In Part 4,
I talked about the election process. Now for the nifty bit about what
elected officials do once elected. The short answer is “what their
constituents actually want”. The long answer involves a whole lot of
what they don’t get to do.
The
biggest problem I see with legislation and legislators is conflict of
interest. The people in power make rules to benefit the people in
power. No one is actually working for the people as a whole. Except
for maybe Bernie Sanders, but he’s going to retire soon.
Government
is supposed to be a public service, not a road to personal power.
Elected officials should be servants, not masters. I have a few ideas
of how to make sure they stay that way, but they’re nowhere near
comprehensive. I’m sure I’ll miss a few obvious things. Feel free to
point them out in the comments.
They
get paid the national minimum wage plus a housing allowance. No voting
themselves a ridiculous salary while the rest of the nation suffers
with insufficient income. The independently wealthy must put their
fortunes into a trust where they cannot access them the entire time
they’re in office. The trust must be both secret and blind. Elected
officials should have no clue who’s managing their money, and the trust
should have no clue whose money they’re managing.
Corporate
and other organizational lobbying is strictly and expressly forbidden.
Only the people have access to their elected officials, and
corporations and organizations are not people. I have more thoughts on
corporations, but they’ll have to wait for another post.
So,
if corporations and organizations can’t lobby for legislation, where
does it come from? The answer is, of course, the people. But how do
the people get ideas for legislation into the hands of their officials?
As often happens while an idea is floating about in my head, somebody else has already come up with the answer.
Crowdsourced
legislation, while being the best way to get people input, is not
necessarily going to do the job of making sure it’s constitutional, or
even a good idea in the first place. The question of constitutionality
goes to an appropriately-named constitutional review board consisting of
legal experts. Assuming the proposed legislation passes constitutional
muster, it can proceed to a vote.
By
forcing legislation to pass through constitutional review before it can
become law, you prevent all the legal challenges that are necessary to
get bad laws off the books, saving an awful lot of money in legal fees
and reducing workload on the court system. The ounce of prevention
rather than the pound of cure.
Showing posts with label utopia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label utopia. Show all posts
2012-11-01
2012-10-20
Utopia - Part 4
And
now for the most topical utopia post so far: elections. It’s no secret
the US election process is so messed up that it can barely reach
“suboptimal” at even the best of times. Clearly a utopia can’t use the
US system as a model. I shall instead take the best ideas I’ve heard and
mash them together with a couple thoughts of my own.
Ideally, there should be no political parties. None of this group identification shortcut crap that shuts out candidates who don’t toe the party line exactly. They can, instead, represent their actual constituents.
Every candidate for office should run campaigns based on actual issues of interest to the public. Prior to election season (which shouldn’t last as long as an actual season), public comments and questions are submitted to a qualified news outlet (remember those from Part 2?), and are consolidated into a single questionnaire for candidates to fill out.
These questionnaires can pull double duty in an “I Side With” kind of way, allowing voters to see which candidates most closely represent their views once the election is underway.
Zero money changes hands as part of an election. Every candidate gets a few infomercials on qualified news outlets to explain policy positions; an equal amount of time across the board. And these must be factual - the independent fact-checkers get their review before the ads are allowed to air. Political advertising of any other kind is prohibited.
Candidates are encouraged to have blogs and participate in social media. In fact, I think that’s where the debates should go. Put the debates online, where everyone can participate in real-time chat; candidates, media, fact-checkers, and the public. The Google town hall with Obama earlier this year might make a decent template for these events.
Votes should be cast by ranked order of preference. This gets you a clear winner no matter how many candidates there are. In case you’re unfamiliar with the idea, here’s basically how it works. When you vote, you don’t just check one box; you order the entire slate of candidates from most preferred to least.
Vote counting starts with everyone’s most preferred candidate. If one of the candidates has a clear majority, that’s the winner. If no candidate has a clear majority, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed, and all votes for that candidate switched to the next most preferred candidate. Repeat this procedure until one candidate gets a clear majority.
This kind of a system doesn't work well with human vote counters, so would have to be done by machine. Voting machines should be commodity-hardware, open source solutions. Any closed-source solution is capable of being subverted to the will of the controller. Only an open-source solution, where everyone can examine the source code for flaws, is trustworthy enough for a task as important as voting.
One assumption I haven't stated yet is that everyone gets to vote. Participatory systems work best when people actually participate. Online registration would be the easiest to implement since the entire population has internet access (Part 2 again).
I'm sure I've overlooked something. Feel free to let me know what I've missed.
Ideally, there should be no political parties. None of this group identification shortcut crap that shuts out candidates who don’t toe the party line exactly. They can, instead, represent their actual constituents.
