Redrawing Democracy: The First Defender Revisited

Recently, I've taken to studying up on the history of Islam. In the process, I found myself wondering how a "two branch" government could be constituted, one which lacked a Legislative branch, due to the existence of a corpus of laws (such as the Shariah, if I am spelling it correctly) which a nation believed sufficient for all things, interpreted properly. And, of course, law is interpreted by judges. Most Islamic lands had a traditional body which did just that (which argued continuously over how liberally to interpret the Qur·’an and the Shariah), which, due to the strength of tradition, was a real power to be reckoned with by the rulers of those lands.

With the preexistence of such a body of men, and the preexistent of such a body of law, the only question that remains is how to constitute an executive branch. While thinking on this, I came up with what I think of as a rather novel idea. The basic idea behind it is, rather than directly electing a chief executive, and making all his underlings appointive, why not instead elect the underlings, and have them select a chief executive for themselves?

You start by making a decision as to how large you can make a community without the people totally losing touch with their rulers. You then divide the country up into sections, perhaps using the method I described earlier, perhaps using some other common sense method. You then let them elect one person to serve as their protector, sort of a "chief executive" for that precinct. That person then becomes responsible for law and order, and perhaps services, within his area.

These people make a decision as to whom they need to be able to work with in order to do their jobs properly, say all the "captains" in a city (or even a particular section of the city), or a number of villages in a contiguous rural area. They then elect someone to be in charge of them, and he becomes responsible for the whole area, and coordinates their efforts where necessary. Their votes would, of course, be weighted by the number of people they serve (in the case where you're not trying to actually divide the country into divisions with an equal number of people).

Those people would then do the same thing the people under then did. For example, the guy in charge of a city would get together with the people in charge of nearby towns and rural areas, and *they* would appoint someone over them, on up to the point where the highest men in the country are appointing the chief executive.

What this would result in is the people that are in direct contact with the people are directly responsible to those people. The people above them are directly responsible to them. Nobody is ruled over by anyone abhorrent to them, and the directly elected men could serve as a sort of "buffer" against a chief executive gone horribly wrong.

These men would do their best to uphold the law in the places they are responsible for, but they would still have to bring the accused before a judge to actually enact punishment. "The Law" can have any source under this system (whether created by an elected legislature or handed down by a prophet such as Moses or Mohammed), these executives would still have to subject their judgments to the judgments of learned men selected by one means or another.

Anyway, I thought it was a cool idea. I do hope someone posts their thoughts (preferably about the method for creating an executive branch, rather than my ill-informed comments about religious law).

Copyright Feudalism

Imagine a feudal land, one in which land is held by a coalition of powerful lords and minor landholders. There are many other people under this system, peasants and serfs who are under the nobility. These people are unable to produce anything from the land without the permission of the nobility, and the nobility charges whatever prince they choose.

The land is recorded on deeds, but the deeds are held privately—they are kept by the owner of the land. The responsibility of defending those claims falls upon the property owners as well, which means they all maintain personal armies to defend their land. When someone attempts to work their land without their permission, they send soldiers to take everything they own, leaving them destitute.

There is land out there that nobody owns. Indeed, there is much land which is not presently in use, because it has either been farmed to the point where it was ruined, or it never had any immediate farming value in the first place. There have been peasants who have gone out to this unused—and often unowned—land, with either shovels to remove rocks, or piles of manure to re fertilize the land, and eke out a meager existence, free from the tyranny of the nobility.

The problem is that it is impossible to tell who owns the land. The deeds are held privately, and though there is usually a historical record as to who originally owned the land, one can never tell who currently owns it, if anybody. There have been many such serfs who, seeking freedom, went to what seemed to be unclaimed land, created a life there, only to be persecuted by soldiers of an owner who has neglected the land. As a result, nobody finds freedom on the free lands. Only the existing nobility can afford to even attempt to work the free land, because they have money enough to exploit it.

That's the way they like it; it binds the serfs to them very effectively, and ensures that nobody will ever emerge who can compete with them in the agricultural goods market.

Such a land exists. It is called the United States of America, except instead of land, it's ideas which I am discussing. Instead of a feudal nobility, it is the existing coalition of media corporations. Instead of serfs and peasants seeking the free lands, it is creators who, much like the founders of these corporations, seek to use historical materials (as Walt Disney did with Steamboat Bill Jr.) as a basis for their own cultural creations. Instead of privately held deeds, it is unregistered copyrights. Instead of the great mix of unowned and owned but unused lands, it is the great mass of images and sounds which might be used in everything from documentaries to music videos, but cannot because their copyright status cannot be determined except at great expense (or risked at even greater expense). Instead of soldiers, it is lawyers, both for destroying those who dare seek creative freedom, and determining what of the mix is part of the public domain.

Does anybody else see a problem here?

Master of Magic 2

First off, an apology to my political readers (there may be two or three of you :p ). This week, I will not be talking about politics or a form of government. I have done little more than play Master of Magic this week, and have had little interest in the outside world.

I was going to talk about what I would like to see in a Master of Magic 2, and I'm glad I decided to do some research into the subject before writing this. It seems that software company Stardock, maker of the 4x space conquest game Galactic Civilizations, it testing the water to see if a Master of Magic 2 would be a profitable undertaking. To me, the answer is obvious. Get the word out, get a big company's marketing department into gear, and MOM2 would certainly be profitable—though one wonders if one can allow a big company to even touch licensed material and not screw the game up. It's a bit of a catch 22. If Stardock makes it, it'll probably be good, but will enough people know about it to make it profitable? If Atari (who owns the license) makes it, it'll probably be profitable, but would the people in charge care enough to make it good?

If you're interested, go here and post about it. Now I'll ramble on about what I'd like to see in a Master of Magic 2.

First off, don't remove anything. Don't reduce the number of wizards, units, races, or heroes because you're doing it in 3d and don't want to have to pay for the sheer number of 3d models necessary to do a game that was originally done with 2d graphics. If it can't be done in 3d on a reasonable budget, do it in 2d. It can be really nice, high resolution, animated, 2d graphics, but if going 3d means reducing content, go 2d.

Don't change the magic system. Change the magic domains already provided, and you change the game. You might as well not call it Master of Magic; please don't corrupt the brand just because it'll bring in more money to call it that. Life, Death, Sorcery, Chaos, and Nature; I can't imagine adding anything to that system, nor removing anything. One might decide to subdivide the system, or perhaps make inter-domain specializations (for example, an Elemental Earth focus that makes it easier to cast Earth Elemental—a Nature spell—and Cracks Call—a Chaos spell, since they are both earth based, but makes it harder to cast wind mastery—a Sorcery spell—and... oh, I don't know, Summon Sprites). But the Nodes system is great as it is, and I don't want to see it altered too much.

I wouldn't even change the races too much. I have read that gnolls are “useless,” but I have also read that gnolls are great if you ignore ruins and nodes, and focus on eliminating the other wizards early on, before they've developed too much beyond swordsmen and cavalry (of which gnolls are probably the best in the game). And, of course, if you eliminate a wizard early on, you get their cities, and can use those cities to develop more advanced armies while your gnolls continue to harass the other wizards.

