My possibly awful ideas for politics and governments.

[Incendia]

Okay...

Ideas maybe:

1. People with an IQ below 110 shouldn't be allowed to be in politics...I know there are smart people with IQs lower than that but IQ does seem to correlate with intelligence...we don't want idiots in power do we? Power to the people...Are you insane? Last time I checked most of the people don't know anything about politics apart from the obvious.

New 1. Stop war. Every country should get rid of it's army. They crazy amounts of money on it. [No point discussing this. It will never happen.]

 

2. Government should have several 'bank accounts' to store money in for later. They tell us to save up money for when we need it...they should take their own advice. Of-coarse these would be special bank accounts separate to mainstream ones...protected by military and such.

 

3. Government owned supermarkets. Profits go to government in order to pay for stuff like lowering taxes. Government becomes an ISP. Government basically becomes a huge multi-product selling corporation. Well it owns one anyway.

Yes it would have competition from other companies. And yes there would still be a tax.

4. A thing that allows people to donate money to the government in order to help pay for things. Donations should be able to be made online and anonymously.

 

5. Universal Education tax. Tax the people to pay for education in all forms not just primary and secondary school but university and college. That way students won't have to pay thousands for education as they will slowly pay it all back over the coarse of their lives. All schools should be able to choose how much money they receive through this tax and should be able to have a price the student has to pay themselves anyway if they wish.

[simplified Example: School A chooses to receive £4200 for every student they take in, and does not charge students money for being educated there. School B however wants to only take on £700 per student they receive and the student must pay a £3200 price for being educated there because its headmaster liked the old days when students paid their own education fees.]

There would be a limit on how much schools can charge.

 

 

@Lemur: This wouldn't require any interest. Also loans = you now have debt. This way you don't have debt. [unless you decide to go to a school that wants to charge you something.] As this tax would ideally be the same for everyone it would provide people with more incentives to keep this system working at its best.

If your going to pay the tax anyway you may as well actually go to university.

Also this tax would help poorer people to go to university. Etc.

It is better than raising fees to £9000.

 

6. No more real monetary system. Replace with 'virtual' monetary system. To eliminate this whole thing of currency increasing and decreasing in value and to eliminate inflation and deflation. It causes too many problems. I don't see why we attach value to a thing that is now usually stored as a line of code inside a computer. I'm not saying eliminate coins and money. Just that we shouldn't place a value on it. In other words: You work. You gain this thing called money. The money entitles you to objects like food. Basically like ration coupons. More money = more food. Just like more ration coupons = more food. Except instead of food it is all objects that we can buy.

 

 

To clarify: I mean destroy all value of money. That way you can't have a value of money that goes up and down. The economy can then actually grow. Have units of money instead.

1 monies = 1 pence

100 monies = 1 pound

1000 monies = 1 Dollar

10000 monies = 1 Yen

100000 monies = 1 Zen

Etc.

By the way...these are just random names for units of money. I'm not actually suggesting these be the units of money.

By the way. In my current understanding of the economy we have an anti-economy. An economy that kills itself slowly.

We need more money right? ...but if we print more the money is worth less and so ultimately we have gained no spendable money. We have in basically limited the amount on money that is allowed to exist. In order to fix our problems we would have to either eliminate the value placed on money or somehow raise the amount of money that our global economy allows to exist. We need more and more money as we progress because progress costs money...but we have unfortunately already hit the cap.

 

@Lemur: I'm not going to try and convince them to lower prices...That isn't my suggestion. My suggestion is to remove the value of currency completely. Basically the current system does no allow the creation of money. Only redistribution. Trying to create some leads to your money to lose value. This means though you have money your money is worth less so your net gain of money is 0. The raise prices because how much the food is worth doesn't change but how much the money is worth does.

This is good in the fact that it stops governments simply printing money whenever they need it effectively giving them infinite money and rendering a monetary system quite useless.

...but there is a problem. Now that money cannot be created there is limited supply...but we need more. Hence debts. If one country pays of all it's debt it has to take money from another to get do so. They don't even have to ask. The money is transferred through good trading. The money just keeps going round and round in a circle around the countries. No new money is made.

However if money was valueless then you could create more. Which we need because progress costs money. It's like in games where the newer technology progressively costs more and more but having it makes it easier for you to acquire some.

