Icecreamcon3

Bump

Okay, I think the main reason I haven't been agreeing with you is because I've been thinking more about destruction from within, corruption, mismanagement, economic collapse, Ect. That is also why I put so much emphasis on rights. I have yet to really entertain the thought of destruction from outside, I think mainly because I'm an American and, at least for as long as I've been alive, we've been the "world police". We haven't really had anyone wage war on our ground (besides 9-11), nor have we had a mandatory draft.

I have a dream. That one day Mankind will grow out of its infancy and peacefully expand to the stars. In order to ease our transition from a type 1 to a type 2 Kardashev civilization I believe we need a society and form of government more up to task. As Carl Sagan once wrote "Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works." I would like to take ideas from many nations but also explore organizational models such as sociocracy that the world has yet to really hear of, but that may have great potential.To be clear I am not trying to design a perfect government... just a better one. So who would be willing to help? My goal is to design a better educated, more free, more involved, and more fair and just democratic society using the tools of sociology, psychology, political science, behavioral biology, philosophy, economics, and the knowledge of the past ten thousand years of human civilization. Some of the specific goals I have for this design are: The ABSOLUTE separation of church and state. Assuring that those in power are kept from too much concentrated power, to prevent feedback loops. An egalitarian political system where, all things being equal, the poorest person in the country has the same chance at a government position as the richest. Creating an academic system where intellectual progress can thrive disproportionately more-so than other countries. A better system for transmitting knowledge and expertise to the next generation. The most government transparency feasibly possible. A system that can move along a spectrum between a socialist economy and a capitalist economy based on the contemporary needs of the society. And if at all possible a system where "green" technologies have an inherent advantage. I think the equivalent of the Bill of Rights should be divided into two parts, First degree rights (bare essential human rights; unchanging), and Second degree rights, which would be things that are not necessary to having a healthy society but they would be beneficial. (Things like a right to all scientific knowledge). First degree: 1. Everyone is free and we should all be treated in the same way. 2. Everyone is equal despite differences in skin color, sex, religion, language for example. 3. Everyone has the right to life and to live in freedom and safety. 4. No one has the right to treat you as a slave nor should you make anyone your slave. 5. No one has the right to hurt you or to torture you. 6. Everyone has the right to be treated equally by the law. 7. The law is the same for everyone, it should be applied in the same way to all. 8. Everyone has the right to ask for legal help when their rights are not respected. 9. No one has the right to imprison you unjustly or expel you from your own country. 10. Everyone has the right to a fair and public trial. 11. Everyone should be considered innocent until guilt is proved. 12. Every one has the right to ask for help if someone tries to harm you, but no-one can enter your home, open your letters or bother you or your family without a good reason. 13. Everyone has the right to travel as they wish. 14. Everyone has the right to go to another country and ask for protection if they are being persecuted or are in danger of being persecuted. 15. Everyone has the right to belong to a country. No one has the right to prevent you from belonging to another country if you wish to. 16. Everyone has the right to marry and have a family. 17. Everyone has the right to own property and possessions. 18. Everyone has the right to practice and observe all aspects of their own religion and change their religion if they want to. 19. Everyone has the right to say what they think and to give and receive information. 20. Everyone has the right to take part in meetings and to join associations in a peaceful way. 21. Everyone has the right to help choose and take part in the government of their country. 22. Everyone has the right to social security and to opportunities to develop their skills. 23. Everyone has the right to work for a fair wage in a safe environment and to join a trade union. 24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure. 25. Everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living and medical help if they are ill. 26. Everyone has the right to get an education. 27. Everyone has the right to share in their community's cultural life. 28. Everyone must respect the 'social order' that is necessary for all these rights to be available. 29. Everyone must respect the rights of others, the community and public property. 30. No one has the right to take away any of the rights in this declaration. 31. Any government official or group of officials who attempt to take away these rights without the full consent of the people are subject to immediate impeachment. (This is just a simplified version of the rights the actual rights are listed here: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/) Second degree: 1.The right to knowledge of all government activities (as much as feasible) 2.The right to be free of involuntary military service 3.The right to all scientific knowledge (verified within reasonable certainty) (Others will more than likely added be added.) The rest of the constitution will be written later, as it requires the system be basically finished so that it is know what responsibilities go to whom.

I'm not going to be able to post on this as frequently because summer vacation has ended for me but hopefully that means I will be able to learn more.

I'm all for efficiency, but why is it divided in the first place? What advantaged does being divided give?

