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A new political system
Some Ideas on a better political system.

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A new political system
vzzbux
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Posted 03/31/07 - 06:07 PM:
Subject: A new political system 		quote post
#1
I think that we need a new political system developed. We need to develop a new system that will respect the people's will but takes out the corruption. We need to find away from separating Corporations from Government or else government becomes another corporation. We also need a stable system that would function in the Middle East. Another system that focuses on keeping peace would be nice. And if we could get a wayto solve the energy crisis that might be nice.

I'm looking for some new governments. Any Ideas?

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benzie5033
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Posted 04/01/07 - 12:14 AM:
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#2
Your looking for something that is unrealistic if you were to ask me. The human condition is going to lead to corruption anywhere you look. Government almost has to become a corporation through the money that passes through it and how it pays terribly, so private industry has to become involved somehow. The Middle East will never have peace to the degree most are looking for because you are dealing with so much religious history there, people have been dying for those beliefs since the time of Anchient Rome. I am not going to touch the energy problem because I think the United States have made some strides in becoming more efficient energy users, even with the long way to go. So unless you can find a utopia where there would be no money, religion, or human condition, I think your idea could become very dead, unless you have some sort of solution, which I am all ears for.

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unrealist42
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Posted 04/01/07 - 12:14 PM:
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#3
You cannot separate the wholesale corruption of third world nations from the commercial interests of the first world.

The lack of hope that things will get better is the single biggest reason for strife in the developing world. If people in the middle east could look anywhere else but religion for hope, they would, but all other paths have been blocked off by repressive regimes with unilatral western support.

If you feel distressed that the only populism in the Middle East is Jihad then you only have your own government to blame. All the moderates, all the liberals, all the freethinkers, all the moderate Imams, all the people with objections to kleptocratic authoritarian government have been killed or driven off with western support. All that is left is a form of Islam that is fanatic and uncompromising.

It is blowback of the worst sort. The stupidity of the west has reawakened a djinn that had run its course hundreds of years ago and will be very difficult to put back in the bottle this time.







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Posted 04/02/07 - 04:43 PM:
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#4
Communism. It's idealist, unrealistic, impossible, but perfect nonetheless. Ideal Communism would solve all world problems you spoke of in the original post. (Except maybe the energy crisis, we can blame the Industrial Revolution for that and look towards science, wars and plagues to solve the population explosion and resulting energy/waste crisis.) Keep in mind I clearly said IDEAL communism. No one can argue against ideal communism being the best system. The problem with communism is that if there is ONE person who does not agree with the system then the entire philosophy will not work because that one capitalist will go for power, become corrupt etc etc etc....and look where we are today.

As for ideas about a better government? Hell if I know. I've thought long and hard but simply the number of people on this planet, the number of opinions and the greediness of humanity makes running the world extremely difficult.



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Posted 04/11/07 - 07:20 AM:
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#5
I would advocate a democracy, but with no political parties, so that each candidate may be chosen on his own merit, and not on his parties ideas. More power to very local governments would allow individuals to have a more significant say about what goes on around them, this is likely to encourage more people to take part because they feel that their opinion makes a greater difference. Let there be an easy method for the public to make it's opinions known, with there being laws that it has to be considered by the entire government if it is accompanied by a threshold number of signiatures &c.
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Posted 04/11/07 - 08:42 AM:
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If every decision was taken by vote then we would not have to trust anyone but that's inpractical. So we will always be trusting someone to make decisions for us and therefore some will always be there to abuse our trust.
INstead we protect ourselves with the systems such as the American constitution and the magna carta

Edited by Gypsy Cake on 04/11/07 - 08:47 AM
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Posted 04/21/07 - 06:06 PM:
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#7
Gypsy Cake wrote:
If every decision was taken by vote then we would not have to trust anyone but that's inpractical. So we will always be trusting someone to make decisions for us and therefore some will always be there to abuse our trust.
INstead we protect ourselves with the systems such as the American constitution and the magna carta


And you have to deal with the fact that the majority of people who could vote shouldn't be voting.

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Posted 04/23/07 - 01:23 PM:
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#8
darcito wrote:
No one can argue against ideal communism being the best system.
Not even an anarchist? raised eyebrow

Seriously, there are plenty of people who argue against the very principles of Communism. Rawls' defense of his "difference principle," for example, presents an argument against strict economic egalitarianism. Courtois, on the other hand, argues that Marxist principles inevitably lead to Communist states (in the sense of the USSR and China) and the actions such nations have historically taken against their own people. And, of course, anarchists would simply argue that any government at all is unnecessary/immoral (depending on the type of anarchist you are dealing with).

