Government posts page 3

multiple votes

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allow voters to vote for multiple candidates in each race. Each vote would be counted and added to the tally of each candidate as it is now. Percentages would likely be drawn from the total number of tallies, but could potentially still be considered by percentage of population.

One could then vote for an independant party that closely matches their interests while still being able to put a vote in for the candidate of the major party they would prefer to win, allowing them to not “throw their vote away”. This would give the other parties much greater success, and perhaps eventually give them some power.

seperate issues from candidates

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voters take something like the NPAT test, a test covering all the major issues up for current debate. The results will all be added together to get an NPAT for the entire nation, and seperately for each subdivision of the nation that is having an election. Each item would be shown as a percentage of the population in agreement with that item. These results would be compared to each the NPAT of each candidate from each division, and the candidate statistically closer to the division NPAT would be elected.

Some Advantages:
This would allow (theoretically) the most appropriate candidate to be chosen by each citizen without each citizen having to wade through the mud slung by each candidate at the other.

One would simultaneously be voting for every candidate close to their personal opinion set, while voting against every candidate opposing their opinion set. In such a way, the problem of limited selection from a two party system would be eliminated, as one could vote third party as well as for their major party at the same time, and even for multiple candidates from their party at the same time.

Some problems:
As politicians already can and do lie about their positions on given issues, it would be unreasonable to expect them to stop now. Especially when their vote is much more directly tied to those positions.

There will be no mechanism to punish candidates for failing to follow through on their declarations made in the NPAT, making the above problem very bad. Some system for this would be needed. Perhaps they could be challenged by a large group of citizens if they fail to meet these positions, and have an independant panel of judges decide if they indeed failed. The group size would have to be set large enough that this wouldn’t be happening constantly, particularly by those who voted opposite the officer. Or perhaps an independant body would repeatedly, perhaps monthly, rate the officer based on their performance on each issue, and the officer would be removed from office or a new race would be ran if a certain threshold is passed in difference between performance and original declaration. This body could potentially be a randomly chosen selection of citizenry, or even the entire nation. This would perhaps create problems if major events change the environment the officer is acting in.

Socialisms: Balance Want with Need

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people want/have preferences for certain things
government could be used to attempt to provide these wants
as in communism goods, jobs, and property are owned by all and managed by government, and these are important areas where people have personal preferences, they could be doled out to those who want them
jobs: person educated generally at first, makes choices as education progresses that narrows them closer and closer to a field they are interested in. they may change directions if they don’t like where they are going, and work towards multiple areas of interest. government, through good planning, knows what jobs are generally needed, and decides how many openings there are in a given field. after education, person either takes opening in chosen field, or is put on wait for opening and works in another area of interest until an opening occurs to their liking. supply affected by demand to some degree: government changes number of positions toward fields people want, or provide other incentives in unwanted fields. person tires of job, can take opening or wait for another field.
homes: people have many ideas of ideal home and location to live. government creates homes where people want to live. can only create so many homes in given place. if can’t get desired location, can be put in closest (based on desirable criteria rather than geographical proximity) available accomodations, put on waiting list till home becomes available. various styles of living accomodations will be made in each area based on demand for each type. all homes will still be designed pragmatically, with items such as energy efficiency and usage efficiency being important considerations. all houses upgraded as technology becomes available, considering benifits for the costs involved.
solitary versus group, quiet versus noise filled, rural vs urban

voting methods: active split voting

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this would be most applicable for smaller governing bodies, such as a congress/parlaiment. It takes into consideration the common US voting method for juries of murder trials. The outcome of these votes is considered rather important, so a strict consensus vote is required. All members must vote for or against a guilty verdict. Multiple votes must be taken until all members make the same choice. Members must try to convince others to vote with them, making the voting procedure rather active.

I think a similar strict system should be in place for the more important votes on legislation. The most important decisions, perhaps ammending the constitution, would require the jury method of all or none. Run of the mill decisions that change very little would require a standard >50% majority. Other votes would be somewhere in between, based on how drastic the change would be. Many of the more important decisions might require something like a 75 – 25 percent split; >75% yeah to pass, <25% yeah to fail. If the proper consensus was not met, deliberation would continue for a while, then another vote would be taken, continuing until a yeah or nay consensus was reached. This would ensure a more agreed upon decision, and render a simple majority of seats less powerful.

