[RicDan]

Definitely agree. I blame educational institutions (I know, they can't do much without enough freedom + budget) for not advocating enough to our democratic responsabilities. I do wish we adapted some stuff from early history (Athens to be precise) - democratic participants got a very low base salary, and they also could vote to ban people from democratic participation (and hence the city) whenever they got too power hungry. Seems like a loss of responsibility allows too much incompetence to prevail.