The ability to have massed, two way, communication gives an opportunity for new types of political activity.
I'm proposing a new online mechanism, I'm calling a BS meter.
More below the fold:
One of the most irritating things about politicians, business leaders and others in the public, self promotion professions is the amount of BS they generate. The blogosphere and sites like MediaMatters.org are quick to point out instances of public BS and lying. This has had the positive effect of holding people to account much better than was previously possible.
While not taking anything away from these efforts, I think a clever use of new technology could take this to a new level. I'm proposing something I'm calling a BS meter. I'll leave it to the software creators to design, but the concept is simple to understand.
Whenever a politician says or does something that smacks of outright BS their comments are put online at the BS meter site. Voters then get a chance to rate the comments. If the person scores a high enough BS rating this is added to their "score".
When the score gets high enough, the politician faces an automatic vote of confidence in their home district. If they don't pass the vote of confidence test, then a special election gets called.
The same for corporate CEO's, and stock tipsters. The CEO's get voted on by the stockholders, and the tipsters get their newsletters removed from the appropriate (sponsored) sites. They are, of course, free to post their financial BS on their own personal sites.
The massed wisdom of the public has been shown to lead to the "correct" solution quite frequently. Let's see if we can find a way to implement it.