Don't remove spells. I'm sure one might have concerns about play balancing, but I suggest one of two approaches. If one simply is too lazy to really put the effort into balancing the rather large number of possible spells (and possible strategies and exploits), don't bother grabbing the license. Just make a non-MOM fantasy style civlike game. However, the other possibility is to allow the player(s) to remove spells before the game begins. Just provide an interface by which the players in a multiplayer game can haggle over what spells they will allow and what spells they won't, and let them run with it.

Now, as to what I would add. First requirement is obviously updated graphics, sound that works on modern machines, and better AI. Please don't replace the music wholesale. I can't hear it now, on my modern machine, but I remember it being pretty cool. As to AI updates, simple things like having the AI actually move about strategically even when there is a city wall (sending cavalry forth to fight a bit before returning to the fortress, if such can be done so with the possibility of them escaping alive), making it smarter about having their spellcasting heroes use their missile attack rather than cast spells under certain situations (like a node battle), and a better simulation of diplomatic behavior would do it. Another thing that would be nice is to have different levels of difficulty be based upon different levels of intelligence and aggressiveness, rather than relying so much upon production bonuses and absolute gang-up situations. Watch your people who are totally new to the 4x experience play, and make the computer act like them (less efficient exploration algorithms, squandering of resources, novice tactical mistakes, etc.) Give your Impossible level access to the nastiest exploits the players can find—and don't even *make* the Impossible level until the game has been out for a bit, and the worst exploits (the ones you don't intend to patch) are found. Release it in an update.

One poster at Stardock's Galactic Civilizations forums said something about more than just two planes. I think this is a great idea, but unless the extra worlds have more to them than a palate shifted color scheme and more space to colonize, I'm not really interested. We need more races for each plane, more terrain types, more wizards, etc. All this is more graphics, more play balancing, more work. If Stardock is really up to it, I'd love to see a system by which each magic domain has its own world associated with it. This is how each place would be justified.

Arcanus and Myrror would represent the intermixing of the mundane and arcane magic which defines Master of Magic. Arcanus is more mundane, Myrror more magical, but both contain elements of the other plane, since magic exists in both. These two worlds would remain mostly as they were in the original MOM. Towers would continue to be the chief door between the planes of Arcanus and Myrror.

Nature magic would have an “origin” plane. This plane would be inhabited by faeries, wood elves, maybe stone giants (all summonable creaturs from MOM, except wood elves), maybe beastmen, and other races appropriate to such a setting (two more would be good enough). It would be hostile to organized settlement. Plains would spontaneously change to forests and swamps, limiting food supplies and population sizes. Rampaging monsters would be very common. On the other hand, nature nodes would be 3x in power (while other nodes would have no power whatsoever).

Chaos magic would have an “origin” plane. The landscape would have lots of hills, mountains, and volcanoes. Inhabitants would include wild elves (or gray elves? gotta have some kind of elf in every world), maybe dwarves and trolls, possibly fire giants, definitely efreet, etc. Spontaneous volcanoes would threaten settlement, as well as the rampaging monsters (Hydra and Great Drakes would be a disturbingly common sight).

Sorcery Magic would be a plain of mostly islands (if not a great cloud kingdom), and high mountains would characterize these mountains. Djinn, Najas, sea elves, and others would populate this domain. Freak storms (air elementals) and sky drakes would threaten organized settlement, as would the common lack of dry land.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with Life and Death magic, if anything. Though one can imagine conquering the elemental worlds, how does one enter the world of the dead without actually being dead? Obviously, angels and demons are summoned from somewhere, but how can one tread the world of The Gods (and indeed, they do exist in MOM, since they occasionally give an artifact as a gift). Perhaps this whole thing makes the idea of creating the Magic Planes a bad idea. Or maybe one need only leave out the realms of life and death. Or maybe neither is necessary; perhaps there is a way to do it that is cool, and I haven't thought of it.

One possible way transitioning between the worlds could work is to have magic nodes, much like towers in the first MOM, be distributed evenly between the worlds. The nodes could be the doors between the worlds. Perhaps other types of nodes wouldn't even exist in the magic planes, but rather more of that plane's type of nodes would exist, unlinked to the other worlds. Under that situation, the nodes could be regularly powered (or perhaps double powered like in Myrror), and the reward is access to more nodes in the magical worlds.

The races that correspond to summoned creatures in Arcanus and Myrror would be designed under the assumption that, when you summon a creature, you're getting basically a random group, the “spearmen” of that race (unless the picture very clearly defines a sword, as in the case of fire giants). Actual military units would be potentially even more powerful, though they could only be used on their home plane at cost, which would be high, in gold, and perhaps even in food (like giants). If one wanted to use them on Arcanus and Myrror, one would have to enchant them with a survival spell... every bit as expensive as the summoning spell. The same could be true of units native to Arcanus and Myrror—they could not go through a node without a special elemental survival spell being cast, something that enables them to pass through a volcano into a world of blazing heat, or swim through eldritch waters to the other side of the sorcery node, or disappear, mist-like, into the wild world of the nature node.

But, all this is purely optional. If it's going to bog development, keep it to a slightly updated MOM. Maybe save all that fancy extra stuff for MOM3, if MOM2 is successful enough to justify doing an experiment that may potentially destroy the franchise (as MOO3 seems to have done).

While we're on 3d graphics, how about 3d gameplay? When you've got a combat involving flying creatures and land creatures, it just might be cool to have aerial dogfights and such between angles, demons, cockatrices, units of griffon riders, and such. Maybe even give flying units different maneuverabilities, looking to Master of Orion (2) for examples of how this can be implemented. Make the less maneuverable units also less hardy, able to have their wings clipped. Give them altitudes, and differing levels of advantage depending on whether they are higher or lower. Heck, while we're at it, do the same with hilly and mountainous terrain for ground units. Having the high ground is always an advantage, particularly if you have bowmen in the group. Castle walls can do the same thing.

If not other planes, then how about other areas of the game world? Wouldn't it be neat to have to deal with merfolk and fishmen at the bottom of the sea? Or how about a subterranean realm? Though the extraplanear gameplay seems a bit threatening to me (as something that could seriously ruin the game if done wrong), these areas seem like natural extensions of the existing game, perfectly appropriate to a sequel.

More places to live means you need more wizards, both more options to play with and more competing in the game itself. I was always disappointed with only four opponents (accustomed to seven in Civlization), and if you have loads of other places to go, you definitely need to potentially have competitors in those places.

And, of course, multiplayer mode. At the very least, one should be able to play turn by turn hotseat mode, by email, or over a network (including the Internet, of course). Maybe set up a way to easily hook up with other players, if not running a server themselves, then at least providing a program which interfaces with the game. Timed simultanious turns should be implemented. And while talking about this with my wife, I came up with another idea: the bathroom break button. You hit it, the other players agree to it, and the game is totally paused (ensuring nobody is penalized by answering the call of nature.)

Yes, I am very excited about Master of Magic 2. It should be very cool.

