Set Up a Wiki, Why Don’t They?
Reading and learning is easier now than every before. We have easy access to everything from newspapers to wikis, books to blogs.
The blog I most often visit is called Tea Party, called that because it’s the Sam Adams Alliance blog, and Sam was the man who organized the famous Boston Tea Party.
I find all sorts of cool stuff on Tea Party — info put up by my colleagues. I just found Michigan anti-tax legislator Leon Drolet’s farewell speech.
“Why do people in government hate term limits?” Drolet asked. “Because they take away our job and our job as lawmakers comes with the unfair advantage we have in extending our power over others.”
Then Drolet states what most legislators say they believe: “We believe we hate term limits because we lose institutional memory. And we believe that we lose our newfound ability to work productively with each other that magically happens in our final term.”
I suppose there’s a small amount of point to the “institutional memory” argument. The longer we do something, the more we learn.
The trouble with legislators learning in office, though, is that what they learn best is how to grow government at citizens’ expense.
And if, under term limits, legislators really worry about institutional memory, there’s a simple solution. Set up a Wiki. For passing on widely spread information, wikis are better than blogs. And there’s nothing stopping any legislature in the country from setting up an internal wiki.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