As to the OP, I think a healthy dose of skepticism and large-scale dedication to real change (i.e. improvement) will lead to a new form of government in the US, whether it is intended to or not. I agree with professoryak about the elimination of political parties, and I might add that election reform would be a substantial step in the proper direction as well. Fix the mechanics of the system and I think you will see it run much more efficiently.

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Posted 04/25/07 - 06:47 AM:
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#9
vzzbux wrote:
We need to find away from separating Corporations from Government or else government becomes another corporation.


The flaw isn't neccessarily in the design of the goverment. No matter it's form, any goverment under ideal circumstances should work. As you've pinpointed the problem with goverments is its ability to be corrupted. If you wanna remove corruption from goverment you need to find the source of corruption, or its motivation. I believe that the motivation is quite easy to find as it is the motivation for most things in the modern capitalistic soceity. Money.

The temptation of personal economic gain must be removed from the politcal leaders of any form of goverment to remove corruption.

I have a suggestion but I worry it borders on infringing on the rights of individuals in political positions. That suggestion would be to not allow anyone in goverment to have investments. No stocks, no ownership of outside buisnesses. If they can't make profit from outside sources they have no motivation to use thier power to profit those investments. Maybe.

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Posted 04/25/07 - 12:00 PM:
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#10
I don't see how it is an infringement of the rights of those in political positions when they have themselves chosen to take on these positions, but I'm not sure that your idea will work. The type of person who would end up taking up such a job would be likely to be very easy to be corrupted by any power they felt themselves to have, money is not the only corrupting force.
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Posted 04/25/07 - 03:06 PM:
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Thats understandable, but I mean it would remove a large amount of motivation for corruption. It might not be infringement for new politcians but for those who are already in those positions, who may not have choosen those conditions.

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Posted 04/26/07 - 02:43 PM:
Subject: political system 		quote post
#12
call me foolish but I believe there is a way to actually make ideal communism work. You just have to create a balance of power between the people, because people will naturally be corrupt and try to take control over almost everything. That is why I believe the perfect system takes Marx ideals and incorporates them into a system that will not fall victim to megalomanias. My idea for creating such a system is a balance of workers and unions. Each factory, business, school, etc has a union overlooking it, each worker gets no wages however access to anything within the society. There are no corporations because this leads to monopolization, each union is responsible for the workers to produce what is needed from them. If people in take advantage of the system in anyways it is in the unions power to discipline this person, however to not give the unions complete control over the society the workers have power to unite against the union if it is being unjust, they bring it to the attention of the other unions and workers that their union is being corrupt there is a vote on it and if the majority feel it is corrupt it is disbanded and the people working for this union can no longer work for any union again they are sent back to school and must learn a different trade. So by balancing the power between unions and workers no person is able to corrupt the system, and by implementing the main ideals of Marx it would create a utopia.

Please feel free to comment on my idea I love discussing politics and if someone does respond to my post I will clarify any questions ot reply to what they have wrote.
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Posted 04/26/07 - 02:57 PM:
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#13
It's been a while since I have read Marx, but I thought that Communism was supposed to be the natural result of Capitalism. If Marx is right, why not just wait?

Your system won't work. The vast majority of the unions, filled with men corrupted by their authority, would support one another in their debauchery.
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Posted 04/26/07 - 03:37 PM:
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#14
Marx stated that throughout history there have always been the ruling class and the people that they oppress (well I am giving a very basic outline here), but communism would not result naturally out of capitalism, he states that with capitalism there will naturally always be the bourgeoisies to oppress the proletariat, but he states the proletariat must rise together against the bourgeoisie in a violent revolution so the ideas of communism can come forth. As stated in the last couple lines of the communist manifesto (forgive me if I butcher it a little because I don't feel like going to my book and looking it up) the workers have nothing to lose but their chains. Workers on the world unite. Therefore it is pretty clear it is just by those two lines that the workers are supposed to be the cause of communism not a natural process through capitalism.

