Idea of the day: Crowd funding government projects

I posted a simple question on Facebook this week, and it developed into a possible solution to the current economy in the US. I see many people expressing their opinions on taxes, and city/state projects that are only wanted by a few, and not the majority. This has always been an issue for us, for as long as I can remember at least. So why has this not been fixed yet. Yes, many of these ideas get voted in, and bundled with other ideas to be voted in, then we are taxed for it. But we need more power into the peoples hands for this, and less power in major corporations who can afford large sums for supporting a project.

The idea I was toying with would be cutting almost all taxes except for sales and a couple others, and then move funding for all of the government projects to an open and croud funded platform. Give the ability for Individuals to donate up to a certain amount, and disallow companies or corporations to donate, keep it on the individual level. Once a project reaches its goal for funding, all individuals who donated to get it there become shareholders, and have a say in how the company progresses. Doing this changes a couple things that I feel we need to change, it forces all public government projects to be completely transparent, and it also tips the scale of power towards the people, the individuals that actually do the work.

This solution also allows the public to get back what they put in potentially, here is an example. Let's say that Martha donates $100 towards a project for the city zoo, that project has a total of 550 donations made, and their donation amount varied up to $5000 and the total project goal was $500,000. So the shares are then split according to % donation amount. After the project is finished and starts to generate profit, the shareholders start receiving checks for their % of the shares. You see how this will go, it is a benefit for all involved.

With our current state of technology and communications, there is no real reason not to continue evolving how we fund and run government. We started off being a self governed nation, and we can get back to that state with just a little bit of work.