The Online Nation

[Buffy]

It is intrinsically better, even if it outright fails a thousand times in a row, it's principally better.

...and therefore no discussion of any potential issues that might cause it to fail are worth discussing! Even if it fails it's better!

 

I knew there was a reason you wouldn't address a single one of anyone's objections by anything other than tossing it off as trivial, irrelevant or an implementation detail.

 

But there are lots of deck chairs to move around on your Constitution, so where should we start? Is there anything you actually have questions about?

 

You keep assuming I want everyone in on this. ... It's very much an elitist nation in that sense, where the educated are respected. When this system is started, I would much more appreciate that only the wonks be interested enough to join in. It'll make it significantly more efficient in terms of passing the initial legal codes needed for a society to function (your road work and education problems and similars). Not to mention that with a bunch of like-minded intelligent people, this system is almost guaranteed to be successful in it's designed purpose, at least initially. If the intellectual elites join in, and the nation is successful, that is the bread of the circus, the marvel of this new type of governance that shines through. It will get notice that way and so that's how we can market it to other people. <- Assuming we care to have other people join.

Sounds kinda like Mensa crossed with the Republican Party. Much better not to let the hoi polloi in before you fix all the rules to favor your own goals, eh? And heck, prolly better not to even encourage them to join ever. Dirty uneducated people are so uncouth.

 

Anyway, here's one interesting question: since by definition there are no political leaders, are we going to ensure that the governmental services have no leaders too? Seems like you lose a bit of legitimacy if you have no president of the government but then have a Chief of Police. With wifi of course the individual police officers could all vote from their cars as to whether to stop the bank robbery or the kidnapping.

 

 

Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it, :phones:

Buffy

[cal]

...and therefore no discussion of any potential issues that might cause it to fail are worth discussing! Even if it fails it's better!

It's better principally, but that doesn't mean we can't eliminate the failures before they occur. I never said to not discuss potential issues, I mean if that was the goal, then why would I have started this thread? "no discussion of any potential issues" is a weird way to describe this discussion we're having of potential issues.

 

 

I knew there was a reason you wouldn't address a single one of anyone's objections by anything other than tossing it off as trivial, irrelevant or an implementation detail.

I think I've been rather successful in addressing all of them, point for point tbh, and I'm also tacking their refutation to my version of the constitution and a proposed solution to each issue.

 

 

But there are lots of deck chairs to move around on your Constitution, so where should we start? Is there anything you actually have questions about?

The whole thing, like we've been discussing this whole time. You sound mad, butt devastated even, could it be I've called you out multiple times and not a single one of my questions have been answered? I mean I'm being the more honorable party here, I've answered all your questions and you've answered none of mine, which would normally mean I'm obligated to not acknowledge your existence anymore, but I've gone against that obligation and forced myself to respond. If anything I deserve another medal for my virtuous acts towards you. Also, if this is a game, then well played, because it was clever that you said I was the one ignoring questions even though it was really you, I almost thought you were delusional.

 

 

Sounds kinda like Mensa crossed with the Republican Party. Much better not to let the hoi polloi in before you fix all the rules to favor your own goals, eh? And heck, prolly better not to even encourage them to join ever. Dirty uneducated people are so uncouth.

Well I just said that we'd have a very viable means of getting large amounts of people to join. You're saying some very hypocritical things, no? First you tell me that no one would want to join, and when I say fine you win, let's not have everyone join, you then go back on your word and tell me it's wrong to not have everyone join. So which one is it? Which do you think is better, everyone joining or not? I have offered solutions for both scenarios that you presented and you seem colon crucified over both solutions.

 

Also, even if it's an exclusive or non-exclusive society, it would be illogical in both cases to not encourage people to join. A government is dependent on having citizens, so I don't see why you're raging over this. Preferably millions of people join the first week this is launched (unrealistic, but I said preferably), which btw, would completely disable me or anyone from totally rigging all the rules in my favor.

 

Another thing you should consider: This whole thing, the whole concept, the whole idea, it's all mine. So isn't it already in my favor? I have total control over where this concept goes, and as of right now it is simply just a concept. So fair or not, it's my baby, I think I have some say in how she gets raised. Also, am I not crowd-sourcing this constitution? Every problem that has been discussed has been added to the refutation section of my doc, and fixes to the constitution have been made respectively, because I am not an egotistical *** (despite what you think) and am taking criticism to heart and changing major parts of the const. based on it. If you don't like what I've come up with, you can answer my questions and offer better solutions, or go and make your own system. The choice is yours, not mine.

 

 

Anyway, here's one interesting question: since by definition there are no political leaders, are we going to ensure that the governmental services have no leaders too? Seems like you lose a bit of legitimacy if you have no president of the government but then have a Chief of Police. With wifi of course the individual police officers could all vote from their cars as to whether to stop the bank robbery or the kidnapping.

How would I lose legitimacy over that? Your local police station is not your government. The people dictate the laws that the police are allowed to enforce, I see no contradiction in having a police chief and not having a congress or a president at the same time. Also, why would there even be a question as to whether or not to stop a kidnapping? The only thing changing here is the government, not the police force (probably). And all this assumes that this government has land to govern over. It needs land in order to have a police force, I think. That kind of stuff gets wonkey since province boundaries can overlap physical gov's boundaries, but idk, that seems like a bridge that can only be crossed once we've reached the bridge. Really that kind of an issue would be handled by whatever legal code gets put in place to implement police forces in a new province.

 

==============================

 

EVARWON, I have not received any code-altering complaints from this forum or anywhere else about the tax code or education system I am proposing for this new nation, which leads me to assume that they are pretty sound systems. They may have small faults, but no large faults, otherwise some issues would have been brought up (I assume), so the tax code is being committed into the constitution, and the education codes are being committed into a single bill to be passed after voted on by people in the system. Sound good?

 

==============================

Edited May 9, 2013 by Snax

[C1ay]

Literacy tests of their native tongue, scientific literacy tests, legal code understanding tests, and law-specific test on the individual laws they vote on greatly reduce the problem you describe here. I acknowledge that it doesn't completely eradicate the problem, but so what? Majority rules, and as long as the majority is educated on the topic, the problem isn't very problematic.