Lots of ‘deals’ would undoubtedly be made to ensure minority support of majority bills, but this is already a noteable problem. There would need to be strict rules in place to decide which sort of bills deserve which sort of split, to ensure a ruling party would not be as able to simply vote all votes on a 50% split.

At the very least, many more votes should be required to achieve a 60 or 75% consensus. Amendmants should require even greater consensus, due to the extreme power they weild.

commune

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After noticing how much time I spend doing things like cooking and washing dished, I’d somewhat like to live in a commune, a group of people providing members needs efficiently. Everyone would likely live in an efficiently designed apartment like building.

People would be free to leave at anytime, join (back) in any time space is available. They may also move to other communes around the country/world anytime space is available.

In its simplest form, this would merely be a large shared living quarters. Each person would have their own private room for a bed, personal possesions, etc.
-Bathrooms could be in each room or, to be much more efficient, on each floor. They would be much more private than standard public restrooms, with rooms for each facility. Bathing rooms would be seperate from toilet rooms.
-There would be a large restaurant type kitchen servicing the whole place. Food would be purchased as used from the full-sized store of regular goods. Any irregular goods could be specially ordered and made regular if needed. The amounts being ordered would be closely monitored to ensure nothing runs out while nothing spoils.
-Community spaces would be provided for playing sports and table-games, watching tv and movies and playing video games, conversing, and other such liesure activities.
-Many commonly used items would be purchased by the entire community for their benifit. The proper amounts for the demand would be monitored. Tools for automotive work and carpentry would be available, with a garage and workshop. Cards, board games, some sporting equipment, tvs, and furniture would be purchased for the community areas. Some cleaning implements, such as vacuums, mops, and brooms would be available for use.

Cooks, dishwashers, and community area maids may be wanted to be payed for by community members to provide their services and allow others to concentrate more fully on their own lines of work. Cooks would cook to order some meals or take orders in advance to allow for better planning. Or a more 24-hour cafeteria like approach could be used, where choices of meals would be available, plus a set selection of items always there. These personnel would be paid by the system, either not bringing in money from the outside at all, or working short enough hours to still allow an outside job.

In a much more involved commune, in which many more of the needs of the community would be provided ‘in-house’, the less specialised jobs would be shared among a lot of people: cook one meal, dishwash for a bit, work on committee for calculating how much food should be ordered next for a bit. This would ensure no-one is forced into doing undesirable jobs all the time.

This article is incomplete.

Socialism:Charity

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In a free state, it would be ideal if only those who want to and are able pay for helping out those less fortuanate would. Instead of taxes covering social charity type programs, donations will. Donations will be given to government run charities. The government charities will be very similar to free market charities; they will be set up to utilize money to improve a specific problem. People will be able to pick and choose which charities they would like to donate to based on the problems they want to fix, just like with free market charities.

Socialisms-buying government services

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Government based socialism under an efficient and well designed government could dramatically lower poverty levels. However, in a free state, those who do not partake in social benefits should not have to pay for them. If someone wants to live in the woods, never working, providing their needs themselves, they will be recieving no government benifits, and thus should not have to pay anything. If someone wants to use government roads, court systems, and other benefits, they should have to pay for them. If someone wants to recieve assistance in living because of poverty, they should have to ‘pay’ for it as well (not monetarily, obviously, since they have no money). This system will have government controlled programs, but will also leave open a door (often a very wide one) for privately owned programs to be run (for many, but not all, of the programs; for example, handling of roads particularly planning the routes and rules, will be handled only by the government, as the space involved in making road systems is too great, and it would just be very confusing, to have multiple systems). Checks must be instituted to prevent favoring of government programs over private (a big challenge).

I will create several articles based on this idea of buying services from the government.

