Some time ago i posted a thread, what's the perfet way of ruling a country (or something similar) and i have been thinking a bit lately of what should really be the perfect way of ruling a socity, and then one beautiful day it hit me, an “open source community”, isn't that the perfect way? Everyone can see what decisions are made and see the reasoning behind it. Everyone can participate in the decisions, if they want and are interested. First i thought about a much more extreme way of doing this but i realized it shouldn't work due to a lot of good reasons that i don't won't to bore you with.

The structure
In a normal open source project there is maximum a couple of thousand developers, BUT in a country there is millions of people so the biggest problem is to coordinate all this. This system (let's call it openism) will consist of two chambers and an administration.

The first chamber
The first chamber will have about 500 members (vary a lot depending on the size of the country), they will work full time on this and they are elected by the people through general elections. Their main job is to vote, coordinate the second chambers work and prepare proposals together with the second chamber.
None in the first chamber can in any way own stocks or be affiliated with any company or similar, nor can none in this chamber accept ANY kind of sponsor money from ANYONE! All this to avoid that kind of corruption we have today.

The Second chamber
This is where things are getting hotter, it's also here where things are getting more complicated, the second chamber consists of the people of the country/state/smaller community. In a big country it may seem to be a bit messy and hard to handle, and yes it may be, but that's what the first chamber and the administration is for (i will write more on this later). Every citizen will have their own login to this “forum / sourceforge-like / nothing you have ever seen before” site. Now i am pretty sure you are thinking “that would NEVER work”. But I'm pretty sure it would. First of all we have to take into consideration that the 95% of the population just don't give a shit about politics and won't bother to help the community, and this is the big different from direct democracy, here it will only be the people interested and they won't vote (in normal cases). In a country like USA, 5% is a lot of people. This will be solved by a HUGE first chamber, in the US case, maybe about 10 000 persons. That's a small price to pay for real democracy in my opinion.

The assignment of the second chamber is to write and discuss proposals together with the first chamber. This is done by discussing in “small” groups with different topics. After a certain amount of time the group either has to have a common proposal to the first chamber or a maximum of five proposals. The first chamber then vote for which proposal which is the best. If more then 70% of the population is against the result of a first chamber voting, they can lift the decision.

The administration and the chairman
The chairman is the person who gets most votes in the election. His/her task is to appoint the administration and lead the first chamber, he/she has no more voting power then any other person in the first chamber.
The administration consist of “not so many” members, each with responsible for a certain area (fiscal, health care etc). Each of the administration members also have some first chamber members with them (everyone in the first chamber has a administration member as their “chief”).

Of course this is not a complete system and there is a lot of things that isn't solved yet, but i want to know what you think of the idea!

My english isn't perfect and there maybe is some things here that are not cristal clear if you aren't involved in the open source world so please ask about the things you don't

and yes i am serious

congratulations! you have just created an oligarchy, enjoy

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus congratulations! you have just created an oligarchy, enjoy

eehhh, more like unoligarchy (?!?!?!)... explain what you meant and i will explain for you

to my understanding the first chamber conducts the business of this government:

quote:

Originally posted by St_Andrew The first chamber The first chamber will have about 500 members (vary a lot depending on the size of the country), they will work full time on this and they are elected by the people through general elections. Their main job is to vote, coordinate the second chambers work and prepare proposals together with the second chamber. None in the first chamber can in any way own stocks or be affiliated with any company or similar, nor can none in this chamber accept ANY kind of sponsor money from ANYONE! All this to avoid that kind of corruption we have today.

Heres where you get your oligarchy;
If elections are being held, and no contributions can be excepted by anyonw, you are only going to have rich people who can run on their own expense run and hence be elected. What the result is, a bunch of rich people running your country.

The other option here is a political boss type structure, where political parties foot the bill for these elections, but you odn't want a political boss structure either - thats usually either a mobocracy (and I don't mean the people as the mob here either, I mean mob mob) or oligarchy.

What your doing, is basically created an exclusive club for rich people. The second assemly, has restrictions on access... u say 5% will use it, but which 5% ... I garuntee you its not going to be the poor, or uneducated.

quote:

Originally posted by Yoepus Heres where you get your oligarchy; If elections are being held, and no contributions can be excepted by anyonw, you are only going to have rich people who can run on their own expense run and hence be elected. What the result is, a bunch of rich people running your country. The other option here is a political boss type structure, where political parties foot the bill for these elections, but you odn't want a political boss structure either - thats usually either a mobocracy (and I don't mean the people as the mob here either, I mean mob mob) or oligarchy. What your doing, is basically created an exclusive club for rich people. The second assemly, has restrictions on access... u say 5% will use it, but which 5% ... I garuntee you its not going to be the poor, or uneducated.

the idea with the no-sponsor elections is exactly the opposite. Today politcians with rich supporting policys gets all the contributions meanwhile the politicans supporting the poor population gets almost nothing... the idea of democracy should not be to have a lot of tv advertising and rock star like tours, it should be about their policys. and of course you will need some contribuitions to have a election campaign, but that money will come from the government and not from the rich people...