Herbivores, Carnivores, and Nuclear Weapons

So here I am, reading a fascinating book called King Solomon's Ring by Konrad Z. Lorenz, when I find myself thinking about nuclear weapons. What's the connection, you say? Well, I'll tell you.

King Solomon's Ring has little to do with the legend that King Solomon, rather than speaking “also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes,” he spoke “also with beasts, and with fowl, and with creeping things, and with fishes...”, using a magic ring. Rather, it has to do with a man, the author, whose study of animals lead him to a profound understanding of the communications animals have with one another, the combination of instinctive automatic reactions to moods and learned attempts to influence another's behavior. The chapter I am reading is entitled “Morals and Weapons,” in which he discusses the nature of intra-species confrontations, between wolf and wolf, or dove and dove.

He describes beasts with hunting weapons as having remarkable restraint. A wolf will never bite the outstretched neck of a rival, nor a crow peck at the eye of another crow. The reason is obvious. If they did not have such inhibitions, the species would quickly disappear. I am reminded of human warriors, from extensive lines of warriors, well practiced in their weapons, who are capable, in all but the most extreme of circumstances, of settling very angry conflicts with a dual that ends with the cry, “I yield!”

He also spoke of herbivores—of hares, of doves (that ubiquitous symbol of peace), and of roe deer. These are animals which don't possess the weapons of a carnivore, but rather an extraordinary ability to escape harm. If one witnesses a battle between two of these, one can't help but think it couldn't help but be more civilized than the more heavily armed. In captivity, however, their true colors show. For while a wolf would never murder another wolf (or at least, very seldom), if you cage rival herbivores in close proximity, you see that they have no such inhibitions. Lorenz put two turtledoves into a large, roomy cage, went on an errand, and when he returned, found the larger of the two standing over the smaller, the lower one plucked and bloody. Had Lorenz not intervened, the smaller surely would have been killed.

The reason these have no inhibition is also obvious, once one thinks of it. Ordinarily, such confrontations end with one fleeing the other and, when a herbivore wishes to flee, there is generally little the pursuer can do about it. There is no need for inhibition; the ability of the loser to evade damage is far greater than the ability of the winner to cause it. Cage the two, and the loser cannot flee, and the winner has absolutely no concept of sparing the loser, the species having not had a need to evolve such a mechanism.

Where do humans come in? Well, we have two stereotypes of people with weapons: the honorable warrior who would spare an enemy who has surrendered, and the vicious murderer who would flay alive one who screamed for mercy. I would like to advance a theory regarding how these two things occur.

First, you have man in a more primitive state. His chief weapons are fists, sticks, and stones. The population density is such that a confrontation can be ended by the loser fleeing the scene, and the winner claiming his territory. This may describe man at his earliest stage of development, as well as men, in our own era, who still live in the countryside and, if they do have guns, at the very least, when they fire them, they fire them to drive off a rival, rather than killing him. So long as a conflict can end with the loser fleeing, these conflicts can remain relatively bloodless, though the newer brain-based mechanism allows more accidents with newer brain-developed weapons than ancient instincts honed on a biological weapon.

Force these people into the city, and a bloodbath quickly ensues. Every murderous urban underclass that has ever existed has always been a recent, and usually unwilling, migrant from the countryside, whether it be the urban poor of pre-American England or the minority urban poor that haunt the “bad side of town” to this day. These people are every bit as dangerous to their fellow men as flock of doves forced into captivity. Having no experience with the power to kill one who cannot escape, their anger finds no barrier. Attempting to beg for mercy just might be a bad idea, though I am not sure. I have never been in such an encounter.

Fast-forward to the urban warrior, one who has weapons which have been in existence for some time and yet remain the best one can have, and also comes from a family line which has lived under such conditions for generations. Now you might find a code of honor, some dueling system with a clear guidelines on how to proceed, how to fight, and how to end a combat without killing. When one willingly delivers himself into the hands of another, the other is stayed by a powerful cultural obligation to accept that a sufficient victory. However angry he might be with the submissive loser, his honor requires that he spare the life. Once again, the large human brain can find a way around this brain-based inhibition much more easily than the small brain of an animal can find its way around its own biologically based inhibition; nevertheless, it is created by the same kind of evolutionary pressure.

Whence comes war, then? Well, I think there are two impetus to the cruelty of war that even civilized beings are capable of engaging in.

The first is the mob mentality, that aspect of humankind that makes a group of individuals almost like an individual in and of itself. People behave very differently in groups than alone, and a human being, in defense of the group, will go to much greater lengths against an individual of the opposing group than against another individual, as an individual. One can almost analogize the conflict to the groups themselves, which wield their individuals against one another. Individuals within the groups may die in this conflict, and, once it's over, the survivors may grieve, but the groups will survive, nonetheless. When the battle looks hopeless, one group will surrender to the other, and assuming they both use the same signals, the other group will generally permit the submissive party to live.
The other is cultural in nature. Human beings are probably the least biologically diverse of all globally distributed species, and are likely less biologically diverse even than species of a more geographically limited nature. Nevertheless, we have profound differences, ones which are lodged within our brains, rather than our DNA, to the point where very biologically related human beings (an Eskimo is more closely related to an African Bushman than are lions on opposite sides of the same continent) are capable of regarding each other in a way most animals regard creatures of a different species. A band of marauders is often as dangerous to a group of defenseless farmers as a pack of lions is to a herd of sheep, for the simple reason that the two groups are so different in habit, temperament, and language (even within the same language group, inflections and slang can serve the same role) that they may as well be different species.

If we have different surrender habits, that can also cause a problem. Lorenz wrote that wild turkeys and peacocks are capable of getting into fights because they are closely related enough to recognize the other's posturing as threatening, and yet, the fight is invariably dangerous to the turkey. For while the turkey is larger and stronger than the peacock, the turkey has an evolved mechanism for deciding conflicts bloodlessly, and the peacock has no such mechanism. The turkey struts up to wrestle, the peacock takes flight and attacks from above. The turkey, unable to cope with this unorthodox technique, lays his head on the ground in a submissive gesture. Were the other combatant another turkey, he would now be completely unable to attack, held back by thousands of years of evolution which demand that he spare the loser. The peacock, however, doesn't understand. He pecks and pecks and pecks. The turkey is driven by this into further submission, prevented from escaping by thousands of years of evolution. Only intervention by another species (most likely human) prevents the death of the turkey. So it is when humans cannot understand an appeal for mercy due to difference of language and/or custom.

Human beings build weapons with their brains, not of their bodies. Humans must, therefore, develop inhibitions based upon thought, not instinct, for our instincts are based upon a creature which has nothing but his bare hands to fight with. Instinctively, we are as doves who suddenly acquired the beaks of crows and the talons of eagles, and haven't the faintest idea of their own strength. If there is to be peace, it is based upon the mind, not the body. The “soft animal within” (which a minister I know refers to so lovingly) is a clumsy brute when the mind gives him weapons which surpass those of even the greatest of predators.

