in their home and be allowed to make essential purchases, as allowed by their sortition jury, orthodontia for their kids, continuing their kids education. But non-essentials such as eating out, vacations, a new flat panel TV, etc. would be stopped. All expenditures out of the account would have to be approved by their sortition jury. In other words, individuals would be allowed to keep their status quo so they would not suffer losing their job, not eating, etc., but they would be forced to hunker down.

In other words, we would keep the status quo going, but those who might have been profligate would be stopped.

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