When you are buying a car, seems there's always someone in your group of friends who is known as the most mechanically-minded, car-loving freak.

When going overseas, you can quickly harness the six-degrees-of-separation tactic to find advice/tips for the cities you're visiting.

Could the self-organising system of local networks produce a better voting system? Let's see:

I've always insisted we should vote for policies more than we vote for people. Otherwise we end up with rock stars and actors as leaders.

So: Votes are categorised into general disciplines (economy, health, education, manufacturing, justice, natural resources, etc).

Your votes are then (SOMEHOW????) weighted by a system of scoring amongst your peers.

'Oh, Jim spent that 3 weeks in hospital last year -- he'll know better than me if those nurses are over/underworked.'

'Tim says he cares about trees, but he never says what should be done about it. I'll weight-up Susan, since she was the one who asked the local council to examine her ideas on funding some green areas among the developments.'

?