Anette

Thank you for appropriate concern of the TDG. It is one of the more common critiques I have encountered. I do address it my book, but for the sake of brevity, I really could not put much detail into this essay.

In your life situation of frequently moving your residence, I would say that you probably won’t be elected to the TDG. Even if you are a person suitable for the TDG, you won’t be building your reputation to give your neighbors confidence to cast a vote in your direction.

But you still get to vote (each TDG will its own rules for residency=right to vote). But once you are registered in a neighborhood, you can use that vote to cast towards someone you have acquired a liking. You likely will not know everyone in your neighborhood, but there might be three or four neighbors who you believe are capable. You might not even know very well the person for whom you want to vote for, but you still probably know that person better than people proffered by the political parties. If one of neighbors is friendly and seems to be of a reasonable mind, this would be a good person for you to vote for.

The idea of these small TDG elections is not to find the best person for the job, but select from among the best. There is no hiding behind a political banner for obvious flaws of character or competence.

And the act of neighbors coming together a year to vote will start building a little community many of yearn for.

Circa 1990, I lived in the Ritchie neighborhood of Edmonton. My neighbor was one of these social butterflies, and she managed to get ten households on our street into a little social group. While we were all Caucasian, everything else was quite different: religion, economic class, age, occupation, etc. We just enjoyed each other’s company. And there was a little support for helping each other out. Neighborhoods can be built in this way. I believe the TDG will be a tool to help build these kinds of neighborhoods.

Thanks again for your comments.