yeah, I mean you make a valid point, and the same goes for the CBC.
you're talking about a much deeper form of democracy than what we have now, but let me point out a problem to you:
Our military was pretty puny leading up to 9/11. If after 9/11 you allowed people to voluntarily give to the military, paranoia was so high, they may have given a huge percentage of their tax dollars to the military. So the gov't takes its new winfall and buys up the whole show; newest and latest everything, hiring like mad, you name it. You now need a steady annual budget to maintain all this equipment and personnel, it's not a one time deal. All of a sudden it's 2009, and cooler heads prevail and not many tax dollars are heading the ministry's way, well, personnel are being layed off, equipment that still has a huge lifespan is rusting, etc. You see, the problem is that it is highly inefficient to manage money that way. You need predictability in budgets in order to maintain levels of service. Economists have recognized for a long time that if you want something done quickly, it'll cost you more.