Youth learning to build the economy of their province

Insight into low election participation

George your blog post presents some explanations for low voter turnout that are worthy of deeper study. A disturbing thought crossed my mind while reading your comments that there is really no incentive for political parties who benefit from low turnout to change the system.

Part of the propaganda that has gone along with our system of electing representatives is that we need to resist, by force in war if necessary, any attempts to remove our “right” to vote. I get a thread in your discussion that the public in large measure and through common sense wisdom has concluded that the process of electing governments has not brought any change to their lives. In Nova Scotia health, education, homelessness and poverty are problems which persist with little attempt to ”engineer solutions” from one government to the next. The candidates go door to door and are told of the problems and the ‘elected government’ probably concerned mostly with becoming the ‘re-elected government’ makes little or no change to the root causes of the social economic problems. Is there an process outside of government to engineer and create social and economic change? Your blog ideas over the years have highlighted the “myth of scarcity”, the extra value available in a resource based economy and the use of the existing expertise to “engineer” solutions.

Perhaps a commune (maybe a ‘loaded’ word) of people donating time and skill weekly to projects that provide housing, feed people, diagnose medical conditions and create infrastructure to enable participation and engagement with others and in counselling may be the evidence that people can get their needs addressed. The entrenched privileged classes may rave about the loss of freedom and the rights that our parents and grandparents died for. Lets try to feed, clothe, house, and care for the pathology of people who can then address political freedom after they have gained some relief from social and economic slavery.