Every candidate for office should run campaigns based on actual issues of interest to the public. Prior to election season (which shouldn’t last as long as an actual season), public comments and questions are submitted to a qualified news outlet (remember those from Part 2?), and are consolidated into a single questionnaire for candidates to fill out.
These questionnaires can pull double duty in an “I Side With” kind of way, allowing voters to see which candidates most closely represent their views once the election is underway.
Zero money changes hands as part of an election. Every candidate gets a few infomercials on qualified news outlets to explain policy positions; an equal amount of time across the board. And these must be factual - the independent fact-checkers get their review before the ads are allowed to air. Political advertising of any other kind is prohibited.
Candidates are encouraged to have blogs and participate in social media. In fact, I think that’s where the debates should go. Put the debates online, where everyone can participate in real-time chat; candidates, media, fact-checkers, and the public. The Google town hall with Obama earlier this year might make a decent template for these events.
Votes should be cast by ranked order of preference. This gets you a clear winner no matter how many candidates there are. In case you’re unfamiliar with the idea, here’s basically how it works. When you vote, you don’t just check one box; you order the entire slate of candidates from most preferred to least.
Vote counting starts with everyone’s most preferred candidate. If one of the candidates has a clear majority, that’s the winner. If no candidate has a clear majority, the candidate with the least amount of votes is removed, and all votes for that candidate switched to the next most preferred candidate. Repeat this procedure until one candidate gets a clear majority.
This kind of a system doesn't work well with human vote counters, so would have to be done by machine. Voting machines should be commodity-hardware, open source solutions. Any closed-source solution is capable of being subverted to the will of the controller. Only an open-source solution, where everyone can examine the source code for flaws, is trustworthy enough for a task as important as voting.
One assumption I haven't stated yet is that everyone gets to vote. Participatory systems work best when people actually participate. Online registration would be the easiest to implement since the entire population has internet access (Part 2 again).
I'm sure I've overlooked something. Feel free to let me know what I've missed.
2012-10-03
Utopia - Part 3
In
the last installment, I talked about providing reliable information to
the population. This time I’m going to go over what prepares the
population to use that information: education. A proper education is a
necessity in a modern society. The more educated a society is, the
better off it will be.
To ensure a proper education for everyone, there should be a single national curriculum. That curriculum should be designed by recognized experts in the appropriate fields, and it should be reviewed annually. Education must keep pace with scientific development in order for people to be capable of meaningful contributions to their communities and the world at large.
Education should focus more on critical thinking skills and less on rote memorization of facts that can easily become outdated. While every student needs to learn the same skills before they finish school, students should be allowed to progress in each subject at their own pace. We shouldn’t hold back children who learn faster than others any more than we should force children to learn faster than they are able.
Education should also be free. Its benefit to society as a whole far outweighs the cost of providing it. And I don’t mean just primary education, either. When I say education, I mean all education, including community colleges, technical and trade schools, vocational schools, and universities. “I can’t afford it” is the most tragic reason I can think of for people to fail to realize their potential.
To ensure a proper education for everyone, there should be a single national curriculum. That curriculum should be designed by recognized experts in the appropriate fields, and it should be reviewed annually. Education must keep pace with scientific development in order for people to be capable of meaningful contributions to their communities and the world at large.
Education should focus more on critical thinking skills and less on rote memorization of facts that can easily become outdated. While every student needs to learn the same skills before they finish school, students should be allowed to progress in each subject at their own pace. We shouldn’t hold back children who learn faster than others any more than we should force children to learn faster than they are able.
Education should also be free. Its benefit to society as a whole far outweighs the cost of providing it. And I don’t mean just primary education, either. When I say education, I mean all education, including community colleges, technical and trade schools, vocational schools, and universities. “I can’t afford it” is the most tragic reason I can think of for people to fail to realize their potential.
2012-09-26
Utopia - Part 2
Welcome to my second post discussing Utopia. To see the first, just click the “Older Post” link at the bottom of the page.
In creating the large disorganized pile of notes that will eventually take coherent form here, I’ve realized that most of my ideas won’t work as intended without a well-informed populace. I’d love to add well-educated to that, but education is a separate topic that I will address later. It’s impossible to prevent willful ignorance, but we can at least minimize unintentional ignorance. I’ve come up with two things that I think would do the job.
The first is universal broadband internet access. Make the internet a public utility, no different than electricity, water, or sewer. I don’t care so much about the actual implementation. In some locales it could be community wi-fi, in others fiber or copper, or perhaps even satellite. No one should be required to take advantage of it, but it needs to be available to everyone.