On to nuclear weapons. Up to this point, whatever the inhibitions of the individuals that make up a group, the group itself has few inhibitions against fighting to the death of the individual within. At its most bestial, such conflicts are rarely destructive to the group as a whole; the rules of victory and submission can generally regulate the outcome of such battles. Genocide is the product of the individual mind, the decision that such conflicts can be brought to an end forever by eliminating the other group. Otherwise, the interplay of bravado and fear can regulate such conflicts, though they be disastrous to the individuals involved.

However, now, we have weapons that frighten even the group mind: nuclear weapons. With one fell stroke, entire cities can be eliminated. What has been the result? On the one hand, some individuals lived through the cold war in a constant state of agitation, while most, due simply to the enormity of the threat, simply did not grasp it, to the benefit of their stress levels. Though guns and bombs have made war between advanced powers more brutal, nuclear weapons have made them more seldom; the fear they evoke is simply too great. Though we may see the day when a truly nuclear war occurs, such would merely be a step on the path toward a day when even mobs treat each other honorably... that, or the human race must perish. I, for one, believe that, given the deterrent nature of the picture the imagination produces, an actual memory of nuclear war may well make all mankind as shy of total war as Old Europe is today.

Personally, I think non-proliferation is a self-serving policy by which those powers which already dominate the world through the thread of nuclear weapons deny other powers this deterrent. We are in the position now that we can invade non-nuclear powers at whim, and the best they can do is fight our troops on the field. If another power attacks us directly, however, we have the option of laying waste to their entire country, leaving nothing left to oppose us. So, we still live in a perpetual state of war. The day every bit of ground on the planet is jealously guarded by a full fledged nuclear power is perhaps the most dangerous day we will ever face. We may end up like doves with teeth and claws, pretending we can still fight as we did before, and eliminating the entire human race in the process—but, if we survive that day, the day after will be a day of true peace. The costs of war will simply be too great, and those high costs will no longer be outside the comprehension of the human animal.

And I am a gambler. I would rather stay than fold. I would rather give up the wars of non-proliferation and roll the dice that have eternal peace on one side, and nuclear Armageddon on the other. I am well aware there are many that would disagree with me on this. I wonder, however, if we can truly stop proliferation. I wonder if, given non-nuclear nations with sufficient determination, we wouldn't end up driving ourselves into bankruptcy making enemies, and then find them with nuclear weapons, anyway.

Redrawing Democracy: The First Defender

I've spoken in previous rambles about how I think revenue collection ought to be handled, and how that ought to affect representation. I've written about how I think popular representatives ought to be chosen. As a result, I now have a legislative branch designed for a new kind of government, but how is execution to be handled? What I will describe is sort of a hybrid of the British and American systems (and their immitators), with a little military dictatorship thrown in--and yet, it should be a more just system. If that doesn't make you curious, I don't know what will.

In any matter of law, of the establishment of bureaucracy that does *not* involve the use of force in enforcement, no entity other than the legislature need be involved. If a welfare administration needs to be established, which will help out the poor while watching for abuses, the legislature could simply declare the chartering of an organization, their duties, how the head of this organization is to be chosen, etc. etc., and there it is. Now there's a welfare administration. Provide it with funding from the general treasury each year, and let them do their job, investigate them if they are suspected of wrongdoing, disband them and establish another organization, or just starve them (cease allocating funds from the treasury) if they aren't any good. The one thing such a bueracratic arm wouldn't have the authority to do is jail anyone or sieze any property... under any cicrumstances.

Examples of functions that cound be done in this way is currency regulation (so long as enforcement isn't an issue), public broadcasting, creation of infrastructure, public education (so long as its not compulsory), or any other thing that simply involves the distribution of funds in payment for a nonviolent service or cause. For anything else, there is the First Defender.

The First Defender is someone who will be sworn to protect and defend the people of the state from malefactors of all kinds, domestic and foreign. He will be the dual head of both any domestic police force or investigative agencies the Legislature chooses to establish, and of any military forces the legislature chooses to establish. He will have primary authority over not only the people that serve under him, but also over the disbursment of funds within his organization. He will have authority to act only within the sphere established by the legislature, to enforce the law and defend the country from foreign invaders. War will be declared only by the legislature; it will be prosecuted by the First Defender.

He will be chosen by a particular subset of the people--all those who have ever served the state in a time of war (whether they were originally a part of the military or just a local militia that assisted), and all who have ever served under the First Defender for a time of two years. His immediate subordinates--those who report directly to him--will be chosen by him, but must be approved by either the House or the Senate. Those who will have the authority to use force within the borders of the state will have to be approved by the popularly elected representatives in the House, the people at large having the most to lose in the event of an abusive domestic police power. Those who's authority will be foreign in nature, whether they negotiate treaties, enforce them, or prosecute war in foreign lands, will have to be approved by the monetarily chosen representatives of the Senate, the monied interests of the state having the most to lose in the event of a war (wars are very expensive). If there is an officer who is to have the authority to act within and without, he must be approved by both the House and the Senate.

ANY use of force in the enforcement of the law will be done within the structure of the First Defender. The only other source of the authority to use force will be that of the substates, by whatever means established in their respective constitutions. The federal government will under no circumstances have the authority to interfere with the substates' authority to have a means to use force in the defense of their citizens, nor to posess and regulate the posession of the implements of force--weapons--save those weapons with the power to damage an area greater than their own area (ie. nuclear weapons, etc.).

The First Defender shall have a veto on any laws that will require the use of force in its enforcement.

My reasons are as follows:

Why is the First Defender chosen by veterans and longtime servicemen, and not by the people at large?

In my opinion, a virtuous citezenry stands ready to defend their country at any time. All who are able should be willing to defend their country (if not necessarily their country's "interests"), and stand ready do do so at some point in their life. If everybody did this, then the "people at large" and "those who have served" would be virtually indistinguishable. In a country that isn't like this, then people who have never served in war or even taken the chance that they might have to shouldn't take part in the selection of the supreme commander of the armed forces.

This ensures that the person who has the primary responsibility in dealing with other nations is someone palatable to people who have actually seen combat. There are two kinds of leaders who are very bad for the country. The first is someone who never served in the military, and yet postures before the nations as a great military power, insulting people, risking war lightly. Few who actually has to do the fighting want to get into a war except when there is no other choice; having servicemen and veterans elect the supreme commander can help avoid this. The other is a supreme commander who avoids war in all circumstances, permitting offenses and abuses which are simply intolerable in the name of avoiding casualties. Men who have fought for their country, or chosen to stand ready, aren't likely to choose this sort of leader, either.

The other thing that this does, though, is that it ensures a bond between the actual head of state and the rank and file servicemen. Though we enjoy a remarkable loyalty of our military forces here in the West, many places suffer under military dictatorships which are often the result of a lack of a legitimate way for civilians and military to negotiate their differences. When the civilian government does something the military doesn't like, the military just takes over. If they had some primary means of having their grievences heard legitimately, they just might use that, rather than a violent coup. Under this scenario, the relationship between the First Defender and the Legislature becomes a point of negotiation between civilian and military interests. Civilians will be unable to force an illegitimate figurehead over a resentful military, and the military will be unable (legally) to either eliminate provincial competition or sieze the resources necessary to maintain themselves.

I'll edit this post to answer any other questions I think are broad enough to invclude here.

