j.r. leonard

Why five bucks a seat? These line standing gigs pay up to $35-$40/hr. There's an argument to be made for cutting out the agencies that take a cut, but why just add another administrative layer?

I thought I had read $5/hr. If they're making actual money I'm less bothered by it.

1/ OK, this is terrible and you are all so, so wrong, and so I'm going to put down what I was working on and give a more complete answer to why this is garbage...

2/ There are, in our Democracy, a number of activities that are themselves considered to be Democratic Institutions. All of these are important in ways that are more tangible and more symbolic -but symbolic are *really* important, maybe even more so than the tangible.

3/ These things include (but are not limited to) things like voting, serve on a jury, public hearings, public testimony, etc. Part of what makes them capital-I Important is that they are equal chances to participate in a public Democracy, no matter your social station or income.

4/ Every time we allow people from one stratosphere to usurp these things from other people, it diminishes the institution, to the point that people lose faith in it and it ceases to be an institution at all - *even if the usurpers are paying good money for the privilege*.

5/ We would not (I hope?) allow the rich to pay poor people for their ballots in an election. We would not (I hope?) allow the rich to pay poor people to take their jury duty slots - especially if said rich continued to have the Guilty-Not vote at their disposal.

6/ And the reason we don't isn't just fairness. It's that these institutions are actually important, and letting them appear tainted beyond the point of value comes at a huge, terrible cost. Which brings us to the issue at hand...