Anyways I have thought about that actually, the unions working together to benefit themselves, and that is one of the major flaws I found. However that is why there must be a balance between the unions and the workers, where if the unions do collaborate with each other then it is the responsibility of the workers to elect new union representatives, and listen to these newly appointed representatives, and the old unions can not do anything about it because the workers have that power. So it is in the best interests of the unions not to become corrupt, and if you are thinking that gives to much power to the workers than take into account it has to be put to a vote between the workers first and than if it is decided upon it must happen (it is not merely a couple workers getting together and saying hey lets get rid of these unions and get new ones, it must be decided upon by all workers).
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Posted 04/26/07 - 05:31 PM:
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Libralesso wrote:
Marx stated that throughout history there have always been the ruling class and the people that they oppress (well I am giving a very basic outline here), but communism would not result naturally out of capitalism, he states that with capitalism there will naturally always be the bourgeoisies to oppress the proletariat, but he states the proletariat must rise together against the bourgeoisie in a violent revolution so the ideas of communism can come forth. As stated in the last couple lines of the communist manifesto (forgive me if I butcher it a little because I don't feel like going to my book and looking it up) the workers have nothing to lose but their chains. Workers on the world unite. Therefore it is pretty clear it is just by those two lines that the workers are supposed to be the cause of communism not a natural process through capitalism.


Yeah, basic Hegelian Dialectics. I think that Marx also stated that the revolution would occur after a drastic fall in the price of wages, but like I said, its been a while.

Libralesso wrote:

Anyways I have thought about that actually, the unions working together to benefit themselves, and that is one of the major flaws I found. However that is why there must be a balance between the unions and the workers, where if the unions do collaborate with each other then it is the responsibility of the workers to elect new union representatives, and listen to these newly appointed representatives, and the old unions can not do anything about it because the workers have that power. So it is in the best interests of the unions not to become corrupt, and if you are thinking that gives to much power to the workers than take into account it has to be put to a vote between the workers first and than if it is decided upon it must happen (it is not merely a couple workers getting together and saying hey lets get rid of these unions and get new ones, it must be decided upon by all workers).


You are thinking about unions as though they were a separate entity from their membership, which they are not. Unions, aside from being a classification used to group certain people together, don't exist, any more than other social constructions exist.

Here is the problem. Under your system, unions need to have strong leaderships in order to carry out their duties. Leadership positions are filled with people. These people, being human, are in a situation where it is in their best interests to benefit from their authority. Therefore, it is also in their best interests to remain in their positions for as long as possible.

There are two ways for them to keep their jobs, do it efficiently and get re-elected, or use their authority to ensure that they will always have their jobs, regardless of whether or not they do a good job. After a certain period of time, the more you do a job, the less effective you become at it as you loose interest.

In short, these representatives will always reach the point, most likely within a short period of time, where they become less effective than their competition, resulting in their replacement during the next elections. Therefore, it will almost always be in their best interests to do away with the elections. Because this applies to every 'union representative' in your system, it's likely that the vast majority of unions will become corrupted.

Being corrupted themselves, they will have no want or will to police the other unions for fear of retaliation. Thus, unless if the workers literally take up arms, the unions will remain corrupted, working in the interests of their leadership over those of their workers. However, by this point, they will likely have taken away from the workers the ability to revolt through some system of force. In short, the workers will be screwed, because they will not have any way to 'elect' their representatives once the union becomes corrupted, and the other unions will not take action because they are likely corrupted themselves. Replace the work Union with Government, and you have a good picture of what is currently going on in the PRC.
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Posted 04/26/07 - 06:43 PM:
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I could say there would be a constitution enforcing that there must always be an election and if the rights of the people are prohibited then (similar to the American constitution) the people have to right to create a militia, (because that whole right to bear arms was in case of a tyrannical president gets into power in the U.S. the people can fight against it) however this creates some conflicts within myself of the right to bear arms which i strongly disagree with. However the best solution to that problem of the corruption would be allowing the right of the people to gather in a militia. Although by simply ingraining in the constitution mandatory elections for the unions would this not solve the problem of the unions eventually trying to eliminate them?
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Posted 04/26/07 - 06:45 PM:
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#17
oh and forgot yes by the way you are right about Marx because the conditions at his time were horrible living standards, however in the communist manifesto it never states that the living conditions have to be horrible, its merely when the rich start to oppress the poor and even today that still hold true i think. Maybe not for us living in North America and Europe but look around the world and I'm sure you already know.
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Posted 04/26/07 - 07:34 PM:
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Libralesso wrote:
I could say there would be a constitution enforcing that there must always be an election and if the rights of the people are prohibited then (similar to the American constitution) the people have to right to create a militia, (because that whole right to bear arms was in case of a tyrannical president gets into power in the U.S. the people can fight against it) however this creates some conflicts within myself of the right to bear arms which i strongly disagree with. However the best solution to that problem of the corruption would be allowing the right of the people to gather in a militia. Although by simply ingraining in the constitution mandatory elections for the unions would this not solve the problem of the unions eventually trying to eliminate them?