The US and the World Criminal Court

This will be a quick filler post. Sorry I'm late.

I just read that, once again, the US Government is seeking to exempt itself from prosecution under the World Criminal court. I just want to say that I have mixed feelings on this issue.

On the one hand, this is typical of anybody that has the upper hand. It is very easy for a person to say "Of course people ought to be held accountable for their evil deeds... unless it's me, of course." It is a reprehensible thing to do, to be involved in the creation of a court of law, but then do anything necessary to ensure that this law applies only to ones neighbors, and not to oneself. What conclusion can we reach but that the US expects to use the court as a weapon, and not to allow it to function as an instrument of justice?

Then again, how exactly are the members of the World Criminal Court chosen? What are their interests? One thing that can be sure is that international institutions are not democratic institutions, nor are they responsible to democratic institutions in any real sense. Will this institution actually prosecute genuine human rights abuses wherever they are found? Or is it an irresponsible body that will act only when the interests of its members are served--which are not necessarily the interests of all humankind?

In a slipshod system of international law, I think it is only reasonable for any soverign body to opt out of this system if they choose. Now, if only our own makers of foreign policy weren't total hypocrites where this concept is concerned...

Classic Ramble: From Democracy to Tyranny

The Collapse of a Republic

"It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist. In a large republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation; there are trusts too great to be placed in any single subject; he has interest of his own; he soon begins to think he may be happy, great and glorious, by oppressing his fellow citizens; and that he may raise himself to garandeur on the ruins of his country. In a large republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interests of the public is easier percieved, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses are of less extent, and of corse are less protected." Baron de Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, chap. xvi. vol I, qyoted from "Brutus" I, new York Journal, Oct 18, 1787, in the book: The Debate on the Constitution, Vol. I. edited by Bernard Bailyn.

If there is any statement about our form of government that could be considered prophetic, the first sentence of the underlined section is it. For the greatest complaint about our government, by those who bother to complain, is that we can't seem to control our upward spiraling debt. The reason for this is that every interest that has the power to do so clamours for government money, while the people typically clamour for lower taxes. Our government is ruled by both, and so we end up with the paradoxical, and self-destructive, behaviour of barely controllable spending that consistantly outstrips the money provided for these purposes.

Even in recent years, with a fantastically robust economy, and a people much more tolerant of taxation, the government barely manages to get by without borrowing further; the accumulated debt remains untouched. What will happen when the inevitable economic crash, or at least recession, occurrs? Or what will we do in the event of an unanticipated emergency of a truely national scale, a major war or something, and our credit is already streatched to the limit? Or have we become so arrogant that we believe we can anticipate everything?

"Brutus" predicted, in 1898 when the Constitution had been written, but had yet to be adopted, a number of things. The one that stands out most were his reservations on the granting of the rights of taxation entirely to the federal government. He speculated that this power would eventually allow the Federal government to absorb all the powers of the states. Because the laws of the United States are supreme, the States must ultimately be second in line for the public revenue. As "Brutus" put it: "No state can emit paper money, lay or imposts on imports, or exports, but by consent of the Congress; and then the net produce shall be for the benefit of the United States. The only means therefore left, for any state to support it's government and discharge it's debts, is by direct taxation; and the United States have also power to lay and collect taxes, in any way they please. Every one who has thought on the subject, must be convinced that but small sums of money can be collected in any country, by direct taxes, when the federal government begins to excercise the rights of taxation in all it's parts, the legislatures of the several states will find it impossible to raise monies to support their governments. Without money they cannot be supported, and they must dwindle away, and, as before observed, their powers absorbed in that of the general government."

Let's look at what's actually happened. The federal government engages in constitutionally questionable activites. The purpose of this government is to do those things the several states cannot do themselves, due to a possible conflict of interests between the several states.

These things include foreign relations; we can't have New York signing an alliance with one nation, South Carolina with another, possily resulting in civil war when the two nations go to war. They include intersate road systems, and especially rail, lest we end up with Austrailia's problem of mismatching rails. They include duties, imposts, tarrifs, since if any one state has lower import taxes than another, goods will simply flow in through the state with the lower tarrif, and then across state borders.

It could include a national system of driver licensing, since a more urban state might have higher expectations in licensing requirements than a less urban one, yet the Constituition expressly requires one state to respect the "Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State" (Constitution, Article IV, Section 1), resulting in a conflict. Internet regulation (while I find such a concept personally distasteful) would fall under this, for the same reason the regulation of commerce and taation of trade is restricted to the federal government.

Road speed regulation should not. Why should the citizens of California care how people are allowed to drive in Montana? The issue is potential loss of life and damage of property, and the risk of this is determined by local conditions. Let California have a 55 MPH maximum, and Montana have it's Montanabaugn. It's a matter of local conditions, not national interest. And yet, there was a time when we had a nationally mandated speed limit.

The methods and content of education are also not properly a matter of national interest. Why should the citizens of one stae care how the children of another state are educated? The only possible excuse is religeous and/or philosophical intolerance, a disagreement on what should or should not be taught. And the state with the best school system only benefits, gaining the best educated and potentially productive citizens. The state with the worst is the one that suffers, but the citizens of that state got what they voted for. Indeed, this is just the sort of competition that induces improvement, as one system proves to be superior to another and one state follows the lead of another. And yet, the federal government is heavily involved in the education of our children.

In both cases, it wasn't a case where Congress passed a law, the president saw that it was enforced, and that was the end of it. Rather, there was an existing law which provided money to the states for as specific purpose (the construction and maintenance of a national road system in the former case, some educational provision in the later; I'm not terribly familiar with the history of national education). They then passed a new law requiering that a new condition be observed in order for the several states to qualify for the grant, the passing of a 55 MPH maximum statewide speed limit, in the former case. This is a constitutionally questionable act, but where exists the mechanism by which to oppose it?

Typically, the constitutionality of a law is challenged in court. A citizen violates the law, challenges it's constitutionality in court, the Supreme Court makes a ruling, and, if found unconstitutional, it is overturned.

If a citizen opposes the speed law, they break not the questionable federal act, but the perfectly legitimate state law (which the state was essentially blackmailed into passing). The citizen has no standing on this issue. I can't see any way a state may oppose such an act, since, after all, it is the federal government's money, though I could well be mistaken. The only option that remains is simply to decline to accept the money, but then, in order to do what needs doing their way, they must collect taxes on top of what the feds collect, which is, short of an extreme revulsion of the federal government, a political impossibility.

This flaw in our system gives the federal government potentially unlimited power over the internal policies of the several states. This power is presently limited only by the political will of the people at the ballot box, which, due to the size of our republic, is "sacrificed to a thousand views," as Brutus mentioned earilier. The lawmakers of the several states have essentially no say in what goes on in Congress, any more than the avarage citizen does. This was not always the case.

At the adoption of the Constitution, the states had one direct link into the federal government. Senators were chosen "by the Legislatures (of the states) therof, for six years." An attempt by Congress to blackmail the several states passing specific laws would result in the several states rejecting their Senators next term around. the People at large won't do this, since nobody wants to vote against their own program, but the legislatures, which ultimately have to cope with the results of such an act, might react differently, particularly in cases where a new requirement is enacted, without providing the money to actually carry it out (which has been the case several times in the past).