Socialism:Welfare

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A welfare program that would allow those not recieving the benifits to not need to lose out significantly:
Those who make too little money to support themselves with bare living essentials, or those who just like the simplicity of the program, will be given the option to enter the welfare program. This program will allow them to improve their standards of living to having the bare essentials plus a certain level of extra income. However, this will not be provided by regular monetary compensation. Instead, the folk will be given jobs, jobs at government facilities. The government facilities will produce items the government deems necessary to improve the standard of living of the nation: as an example, medicine production, education, and road construction and maintenance. As these jobs will be provided to them, they will lose some of their freedom that those not partaking will be left with; they will be assigned to jobs where they are needed rather than where they want to or feel comfortable working (as an example, if someone has aspirations of working in restaurants, but the government has no need for restaurant workers, that person will have to work elsewhere, where the government needs them. Also, if someone has skills in steel production and wants to make a healthy living producing steel, but was laid off, and the government can’t use those skills, that person will have to learn new skills. The government will pay attention to peoples skills and wants though, and provide when possible).

Bare essentials will not be provided through monetary compensation, but rather directly. Housing will be provided in efficient government apartment complexes. Food will be provided through meal plans at a government cafeteria. Transportation will be on government busses. Clothing and other near-essentials will be provided from government facilities or purchased from free market facilities, depending on which the government feels will be better (if there are enough people to fill jobs making government clothes, then the facilities will be government run. If there is too little, then some or all clothing will be purchase elsewhere). Healthcare and basic and job specific education will be provided. The workers’ labors will provide for the needs of other workers in the program so that all needs are met by all members, as in a near self-sufficient commune. The facilities will be put into operation with the help of government funds from the social system given by others (government run ‘charities’ will collect money from those who want to help the impoverished). They will then not only provide products to the members of the welfare program, but to the free market, in which they will provide income to the government for continuing the program as well as other areas of social provision.

The folk will also recieve monetary compensation to put them above and beyond the bare essentials. They will recieve a small stipend, if the program can afford it, for their own personal purchases from the free market. They will also, more importantly, have a stipend put into an interest bearing account. This stipend would be there merely for allowing the folk to save up enough money to break out of the welfare system and reenter the free market. If they never leave the system, the money will be used to finance bare essentials for their retirement.

gov inspection and control of business

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Each business will be given by the government a worker who will work in a management like position at the business, paid by the government, but only specifically in regards to ensuring the company complies with legal standards. Every business will be given a number, based on its size, mostly number of employees but also geographical size and industry, balanced to ensure that the gov worker always has work to do but not an overbearing amount. Small businesses too small to need or make economical use of a dedicated gov worker will share with other businesses to give a gov worker a full workload. This will make government headed decisions directly a part of the business, making inspections of certain industries built-in, and adding them to all others. Lawsuits will also be less common, as the gov worker should ensure the business is in compliance with all law including current common law.

In most businesses, the inspector will deal with accounting laws, employee related laws, and other such laws common to all or most businesses. Some businesses, such as hospitality, which have many industry specific laws, will have those watched by the inspector in addition to the basic business issues. Inspections of restaurants to see if they are up to sanitation codes would be eliminated in this system, as the inspector would continuously or frequently be at the restaurant and would have managerial powers to change problem areas. Instead of giving a score that decides whether a restaurant will be shut down or allowed to remain open, they will attempt to fix the problems through a managers capabilities. Only if changes are not able to be made and the inspector finds them unlikely to be able to be made will a shut down be considered.

Careful care must be taken to ensure that the inspector does not become attached to a company in such a way that he/she will bend the law or “look the other way” to benifit the company. The inspector shall
-recieve no pay or benifits, such as free meals, from the company
-hold no stock or other stake in the company
-make no company decisions other than those directly related to legal issues
-have as close to no ramifications as possible for making decisions that would harm the company in the interest of legality