 

7. Global electrical grid. In places where two cities neighbour each other and are very close by their power grids are separate yet it wouldn't be hard to link them. With a linked power grid we could spread electricity more evenly. In Europe and stuff we are worried about overloading the grid. In developing countries however they do not have enough power plants to feed demand. We should have special building near the borders of countries. These building would have a power supply from both countries that it is on/near the border of. These building would be able to either send the electricity back into the country it came from or connect the two grids when the event happens that power is necessary in one country and there is too much in the other. We have the technology. ...Why is this in politics? Well agreements would have to be made between the two countries in order to make this work.

Edited December 13, 2010 by ProcuratorIncendia

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

2. Government should have several 'bank accounts' to store money in for later. They tell us to save up money for when we need it...they should take their own advice. Of-coarse these would be special bank accounts separate to mainstream ones...protected by military and such.

This would require governments to vastly reduce their spending. They already have bank accounts, though. How do you propose the military protect a bank account? Stand guard over the debit card?

 

3. Government owned supermarkets. Profits go to government in order to pay for stuff like lowering taxes. Government becomes an ISP. Government basically becomes a huge multi-product selling corporation. Well it owns one anyway.

This would raise prices. The government, without competition, would have no incentives to operate the supermarkets efficiently and cheaply. Food costs would rise.

 

This is why we have sales taxes instead.

 

6. No more real monetary system. Replace with 'virtual' monetary system. To eliminate this whole thing of currency increasing and decreasing in value and to eliminate inflation and deflation. It causes too many problems. I don't see why we attach value to a thing that is now usually stored as a line of code inside a computer. I'm not saying eliminate coins and money. Just that we shouldn't place a value on it. In other words: You work. You gain this thing called money. The money entitles you to objects like food. Basically like ration coupons. More money = more food. Just like more ration coupons = more food. Except instead of food it is all objects that we can buy.

We already have this, since our currency is a fiat currency. It has no intrinsic value.

 

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Fiat_money

[Incendia]

I wouldn't say vastly. Just 2.4% or something like that each year. And they have a bank account for money that should be spent on the country and not people?

Military protection for physical money...you know hat just forget about the military bit for now.

...I didn't say there was no competition against the government stores...I just said they should exist. And tax doesn't generate as much money as owning all the profit made would. They would be subject to the same laws other store would. The only bonuses would be that the are exempt from VAT which would be useless in a store where the profit goes to the government.

 

I mean destroy all value of money. That way you can't have a value of money that goes up and down. The economy can then actually grow. Have units of money instead.

1 monies = 1 pence

100 monies = 1 pound

1000 monies = 1 Dollar

10000 monies = 1 Yen

100000 monies = 1 Zen

Etc.

 

I know nothing about politics...are my all points/suggestions valid?

Edited December 4, 2010 by ProcuratorIncendia

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I wouldn't say vastly. Just 2.4% or something like that each year. And they have a bank account for money that should be spent on the country and not people?

The US government spends trillions of dollars each year by borrowing money, rather than spending out of a bank account. There's no money to put in a bank account -- we're in debt.

 

...I didn't say there was no competition against the government stores...I just said they should exist. And tax doesn't generate as much money as owning all the profit made would. They would be subject to the same laws other store would. The only bonuses would be that the are exempt from VAT which would be useless in a store where the profit goes to the government.

Large stores like Wal-Mart make only a few percent profits on each purchase, but local and state governments make 6-10% sales tax. I'd say they're doing better than the stores.

 

I mean destroy all value of money.

If money has no value, how would you use it to acquire things of value?

[Incendia]

Well that's because of point 6 not happening. We will always be in debt.

 

Are you sure...Last time I checked your total percent = about 15%...where's the rest of the money?

Things have value? I thought that the 'value' of an object was just how much money the owner thinks you should give him before he lets you have it so that he can buy stuff too. [Money is very similar to energy in the fact that it cannot be destroyed or created. (In our current monetary system.) All our money was created before our current economic system. Now if we try to make more our money is worth less so we don't have any net gain. This means prices of things go up but people don't get paid more. In other words our system kills itself whenever we print money. The apparent loss of money is actually it going abroad to another country via trading.]

Edited December 4, 2010 by ProcuratorIncendia

[lemur]

Okay...

Ideas maybe:

1. People with an IQ below 110 shouldn't be allowed to be in politics...I know there are smart people with IQs lower than that but IQ does seem to correlate with intelligence...we don't want idiots in power do we? Power to the people...Are you insane? Last time I checked most of the people don't know anything about politics apart from the obvious.