With senators elected by legislatures, the several states had a voice in the federal government. However, in 1913, the 17th amendment was ratified, which transferred this power from the legislatures to the people at large. This was hailed as a victory for Democracy, but also had the unintended (or perhaps intended? there have always been those who despised the federal system, preferring a unitary one) consequence of stripping the states of their last remaining shred of soverignty. What authority remains to them exists purely at the pleasure of the federal government.

As I said before, the federal government has it's uses. It is necessary to ensure that commerce can continue and that we can resist the encroachments of foreign nations. However, there are also things which are best handled by the states, for the reasons put forth by baron de Montesquieu. Given the chance, the federal government will ursup these duties, as history has proven. If we are to retain our liberty, this must be prevented. To this end, I suggest we repeal the seventeenth amendment. Since the Sentate, presently dependent on the whims of a million voices, is unlikely to give it's independent and less accountable nature, perhaps it is time for our state legislatures to excercise a power never before excercised. Perhaps it is time to call a Convention.

Redrawing Democracy: Harnessing Capitalism

Skip to the conclusion if you want a quick summary of what this document contains.

If there's one thing most people agree upon, its that our politics has been corrupted by people with lots of money. Elections are largely decided by the economic control of mass media; he who buys the most television hours tends to win. He who fails to buy any is unheard of, and never even makes the nomination. Many politicians, in response to the fact that everybody knows our politics are corrupted by the flow of money through it, call for reforms in “campaign finance,” but they don't follow through with it. Some don't vote for it on principle, saying that “campaign finance reform” is just a sneaky way to deny speech rights to people the campaign finance reformers don't like. Others don't vote for it because it is generally only necessary to make a speech to get people to believe he is for a particular issue; few check vote records. Ultimately, it is because they are dependent upon this system; it's what got them elected in the first place.

Personally, I think that so long as we allow economic inequalities (and I think an attempt to remove economic inequalities only results in other, more sinister forms of inequality), our campaigns are inevitably going to be influenced by the money necessary to control mass media. Wherever it is possible, people with an opportunity for power are typically going to take it. People with money can pay for pamphlets, air time, a network of professional door-to-door advertisers—they can get the word out. People who wish to serve in public office can dramatically increase their chances of being elected by tapping these resources. One can make some speeches to the public about issues they care about, then do favors for the people who paid for the campaign. George W. Bush is doing it now, and elected members of our government that came before him (Republican and Democrat) have done it too.

It's even worse when a large portion of the economy is dominated by government spending. Most of the big companies have some sort of tie to our government through military contracts. These companies then hire lobbyists and contribute to campaigns, which ensures that government spending remains where it is, if not increasing. Thus, they ensure that they make even greater profits. This money can then be used to influence the politicians, gaining the companies more contracts, in a spiral of money, most of which comes not from these companies, but from the rest of the economy through taxation. Very simply put, in a roundabout way, much of the special interest money that goes to corrupt our government was originally tax money.

However, I do not believe that campaign finance reform is the answer. I think that the “free speech” argument is right. The simple fact is that people have a right to have their voice heard, to communicate in whatever fashion they see fit. If they just happen to have enough money to ensure that many more people see their communications than if they had less money, so be it. We live in a capitalist democracy, and the only way to reduce the influence of the rich is to reduce the rich. Make “campaign finance” illegal, and you only exclude the honest financiers. Those that want to buy campaigns will find a way of doing it.

Personally, I think that the problem isn't the money, but the dishonesty that accompanies it. Politicians need votes to get elected. In order to get those votes, they have to say things that people want to hear concerning what they will do if elected, what they believe, their values—and they need to be heard saying it. In order to be heard, they need money to spend on air time. In order to get money, they need to say what the people that have money want to hear. Often, these things are not the same as what is said to the people who provide the votes. So, in order to get elected, they generally have to lie to somebody. Once a person has rationalized such systematic lying, what other forms of dishonesty are they capable of? I am reminded of a movie entitled Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which a politician who is known for honest and compassionate representation turns out to be little more than a stooge to a Tammany Hall style political machine.

Once in office, politicians must take great care not to offend the national news media. Many politicians have had their careers ruined by national networks providing continual, non-stop coverage of some blunder they have made. At the same time, a politician's career can be made by continual, non-stop coverage and interpretation of their better actions. Two presidents, for example, can perform the same action: a bombing that results in the deaths of many civilians. The media's attitude toward that president decides how people see it. For presidents they don't like, it is a horrible atrocity, focused upon exclusively about every five minutes. For presidents they do like, it is downplayed as “collateral damage,” when it's mentioned at all, at this. Then, when victory is achieved, pictures of people dancing in the streets are shown. If they don't like the president, pictures of the wounded and protesters are shown. There is a wealth of pictures on all sides of any issue, and by picking and choosing the images, the national news media can influence almost totally the way people perceive the issue, and how they perceive any politician who could possibly be connected with it.

Ultimately, our politicians must contend with conflicting loyalties involved in getting elected and trying to stay that way. They must say what the people want to hear, what their contributors want to hear, and what the people who—through corporate ownerships—control the national media, want to hear. Ultimately, all they have to do, so long as they have the media on their side, is say what the people want to hear; they don't necessarily have to actually do anything about it. It isn't the money, it's the system. There are probably plenty of politicians who start out trying to do their job honestly, but the honest men are ultimately either corrupted or removed from office. The few who have a constituency that allows them to serve honestly (I'd be hard pressed to identify such a place) are very few, and numerically irrelevant where national politics are concerned.

You can't keep the money out of politics. Money is just our way of expressing the influence that comes from a contribution to a process, and taking the money out will simply result in a more direct bartering of services, off the record. No, we need not to remove the money, but to channel it in a more constructive way. My suggestion is that, rather than piling meaningless law upon meaningless law trying to pretend that our legislature is not influenced by the money that goes into its election, we instead go the other direction entirely. I suggest we literally sell one house in a bicameral legislature.

What I mean is this. Assuming we're doing this U.S. Senate style (this system is applicable to any bicameral legislature), over the course of two years, people would buy “shares” in the Senate. At the time of the election, these contributors would vote for the Senate much like shareholders vote for corporate officers. Their votes would be weighted by the amount of contribution made by the voter. Anybody who wished to contribute could do so. (I would go so far as to permit non-citizens and representatives of foreign governments to contribute.)

I would also abolish internal taxation at the federal level. This would remove the “prize” that can be won though the purchasing of elections. The government would have only the revenues made from these sales, and from tariff collection. I would hope that between a genuine desire of some to contribute to the upholding of justice and liberty, and the desire of special interest groups (everything from military supply companies, to labor unions, to environmental lobbies, and state governments) to dominate policymaking, that the government would have sufficient funds to uphold liberty and justice. At present, I think our government has far more than it needs for this, and that much of it goes against the common good, both in this country, and in many others.

