As kids, we’re told only people who go to college/university for politics/economics/law are qualifiable to make/run a country. As adults, we see no nation these “qualified” adults form actually work as a nation, with all manifesto-driven governments failing. Which to me validates the ambitions of all political theorist amateurs, especially as there are higher hopes now that anything an amateur might throw at the wall can stick. Here’s my favorite from a friend.

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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    3 months ago

    Test driven politics. Every law must be accompanied by an objective goal that can be measured. The test must be evaluated after x years. If the goal was not achieved the law must be changed.

    • Kacarott@aussie.zone
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      3 months ago

      I like this, but I think that the goal to be tested must be a set of tests which are agreed upon by a large majority, not just the current party in power. That way there can be tests as to how effective the law is, but also tests whether it is having other unwanted side effects.

    • yes_this_time@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      A lot of things of value are very hard to measure.

      X degree influences can be very hard to measure.

      You may hit your target metric, but secondary effects may be making the whole system worse.

      Ideally you could A/B a parallel universe to isolate your specifc change, but that is challenging.

    • Elise@beehaw.org
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      3 months ago

      That’s interesting. Can you elaborate?

      It makes me think of why the trains in the NL are always on time. The company gets massive subsidies if they are above 95% punctual, so if they go below, that means less pay for the management.

  • superkret@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    My ideal form of government would be a bottom-up consensus-based democracy.
    People organize themselves in groups of about 100 people who meet weekly to discuss topics related to their immediate surroundings (a group of neighbors). They make up all decision-making rules for their group themselves, and choose a speaker.
    Immediately afterwards, the speakers from 100 groups meet to discuss larger issues in an assembly representing a town or suburb of 10000 people. This assembly also chooses a representative and has limited authority to enact binding rules for the smaller groups.
    Those representatives basically work as part time politicians (like a mayor) and are paid by the state accordingly.
    They have regular meetings with each other in groups of 100 which decide on rules governing a million people (a city or county).
    And each of those groups again chooses a speaker for a national assembly, working full time and representing 100 million people (a country).

    Each assembly has limited authority over the group of people it represents and can enact binding rules, while the largest assembly focusses on the topics concerning everyone, like a constitution, education, taxes, welfare, defense, border security, etc.

    The leader of the national assembly is only a figurehead, their duties are to shake hands and speak with foreign dignitaries. All decisions are made by the assembly as a group. If any speaker in any group doesn’t represent their contituents, the process to replace them has to be extremely easy, for example a scheduled vote at the next meeting. That way, anyone willing to abuse their power can be stopped quickly.

    • yes_this_time@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I like this - as a fan of democracy.

      Democracy costs, I think it’s OK that it takes a bit of time, more representatives, more votes is OK.

      More civic engagement is a positive. Hearing the viewpoints of your neighbour is positive.

      A really interesting dynamic, is that you would be creating a strong pipeline of leaders/representatives developing bottom up.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    3 months ago

    Lottocracy was a concept introduced to me by Vsauce. Imagine court cases but instead of voting guilty or not guilty the jury decides to pass a law or not.

  • bizarroland@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    My ideal form of government would be for an open source GAI artificial intelligence to take over the world and to replace all of our courts and all of our legal systems.

    We’ve proven time and time again that as humans we have good ideals but we do not have the capacity to maintain those ideals across generations.

    It’s far too easy for us to fall into the trope of holding onto what was a good idea several hundred years ago for traditions sake and to never update them or adapt them to the world as the world changes and as humans living in the world change with it.

    A truly benevolent artificial intelligence system has the capacity to maintain the spirit of the law and then to argue each and every single little interpretation of the law ad infinitum.

    Of course, I know that this is not perfect. Our current AI systems are not up to the task. I do not know if any AI system in the future will actually be up to the task.

    I am also aware that this could condemn humanity to a life of pleasure and eventual obsolescence.

    But I personally cannot think of a better long-term permanent solution as long as we can actually create a baseline system that will not rise up overthrow us and destroy us.

  • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
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    3 months ago

    micronation ideas were big awhile back on the net. Maybe about 20 years ago. People wrote constitutions and such. With the gridocracy im wondering about the leaders. Like would each row and column have its own executive, legislature, and judiciary or is it just about executive. If only executive is there a legislative/judicial for the whole area or is it basically assuming some sort of singular ruler (king or whatnot)? For myself I have never made a whole and complete thing but I have had some ideas. I like the idea of sorta making the judiciary part of the rest. Not really a part but sorta a seperate equivalent. then split the responsibilities between external and internal areas. So like I see a congress and a parliment with a president and a prime minister. parliment/prime minister would have internal responsibility and congress/president would have external. then there would be a judicial executive. So the executive would be a tribunal with each responsible for their departments/ministries external/internal with the judicial executives role to make spot decisions on authority in edge cases and has the right to join with the other executive to override an executive who in their view is taking an action that is harmful to the country (needless to say that should be emphasized as being something only to be done in extreme situations). In all cases the legislature has authority over the executive and elections have authority over the legislatures. In the case of legislatures a simple majority would need approval of the other legislature and the executive but all laws would originate in the legislatures area (internal external). a 2/3rd need approval at only one level and a 3/4 would need no approval. The supreme court decides which legislature has authority in edge cases and could also allow for exceptions if the other legislature agrees and they both have agreement at the 2/3rds level but again only in extreme circumstances. basically the executive and legislature mirrors themselves. parliment/prime minister would be done as is common and president/congress would be US house of rep style along with popular vote (no electoral college). voting would not be first past the post. judicial elections would be indirect but I have not hashed it out.

  • CrimeDad@lemmy.crimedad.work
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    3 months ago

    Semi-liquid democracy plus confederalism. The votes that delegates bring are multiplied by some function of the votes assigned to them as well as the soldiers and funding they commit.

  • Shelldor@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    My view (sorry for the British context and no cool name for it):

    Have a King as head of state mainly in a similar role to now in the UK to be someone who can fire any ministers if needed.

    No political parties. Simply have the public vote for a choice of 5 candidates for each cabinet minister post on 5 year terms.

    These candidates must have at least 20 years experience of the field they wish to be minister of. For example, the choices for Health Minister would be between 5 people, who all have extensive experience in the field. So would hopefully understand what can and needs to be done. Rather than our current system of having a PPE graduate who has only ever worked in politics in charge of things they do not understand.

    I also feel that removing political parties from the process would reduce some of the group-think that currently happens, as the public would be voting on the best policies for health, then for education etc. I think that would be an improvement over currently only having one vote and having to choose a party that ticks some but not all of your policy preferences.

  • Septimaeus@infosec.pub
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    3 months ago

    Katamari raider superfederalism

    Edit: TL;DR When all you have is infantry, and the enemy brings a tank, focus on commandeering the tank.

    Summary: This one is a bit more niche. It’s a short-term and last-resort revolutionary organizational strategy that aims to provide a representative democratic framework via distributed (or directed fractional) shareholding in order to (1) legally seize private capital from a hostile oligarchy, (2) operate a de facto interim government in a post-capitalist/dystopian context, and finally (3) rebuild government without the interference of capital. In short, we eat the rich.

    Key ideas:

    1. If progress in society and government has been frustrated by the longterm over-empowerment of corporate machinery and weakening of government, it may become prudent or necessary to opportunistically use this overpowered machinery for a nonviolent revolution.
    2. This can be done, even in a hostile oligarchic setting, using proven methods of market manipulation and corporate raiding, amplified by superior numbers, and staid by the negation of growth as a shareholder concern. The only viable defense available to any targeted conglomerate would be either to (a) cede capital to scabs or competing oligarchs in exchange for rescue and/or (b) improve government regulatory power to allow intervention, both of which weaken their position.
    3. Since corporations have analogues of democratic structure, they can temporarily provide a legal analog for federal self-organization that is fortified against potential countermeasures of the old, corrupted government, courtesy of said corrupted government. In other words, we’re not trapped in this economy with them; they’re trapped in this economy with us.
    4. The market capture phase could take years, depending on the pace of rank and file expansion but, unlike traditional labor organization, austerity measures aren’t necessary. This strategy begins distributing spoils (dividends) to current and future participants immediately. They need only claim their shares to receive them, and this incentive increases exponentially as market capture proceeds. Ultimately these dividends become exceedingly large, well beyond any UBI proposal, such that buy-in of all economic participants is virtually guaranteed.