 

I guess you're not familiar with tyranny of the majority. Elitism is not the answer.

 

You mean beauty contest in the sense that proposed laws that look good, but aren't actually good, will cause problems, right? If that's what you mean by it, then that's a problem with every form of government, not just democracies. And I don't think blanket problems like that are valid reasons why this specific government is someone not as good as other governments, because those other governments experience this same problem.

 

By beauty contest I mean that people for the things or people that promise them the most even at the detriment of everyone else. The U.S. founders saw that elections are quite often nothing more than a popularity contest, i.e. a beauty contest.

[LaurieAG]

Not necessarily true. One could easily have a constitutional monarchy with no elements of democracy. I don't think constitutions in and of themselves are problematic.

Hi C1ay,

 

In Australia we have a constitutional monarchy that is interpreted as a parliamentary democracy by our High Court. That might explain why there has been no "Yes" vote at a referendum since 1986 when the Australia Act was introduced although prior to that there were many referendums with a mix of "Yes" and "No" results.

 

How would the US people like it if their state governors lost the power to veto laws passed by their state legislatures through federal laws passed without a "Yes" vote at a national referendum?

[Buffy]

It's better principally, but that doesn't mean we can't eliminate the failures before they occur.

Thank you for agreeing with me! :cheer:

 

I never said to not discuss potential issues, I mean if that was the goal, then why would I have started this thread?

Well one thing that would be more encouraging is if you didn't have such a low bar for being convinced that you've got everything right already.

 

To wit:

 

EVARWON, I have not received any code-altering complaints from this forum or anywhere else about the tax code or education system I am proposing for this new nation, which leads me to assume that they are pretty sound systems. They may have small faults, but no large faults, otherwise some issues would have been brought up...

Aren't we all going to get to vote?

 

Ever consider the possibility that maybe no one really wanted to, or had the time? Craig asked you for some clarification of your tax issues, which implied some pretty significant issues, but I wouldn't assume his lack of response to your replies was agreement. I'll put up a list of issues on taxes tomorrow, but as a preview, your tax is only slightly progressive. Even current US taxes in aggregate are far more progressive recognizing that a "base tax" puts people below the poverty line that much closer to starvation, so they actually get negative taxes in some cases. At least you're not proposing a Flat Tax or worse moving to pure sales taxes like Bobby Jindal just failed to do in Louisiana which is the ultimate in Regressive Tax policy.

 

The whole thing, like we've been discussing this whole time. You sound mad, butt devastated even, could it be I've called you out multiple times and not a single one of my questions have been answered?

I'd disagree that I have not answered "a single one" of them, but of course a whole lot of them are rhetorical...like this one.

 

Well I just said that we'd have a very viable means of getting large amounts of people to join. You're saying some very hypocritical things, no?

Nope!

 

First you tell me that no one would want to join, and when I say fine you win, let's not have everyone join, you then go back on your word and tell me it's wrong to not have everyone join. So which one is it?

I do indeed find there's little to attract people given what you've presented. I find it extremely, well, *odd* that your reaction to that was not to figure out how to make it more attractive but to decide that that was a suggestion to "not have everyone join." Let me be a little bit clearer: You may wish to consider that the notion that it is a direct democracy is a little bit weak all by itself, and you may wish to advance some goals--as a part of the constitution--that actually speak to core human desires. As an example, you may wish to explicitly proscribe or enhance the notion that "businesses are people too," since this is a hot topic, and widely recognized as a valid constitutional issue that our founders did not have the foresight to enshrine in our own.

 

The second part of your question is also a key set of related issues I've asked you about several times:

 

• Despite your claim here that it was my fault that you decided to not have everyone join--not having everyone join is problematic if you have to enforce laws on those who are not members of the government. If a person from another country robs another and then goes home as an example, with a geographically bound government crossing the border to apprehend the thief is usually considered an act of war, and the US Constitution explicitly reserves the power to create and enforce extradition and other treaties with foreign powers to the President with Advice and Consent of the Congress. With an overlayed government, you've got a morass of jurisdictional issues: are there any right's accorded non-citizens? Is there any consideration that the police going to the perpetrator next door and arresting him would cause an "international incident?"
  
• Related to this is the issue of disenfranchisement. Using the same example, Is there any concern that this person can legitimately claim "I'm not a member of your government, so your laws don't apply to me"? Is the constitution going to say all laws can be enforced against anyone irrespective of their citizenship? When they don't vote X times in a row and are now "kicked out" if say they owe a huge chunk of back taxes, do they have to pay them? Pay them to be reinstated?
  
• So far you've discussed this as a mass of individuals, ignoring the fact that tribalism exists as a part of human nature and in any of the various forms of democratic government you need to worry about the "Tyranny of the Majority" (something that C1ay, Craig and I have all brought up). What's become obvious in our current situation in the US is that money has proven it has the power to create majorities that happily vote against their own interest, and in fact taking the middlemen representatives out of the equation just makes it simpler for the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and Rupert Murdoch to just fund Fox News rather than the messy job of attempting "near bribery." What protections are there to keep the majority from passing laws that harm minorities? Have you thought about a Bill of Rights? Going to have Supreme Court? Are they elected as, uh, representatives, or do all constitutional cases come up for a vote?
  

These aren't really "implementation issues" nor are the answers obvious. If you're going to have a government that raises a middle finger to all other governments and ignores their laws, you'll find yourself in the middle of a (at least cyber) war. If you're going to let anyone who decides to opt-out get away with breaking all your laws then the citizens are going to start to wonder what good those laws are.

 

This is NOT advocating either extreme, but rather pointing out that each has it's own pluses and minuses and you end up with some severe compromises having to be made, and they can all be complained about: there is no "intrinsically better" solution to the issues of national sovereignty and enfranchisement. They are fundamental and absolutely need to be addressed by any Constitution.

