Random Strings

People can give politicians (not civil servants) they support money with, say, 10,000 euro as the maximum cap. The transaction is processed by authorised banks and the money is given out to politicians by a central agency annually. The transactions are released to the public at the same date. Information both about the number of donors and the amount donated can be used to establish the popularity of a politician and the social strata that donated.

The system provides a transparent way to financially reward good politicians and minimises the lure of corruption. Some might argue, it will encourage political rent-seeking as politicians will take away money from rich people to give it to the poor. That already is the case in a democracy, where countries with big wealth gaps tend to vote in socialist leaders. The proposed system would counterbalance rent-seeking to some degree, as rich people can afford to give more, which is another point of criticism.

Posterous.com is more usable, simpler and has a broader market (not censored in China, yet). Wordpress.com will be mirroring the posts. By the way, I have set the time on randomstrings.wordpress.com to UTC. Can't be bothered to tweak the settings everytime I change the time zone.