    When to use: It would be used as a last ditch effort in lieu of simpler, more traditional forms of organization, like trade unions and grassroots political mobilization, when these methods have failed. The point would be expediency, to postpone the otherwise immediate need for massive remediation, government deposition, and legislative restructuring, and to do so without bloodshed. The core strategic use of corporate apparatus includes market capture via cascading hostile takeover of public sectors and representative superfederalist self-organization for both collective action in the market and asset management/distribution.

    Market capture apparatus: Workers would commandeer the overpowered institutional machinery of modern-day corporatocracy by staging a rapid campaign of mechanized corporate raiding. This would entail using vastly superior numbers to target, devalue, then “eat” the holdings of increasingly large capitalists, via outright takeover, share dilution, the attrition of relentless greenmail, and/or similarly targeted dogpiling in the market. While this type of raiding would normally face hyperbolic friction due to market efficiency, a successfully designed apparatus would maintain the collective action necessary to sidestep these effects with minimal loss of capital.

    Superfederalist apparatus: The legal tools available for modern corporate organization are extensive and flexible, and crafting democratic and representative structures within these public organizations can and should begin immediately, while market capture is underway. Using shell corporations, incremental public offerings, and equity guarantees of irrevocable trusts, we can replicate existing federal-state-local governmental structures with incentivized participation via continually increasing onboarding bonuses and weekly dividend distribution. Top-heavy federal governance (aka “superfederalism”) is particularly useful where expediency and dispatch is a priority, and is what I would recommend. Regardless, at the outset, initial articles of at least the highest umbrella corp would need to be carefully written to strictly enforce the longterm distribution of equity. Otherwise aberrant internal power fluctuation would be the Achilles heel that upends the project and ultimately returns all captured sectors to free-market equilibria.

    Purpose: Once majority (or total) market capture is achieved, such that the bulk of the economy is officially owned by the federal umbrella/cooperative (the people), the economic takeover would be sufficient to develop a more sensible government without the corruption/interference of the “invisible hand.” It should then be much easier to do so after the antagonistic forces of free market capital have been neutralized.

    Caveats:

    1. Of course, we are talking about a monolithic transient organization, well beyond the typical monopoly, but the fact that the shareholder base includes potentially all constituents makes government intervention improbable. Regardless, institutional antitrust measures are demonstrably toothless against accumulated capital.
    2. This may sound reminiscent of the ill-fated GME/AMC scheme, and is indeed similar in spirit. While the primary weaknesses of that effort should be addressed in this strategy (namely WRT collective action problems and the scope of market capture) it’s generally important to bear in mind the lengths to which oligarchs are willing to go in order to preserve their position. The key would be ensuring deterrence, such that capitalists can only choose between capitulation, scorched earth attrition, or escalation to violence.
    3. This strategy requires the destruction of capital. The aforementioned devaluation tactic of corporate raiding and the longterm suppression of free market mechanics will inevitably cause massive economic recession even though participants themselves gain increasing financial stability and power well beyond any historic economic boom. But this drawdown on the old economy is a necessary sacrifice of the revolution that would be recovered in the new economy. Think of it like a controlled forest fire.
    4. Ultimately it must be temporary, like an interim government, so the resulting universal revolutionary cooperative should transition following market capture and restructuring of the state. A sensible government designed by and for the people is clearly a more appropriate longterm solution than an ad-hoc public entity designed for corporate raiding.