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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Instead of donating $1 to some guy on the Internet who made a cartoon, how about running for local office in your township right now? You might be surprised how easy it is to get involved in government at the level where most real decisions are made (the school board, planning boards, etc). The overwhelming majority of people in your township pay zero attention to local governance.

Which "tipping point" is more interesting: the one where Internet cartoon guy gets $67,000 and a long list of names on a web page, or the one where several hundred people from Hacker News end up on school boards?

As I get older, I find myself making friends with more and more people who have gotten off their asses and actually done this. I promise, it's easier than starting a company, and it's a drastically lower time commitment.

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Sean Tevis--the "some guy on the internet" I think you're talking about--ran for State Representative (Kansas) in 2008.

Tevis ran for the KS house, and lost, probably in part because he tried to make a national movement out of the KS house (I followed the race somewhat closely and his fundraising was definitely part of the negative package aimed at him).

My point is, forget about a national political movement. Engage with local politics, for local reasons. "Move" towards real engagement, not the feel-good merit-badge engagement that this article alludes to, where by giving a buck and signalling your support you might help create some sort of "tipping point" that will fix national politics.

Anybody who's telling you that you can fix dysfunctional national politics by giving up your credit card number online is, obviously, selling you something. I bet a lot of people on HN could easily get themselves onto township planning committees, where they can actually make a real difference.

So you're telling HN people to give up their time programming or doing startups to volunteer time for government planning, politicking against adversaries, and the like.

...and even easier is to learn more about your local issues/candidates and show up to vote. Your single vote can make a big difference on significant local issues in an off-off-election-year nationally.

That's probably all I'm going to do this year, but the read I'm getting from my friends is that you can actually get directly involved just as easily. One friend of mine was on the online/telecom planning committee; another gave a single speech to get elected to parks commission.

I promise, it's easier than starting a company, and it's a drastically lower time commitment.

This, unfortunately, will depend on where you live. Urban cores plagued with massive municipal debt (like where I live) tend to see their local representation rendered quite ineffective by corruption and cronyism.

In my city, it's actually considered easier to run for office in the state legislature than to navigate the local political scene, since latter has decayed into rampant trading of favors. Unfortunately, the time commitment for the state legislature makes it such that few people can muster the time and resources to campaign and then serve office.

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