Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Let's get the actual method of how the system would work before we delve into all the Freedom, Economic Rights, Human Rights, Base Income, etc.  We need to create an actual system before determining its restrictions.

[Baffler]

I'll bite. Unless I mistake the purpose of the thread, here's my (barebones and somewhat disorganized) stab at a simple constitution to get things going, with an eye toward decentralization relative to the U.S system.

Local
Local government is divided into counties, as in the United States. Each county is led by 3 directly elected councilors, who have the power to appoint people to administrative positions below them (but only to tasks related to their office) in order to run the county more effectively. All three councilmen can propose laws relating to their county, but only if they don't conflict with regional law. Councilors can propose new laws, or they can be proposed directly via petition. Laws proposed by petition must have the signature of at least 10% of the county's people, to a maximum of 20,000, before they can be put to popular ballot. Laws proposed by councilors must be approved by at least one other councilor before being put to popular ballot. All bills on the local level must have at least a 3/5 majority to pass.

One councilman is the Mayor, who has the power to appoint local judges and school officials. The mayor is ultimately responsible for the issuing of licenses, and manages the census and other data. The second is the Treasurer, who manages county finances and the collection of taxes. The third is the Commissioner, who is responsible for the management of elections and appoints law enforcement. Any elected or appointed position is open for recall, under the same rules as any other bill.

New counties can be formed by initiative, but must have a minimum area and population (no idea how much) to prevent exploitation of the regional government system enumerated below.

Regional
The regional government is the highest authority in the government, and can be thought of as analogous to U.S states in that each region contains many counties. Regions are more fluid, however, and while each region must be geographically contiguous, counties are free to leave it and join any other. This proposal must win a 3/5 vote of the regional electors regardless of circumstance. Counties may form new regions, but must be able to convince at least 4 other geographically contiguous counties to join their new region.

Regional electors are essentially analogous to U.S representatives. Each region chooses one elector for every 5 counties it contains, with the difference being rounded up. Electors are elected directly by residents of those 5 counties. These regional electors are dispatched to serve on the Council of Regions, which mirrors local government in its structure.

The electors choose a Speaker and a Treasurer from among themselves, and select a marshal from a list of suitable candidates. Unlike the county elections, bills here need only a simple majority to pass and can be proposed by any member of the council, but they can be vetoed by the Speaker. A bill must have a 3/5 majority to overturn the Speaker's veto. The speaker does not normally vote, and has no special privilege for proposing bills, but will cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie. The Marshal is responsible for the administration of the army, and has final say on tactical decisions, but does not have the power to define overall military objectives. The Treasurer is essentially the same as on the local level, but does not have special powers of proposing bills.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

...call me a cynic, but that wouldn't work.  For one big reason, the regions are different countries in all but name.  And that wouldn't work.  Hell, it's been tried twice, and both times its failed.  First, the Articles of Confederation, first constitution of the US, which gave power to the state level rather than the national.  Failed spectacularly.  Second, the Confederate States of America.  It had many flaws besides, but it could have survived if not for its state-centric structure.  Chief example, there were warehouses of uniforms and boots down in Georgia and South Carolina, which could have been used to outfit soldiers from Virginia who were in regular clothing.  However they didn't go to the Virginia soldiers, due to them being 'for Georgia/South Carolina soldiers only.'

[SquatchHammer]

It can never work in the plain fact that humans are too self-centered. Only reason why there would be any local government is to just keep things in check and disseminate the resources accordingly. You'll need a central government of some kind to work properly at this point. Also making a lot of the items standard across the board excluding region specific weather/geological fluctuation would help too.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Just so we have another option, here's another structure:

At the end of a schooling period, everyone is tested to determine what knowledge they managed to retain, and their general interests.  The results will be fed into a massive network of server farms that will return five related job categories, that would be used as the basis of the second part of their schooling.  At the end of the second, there will be a testing that returns three jobs from within those categories, which will be used for the third part.  After the third, the person would choose which one they would prefer.  The former two periods would be in your standard schooling area, roughly analogous to primary/secondary and college levels, with the third being on the job internship with someone already in the field, with the person being with one person from each of the recommended jobs.

I spent a paragraph on the educational and job system, as the government will be based around that.  From each of the fields, a random set of people is selected by a computer to serve as members of the council determines the laws.  Each person serves for one year, and are able to only serve once.  This time length is tripled during times of war, in order to keep stability on the homefront and with policy for a longer period of time.

[Cheeetar]

Sounds silly. You're only ever allowed one career after you've chosen?

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Sounds silly. You're only ever allowed one career after you've chosen?

Just wanted to put up an another system to debate about.  Need to have a few possibilities before we select one.

[Baffler]

...call me a cynic, but that wouldn't work.  For one big reason, the regions are different countries in all but name.  And that wouldn't work.  Hell, it's been tried twice, and both times its failed.  First, the Articles of Confederation, first constitution of the US, which gave power to the state level rather than the national.  Failed spectacularly.  Second, the Confederate States of America.  It had many flaws besides, but it could have survived if not for its state-centric structure.  Chief example, there were warehouses of uniforms and boots down in Georgia and South Carolina, which could have been used to outfit soldiers from Virginia who were in regular clothing.  However they didn't go to the Virginia soldiers, due to them being 'for Georgia/South Carolina soldiers only.'