 

Saying it's not really a problem or that we'll figure it out later is at best a cop out, but the worst thing is that it indicates your constitution isn't dealing with things that directly affect people's lives, and gives them little reason to join in.

 

So:

 

Which do you think is better, everyone joining or not?

If it is going to be successful, you need as many people to join in as quickly as possible. If an "elite" gets in and sets up a government that is basically odious to the "uneducated masses" no one is going to join because huge chunks of the law will be abhorrent to them (you might want to consider parallels between what you're describing and Communist doctrine's "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" one of those fabulous terms that means the exact opposite of what it appears to mean). Conversely, the more people involved and the more disparate their backgrounds, the more you'll find that both the government is more popular and at the same time less "perfect" because of all the compromises that need to be dealt with (need I bring up the enfranchisement issue again?).

 

But as I don't really give a rat's :lol: about perfect, I come down on the side of yes, the more the merrier, precisely because less people means death spiral for the entire experiment.

 

I thought that was kind of obvious, but far be it from me to assume that you do too.

 

I have offered solutions for both scenarios that you presented and you seem colon crucified over both solutions.

Well, unfortunately what I've done is present the pros and cons of the different approaches to try to demonstrate the fact that none of the answers to the questions is "obvious" or "intrinsically better", meaning that all these issues are best solved by shades of grey whose nuances truly seem to annoy you. Sorry about that.

 

And the doc just checked my colon and it's actually in great shape.

 

Also, even if it's an exclusive or non-exclusive society, it would be illogical in both cases to not encourage people to join. A government is dependent on having citizens, so I don't see why you're raging over this. Preferably millions of people join the first week this is launched (unrealistic, but I said preferably), which btw, would completely disable me or anyone from totally rigging all the rules in my favor.

No question there, but I'll respond anyway: The reason "not encouraging people to join" has been a point of discussion here is that I've been pointing out the numerous ways in which you are setting up elements of you constitution that exclude people. By having a "vote or be thrown out" is a great way to keep people joining in the first place, but also disenfranchising them on what inevitably end up being arbitrary rules. So the thing is if it's "illogical" not to want as many people as possible, why in the world would you have something that drives them away? Moreover by punishing them with what appears to be the ONLY advantage of the system you're proposing. That just sounds so, well, illogical to me...

 

So, the point here is that you really need to think about this issue of enfranchisement and the "requirement to vote" in an intelligent and educated way, instead of simply saying "we'll just do whatever Buffy says so that maybe she'll stop babbling about stuff I don't think is important."

 

Another thing you should consider: This whole thing, the whole concept, the whole idea, it's all mine. So isn't it already in my favor?

By George, I think he's got it! [buffy gets up on the table and starts singing "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!"]

 

See? That's what a bunch of us have been trying to point out! You have an advantage! People with money will have an advantage! People who are smart or charismatic will have an advantage!

 

It's the "Tyranny of the Majority" which is usually controlled by the folks with the most money, organization, charisma, popularity, or power.

 

Ya really do need to deal with it!

 

Also, am I not crowd-sourcing this constitution?

Well in a limited sense, yes, but like most crowd-sourcing, the work is being done by a bunch of people who right now...get...no...vote.... :o

 

Seriously dude, when are we gonna get to vote? I think it would be an interesting exercise to go through that, making sure that you apply the Constitution to itself, and avoid that evil "omnibus bill" problem by putting each and every major section up for a vote.

 

Anyway, here's one interesting question: since by definition there are no political leaders, are we going to ensure that the governmental services have no leaders too? Seems like you lose a bit of legitimacy if you have no president of the government but then have a Chief of Police. With wifi of course the individual police officers could all vote from their cars as to whether to stop the bank robbery or the kidnapping.

How would I lose legitimacy over that? Your local police station is not your government. The people dictate the laws that the police are allowed to enforce, I see no contradiction in having a police chief and not having a congress or a president at the same time.

You said it yourself, direct democracy is "intrinsically better", and by implication any hierarchy is inefficient and unrepresentative. This is exactly why both government and business organizations attempt to do things like put beat patrolmen and low level workers on boards of directors, in order to make sure that the organization "benefits" from their "input". Of course most of the time this is token representation with no real power, so it's worse than just dictatorial top down management.

 

You really don't see any parallels here?

 

There actually have been attempts to do the sort of thing I describe above with for example volunteer fire departments, but even they end up appointing chiefs to deal with day-to-day decision-making--in, ahem, a representative manner--but the proposal is not at all facetious, because even if you don't think so, others will see a contradiction in a system whose primary reason for existence is the notion that organizations that use representatives for decision-making is intrinsically inferior that uses traditional hierarchical bureaucratic structures to implement its key services.

 

Just sayin'.

 

Also, why would there even be a question as to whether or not to stop a kidnapping? The only thing changing here is the government, not the police force (probably). And all this assumes that this government has land to govern over.

And so yes, when you consider the jurisdictional issues I bring up above, you do have to decide whether you're going to deal with crimes committed by non-citizens or not. While you may find most other governments amenable to prosecution of crimes like kidnapping, you'll still need to deal with the normal demand that governments have for orderly extradition treaties.

 

But more vexingly are the cases where the laws are different. If someone owes a ton of back taxes to your government, "quits" (voluntarily or not), and the majority of your government's citizens pass a law that says that your government can confiscate his house, what happens when the new government he's joined says that it will protect him from all claims on his property by foreign powers?

 

As you admit here, the only way this sort of thing starts to make sense is if "this government has land to govern over," but at the same time, you've explicitly--and rather hostilely--stated that this is *not* a geographic government, at least until you get to a "majority" in which case--as far as I can tell--you're going to declare sovereignty over everyone in the geographical area that you have 51% of.

 

I won't try to say you're a hypocrite here, because it's clear that you're trying to bootstrap a government starting with no territory, so you have no choice.

 

But it sure doesn't appear you're thinking through the obstacles to actually making some of these transitions.

 

As we've--I think--agreed, you need to grow this thing, but people do have to have a reason to join, but if you start hacking back all the things that the government can do within the constraints of not wanting to start a war with the geographical government, and therefore really having to just live with that other government's rule over just about everything, what is there left for this government to "create laws" for? In this respect you may be right that the voting burden will not be big because the government really has no power to do anything. Who's going to want to pay taxes for not very much?

