The Chinese hot pot (火鍋/打邊爐) (very informative Wikipedia entry with pix) industry specializes in bringing you RAW FOOD and a big pot of boiling hot stock for YOU to COOK the RAW FOOD and then present you with a big bill at the end of the meal YOU cooked! If you sense that I think this hot pot thing is a bit of a cheat, a bit too Tom-Sawyer “I will let you pay me to paint my fence”-ish, you are right!
You see, if I am dinning out and paying someone money for food, I prefer the food to be tasty, cooked perfectly right by someone ELSE ! I’ve got a lot of raw food at home all the time, so tell me why do I want to see and cook raw food in a restaurant and paying restaurant prices for the “privilege” of cooking my own food?
So when I read from my learned blog friend Andreas’ insightful article “California’s voter initiatives – Sign here – The season for ballot-measure petitions has begun. With a twist” and the arguments he and others presented in the winning debate between Andreas and others against former CA governor Gray Davis and others re “California is the first failed state”, I have to conclude I see Tom-Sawyer’s “I will let you pay me to paint my fence” being pulling on Californians for years.
In my simplistic explanation, the voter initiatives give a false sense of democracy (embedded with great amount of complexity and sometimes confusing policy issues) to the voters. The voters feel that they are deciding something important. But if they think deeper, the voter initiatives’ decision processes can be much worst than getting a world-class chef’s recipe and think that you can cook a good dish.
Note that I am not comparing politicians to world class chefs. But what I am saying is that if we don’t like the chefs, we can “fired them” (by “hiring” a “better” one by going to a different restaurant). In other words, firing the politicians by electing someone else.
Now, when the voters are ALWAYS in the beeping kitchen busily “deciding” things, then the voters have to take some of the blame too. Which is why I don’t like Chinese hot pot.
Finally, comparing “California’s voter initiatives” to Chinese hot pot may be taken as an insult. I hope the Chinese hot pot doesn’t mind. 🙂
Filed under: Democracy, politics, united states, Video 
