3 Crazy Ideas for a Better Society

[True Blue Door]

1. Guarantee every person 1 year in ten or twenty where food, utilities, rent, parking, and transportation are reimbursed by the government, and are exempted from all taxes for this period. But the bills you submit to taxpayers to cover will be published next to your name and photo, so everyone will know about it if you're a douchebag on their dime.

2. Give juries near-absolute power over criminal trials: They can ask questions whenever they feel like it, request new information at any point in the process, find the judge or either side's attorney(s) in contempt, and can award financial damages to an acquitted defendant whom they feel should never have been brought to trial.

3. Universal, free, unlimited public transportation within the United States. The whole country belongs to each and every one of us, so let each and every one of us have full, perpetual, and equal access to all of it.

[Fawke Em]

1. The last one wouldn't work where I live.

There simply is no public transportation from the city to the county. We aren't big enough for a subway, so I'm talking about bus service here.

In other words, to get to work, I'd still need a car since I live in the city and work in the county.

To have No. 3 work, you'd need a better infrastructure.

[JayhawkSD]

2. "To have No. 3 work, you'd need a better infrastructure."

Which, I think, is the poster's point.

[True Blue Door]

6. Building better infrastructure would be implied in meeting the requirement.

[Fawke Em]

12. Well, I'm all for that.

It would also put people to work.

[Taitertots]

3. 2. Is really good. I don't think the other two are...

Feasible or practical.

[True Blue Door]

7. Never know till you try.

[NightWatcher]

4. Yes, those are 3 crazy ideas

We need to start with less crazy ideas.

1. Universal Medical Care
2. Free Education Through Graduate Level At State Universities. If you want to go to Harvard or another private school, you can pay yourself.
3. Re-start of the Civilian Conservation Corps to provide jobs as well as to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure (most of it feels like it hasn't been updated since the last CCC). Stop giving the contracts to contractors who pocket profits and hire substandard or illegal laborers.

I've got others too. Nightwatcher/Skittles 2016. He'll kick ass, I'll take names.

[True Blue Door]

8. I disagree. Start with very crazy ideas

and then the limiting function of practicalities will deliver less-crazy but still ambitious outcomes.

Try to remember this entire country's existence is a crazy idea.

Certainly the internet is.

[fizzgig]

10. i'm with you on all of those

but it's the third one that kills me the most. anyone with two effing brain cells to rub together should see how beneficial that would be and how badly it is needed.

[JayhawkSD]

11. Two out of three ain't bad

We are mind-bogglingly stupid not to be doing numbers one and three.

Number two I have to disagree on. We need to restore prosperity to non-college jobs. Electrician, plumber, truck driver, sanitation worker, custodian... These are all necessary jobs which contribute to the well being and necessary functioning of society. None of them require anything beyond high school. They should be jobs which provide dignity and a wage on which one can raise a family.

The idea that everyone in the nation should be working in jobs which require a college education is absurd; utterly nonsensical.

[taught_me_patience]

5. While I don't agree, I like the out-of-the-box thinking

Hopefully it stimulates some discussion.

[True Blue Door]

9. That's my hope.

We liberals are too conservative, so to speak - in the mundane sense that we allow ourselves to become so conventional that we get trapped in the same old problems instead of rising above them to see their larger context.