Pete Ashdown's campaign site has a wiki where people can, apparently, help construct his campaign platform. I find this idea deliciously novel. This is something that I would love to see more politicians do. What do you SciForumers think about this? (I couldn't decide whether to put this in Politics or Free Thoughts. But I decided that, since I was focusing more on the idea of the wiki than on politics, it belonged here.)
Seems strange that other people would explain what he thinks, can't he do that himself? Or are other people telling him what to think?
I don't think it's like that. He is the candidate of an organized political party, and his platform is pretty much in line with that of the party. It's not totally random. He probably did explain it himself, to an extent. How else could the wiki have been started?
It's more of a consensus, isn't it? Otherwise minority viewpoints would at least have a voice outside of the revision history.
Minority viewpoints with large wads of cash (oil companies, zionists, the sierra club, big sugar) can exert as much influence as, if not more than, large constituencies that lack organization or cash.
It's pretty nice that you can see his policies. His ideas on global poverty are decent in terms of eliminating global debt.