 

Even when you get to 51%, you're going to declare the other competing governments irrelevant? Gonna do that without a war? Are other governments going to let you build your own army in their midst without preparing to fight back?

 

Have you considered any of this?

 

Well, apparently not too much:

 

It needs land in order to have a police force, I think. That kind of stuff gets wonkey since province boundaries can overlap physical gov's boundaries, but idk, that seems like a bridge that can only be crossed once we've reached the bridge. Really that kind of an issue would be handled by whatever legal code gets put in place to implement police forces in a new province.

 

Yah, it is definitely kinda "wonkey".

 

This is an example of your "not answering" my questions: I've posed the issues above in this post a number of times previously, only to be met with "seems like a bridge that can only be crossed once we've reached the bridge" and "would be handled by whatever legal code gets put into place"...

 

"So okay, well, I haven't thought about it much but for us to get to a point where we can actually make laws that mean something to anybody, we might have to go to war. IDK. We'll figure that out later."

 

Gee Willikers! Where do I sign up! Way to sell people on a plan! :cheer:

 

Seriously, the books that Craig mentioned earlier are great examinations of the issues that come up if you're going to try to do a direct democracy starting from scratch, and yet you haven't wanted to really engage on the problems they enlighten so well. And that's only two: there were hundreds of novels and essays on Utopia in the first half of the 20th century that are filled with these really interesting issues, and I--and I'm sure Craig as well--would have loved it had you stopped to look at them and talk about how some of what they bring up are handled by your form of government. My own favorite if you do want to add another book to your list is Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, and of course a rather interesting look at the issue of disenfranchisement in a Direct Democracy can be found in "A Voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms," Part IV of Gulliver's Travels.

 

Joe Buffy sez, "Check it out."

 

 

The enfranchisement of humanity may be regarded as a species of second birth of the race, :phones:

Buffy

 

For those who are really bothering to keep score, in the replied-to post Snax asked 9 questions and I answered 14 of them.

[C1ay]

Hi C1ay,

 

In Australia we have a constitutional monarchy that is interpreted as a parliamentary democracy by our High Court...

 

That doesn't mean constitutions in general are bad, just that the implementation or interpretation of yours is bad.

 

How would the US people like it if their state governors lost the power to veto laws passed by their state legislatures through federal laws passed without a "Yes" vote at a national referendum?

They'd probably file a class action lawsuit since that would be unconstitutional under our constitution.

[cal]

Before we get started, I want to apologize for the wall of text, I know it was a lot to cover and I tried to get it all, so my apologies in advance.

 

It's better principally, but that doesn't mean we can't eliminate the failures before they occur.

Thank you for agreeing with me! :cheer:

I never disagreed on this.

 

 

Well one thing that would be more encouraging is if you didn't have such a low bar for being convinced that you've got everything right already.

I think I got some things right, but not all of it. The core tenants of the constitution I know I got right. The rest of it is out of my right-knowing clarification faculties.

 

 

Aren't we all going to get to vote?

The education thing will be a bill presented for the populous to vote on, and the entire rest of the Constitution still needs to be ratified, so yes, you will get to vote. I am considering anyone who has been a part of this dialogue as a member of the "Temporary Ratification Committee". I guess a better name would be the "Hundred Calorie Snax Committee" and it would be awesome if there were exactly a hundred people in it lols.

 

 

Ever consider the possibility that maybe no one really wanted to, or had the time?

Yes. And if they felt it of higher importance to answer, they would have made time. Since they don't, and haven't, too bad.

 

 

I'll put up a list of issues on taxes tomorrow, but as a preview, your tax is only slightly progressive.

So? I'm not designing a system around taxes, I don't think my cares are placed into specifically how progressive the taxation system is. My cares are placed into how progressive this system of governance is, at least I think so, I tend to be a pretty good judge of my own cares. Ideally, my suggested system is entirely replaced by one catered to the crediting economy being utilized here. But until a better system is laid out, or specific sections re-written so I can copy and paste the whole thing over my old one, then my system stands. I am not an economist, I am not claiming my tax codes to be works of genius. Granted, I don't have a degree in poli sci either, but I have put considerably more time into working out the ethical and logical principles of government than the ethical and logical principles of taxation (even if that difference in time is small, it is still a difference, and therefore I have more say on one subject than the other).

 

 

I'd disagree that I have not answered "a single one" of them, but of course a whole lot of them are rhetorical...like this one.

A person dodging questions says what?

 

 

I do indeed find there's little to attract people given what you've presented. I find it extremely, well, *odd* that your reaction to that was not to figure out how to make it more attractive but to decide that that was a suggestion to "not have everyone join." Let me be a little bit clearer: You may wish to consider that the notion that it is a direct democracy is a little bit weak all by itself, and you may wish to advance some goals--as a part of the constitution--that actually speak to core human desires. As an example, you may wish to explicitly proscribe or enhance the notion that "businesses are people too," since this is a hot topic, and widely recognized as a valid constitutional issue that our founders did not have the foresight to enshrine in our own.

Wut. The quote is "Corporations are people, my friend," not businesses. And I don't think corporations are people either, they're concepts that have a specific word tied to them so that the concept is traceable on paper. Corporations don't have equal rights as people do, otherwise I'd be allowed to marry one. Now that I think about it, a lot of people don't even have that right, so your argument is just falling apart here. I do not wish to advance "goals" simply because people desire them, that is a huge irrational conflict. I do not want to play into emotion, the reason the principles of liberty and the principles of freedom of information and knowledge are the underpinnings of this constitution is because that is what is logical to base a system of control on, liberty and the knowledge of it. If people want a core human desire to follow, let it be power. You get much more power in this system than any other system on the planet (given you are not a prime minister or something like that).