No More Patents

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no more patents. Patents create a temporary monopoly for the inventor of a product. This ensures the ability of the inventor to make money off of the invention if it will sell; a smaller company may be unable to compete with a larger one once the larger one starts selling the product, since it will have more money to make and push the product with, as well as more fronts to push it at. Other companies may even be better able to make, sell, and promote the product with the same amount of money. The inventor, who has taken time to research and develop a product or modification to an existing one, deserves compensation for this important help to society.
However, patents also can slow significantly the spread of a given invention and the knowledge associated with it. This can be devastating to some lines of development. There is up to a 17 year period over which any other manufacturers cannot sell this product: they can develop it but cannot sell it for the entire period, which significantly reduces their possible interest in it and capabilities to do so. Other people must develop the product/mod with no monetary incentive (unless they can surpass the inventor in some way while developing it, which sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t need to be a very significant change) to do so and without the knowledge that the inventor put time and money into.
Patents as they stand in the US right now also stifle the very small inventor, as opposed to helping as is the idea. Some folk come up with ideas independant of a company (meaning by themselves). Many of these folk are not particularly wealthy and don’t know how to obtain the money or other resources necessary to get their product to market. To patent the product they need to come up with a significant amount of money (relative to a normal person’s personal income) just to get the patent checked out and then, if they are lucky, put on the books. This leaves even less money for them to make and market the product. The alternative to self-manufacturing, probably more feasible to an individual, is to have another company make and sell the product and then give money to the inventor. Some companies will take inventions from individuals, deal with the patent office, and then sign a deal with another company that would want to manufacture it. However, this costs at least what the patent office charges, possibly more for the service. The other option is to contact a manufacturing company directly. If the company likes the idea enough, it will likely pay for the patent making. However, the inventor would likely have little leverage and improper knowledge to insure getting a good deal with the company. Also, an individual will have little documentation of his or her having done the work to invent the new invention, as well as no way to protect themselves legally against the company if the idea is stolen; they have little money, especially compared to the company, little knowledge of how to go about the legal procedings, and little evidence that they invented the product and the company didn’t independantly.

possible replacement-something sort of comparable to a copyright licensing set-up. An inventor creates a product. for a small fee, the product’s inventive features can be inventrighted. the fee will be based on the size of the inventor monetarily. these features can then be used on the given product by anyone, regardless of the want of this ability by the inventor. However, the other manufacturers must pay a royalty to the inventor for this use.
The royalty is determined by the ‘patent’ office instead of the inventright holder, as it would be with copyrights. The ‘patent’ office examines the significance of the change to determine a fair value, based on the changes potential effect on society/life relative to other current inventions as well as what companies could be expected to be able to afford if they were to implement these changes. This charge would be as a percentage of the companies income from the product. The fee would be scaled based on the size of the licensee company making the product, so that a small company could make the product with a much lower fee than a large one; as that company grows, however, so does the fee.
The inventright would last only for a certain duration, perhaps,say, 17 years, and the invention/modification would then become free to sell. The fee would probably start at a higher cost and then slowly phase out to nothing over the period, to give the inventor a chance to get into the market with less competition. This would apply only to the selling of a product, not to its manufacture.
In licensing, there would likely be a requirement for the inventor to provide some basic info about the mod/invention to the licensee. This would not be anything that will cost the inventor significant money, probably something like a document based upon internal documents on the process, materials, or any other pertinent info that would be necessary to implement the mod or make the invention as the inventor had. This is to allow quick sharing of the ideas involved so that they can spread rapidly and then be revised and built upon by others.

possiblity 2 (far simpler to implement) – patents allowed only for two year period. This allows inventor to have monopoly on invention for long enough to get fairly strong beginning in market, while still allowing quick dissemination into society. reviews of patents would then be more stringent and require greater modifications to be applicable for another patent if other inventors make insignificant mods to get around monopoly. The mod must have a significant impact on functionality of the product. this functionality means that of the features that are the essence of the product ( ie effect what it was designed for, its purpose) as opposed to parts that are insignificant in the use of the product.
There would be allowed, in that two year period, a licensing out of the manufacturing of the product, as a percentage of net income from that product, chosen by the inventor ( not to be greater than 100%). As in above, the inventor probably would have to provide info to competitors on how to produce the new product/ mods, in this case to anybody who requests it. They can charge a fee for the info however, which must be reasonable for the amount of info provided.

[added 4/12/6]possibility 3: government incentives replace monopolistic incentives. grants could be given for succesful creation of inventions or/and for research toward their creation. the patent office or body put in charge of this would award incentives based upon the significance of a possible improvement over the current technology as it affects humanity or the world. Incentives would likely need to be given out incrimentaly based on their actual affects, to insure the company actually markets the item. Products more well marketed (sold more) would recieve more money, as these would have a greater affect on more people.