Edit:
The 5% who will use their right to influence decissions can be whoever interested, instead of the rich people and the big companies as it is today. and of course the ones most interested in this is the well educated people but maybe that will change if the more less educated people feel that they actually can change something...

quote:

Originally posted by St_Andrew the idea with the no-sponsor elections is exactly the opposite. Today politcians with rich supporting policys gets all the contributions meanwhile the politicans supporting the poor population gets almost nothing... the idea of democracy should not be to have a lot of tv advertising and rock star like tours, it should be about their policys. and of course you will need some contribuitions to have a election campaign, but that money will come from the government and not from the rich people...

I'm afraid it's a much much more complex situation than that. The problem with campaign finance reform is that on the one hand you equal the playing field for everybody ************ of popularity or stance, but on the other hand you limit the tenents of free speech by not allowing voters to express their financial support for the candidates of their choosing. It is for this reason that the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) opposes the current campaign finance reform bill that is going through congress. It will essentially limit the ACLU's widespread ability to take out ads against candidates who they feel are threats to their agenda (bush being one of them). Therefore, should people be allowed to support candidates that most reflect their desires? It's somewhat of a dicey first amendment issue.

Furthermore, we run into the issue of candidacy legitimacy. If everyone and their mother can attain equal legitimacy compared to serious candidates with respects to their tv time/media coverage, I think that may result in an unfair advantage. If Bush, Dean, and Gary Coleman were running for President should Bush and Dean (supported by millions of people) be provided with the exact same airtime as Coleman (supported by 2 people)? Now multiply the number of candidates in such a scenario by a hundred/thousand and you arrive at the difficult situation of how to determine legitimate candidates in elections. The current system essentially weeds out the illegitimate by allowing candidates to build a substantial bloc of influence among voters. The more popular you are, the more campaign contributions you get, the more air time you get, etc. Even if a plutocrat were to appease big businesses and gain more money/air time over competitors it is implied that their political stance, which appealed to the plutocracy alone, would influence the majority to continue to vote/contribute to the candidates that best reflect their desires.

So at any rate, I don't know. I think some reform over the current system is warranted, however a careful balance must be maintained between free speech and corruption/abuse.

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Retro ...

quote:

Originally posted by occrider I'm afraid it's a much much more complex situation than that. The problem with campaign finance reform is that on the one hand you equal the playing field for everybody ************ of popularity or stance, but on the other hand you limit the tenents of free speech by not allowing voters to express their financial support for the candidates of their choosing. It is for this reason that the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) opposes the current campaign finance reform bill that is going through congress. It will essentially limit the ACLU's widespread ability to take out ads against candidates who they feel are threats to their agenda (bush being one of them). Therefore, should people be allowed to support candidates that most reflect their desires? It's somewhat of a dicey first amendment issue. Furthermore, we run into the issue of candidacy legitimacy. If everyone and their mother can attain equal legitimacy compared to serious candidates with respects to their tv time/media coverage, I think that may result in an unfair advantage. If Bush, Dean, and Gary Coleman were running for President should Bush and Dean (supported by millions of people) be provided with the exact same airtime as Coleman (supported by 2 people)? Now multiply the number of candidates in such a scenario by a hundred/thousand and you arrive at the difficult situation of how to determine legitimate candidates in elections. The current system essentially weeds out the illegitimate by allowing candidates to build a substantial bloc of influence among voters. The more popular you are, the more campaign contributions you get, the more air time you get, etc. Even if a plutocrat were to appease big businesses and gain more money/air time over competitors it is implied that their political stance, which appealed to the plutocracy alone, would influence the majority to continue to vote/contribute to the candidates that best reflect their desires. So at any rate, I don't know. I think some reform over the current system is warranted, however a careful balance must be maintained between free speech and corruption/abuse.