Representative government often serves the purpose of representing constituents to themselves for them to react to. It's like institutionalized self-reflection. Voters elect stupid politicians so that they can gain intelligence by witnessing how their stupid politicians publically handle their power. It's an evolutionary process of learning by critical self-reflection. E.g. "I want a strong commander-in-chief to take control . . . oh shit, THIS is what happens when a strong commander-in-chief takes control . . . revise and re-submit."

 

2. Government should have several 'bank accounts' to store money in for later. They tell us to save up money for when we need it...they should take their own advice. Of-coarse these would be special bank accounts separate to mainstream ones...protected by military and such.

Government lends money in the form of student loans and other loans that require repayment with interest. This is the same thing as saving with interest. It can also invest in savings bonds issued by other governments. This could be called "foreign aid."

 

3. Government owned supermarkets. Profits go to government in order to pay for stuff like lowering taxes. Government becomes an ISP. Government basically becomes a huge multi-product selling corporation. Well it owns one anyway.

This would be the same thing as raising taxes on supermarkets or isp. If the only reason the government would "own" these things would be to get revenue, they might as well just extract the money they want from them in taxes. If they want to exercise control over how the businesses run, they can just create regulatory strategies. There's no reason for direct ownership when you can exercise control more effectively by keeping the people you want to control as "the owners."

 

4. A thing that allows people to donate money to the government in order to help pay for things. Donations should be able to be made online and anonymously.

Depending on which aspect of government you want to contribute to, you could probably do so anonymously via paypal. I would guess the IRS has a paypal site and you could give money that way. If you wanted to contribute extra money to defense, why not give money to the defense contractor of your choice? Basically, anything you want government to do, you could probably do yourself and claim it as a tax deduction. The only thing you couldn't do would be to give money to other tax payers without it being subject to a gift-tax.

 

6. No more real monetary system. Replace with 'virtual' monetary system. To eliminate this whole thing of currency increasing and decreasing in value and to eliminate inflation and deflation. It causes too many problems. I don't see why we attach value to a thing that is now usually stored as a line of code inside a computer. I'm not saying eliminate coins and money. Just that we shouldn't place a value on it. In other words: You work. You gain this thing called money. The money entitles you to objects like food. Basically like ration coupons. More money = more food. Just like more ration coupons = more food. Except instead of food it is all objects that we can buy.

This is basically already what money does. Inflation and deflation are caused by sellers setting their prices higher or lower than they were previously. Currencies increase and decrease relative to each other because one can be used to buy another. You do it whenever you travel somewhere that businesses are unlikely to accept the currency you have on hand.

 

By the way. In my current understanding of the economy we have an anti-economy. An economy that kills itself slowly.

We need more money right? ...but if we print more the money is worth less and so ultimately we have gained no spendable money. We have in basically limited the amount on money that is allowed to exist. In order to fix our problems we would have to either eliminate the value placed on money or somehow raise the amount of money that our global economy allows to exist. We need more and more money as we progress because progress costs money...but we have unfortunately already hit the cap.

The money supply increases by deflation. The more prices fall, the more money people have relative to the commodities available for sale. When more money is printed, sellers increase prices as much as possible to get as much money for their sales as they can. This results in inflation, which effectively lowers the amount of money per unit consumption. If sellers would lower prices (deflation) instead of holding them constant or increasing them (inflation), the amount of money available per unit consumption would increase. That's rational but now try convincing businesses to lower their prices to stimulate the economy. Good luck!

 

7. Global electrical grid. In places where two cities neighbour each other and are very close by their power grids are separate yet it wouldn't be hard to link them. With a linked power grid we could spread electricity more evenly. In Europe and stuff we are worried about overloading the grid. In developing countries however they do not have enough power plants to feed demand. We should have special building near the borders of countries. These building would have a power supply from both countries that it is on/near the border of. These building would be able to either send the electricity back into the country it came from or connect the two grids when the event happens that power is necessary in one country and there is too much in the other. We have the technology. ...Why is this in politics? Well agreements would have to be made between the two countries in order to make this work.

Wouldn't this encourage energy exploitation? The wealthiest people would get access to the cheapest energy and they would buy more of it, which would drive up the price. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, since it would stimulate poorer people to conserve more - but what's wrong with stimulating wealthier people to conserve more by keeping their prices high?

