[Venus]

This is a sad, but incredibly real problem all around the world. What gets me is in countries like Britain, or the Unites States, where we are supposed to be ran on a "democratic" principle, a country for the people, by the people, kind of thing, it seems people aren't really involved in choosing how we spend our money. I challenge you to go into any given city and find 5,000 people, a number that is far from majority in most cities, that would choose to purchase yet another nuclear weapon over building a homeless shelter. I don't think it can be done, which brings me back to my point that it's not the nation choosing how it's money is spent, but the rich representative that have stock or ownership in the companies that we buy from..Some philosophers live by the fact that "the people are ignorant" and that if we were allowed to really vote or decide on how the country was ran, it would fall. I believe, however, that we are not given enough credit, and that we should be given more power in the government. Looking back to ancient greece and the way they ran their democracy, seemed to work pretty well. I feel if it became the people's right to have a larger say in how they country's money is spent we would find our country well taken care of. I believe our funding of other nations would suffer in the beginning, though not end, but that when we had gotten ourselves together, we would be able to help others in a way like never before.