 

 

• Despite your claim here that it was my fault that you decided to not have everyone join--not having everyone join is problematic if you have to enforce laws on those who are not members of the government. If a person from another country robs another and then goes home as an example, with a geographically bound government crossing the border to apprehend the thief is usually considered an act of war, and the US Constitution explicitly reserves the power to create and enforce extradition and other treaties with foreign powers to the President with Advice and Consent of the Congress. With an overlayed government, you've got a morass of jurisdictional issues: are there any right's accorded non-citizens? Is there any consideration that the police going to the perpetrator next door and arresting him would cause an "international incident?"
  

I never said fault, it's not like this has actually happened yet. I said you weren't happy with either scenario, and you still aren't, so I don't have a way to appease you. Enforcing laws on non-members is the same as enforcing laws on people that claim those laws don't apply to them in America, you still detain them and run them through the system. You might say, well most of those people are citizens. Not all of them. Foreigners still commit crimes and are prosecuted for it. The same thing applies here, if someone commits a crime against one of our citizens, they will be detained and ran through the system (meaning trial). The significant difference between the average govs on the planet right now and my proposed one, is that the entire planet is the territory for an online nation to enforce law (provided that a province is nearby). The transitional phase of this government from being entirely without land to having its first province, will be the initial period in which there are no full citizens, but only people with dual-citizenships between the online gov and whatever country they are from. During this period there will be no way of enforcing laws that apply things outside the online interactions between the online gov and its cits. I don't see this as a major problem, because this government is a peaceful one that can only be implemented by slow, gradual transitions onto a populous. Like I said before, we won't even have our first province until 100% of a physical country has dual-citizenship with the online gov, so I'm thinking one of the scandinavian countries or maybe some other first-world elite like canada would be the first province, if there ever is a physical place this system claims.

 

Also, your international incident thing, people are detained in America and deported to other countries if they commit crimes in those other countries, and most other countries do the same back. Are you implying that for this new government they simply choose to not hand over criminals for trial but will continue doing it for other nations? That doesn't make sense.

 

 

• Related to this is the issue of disenfranchisement. Using the same example, Is there any concern that this person can legitimately claim "I'm not a member of your government, so your laws don't apply to me"? Is the constitution going to say all laws can be enforced against anyone irrespective of their citizenship? When they don't vote X times in a row and are now "kicked out" if say they owe a huge chunk of back taxes, do they have to pay them? Pay them to be reinstated?
  

Why would someone not be a citizen for not voting? That wasn't said anywhere... like at all, by anyone. And yea, just like how it's fine for you to go to Canada and murder thirty people and they can't do anything about it because their laws don't apply to you, right? Technically, the principles of liberty extend to any consciousness able to come about them, so I don't see why people outside our system wouldn't have the same rights as people inside it (with the exception of voting privileges, etc.). I think I added that to the const, can't remember, that rights derived from liberties extend to all people, not just people that are citizens of the ON. If you leave America because of massive debt, you still owe that debt, let's not be unreasonable about this.

 

 

• So far you've discussed this as a mass of individuals, ignoring the fact that tribalism exists as a part of human nature and in any of the various forms of democratic government you need to worry about the "Tyranny of the Majority" (something that C1ay, Craig and I have all brought up). What's become obvious in our current situation in the US is that money has proven it has the power to create majorities that happily vote against their own interest, and in fact taking the middlemen representatives out of the equation just makes it simpler for the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and Rupert Murdoch to just fund Fox News rather than the messy job of attempting "near bribery." What protections are there to keep the majority from passing laws that harm minorities? Have you thought about a Bill of Rights? Going to have Supreme Court? Are they elected as, uh, representatives, or do all constitutional cases come up for a vote?
  

I think I'm going to stop replying after this post because it appears most of your concerns are on issues that are covered already in the constitution (the one you can't see, so it's understandable that they are still concerns). There is a sort of bill-of-rights section outlining the definition and principles of what liberty is, and how you can derive rights out of it, what rights are specifically asserted by the constitution, etcetera. The "Supreme Court" will be non-elected members, the members will be the entire top 10% (percent is open to change) of law-makers. The software selects the top ten percent of law-makers that have had the most laws passed (or we can do it by number of successful laws passed in proportion to however many you've proposed, none of anything I've said here is in stone) and then they vote on whether a law/bill is constitutional if that said law/bill is reported enough to send it for Constitutional Scrutiny (this name is also changeable). Technically you could say the citizens elect the members of the Constitutional Scrutiny (Board ?) by supporting the laws they make in the first place. What say you on this proposal?

 

 

These aren't really "implementation issues" nor are the answers obvious. If you're going to have a government that raises a middle finger to all other governments and ignores their laws, you'll find yourself in the middle of a (at least cyber) war. If you're going to let anyone who decides to opt-out get away with breaking all your laws then the citizens are going to start to wonder what good those laws are.

Why would this government ignore all other governments' laws? I don't think that was ever explicitly said or even implied (I guess the confusion can come from when I was talking about how a country replaces their old government, but that's outside the possible actions of the ON, that has to be by their agenda alone). Also, kinda side note, your cyber war thing; I was thinking that since this is an online government, and that war is the last thing I ever want to happen ever, for any nation, that if another country wants to war us, they do it via a competitive shooter (vidya gaem). An online nation with an online army makes sense, but I digress. People who opt-out don't get away with breaking our laws, I never explicitly said this or implied this. All they opt-out of is citizenship, which means they lose the opportunity for voting privileges, law-making, etc. I think I covered more of how law-abiding works for your other quote above in this post.

 

 

there is no "intrinsically better" solution to the issues of national sovereignty and enfranchisement. They are fundamental and absolutely need to be addressed by any Constitution.

False. A solution that does not allow for the choice of its citizens is no solution at all. Before you pull the No True Scotsman fallacy on me, I was saying that figuratively, not literally, despite my signature. A solution that is founded on the choice of it's populous is a better solution, intrinsically, because otherwise it's tyranny.

 

Also, don't worry, all (or most?) of these issues have been addressed in the constitution (more sorries for not showing any of it yet) and if they haven't, I will be adding those sections soon. I'm not rushing to make this thing happen all that soon. I'm guessing it would be a few years before I even have time to get professional programmers to make a prototype platform for this system to run on, what with college and my job and all that noise. I'm trying to be methodical about this, trying is the key word there.