I can't agree with you on that point. I don't see why to forbid election campaign contributions would do any violations on your free speech rights.
The whole idea with the first chamber is that no one has more power then any other in the voting process. The chairman will only have a symbolic role, he will not make any decisions that anyone else can't, he is like everyone else but with the coordinating role. So the big national election campaigns really isn't important. But the small local ones are. The need for money and contributions isn't that big there, and that kind of more local elections will also help the politicians come closer to the citizens.
And every candidate won't get exactly the same amount of tv time that is not the point, the point is that everyone should have the same chance to get on TV (of course here is another problem, media people get way to much power, but that's how it is today too).
I do agree with you that todays system really need to be reformed. This is just an idea of how. I really think that this could be something thought....

quote:

Originally posted by St_Andrew I can't agree with you on that point. I don't see why to forbid election campaign contributions would do any violations on your free speech rights. The whole idea with the first chamber is that no one has more power then any other in the voting process. The chairman will only have a symbolic role, he will not make any decisions that anyone else can't, he is like everyone else but with the coordinating role. So the big national election campaigns really isn't important. But the small local ones are. The need for money and contributions isn't that big there, and that kind of more local elections will also help the politicians come closer to the citizens. And every candidate won't get exactly the same amount of tv time that is not the point, the point is that everyone should have the same chance to get on TV (of course here is another problem, media people get way to much power, but that's how it is today too). I do agree with you that todays system really need to be reformed. This is just an idea of how. I really think that this could be something thought....

So if everybody has an equal opportunity to be on tv, but not an equal amount of tv time, how do you determine how much time a candidate has on tv? Political contributions are a mode of speech as your contribution to a candidate is similar to the publication of your ideas or to hiring a speaker or commissioning an author. The amount of money you contribute as an individual or in cooperation with others should not disqualify you from expressing your ideas. The only proper limits on contributions are those set by your willingness to employ your money for this purpose. If I form a coalition of people against Bush, and we pool our money to take out an ad in the paper, I shouldn't be able to do so?

The purpose of the first amendment is to protect the right of citizens to express their views. The right to utilize your property makes it possible for you to express your ideas through a variety of mediums be it by publishing a book, placing an ad in the paper, giving a lecture, supporting a candidate with whom you agree, or more important criticizing one with whom you disagree. The right to use property in order express your free speech rights is the only protection a private citizen has against a government monopoly on ideas. I'm afraid that I'm in rare agreeance with justice Rehnquist when he said, "It's not up to the government to decide there is too much speech coming from one place and not enough from another."

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quote:

Originally posted by occrider So if everybody has an equal opportunity to be on tv, but not an equal amount of tv time, how do you determine how much time a candidate has on tv?

That decision is made by the tv station, pretty much like today with the exception that money should not have any impact on the station's decision.

quote:

Political contributions are a mode of speech as your contribution to a candidate is similar to the publication of your ideas or to hiring a speaker or commissioning an author. The amount of money you contribute as an individual or in cooperation with others should not disqualify you from expressing your ideas. The only proper limits on contributions are those set by your willingness to employ your money for this purpose. If I form a coalition of people against Bush, and we pool our money to take out an ad in the paper, I shouldn't be able to do so? The purpose of the first amendment is to protect the right of citizens to express their views. The right to utilize your property makes it possible for you to express your ideas through a variety of mediums be it by publishing a book, placing an ad in the paper, giving a lecture, supporting a candidate with whom you agree, or more important criticizing one with whom you disagree. The right to use property in order express your free speech rights is the only protection a private citizen has against a government monopoly on ideas. I'm afraid that I'm in rare agreeance with justice Rehnquist when he said, "It's not up to the government to decide there is too much speech coming from one place and not enough from another."

Yes this may be a downside, but it's worth it. There is many other ways to express you opinions than putting in ads in newspapers. The reason why it should be like this is that everyone (whether supported by rich people or poor people) should have about same chance to run a political campaign.

If you see it the other way around it actually violate free speech more with the system we have today. The rich people have a much bigger opportunity to express their opinions.

hehe, no one actually thougt the idea was good?

This form of government if implimented immediately would be inefficient imho... I'll still stick my beliefs that democracy isn't the best and efficient political system around the place.

I'll do some research onto this subject and post more below...

quote:

Originally posted by kaffeemeister This form of government if implimented immediately would be inefficient imho... I'll still stick my beliefs that democracy isn't the best and efficient political system around the place. I'll do some research onto this subject and post more below...

haha nice bump

it might be inefficient, that's the biggest problem indeed. But i think the decion making progress wouldnt have to be that much slower, only the administration would have to be bigger.

and no i probably agree that democracy is not the perfect system, however its the best system we know about and this is a further development of it.