> The greater the involvement, the more you reduce corruption and even out influence. I think you have a naive view of how the United States is run. The majo

> The greater the involvement, the more you reduce corruption and even out influence. I think you have a naive view of how the United States is run. The majority of the people in this country simply do not have the time/money/inclination to participate meaningfully in the political process beyond (possibly) going to the ballot box. Furthermore, most policy decisions are actually made by unelected career bureaucrats. What ends up happening is that vocal minorities who DO feel strongly about a particular topic end up having disproportionate influence. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture for an example, although the phenomenon is more general than that. From the article: "...regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with a high-stakes interest in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies in attempting to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether. When this imbalance of focused resources devoted to a particular policy outcome is successful at 'capturing' influence with the staff or commission members of a regulatory agency so that the preferred policy outcomes of the special interest are implemented, then regulatory capture has occurred." That's democracy in a nutshell - except it applies to governments, not just regulatory agencies.