 

 

Saying it's not really a problem or that we'll figure it out later is at best a cop out, but the worst thing is that it indicates your constitution isn't dealing with things that directly affect people's lives, and gives them little reason to join in.

It is a cop-out, but I don't have any better answers yet, so once again I will extend my question that will most certainly go unanswered- do you have a better suggestion on how to do this? Because if not, again, go make your own nation. Maybe we can have cyber warfare with each other and die bitterly in the aftermath of a ragequit session of BLR where we both commit suicide because of server lag (well that and the fact that your mother is kicking you out of the basement), as I said, "none of it seriously."

 

Also, you're still trying to force in that "little reason to join" bit there, and this part actually upsets me because it shows you have failed to understand the fundamental concepts I have explicitly outlined multiple times for you about what this government is. THIRD TIME'S A CHARM - No matter what answer I give to this question, you seem to never accept it. What does this government do and how is it any better to its citizens than any other government? This is like when Rade decides to just totally ignore everything I say and just use a definition that doesn't apply to a word at all, but he uses it anyways because he just doesn't give a [LUL]. As soon as you become a citizen of the Online Nation, you are immediately granted with equal political power in relation to every other citizen, which is more political power than you could ever have in any other nation (granted that you aren't prime minister of Aus or something like that). On top of truly equal political power, this system gives way to incrementally transitioning peoples out of physical governments (and by extension, physical borders even) and into a singular world nation, peacefully. If you simply choose not to value the principles of a united planet and the principles of liberty and equal policy powers in a government, then I know not how to answer your question. Or for that matter, care to have you in the type of nation that strives for a peacefully unified planet, as that type of person must not want a peacefully unified planet (which means you are probably a bad person).   =(

 

 

If it is going to be successful, you need as many people to join in as quickly as possible. If an "elite" gets in and sets up a government that is basically odious to the "uneducated masses" no one is going to join because huge chunks of the law will be abhorrent to them (you might want to consider parallels between what you're describing and Communist doctrine's "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" one of those fabulous terms that means the exact opposite of what it appears to mean). Conversely, the more people involved and the more disparate their backgrounds, the more you'll find that both the government is more popular and at the same time less "perfect" because of all the compromises that need to be dealt with (need I bring up the enfranchisement issue again?).

Prols are double-plus un-good.

 

 

But as I don't really give a rat's :lol: about perfect, I come down on the side of yes, the more the merrier, precisely because less people means death spiral for the entire experiment.

 

I thought that was kind of obvious, but far be it from me to assume that you do too.

I'm a dumb bastard, I'd much prefer you draw me a picture like this every time rather than trying to get me to guess at what you think would be the best solution.

 

 

By having a "vote or be thrown out" is a great way to keep people joining in the first place, but also disenfranchising them on what inevitably end up being arbitrary rules.

I NEVER SAID THAT! I said vote or don't vote! Voting is a privilege, not citizenship. Citizenship is a right, it cannot be striped from you unless you actively choose to do it yourself. Voting is the only thing taken away from a citizen (and it's temporary, mind you) if they don't vote, I never said ANYTHING about them losing citizenship over it. Also, I guess law-making privileges are taken away after a certain number of faulty-made laws, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here (and those privileges can also be restored after a longer suspension and a more rigorous test anyways).

 

 

So, the point here is that you really need to think about this issue of enfranchisement and the "requirement to vote" in an intelligent and educated way, instead of simply saying "we'll just do whatever Buffy says so that maybe she'll stop babbling about stuff I don't think is important."

I have covered this in detail and from many angles, the premise is secure, we have Bin Laden, I don't see why you are accusing me of letting him get away after you are the one that shot me in the back. All that is required to vote is that you be 14 years of age, are literate in the language that the laws are being presented to you (so probably English, and it's not unreasonable to think English be the standard language here), are scientifically literate (meaning discouragement from people doing things based on belief rather than knowledge), and are literate in what is explicitly outlined in the constitution.

 

Colors so others see it too, cause this is yet another thing I forgot to put in the gdoc (anyone wanna help me with that btw?).

 

 

Another thing you should consider: This whole thing, the whole concept, the whole idea, it's all mine. So isn't it already in my favor?

By George, I think he's got it! [buffy gets up on the table and starts singing "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!"]

 

See? That's what a bunch of us have been trying to point out! You have an advantage! People with money will have an advantage! People who are smart or charismatic will have an advantage!

It's the "Tyranny of the Majority" which is usually controlled by the folks with the most money, organization, charisma, popularity, or power.

Ya really do need to deal with it!

This Constitution will still eventually have to be ratified, and I'm crowd-sourcing it right now (like I am here), so I was lying when I said it was all mine; it is an aggregate of proposed ideas (many of which from you hypographers directly). And I do not have the final say on it either, because again, we will be having that Hundred Calorie Snax Review Board Committee Board of Reviewers Board that will look at it and have the final say on whether or not it's good enough (and everyone is invited to the HCSRBCBRB btw).

 

But yea, people with influence will be more influential, I feel ya. But like I said way back in like the second or third post, the people with more influence have more influence for a reason, and they have usually earned and deserve that influence. I don't see it as a problem (especially since financial influence isn't as significant *online government regulated crediting systems yo*), but if it truly becomes a problem much like the railroad, oil, steel, paper mill, etc. trusts and monopolies did and they somehow start controlling the government, their will be someone who rises against the tyranny, and the populous will up-vote his/her laws to regulate market control and lobbying and voter-buying and on and on. You say that these are all thing for me to consider, and I have considered them, but I cannot solve all these things, and a testament to the power of this system will be that all these significant problems are solved much, much more quickly when the raw computing power of 7 billion minds work together on something instead of being limited by imaginary lines in the ground. That number might be a delusional thing for me to claim, but one day it might not be so delusional.