The second is trickier to implement, but probably far more important. It’s the idea of “qualified news media”. In order to be called “news”, such media must clearly mark the difference between fact and opinion, publish prominent retractions and corrections of material published as factual that is wrong or misleading, and disclose any financial ties to people or organizations in their stories. And it must be made freely available to the public.
Any individual or organization that meets these requirements can be a qualified news source. Citizen journalism is not only allowed; it is encouraged. In fact, I see no reason foreign news services couldn’t set up local news outlets, as long as they follow all the rules.
The people have a right to correct, factual information that can be trusted. The news must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And it must be constitutionally protected from persecution or prosecution. The truth must never be a crime, under any circumstances.
I’m not exactly sure how to protect legitimately classified information from inappropriate release while still guaranteeing the journalistic rights I’ve already outlined. I’d be happy to hear your suggestions.
In creating the large disorganized pile of notes that will eventually take coherent form here, I’ve realized that most of my ideas won’t work as intended without a well-informed populace. I’d love to add well-educated to that, but education is a separate topic that I will address later. It’s impossible to prevent willful ignorance, but we can at least minimize unintentional ignorance. I’ve come up with two things that I think would do the job.
The first is universal broadband internet access. Make the internet a public utility, no different than electricity, water, or sewer. I don’t care so much about the actual implementation. In some locales it could be community wi-fi, in others fiber or copper, or perhaps even satellite. No one should be required to take advantage of it, but it needs to be available to everyone.
The second is trickier to implement, but probably far more important. It’s the idea of “qualified news media”. In order to be called “news”, such media must clearly mark the difference between fact and opinion, publish prominent retractions and corrections of material published as factual that is wrong or misleading, and disclose any financial ties to people or organizations in their stories. And it must be made freely available to the public.
Any individual or organization that meets these requirements can be a qualified news source. Citizen journalism is not only allowed; it is encouraged. In fact, I see no reason foreign news services couldn’t set up local news outlets, as long as they follow all the rules.
The people have a right to correct, factual information that can be trusted. The news must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And it must be constitutionally protected from persecution or prosecution. The truth must never be a crime, under any circumstances.
I’m not exactly sure how to protect legitimately classified information from inappropriate release while still guaranteeing the journalistic rights I’ve already outlined. I’d be happy to hear your suggestions.
2012-09-24
Utopia - Part 1
For
anyone who actually bothered to read my ramblings when last I posted
something here, sorry about the really long wait. But I’ve come up with
something that kind of demands that I put it out here for the world to
see, so I’ll be writing again.
It’s no secret that the US political system is far from optimal if you’re merely a citizen and not a corporation or multimillionaire. Its society has a few shortcomings as well, although I’m pretty sure there’s disagreement about exactly what those are.
I have some ideas about what the ideal government and society would be, and I’m going to put them out here for everyone to see. I welcome discussion, as long as it’s civil and reasonable. Consider this a combination constitutional congress and interim legislature with an ultimate veto authority in the form of me.
The foundation of our utopian society is the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our constitution will include the declaration by reference. Laws that violate it will be considered unconstitutional and unenforceable.
The function of government is to provide for the common good of all its citizens, with no exceptions. Because Article 2 of the Universal Declaration allows for no exceptions based on nationality or lack thereof, we have to make sure not to violate the rights of any foreigners while we’re at it.
Here are some of the things I intend to cover in this series:
I’m sure I’ll come up with more later, and will also happily address issues brought up in comments. Speaking of comments, I have enabled anonymous commenting in an effort to spur additional discussion. If said discussion becomes trolling, I may be forced to revisit that policy.
It’s no secret that the US political system is far from optimal if you’re merely a citizen and not a corporation or multimillionaire. Its society has a few shortcomings as well, although I’m pretty sure there’s disagreement about exactly what those are.
I have some ideas about what the ideal government and society would be, and I’m going to put them out here for everyone to see. I welcome discussion, as long as it’s civil and reasonable. Consider this a combination constitutional congress and interim legislature with an ultimate veto authority in the form of me.
The foundation of our utopian society is the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our constitution will include the declaration by reference. Laws that violate it will be considered unconstitutional and unenforceable.
The function of government is to provide for the common good of all its citizens, with no exceptions. Because Article 2 of the Universal Declaration allows for no exceptions based on nationality or lack thereof, we have to make sure not to violate the rights of any foreigners while we’re at it.
Here are some of the things I intend to cover in this series:
- Electoral process
- Judicial process
- Public services
- Civil Rights Laws
I’m sure I’ll come up with more later, and will also happily address issues brought up in comments. Speaking of comments, I have enabled anonymous commenting in an effort to spur additional discussion. If said discussion becomes trolling, I may be forced to revisit that policy.
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