Les Bonnes Choses

So tonight's the big leader's debate in Canada. If you've been governed by a tyrant for a period lasting more than three terms, see your polling station. This may be a symptom of apathy, a potentially quality-of-life threatening condition.

Courtesy of Vivien over the weekend comes this Toronto Star article about getting people to vote instead of complaining about being victimized. And it got me to thinking. Every September of my grad school career, we were expected to put together one or more application packages for scholarships or grants from various government funding agencies (the budgets for these agencies have since been cut in recent years). This application season was a pain in the ass. Most time consuming was the part where you had to write a detailed description of your research: where it's been and where you want to go with it. Despite being a pain in the ass, it was still a good exercise. Probably. At the very least, it required us to do some deep reflection.

For many of us, that was all we got out of the exercise, as diminishingly small numbers of applicants were actually awarded any money. That was quite a bit of work for government money that may or may not pan out. But then I was thinking, what value would we place on the government services we take for granted? Sure we pay taxes, but look at it this way: each year, we all get thousands of dollars of funding in the form of health care, education, social assistance, roads and sewers and fake lakes. And we get it all without having to write anything. Maybe we should change that, and incentivize voting. You need your driver's license renewed? Write a 250 word essay on who you voted for in the last election and why.