First off, it would end the requirement that people with money engage in dirty dealing to protect their position from a government that would gladly steal from them if it could. No longer would they have to corrupt potentially honest men. Now they could simply hire somebody to represent their interests openly and honestly. With the influence of the wealthy concentrated in the Senate, those who wish to represent the interests of the people likely could do so without having to worry quite as much about being undercut by a less honest, but better funded politician. Those who would represent moneyed interests could do so openly and honestly, as well.

Secondly, it would divert a great deal of the money that would go to the national media under our current system. Making the media more dependent upon their customers, rather than the other way around, seems like a very good thing to me. There has been a lot of media consolidation going on in recent years. Control of the minds of the people who rely upon the media for their information is the product of a media corporation that determines most of what people see and hear. This is not a product conducive to liberty. There is little doubt in my mind that most of the news we get, the commercials we see, even many of the television shows we see are designed to create an electorate which doesn't know any better than to support those the media wishes to be supported. If the money went directly to the government, rather than enriching the major media corporations, we just might see a return to a more competitive, perhaps even a more honest, national mass media.

Finally, taking direct taxation out of the hands of the federal government would re-empower the states to enact their own local efforts. At present, the fact that the federal government takes a much larger share of the potential tax dollars in this country means that the states are reliant upon federal spending for their own revenues. Any time the federal government wants something done that it doesn't have the authority to do, it simply threatens to revoke funding for whatever state project is related if the state doesn't adopt a law having the effect the federal government would like to create. The result of this sort of thing was the nationally mandated speed limit that was in place years ago, and nationally mandated “abstinence only” sexual education at public schools (a policy which causes my home state, California, to simply give up the related federal funding).

Finally, the money that went in would be the money that came out. Election manipulation would no longer be a way to make a profit. Only those providing genuinely necessary services could expect to come out ahead of where they began.

The first thing many would say about this proposal is that it would result in handing the government over to moneyed interests. I remind them of 2 things. First off, moneyed interests already have an indeterminable amount of influence over our government. At least under this system, we would know exactly how much influence they have, measurable in dollars and cents. The second thing is that this system only sells half of the legislature. The people would still have the House of Representatives and, if anything, the easy, public, and honest access of money to the Senate would end up diverting some money away from the popular elections, resulting in a purer representation on that side, as well.

In conclusion, my proposal is to remove the authority for direct taxation from the federal government, and have representation in the Senate be directly connected to voluntary contribution to the treasury of the federal government. This would result in the honest representation of moneyed interests in the Senate, and the honest representation of popular interests in the House of Representatives. It would also result in taking Big Media out of the loop, reducing it, once again, to an outlet for ideas, rather than a creator. It just might return this land to freedom.

Redrawing Democracy: Acknowledging Non-Geographical Political Entities

Last week, I talked about the possibilities allowed by modern technology in the area of the creation of local jurisdictions, provinces, or states, by direct vote. This week, I shall talk about the possibilities modern technology presents for the determination of representation in the popular branch of a legislature. Very simply put, with computers to implement more complex vote-counting schemes, there is the possibility of enfranchising many groups of people who, while not technically disenfranchised by our current geographical mode of representation, are effectively disenfranchised due to their lack of geographical cohesion.

Our government is currently structured along the same lines it was structured over two-hundred years ago, before even the invention of the telegraph. “Community” was synonymous with the geographical areas they inhabited. Only a few people of the upper classes might have identified more closely with their peers the next community over than their immediate neighbors, and being already influential, their interests were probably over-represented at the time. The direct representation of geographical communities was perfectly adequate, and any other mode of representation would have been overkill. Certainly the complex scheme I am about to present would have been costly and time-consuming to the extreme, with their level of technology. But we do not have their level of technology.

With the rise of instant communications, particularly the Internet, we have the possibility—and more and more, the current reality—of having what might be called “cyber-communities.” What I mean by this is that groups of people, having a sense of “community”, might arise, perhaps desiring representation as a body, and fully deserving of representation. The individuals in this group, however, are scattered throughout the country, rather than being a traditional “local” community. Even if such a group becomes large enough on a national scale to have a respectable plurality, their lack of a local majority in any one place ensures that they will never be directly represented. If they have specific “issues” they feel strongly about as a group, they might be able to fold them into one of the major political parties, but that's hardly guaranteed, and hardly the point. We fought a war for independence over the issue of “virtual representation” over two-hundred years ago. Communities need direct representation, and recent experience demonstrates that communities are not necessarily geographically defined.

If I remember my basic political science correctly, the U.K. system of representation is done along party lines rather than provincial lines. This is similar to what I suggest, but still simplistic compared to the system I would like to propose. My system works as follows (and reads a bit like computer code in natural language).

Everybody starts out with a single vote (and an object presence in the program that adjudicates the election). They place their votes for whatever individual they trust to be smart about, if not legislating or governing, at least voting for someone else to do that job. The program then goes through each individual, and sends their vote along to the person they voted for. At this point, certain people will have more than one vote to their name. The program rearranges the list of all citizens from most votes to least.

At this point, the program performs the following actions on each record sequentially, from most votes to least. First, it checks if the voter's current number of votes is equal to the most recent non-zero value it had. If so, it marks this record as “locked,” preventing it from sending its votes to the one it voted for. This is done to prevent infinite loops in vote counts. It then checks to see if the citizen has enough votes to gain a seat in the legislature.

If any of these people have enough votes to gain a seat (at least .2% of the vote in a body of 500 legislators), the person is marked as a legislator; he wins a seat. The number of votes required to gain a seat are subtracted from their total. Any remaining votes (even if they didn't win) are sent on to whomever he voted for, and the person he voted for is “unlocked” (to allow the votes to flow onward), and the system moves on to the next one on the list, performing this series of actions on every record (or, perhaps to save processing time, all non-zero vote records).

Once the program reaches the end of the list, it re-sorts them according to their number of votes and does this over again. It continues doing this until either all votes have been absorbed by representatives, or until all records on the list are either zero or locked to prevent infinite loops. Once this happens, the remaining seats are filled by people at the top of the list (however many are necessary to reach the number of representatives specified), the individuals selected are notified, and everything else is up to procedure.

One further detail is that the votes that are passed around at this time aren't simply numbers, they carry the identity of the voter who originally cast it. Once it reaches a point where a winner “absorbs” it, an encrypted email is sent to the voter, informing him who his vote ultimately elected, and at that point, the identity of the person who voted is destroyed. The candidate doesn't get to know who elected him (the secret ballot remains in place), but the voter gets to know who his vote ultimately elected.

There are a number of ways in which I could see this mode of voting being used. The first is by parties using it to consolidate their numbers nationally in a more exact manner. Parties could be national in scale representing partisan interests, or local in scale representing regional interests. The second is by people who don't pay a whole lot of attention to politics, but do understand its importance and know someone else who does pay attention and might know better how to vote than they.

One problem with our system of government is that it doesn't reflect the way many people actually do politics in this country. While the nomination process is a bit of a free-for-all, the final vote ultimately results in the complete elimination of one group's voice. While this isn't a problem for the two major parties (even if they lose one state, they are sure to gain another) it is a problem for anyone else who can't muster a majority in any one state. Minority views are squelched, and the two major parties present a difficult choice to one who's views straddle the party line.