 

 

Well in a limited sense, yes, but like most crowd-sourcing, the work is being done by a bunch of people who right now...get...no...vote.... :o

This one I have no solid reasoning for, I am simply too lazy to find time to finish formatting my version, upload it, or find some applet or script that lets people make remote changes like a gdoc wiki thingy in which the changes are voted on. But I assure you that you will have a vote, and you do have a say. If you want to have direct control over the constitution, gimme your email and I'll add you as an editor to the gdoc (as I've done with a few people now) and you can make changes as you please. Oh, but highlight the changes so I know what to add back to my copy on my hardrive.

 

 

Seriously dude, when are we gonna get to vote? I think it would be an interesting exercise to go through that, making sure that you apply the Constitution to itself, and avoid that evil "omnibus bill" problem by putting each and every major section up for a vote.

I consider this a form of voting now because I am getting direct feedback on specific phrases of the constitution that people disagree with. I don't think a formal vote is reasonable to have until there is a formal Constitution that has been finalized and ready to be ratified. Although, a solution to this problem would be some script for gdocs that requires every change to be voted on by people, but I can't find anything like that (granted I haven't looked very hard).

 

 

There actually have been attempts to do the sort of thing I describe above with for example volunteer fire departments, but even they end up appointing chiefs to deal with day-to-day decision-making--in, ahem, a representative manner--but the proposal is not at all facetious, because even if you don't think so, others will see a contradiction in a system whose primary reason for existence is the notion that organizations that use representatives for decision-making is intrinsically inferior that uses traditional hierarchical bureaucratic structures to implement its key services.

Organizations are not the government, organizations can use whatever system they want. Why is it bad to have a Fire Chief for a county? I do not see a contradiction here. I don't like hierarchical government, I could care less about the things that aren't the system I have to abide by.

 

 

But more vexingly are the cases where the laws are different. If someone owes a ton of back taxes to your government, "quits" (voluntarily or not), and the majority of your government's citizens pass a law that says that your government can confiscate his house, what happens when the new government he's joined says that it will protect him from all claims on his property by foreign powers?

I like this one ^. I didn't think of this one before, so I'll add to the constitution that our government must succeed to the other government in this scenario, again because peace is a strong priority.

 

 

As you admit here, the only way this sort of thing starts to make sense is if "this government has land to govern over," but at the same time, you've explicitly--and rather hostilely--stated that this is *not* a geographic government, at least until you get to a "majority" in which case--as far as I can tell--you're going to declare sovereignty over everyone in the geographical area that you have 51% of.

No, I never said this, stop making me re-type what I said, I don't like doing it. I said that if any nation wanted to overthrow its gov, all the people had to do was stop listening to the law of the government, and I said if they did this, they would need to constitute a large majority, 51% or more (most likely), of the population in order to get away with it, because you can't detain more than half your population. I never said you should force the rest of the loyalists to do what you want, that defeats the purpose of liberating them. I also never said anything about doing this directly for the Online Nation, I was simply outlining how a new government could be put into place (based on historical overthrows), and that's also if people even want to overthrow their government. I have also said multiple times that past examples are not good for comparing to future problems. There is another peaceful way for an online government to replace an existing government, where if 100% of the people of a country hold dual citizenship with the ON, they can then vote to get rid of their old government and make their territory a new province in the ON, ran by the ON government system.

 

 

As we've--I think--agreed, you need to grow this thing, but people do have to have a reason to join, but if you start hacking back all the things that the government can do within the constraints of not wanting to start a war with the geographical government, and therefore really having to just live with that other government's rule over just about everything, what is there left for this government to "create laws" for?

For principle. Like I said, this is very much an intellectual's government, which is probably why you don't think it has much appeal. That's not a knock on your intellect, btw, I'm saying that I see why you'd think the average person won't care for it, because the average person lacks principles, more importantly, intellectual principles. I'm sorry that I cannot give a "stronger" reason than that, but the principle of the matter has always seemed to be the strongest reason to do anything at all, at least to me.

 

Also I should clarify the war bit. I am strongly against war, but only war were human casualties occur. I am not against war in any other means, and I mentioned earlier in this post Competitive Shooters. I think that idea is a very good one, the problem is whether or not people will honor the decision made in an online match, but competing countries honor the Olympics, so the way I see it, if a country refuses terms set over a virtual war, and causes physical harm after that, all we do is cause physical harm back after a truce like they did. Golden-ish Rule: do unto others as they have done unto you. Which I guess is also Karma's rule. I don't know how to handle war after a country decides to not honor an online war's decisions besides having a (standing?) army ready to defend intruding forces (and a draft or something). I don't see why there would be war with the ON anyways, since the ON can't declare war against others and therefore will never have an invading force. If they start a war over resources or something, that would be stupid cause all they would have to do is peacefully ask for resources and we could probably provide those. Really I guess worst case scenario is the Christian Inquisition happens again, but at that point the whole world is ****ed, not just the ON.

 

 

This is an example of your "not answering" my questions: I've posed the issues above in this post a number of times previously, only to be met with "seems like a bridge that can only be crossed once we've reached the bridge" and "would be handled by whatever legal code gets put into place"...

The questions you proposed before were issues that could only be dealt with later, and now it is later and I have dealt with them, stop crying.

 

 

and I--and I'm sure Craig as well--would have loved it had you stopped to look at them and talk about how some of what they bring up are handled by your form of government.

I have eighteen books in my backlog that I have to go through before I get to Craig's books, and then those two before yours. I was not lying to simply throw the subject away, I actually have a huge backlog, but I will probably be done with all of those by the end of summer, so relax.

 

 

Joe Buffy sez, "Check it out."

Your name is Joe? Whaaaat teh phuk. YOU HAVE BEEN LYING TO ME ALL THIS TIME. I TRUSTED YOU, YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A HYPOCRITE, A CHEAT, AND A SCOUNDREL.

 

 

For those who are really bothering to keep score, in the replied-to post Snax asked 9 questions and I answered 14 of them.

How is that even possible? Also, we're tied...

[LaurieAG]

They'd probably file a class action lawsuit since that would be unconstitutional under our constitution.

