Ling SM wrote:

> In most cases better citizenship is [...] a lot of hard work by the
> citizenship.  With high cost of living in the modern world, it is only
> natural to have absentee citizen.  

I respectfully disagree with the second affirmation, and partially with the
first. 

The modern world has AFAIK the lowest cost of living for the large majority
-- at least in most of the countries where we do have a reasonably working
democracy. In pretty much all of USA, Canada, Japan, most of the EU
countries, most people can live quite well (not wealthy, but well) with
some 40 hours of work per week. And this includes many goodies people in
earlier times didn't have.

So IMO the "high cost of living" is not that high, and if people wanted to,
they could easily take upon the "hard work" of being more of a citizen.
It's the choice between watching a show on Friday evening or going to a
town meeting. Or between watching another show on Tuesday evening or
researching an issue that's up for discussion in congress (or whatever the
country's parliament is called) and writing an email or letter to the
representative. Doesn't sound like real hard work to me.

To be absent from the political process may be natural, but it has nothing
to do with high cost of living. The majority of the absentee citizens in
the cited countries have /much/ more than they need, including relax time.
It's their free choice to be absent from the process.

Gerhard
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