All it means is NO DRAFTS. I bolded "volunteer" to connect the dots with your words "willing" from the post I was replying to. Do you realise that right now this is how the military is... And you think it would be fairer to have a draft where your picked at random to fight in some goddamn war while others who haven't been drafted "have the luxury not to take part"? Please explain your logic, how is any more fair to be picked at random rather than volunteering?? I'm impressed with how many times you can miss the point! Good job! Do you even know what DIRECT democracy is?? You would think the name would give it away, but apparently not... The reason it would be limited in the first place is because you can't have the majority taking away the rights of minorities AKA mob rule, that's why it should be limited to a fixed set of things. We decide what those limited powers are ... the ones designing the system, and there can be a mechanism to add or remove powers but only if the people consent. Obviously (Well evidently not for some..)

I'm for the ABSOLUTE separation of church and state, but I just think they should pay their fare share to the society that fosters them. As for what I think we need to do with education I'll quote myself from another thread:

I think he's referring to when I said I cannot edit the OP.

Like paying taxes gets you seats in government...

All it means is no drafts, you know like Vietnam... you are still perfectly permitted to volunteer! A limited direct democracy... key word there. Direct democracy would be used on a few permanently assigned, fixed set of political economic issues of central importance, while the current representative democracy would cover the rest(or preferable we would design an alternative system.) Yes that's exactly what I meant but I seem to be unable to edit my original post... and on that tangent I would like to correct myself, the list in the original post is not supposed to be the whole constitution merely the bill of rights.

Yeah I do think we need to start talking about it in terms of designing something new but you cannot advance the current state of things without taking the very best that we currently have and going a little bit further. and if it were up to me religious institutions would have to pay 100% taxes ... I mean Their god can finance them, right? Well then I guess we will have to put a lot of effort into designing the most transparent design feasible . At least with its own citizens, we would wan't to have anything like what the NSA's been doing now would we... That was implied, but maybe I made these to vague.. Wouldn't any new technology to be patented be engineering information... I mean technology is intimately connected with science but it isn't science itself, it's taking scientific knowledge and applying it. Not to say I completely agree with the idea of "intellectual property" either. I agree this one is just too subjective and I'll remove it.

We basically need to copy Finland's education system AKA better qualified teachers, the teachers are trusted to be autonomous, longer recesses (There is a reason children evolved the desire to play...), a more balanced curriculum , and NO standardized tests! Although a few things I would add: Children should move through grades not based off age but ability. science classes should be split into 50% lectures and discussion and 50% experimentation and not "preplanned" experiments, but things more like "Hey look at this phenomena how do you think this is caused?" and then the children would design and test an experiment to figure it out (and they would be taught how to interpret data and to peer review each others conclusions, ect.) and thirdly foreign languages would be taught from an early age, maybe a choice of the 5 most common languages on earth so the parents won't feel as if they're having someone else's culture pushed onto them.

. Perhaps you're right, but the reason I listed things such as the right to mass communications technology is that if your government is outlawing them, like how the middle eastern countries are outlawing certain websites, it's definitely not a good sign, and at least then you will be able to hold them accountable saying "Hey, these are our rights you can't take them away!". Well that's the reason democracy is based on the opinions of other people too, although yeah I have seen the statistics on how many people think evolution is true... it's kind of depressing. I think the use of direct democracy should be limited, of course, and only used on things that a Representative democracy just can't handle, such as where tax money should go. that way money is kept out of the hands of the individual and is directed by the people themselves, which are a tad bit harder to corrupt. Are you seriously asking why we should have a well educated electorate in a democracy...?

The problem I have with what you're arguing is that you're arguing against a system that already exists not any of the newly proposed amendments.... And although the problem does exist, yes, but It's not system destructive and as I've stated I'm not trying to design this perfect utopia free of all crime, I am just trying to design a better system taking the best of the governments and sciences of today and taking those ideas and extending them for tomorrow. Not to say we shouldn't at least try to diminish these kind of problems as much as we can.

I concur in a lot of ways, such as how medicine should be no where near a for profit system, but I personally don't think the free market is the way to go, for one it can cause ridiculous socio-economic stratification and monopoly such as what we see in America today, and it is designed to drive society by greed rather than mutual cooperation for the greater good of the society. And although I must admit it is very good at distributing goods and services, it seems intuitively immoral. I must repeat myself, this is just my personal opinion. and if more people would wish to join me on this project to design a better form of government and we democratically, scientifically and logically decided that the free market economy is the best out of all possible systems that we could think of, of course I would have to put aside my opinions and biases and agree. I would rather have a system that would allow for the system itself to change as the society's needs change, maybe by having citizens vote on the amount of federal taxes that the they pay, so paying 0% taxes would be a more unprotected capitalist anarchy while 100% would be very socialistic/communistic society, thus able to dynamically and quickly respond to the economic problems therefore making it more fit for the rapid change of the coming century. And of course it wouldn't be that simple but that's just the general idea. And I'm pretty confident that we could peacefully try out a new government similarly to the Quakers and other types of unique societies in an attempt at a quasi-utopian system of organizing our species. I haven't slept last night so I apologize for any fuzzy thinking that may be in this thread or my reply I will edit it when I'm more "sober".