I had the Articles of Confederation in mind when I wrote this, and you'll note a few key differences. The first is a lack of the utterly idiotic requirement that all decisions be unanimous that was primarily responsible for the paralysis of the system. The second is that the Council of Regions has the power to levy taxes under this system, another crucial power missing from congress under the Articles of Confederation. Lastly, the Marshal (and the military by extension) answers to the Council of Regions but isn't tied to any specific region, preventing silliness like Shay's Rebellion where privately funded militias fought the rebels, or the supply issue you described.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Corporations aren't allowed to flip between businesses and humans in regards to law whenever they feel like it.
Law enforcement have to be treated like any other human being in regards to the court system (no sure how you'd work that one, though)
Political parties can only accept so much in the way of bribes donations from people/corporations

Let's work on getting a system in place before we start laying in the restrictions.

I had the Articles of Confederation in mind when I wrote this, and you'll note a few key differences. The first is a lack of the utterly idiotic requirement that all decisions be unanimous that was primarily responsible for the paralysis of the system. The second is that the Council of Regions has the power to levy taxes under this system, another crucial power missing from congress under the Articles of Confederation. Lastly, the Marshal (and the military by extension) answers to the Council of Regions but isn't tied to any specific region, preventing silliness like Shay's Rebellion where privately funded militias fought the rebels, or the supply issue you described.

Shouldn't the Marshall and Council be in a national category, then?

[Bohandas]

Corporations aren't allowed to flip between businesses and humans in regards to law whenever they feel like it.

corporate personhood should be abolished completely

-----------------------------------

ALSO, intellectual property law needs to be seriously reined in. There should be a 20 year maximum limit on all forms of intellectual property before they become public domain; or five years after the creator's death, whichever comes first.


-----------------------------------

Also, obscenity should be protected speech.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

As I said at the begining of the thread, let's get a raw system in place before we determine restrictions.

Right now we have two.  Lets get a couple more, fine-tune the mechanics on them, then vote to determine which it would use.  Then we work down the list of each office and departments to determine their jobs.  After that, then we will work on restrictions.  Let's save the flamable areas for last, so we can actually get something done.

[Bohandas]

-Legislature similar to the United States legislature, but with the senate replaced by a small group elected by the nation as a whole

-All elections conducted in two stages: in the first stage anyone may run. In the second stage citizens must choose between the two highest vote getters from the first stage. This should eliminate the problem of third-party candidates splitting the vote and thus prevent the nation from being locked into a two party system.

-All stages of all elections will use the popular vote only. Nothing in any way resembling the electoral college will be used under in circumstance.

-Anyone old enough to vote is old enough to run for any office.

-Anyone old enough to serve in the military is old enough to vote.

-Term limits for all major offices

-The only requirement for a foreigner to gain citizenship is being in the country for a certain number of years without committing any felonies. Anyone may enter the country who hasn't been for some reason kicked out.

--------------------------------------------

ALSO:
-Social welfare programs shall be the primary function of the government

[Bohandas]

This is just a tid-bit that I would love to see- not so much a restriction as it is structure:

All officials of any elected position cannot be re-elected. This is to prevent the general "90% of work in-office is working towards being reelected" nonsense that happens today.

It would be better to ban or severely restrict campaigning, thus forcing officials to work toward reelection by governing competently.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Also, obscenity should be protected speech.

I'm going off the track this one time to correct this.

In any nation that has free speech, it is.  See below for a description of how it works:

-Social welfare programs shall be the primary function of the government

It would be better to ban or severely restrict campaigning, thus forcing officials to work toward reelection by governing competently.

Save it for later, all that is being discussed right now is:
General Structure/Heirarchy
Which positions exist
How you get into those positions
How it relates to the creation and enforcement of laws

[Bohandas]

Also, obscenity should be protected speech.

I'm going off the track this one time to correct this.

In any nation that has free speech, it is.

Not so:
For example, according to rulings by the US Supreme court it is in the power of the government to restrict the sale of material on the basis of obscenity provided that is "patently offensive", "appeals to the prurient interest" and wholly lacks any serious artistic, political, literary, or scientific value.

It is also my understanding that Britain and Austrailia have a number of rather absurd restrictions and proposed restrictions on porn (Austrailia, IIRC, has an overly broad definitions of what constitutes things like child porn, snuff movies, etc. which if interpreted literally includes anything with anyone who even looks like they might be underage even if they can produce ID that conclusively proves that everyone was well over twenty one at the time it was filmed, that nobody actually died, etc. and/or, even more absurdly, even if it is cartoon pornography and doesn't even feature any real people at all.; Britain has a plan in place to require an intrusive amount of age-proving verification in order for its people to access porn online)