 

 

 

 

[Pangloss]

1. People with an IQ below 110 shouldn't be allowed to be in politics...I know there are smart people with IQs lower than that but IQ does seem to correlate with intelligence...we don't want idiots in power do we? Power to the people...Are you insane? Last time I checked most of the people don't know anything about politics apart from the obvious.

 

For what it's worth, drawing the line at 110 might decimate the Democratic Party and liberal movement in the United States. They're already outnumbered 2:1, and even if we accept the frequent argument that liberals tend to score a few points higher than conservatives, you haven't put the bar high enough for that to matter.

 

Also, the usual motivation for an intelligence requirement is frustration over people making "stupid" electoral choices. But politics is a very lowest-common-denominator sport. In general the issues are not hard to understand, so even "stupid" people can get them if they want to. And even intelligent people can be mislead by pundits who share their ideology. So the practical upshot of an intelligence requirement is that voters would STILL appear to make "stupid" electoral choices -- the frustration factor would not be eliminated.

[Incendia]

I updated the opening post.

Lemur: What was your argument against 7.? It made no sense. Please revise your post.

Edited December 5, 2010 by ProcuratorIncendia

[Incendia]

bump..._{why has everyone abandoned my thread?}

[Dak]

 

Things have value? I thought that the 'value' of an object was just how much money the owner thinks you should give him before he lets you have it so that he can buy stuff too.

 

No, that's it's cost in pounds (say).

 

It's value is it's worth. If a pint cost £3, and 20 fags costs £6, then the value of 20 fags is two pints, or £6, or half a pint and £4.50. it's cost in pounds is £6

 

[Money is very similar to energy in the fact that it cannot be destroyed or created. (In our current monetary system.) All our money was created before our current economic system.

 

Nooo... money can be, and is, created

 

 

Now if we try to make more our money is worth less so we don't have any net gain. This means prices of things go up but people don't get paid more. In other words our system kills itself whenever we print money.

 

Yes. Although people do get payed more.

 

you put £3 in the bank, you've given them a pint (or 10 fags) worth of value. they buy a pint. they create more money, lowering it's value. now a pint is worth 10 fags is worth £6.

 

You withdraw your money. they sell the pint for £6, and give you your £3 back.

 

in money: you give them £3, they give you £3 back.

in value: you give them a pint, they give you half a pint back.

 

you'd have to limit the amount of money they can create, either via regulation or by going non-fiat again (say, using silver coinage who's value == the value of the silver it was made out of).

 

I'm not sure there's no sneaky way of inflating silver-based money that the banks could use to rob us (hedging?).

Edited December 14, 2010 by Dak
epic math failure

[Mr Skeptic]

Lets not confuse value and price. The price of something is a measure of what people are giving or demanding in exchange for an item. Everything has a price, which we frequently measure using money. Money has a price too, which is also usually measured in terms of money (from other countries), but can also be measured in metals or other items.

 

Value is what something is worth. Water has nearly immeasurable value but a very low price. But if water were to become scarce tomorrow, its price would skyrocket to reflect its true value. Trades happen when the value of an item to one person differs from the price of the item -- people buy or sell items accordingly.

 

Now the issue with money is that it has no value but a very high price. Because of the very high price of money, and other attributes such as a consistent price for different pieces of money, we use it to exchange for other goods, which is pretty much the only use for money. However, the government can print more money and then in accordance with the principles of supply and demand the price of the money drops, which we call inflation.

 

While the government cannot print more gold or silver or other metals, the price of these can also change. The price can change due to different mining technology or activity, or can be artificially inflated by someone with enough resources to control a huge chunk of the market. For example, copper and silver used to be nearly as valuable as gold, but due to (sort of) recent advances in mining and chemistry, we were able to use ores instead of plain native metal, and the prices of copper and silver plummeted. Additionally, using a currency based on metals would have other issues, for example if the economy grows faster than the supply of metals then there would be negative inflation which is dangerous to the economy (you can make money by putting some under your mattress). Also, it loses the government's option of implementing a wealth tax (ie, printing money faster than its demand increases), having an emergency way of paying off loans (at the cost of devaluing their currency), and they can't control the supply/price of money. Of course, some might consider these advantages, but governments won't.

[Incendia]

...what's the point in things having values that change?

 

And how would money be created without the prices of things and the amount people are paid going up to compensate?