No. Rights disappear at the point of a gun.
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Posted 04/26/07 - 08:11 PM:
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The only possible solution would then be anarchy, or accept corruption as an impossibility to eliminate. For sure there is corruption within our systems today, and there has been no government in history that hasb't been self serving. Are you saying there will never be a government that is not self serving? Call me optimistic but I believe through rules and balance there can be a government that has to uphold policies of what is best for the people.
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Posted 04/26/07 - 09:45 PM:
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You're optimistic shaking head

perseus
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Posted 04/27/07 - 04:06 AM:
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It’s difficult to have a non-corrupt government in a society that is inherently corrupt. The maldistribution of wealth in society irrespective of effort leads to immense individual jealousy and greed and disrespect for authority. This leads individuals to throw morality to the wind and get what they can out of the system themselves. However, in principle at least I suggest the following idealistic requirements for a fairer political system, dream on!
  • The state must fund political parties, never individuals or businesses to avoid conflicts of interest
  • The financial funds allocated to parties and the number of news print area, poster room or air time given by the media should be a function of the popular vote
  • Individuals in a position of power must also waver their right to subsequent financial award from businesses in future years and their income stream must be closely monitored to ensure this. Perhaps they should be committed to work within the public sector for life.
  • All those in a position of power must occasionally be tested for corruptibility (for example a fake bribe). Failure in this test renders them unsuitable to hold positions of power or responsibility.
  • Peerages and similar non-financial awards and positions awarded by non-democratic means should be abolished
  • Every vote in a parliament should be free and anonymous, uninfluenced by party interests.
  • The power acquired via the popular vote should be representative of it in some way (so parties of similar beliefs don't neutralise one another and allow a minority to dominate)
  • People without a fixed address should be allowed to vote

Even if all this was achieved a fair system assumes people vote rationally and are uninfluenced by personalities, lies, racism etc. Are people intelligent enough to vote?


Edited by perseus on 04/27/07 - 04:15 AM

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Posted 04/27/07 - 09:24 AM:
Subject: Separation of Business and State 		quote post
#22
Avoiding the question about corruption (which is likely congenital and incurable), I'd like to address the idea of separating corporations from the government. Excepting anarchy or abolishing corporations, it really can't be done (which is neither an advocation of anarchy or abolishing corporations).

That's because our distinction between "public" and "private" is more or less an arbitrary distinction. One that doesn't exist except in our eyes. Government, by definition, must have some power over the market. Even if only to fund itself through taxation tariffs, etc., and it to spend revenue as wages and the purchase of goods and services from the "private" sector. These acts impact profits, prices, competition, supply, demand, labor markets, etc.

So long as government has that power, corporations will be able to turn that power to an advantage. (And let's remember corporations don't have a philosophic or moral dedication to capitalism; they support capitalism out of self-interest.) This naturally encourages rent-seeking. So long as a company can spend one dollar on lobbying (or campaigns or whatever) and receive on dollar and a penny in favorable tax rates, legislation, regulation, etc. it is in their self-interset to do so.

So long as government power can influence the market, that power is a resource--like natural resources, labor, capital--which corporations will compete to exploit.
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Posted 04/27/07 - 09:42 AM:
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I think that anarchy could be a very good solution. All that would be needed is a sufficiently decentralized population and then the people will take care of themselves. It is almost like communism, but I don't think that any government regulation is necessary.

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perseus
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Posted 04/27/07 - 10:00 AM:
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Alekhine wrote:
I think that anarchy could be a very good solution. All that would be needed is a sufficiently decentralized population and then the people will take care of themselves. It is almost like communism, but I don't think that any government regulation is necessary.



Isn't that like the situation in many African countries, or in Europe during the Dark ages? The lack of a stable, non-corruptible central government allows warlords to dominate.

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Posted 04/27/07 - 12:23 PM:
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I would suggest Jonathon Rauch's "The End of Government: Why Washington Doesn't Work"

The problem is cleverly dubbed, demoscleroris.

I think that is what a lot of you are talking about. Rauch doesn't really put forth a clear solution, so much as identifying the nature of the best. But, there are certainly some ways to re-incentivize the system.

Some literature that may be interesting is Thomas Pogge. I saw him speak recently. He has the international system mapped out in terms of negative (not positive) duties/rights.

I think that there are some ways to reincentivize anyway ...
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