Here they are just trying to get some trivial "Yes" referendum through to post validate their sale of public assets etc.

 

In the past church and state were separated for obvious reasons and the separation of the powers theoretically removed interference of the legal system by the politicians. There needs to be an extra separation of the powers that counters the current ability of trained amoral agents for third parties (lawyers) to interfere with the democratic operation of the political system.

 

In the US the President must be born in the US. In Australia we have a Prime Minister (who has the Governor Generals (Head of State) rubber stamp in her back pocket) and an opposition leader who have both been trained legally and who both were not born in Australia. They have both also started to talk about 'no Australian worker will be disadvantaged under their policies' so socialism is not on their agenda's anymore.

 

Serious consideration must be given to the concept of the reverse separation of the powers for democracy to continue to evolve in a way that doesn't just benefit a minority of the population.

[Essay]

There needs to be an extra separation of the powers that counters the current ability of trained amoral agents for third parties (lawyers) to interfere with the democratic operation of the political system.

 

Serious consideration must be given to the concept of the reverse separation of the powers for democracy to continue to evolve in a way that doesn't just benefit a minority of the population.

 

Hey, as Snax suggested, in the way "online" capabilities can (or soon will) allow us to simulate an organism, perhaps simulating our current government could also be done; so the parameters and problems that need changing could be more easily identified and tested.

 

If a simulation was accurate and complete enough...

Simply monitoring many dimensions of the government might provide that "extra separation of powers" by introducing a new evolution in transparency.

 

~?

[LaurieAG]

Hi Essay,

 

If a simulation was accurate and complete enough...

Simply monitoring many dimensions of the government might provide that "extra separation of powers" by introducing a new evolution in transparency.

The same thing could be said about climate change although the politicians might even agree if it turns out to be a better Boondoggle than their own (although admittedly pressure has been successfully applied to change the name from global warming).

 

You can already see how both the German basic law and the Japanese constitution were modified to serve the interests of one side of the cold war just by reading their text/modifications and even the UN is at odds with the Pentagon (but not necessarily the US President) with regards to who has been using chemical weapons in Syria lately so nothing really changes.

[Eclogite]

If you simply choose not to value the principles of a united planet and the principles of liberty and equal policy powers in a government, then I know not how to answer your question.[/b]

You imply that a united planet is superior and preferable to a disunited planet. I understand you to mean by united planet one that has a single government and a single set of policies and laws. By extension I take you to mean that a disunited planet would be one where different governments existed, with different policies and different laws. My post here is predicated upon those understandings. If am mistaken in those understandings please state that clearly.

 

I value the principle of a disunited planet. I am attracted to the positive notion of adapting government style, policies and laws to the context, such context being environmental and cultural in scope. Diversity is a positive thing and diversity is encouraged in a disunited planet. That disunity need not extend to disagreement of how peacefull interactions may be prmoted between governments, socities and cultures. Indeed, agreement on such points pretty well negate the need for the type of governmental unity you propose. A balance between tactical diversity and strategic unity is arguably the best hope for humanity.

 

Or for that matter, care to have you in the type of nation that strives for a peacefully unified planet, as that type of person must not want a peacefully unified planet (which means you are probably a bad person).

Really? So, someone who believes there is an alternative approach to peace, that does not involve unification and the risks associated with that is probably a bad person. I'm not sure I would wish to be part of a system initiated by someone who held such a strongly held view that those with carefully thought out, well intentioned alternatives was branded a pariah.

[cal]

Eclogite, your understanding of what I was saying was mostly correct, so addressing your first point:

 

I value the principle of a disunited planet. I am attracted to the positive notion of adapting government style, policies and laws to the context, such context being environmental and cultural in scope. Diversity is a positive thing and diversity is encouraged in a disunited planet. That disunity need not extend to disagreement of how peacefull interactions may be prmoted between governments, socities and cultures. Indeed, agreement on such points pretty well negate the need for the type of governmental unity you propose. A balance between tactical diversity and strategic unity is arguably the best hope for humanity.

To be honest, I had never given the other side a fair shake, I guess I just intuited unification as a superior thing rather than thinking out how separation via imaginary lines in the ground that lead to land-grabbing, resource hogging, and the millions of ended consciousnesses associated with it could somehow be better.

 

I think you are bringing out a principle here that is in both a unified and non-unified planet, which makes that principle null in relation to which is better. The "provinces" I describe in these posts are the representations of where old governments were. Let's say America switched to an online system like the one I've proposed (murika will probably be one of the last countries to switch, but whatever), that would then mean that the borders of America are just the jurisdictional borders of the province. I guess America is a bad example, they might want to do their provinces by state since America is a rather large land-mass, but you get the point. Very few National Laws will be passed in my proposed system because it will be hard to get everyone from all the different countries of the planet to agree on national laws, but Province Laws and Area-Specific Laws (are-specific laws are like county laws) will be utilized mostly for like... the Province of California? So the differences between people of different countries, different states, different counties, will all still be recognized. Having a unified planet does not hinder diversity as far as I'm concerned, in fact all it really does is make that diversity more efficient in being so.

 

 

Really? So, someone who believes there is an alternative approach to peace, that does not involve unification and the risks associated with that is probably a bad person. I'm not sure I would wish to be part of a system initiated by someone who held such a strongly held view that those with carefully thought out, well intentioned alternatives was branded a pariah.

By the definition of the fundamental underpinnings of Altruism, yes, someone who does not want peace and unification of life is probably a bad person. I say probably, because most people who don't want that usually work against it (leading to war, honor rape, mass-confiscation of property and goods, etc). Also, I haven't seen any of these "alternative approaches to peace" you're talking about. What are they? Because if your alternatives are what you described - separated government & peoples; having these separated peoples duke it out with their militaries like all of recorded history has shown people of different physical governments do - then I have to disagree with you. And yes, you are a bad person because your intentions are not "well" at that point. I would sure hope anyone who has such ill intent on the entirety of the human race be outcast socially, as you are a hindrance to the progress of the human condition.

Edited May 11, 2013 by Snax