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Sounds good to me

's OK.

Nah.

Really don't like 'em

SSSSIIIIIINNNNAAARRRRRR!!!

[Voter is a lolcat playing with a keyboard.]

[dwarfguy2]

Progress goes well. Look, I'm already dead!

[Nikov]

Throwing a half a billion dollars at education doesn't guarantee better education?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Correct.

[Aqizzar]

Throwing a half a billion dollars at education doesn't guarantee better education?

Throwing it all at one school, obviously not.  I don't think there's anybody outside of Los Angeles who would disagree with that.

[dwarfguy2]

This is my casual conversation voice. Anyway. Does throwing half a billion mana in a hadoken guarantee a deadlier hadoken?

[Sir Finkus]

I don't see anything objectionable about the government you are proposing, the trouble is implementation.  Eventually someone with corrupt intentions comes along and screws the entire thing up, or concerned mothers reduce some of our freedoms because "THINK OF THE CHILDREN".  Politicians are fantastic at skirting their way established laws using loopholes and leaps of logic.

[Criptfeind]

Wait what is this thread about?

All people have different ideas on how to do so but (outwardly at least) all governments try to do this.

Really, everyone has justification for what they do, saying they should do this is just saying that you want everyone to think the way you do and then adopt your idea of freedom.

For everything you need to make sacrifices, the hard part is to see where it is a good idea.

[PTTG??]

I don't see anything objectionable about the government you are proposing, the trouble is implementation.  Eventually someone with corrupt intentions comes along and screws the entire thing up, or concerned mothers reduce some of our freedoms because "THINK OF THE CHILDREN".  Politicians are fantastic at skirting their way established laws using loopholes and leaps of logic.

Ah, but these three things are the exclusive laws. That is, there may be additional, regular laws, but they must always be allowed by those three laws, much like how laws are supposedly supposed to be made in adherence to the constitution, which is a vague and highly subjective document. These, on the other hand, says clearly that if a law decreases total freedom, then it's illegal. It's not illegal to outlaw murder, because it increases the freedom from danger more than it decreases the freedom to get some healthy exercise. Banning dirty magazines is illegal because the freedom to communicate, freedom of expression, freedom of economic activity, and several others are greater freedoms than the freedom from having to occasionally parent your child.

All you need to do is say that "Your proposed law violates #2, your argument is invalid." Of course, if we're looking at building a new structure, then that would be easy to do. I'd say three overseeing groups, like senators. They are all elected the same way, and like the three branches of the US government, one group creates laws, the next enforces them, and the third makes sure the other two are kept in check and validate the laws. Engineering that structure at this juncture is a bit more work than I'm interested in at the moment, but after I have some tea I'll sketch something out on a napkin for you.

EDIT: added a bit to first paragraph.

[Criptfeind]

Interesting.

I am surprised I am the only one who said no on the poll.

[Aqizzar]

Ah yes, the DIY constitution for a theoretical nation with no history or people.  You realize it took dozens of the most intelligent men in a young America most of a year to design a government that even they considered flawed and unstable.  But hey, knock yourself out.

The irony is, I should be all over this thread, with loads of suggestions and historical reference.  But I just don't feel up to it.  Maybe I've gotten too cynical at seeing the exact same refutations of human governance and the principles for solving such, repeated ad nauseum, always totally confident that they're the first people in history to think to write this shit down.  Or maybe that I prefer dealing with specific scenarios instead of hypothetical napkin drawings.

I can tell you right now, making every office a popular election, and giving one "branch" unanswerable authority over the other two, carries more pitfalls than any theoretically-equitable real government I can think of.

[Bauglir]

-snip-

[mainiac]

Politics can not and should not be simple.  People who say "wouldn't it be simple if..." statements are just engaging in wishful thinking.  Actually look at what the founders said some time.  The basic divide was between Madison's federalism which said government is really hard, but we owe it to our country men and the world to do our utmost and Jefferson's anti-federalism which said government is really hard and we should do our utmost, but we owe it to our country men and the world to be act with extreme caution.

I want reform as much as the next guy (a lot more probably), but I want my reform to be well grounded in reality, thank you very much.  Saying we need a clean slate is saying that we need to chose ignorance over experience.  Don't blindly follow the rules of yesterday, but learn from the past.

But the real problems in american politics stems from one central fact: lazy voters.  If you want democracy to work for you, you need to work for democracy.

[Derekristow]

This seems good, but need fleshing out of course.  Having the three branches all be like the Senate is a horrible idea.  The nation would have no public face for foreign relations (the president's original job); and the justices would succumb to politics as usual, resulting in an unstable structure of laws coming and going at all times.  The current overall system works fairly well, perhaps needing some tweaking to encourage more parties.

[Earthquake Damage]

The current overall system works fairly well, perhaps needing some tweaking to encourage more parties.

But we already have statues.  Dining halls, too.

[Aqizzar]

The current overall system works fairly well, perhaps needing some tweaking to encourage more parties.

But we already have statues.  Dining halls, too.

Then start engraving everything, and replace all the old crappy doors with good new ones.