Take my own situation. I am for economic liberty, which is a Republican platform, typically. However, I am deeply concerned by the creeping of religious fundamentalism, and suspect that many republicans would institute a Christian theocracy (their particular variety of Christianity, that is to say) if they had the chance. Then there are those Republicans that, given the chance, would give over all our rights to a small set of wealthy corporations and individuals. I am also concerned about the environment, which is typically a Democratic platform. However, I also think at times that many Democrats, given the chance, would go to liberty crushing extremes to engineer a “perfect society,” despite the lessons learned in the Soviet Union. I am sure there are others who share my set of views; indeed, the continual “rush to the center” by the two parties only proves that the majority of “swing voters” do straddle the party lines.

The ultimate result is a large number of representatives who don't know where their loyalties lie. At times there are centrists who feel indebted to the extremes of right or left, and do things to keep from losing their votes. Others might be partisans who try to keep a centrist face to stay in office, but sneak in a highly partisan measure here and there, when they can get away with it. One can't help but be dishonest and sneaky under a system like this; its the only way to survive. The more faces one can present, the more likely one is to be elected.

The most extremely unjust situation I can imagine is as follows. Suppose you have a situation where there are two parties which typically have a majority in any given state. Suppose there is a third party which is typically able to get a third of the vote in all states (not a real situation, just a mathematical hypothetical). This means that in every state, either party 1 or party 2 have at least 50% of the vote in each state, with the other major party having no more than 18% of the vote. The third party has a stable 33% of the vote in all states. Despite this stable, strong showing, they have absolutely no representation in the government. Even if they fold their views into party 1 or 2, it still doesn't matter. In each state, the dominant party is already winning, and the smallest party (which has a majority in other states) can't win with their help. (Of course, real life would rarely work like this.)

Disconnecting the votes from local areas and allowing people with similar ideologies to consolidate their votes would allow the people ultimately elected to honestly represent the people they actually identify with, rather than having to constantly play the polling and guessing game that typically goes on now.

However, there's another group of people who typically aren't represented. These are “non-political” people. These are the people who typically don't vote, and I'm pretty sure all of us fit into this category in one way or another. I, for example, tend not to vote in statewide elections, simply because of a lack of readily available information about the candidates, the issues they discuss, and the actual activities of the state legislature. One practically has to be an expert researcher to know anything about state politics in California. I do vote in the presidential election (though both major candidates usually disgust me, and I end up voting for a third party candidate). I generally vote in the senatorial election. One can't avoid information about these elections. But I typically know nothing more than what the voter pamphlet tells me in state and local elections. And I know I'm not alone in this; the voter turnout statistics prove it.

In addition, I am uncomfortable with what information I can acquire, since it is skewed ultimately in favor of large and powerful media organizations.

What if, instead of having to research the entire system (which would be quite a chore here in California; we even elect the county's head fireman!), we could simply research one close-to-home area of local politics—say, city council—and discover who in that area we trust to make the right decisions. Or perhaps we have a local political organization, and know certain people who know more about the system than we do directly. What if people could literally vote for whomever they want to, and know that, in some indirect way, that vote actually does count?

Now, one way to allow this is for people to simply ask those more knowledgeable people for voting advice. There are two problems with this. First off, it removes the secrecy of the ballot; that individual, at least, knows how the asker likely voted, and that makes many people uncomfortable. The other problem is that once a country reaches a certain size, there are more than three layers of community to consider. The current solution to that problem is a giant media bonanza that ultimately results in elections being dominated by people with the most money to buy the best television ads. What do we really know about our senatorial candidates, let alone the President? Most people know nothing more than what their TV tells them. The system I propose would allow people to vote for people they are personally acquainted with, and thus would likely know more about, and then allow those people to vote for people they are acquainted with, and so on up the ladder until it finally reaches a national level—and it would only take a day to do it. Television campaigns would still have a significant effect, but candidates would also have to worry about their private face, since people close to them just might have enough quiet influence to decide the election.

This could work particularly well in emerging democracies, or countries where the general populace rightfully distrusts the national media. Most people stay home if their choice is to vote for some famous guy they know little about or nobody at all. But what if they could vote for the village elder, or a local hero, or something? That person may not have enough support to represent the whole country's interests, but likely they know someone who is a bit closer to that goal. It would be an election based not upon money and television, but upon a rising pyramid of trust.

What, then, do we do about the representation of local interests? My answer to this is, we do after all typically have bicameral legislatures. Let one house represent these national interests, and the other continue to be elected on a regional basis, to defend local interest from the ravages of ideology unleashed. Or, there is a second option, but I shall leave that for next week's ramble.

Redrawing Democracy: From Accidental Government to Experimental Government

The study of political systems seems to me to be the study of how people went from simply allowing things to happen to deliberately getting together to defend against the vagaries of chance. Whether it be tribesmen gathering together under the leadership of a chief to coordinate their defense against other people, farmers gathering together under the leadership of a king for mutual defense and the coordination of irrigation projects, or modern peoples choosing representatives to direct their officers against the many complex difficulties of modern life, government exists to combine the efforts of individuals against common problems.

It also seems to me that, wherever government can exist, it will exist, whether or not the peoples that inhabit an area wish it. Whether the leaders are elected and rule with the consent of the governed, or there are more able people who use whatever power they have to force their will upon the people they dominate, government is inevitable. A people who organize themselves are more likely to be prepared for disasters, both from within and without, than others, and thus will continue to prosper despite setbacks. An unorganized people, on the other hand, are fodder for any conquer who happens upon them; organization is then forced upon them.

It is generally agreed that the former is preferable; we call it Democracy. Our leaders are chosen by election, usually direct, meaning that each individual person is asked who should make the high level decisions, the answers are counted, and the results are honored. In a barbarous country, if an administration or representation is found to be unsatisfactory, the only reliable way to remove him is by force. Indeed, royal lineages are a blessing in such countries; the other alternative is continual disturbance as ambitious men continually war against one another for the reigns of government, as happened in the late Roman Empire, and happens to this day in many other countries. In a civilized country, however, a people can simply wait for the end of his term, and then elect new leaders peacefully, while the old leaders step down peacefully. Though, at times (if not most times), campaign rhetoric seems far from peaceful, the fact that final decisions are made peacefully—rather than through the physical violence known historically (and presently throughout much of the world)—is a tremendous advancement.

However, there remains one area of government that is still the province of historical accident (much like an inherited lineage), with violence being the only reliable recourse should this aspect prove unsatisfactory. I refer to the actual arrangement of governments, the borders between them, as well as the internal borders, between provinces or “States”. The political borders between states is, today, set in stone, so to speak. However, the Declaration of Independence opens with the following sentence. “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...” Have we learned nothing since then? The men who wrote those words made the simple assumption that it is, at times, necessary for political bonds between two peoples to be severed; yet, we include nothing in our own plans of government to account for this.

The result of this is that, when it does become necessary for this to happen, it usually happens violently, after several generations of resentment, and that resentment and hatred remains in many for generations to follow. Even when such an event does occur peacefully, it relies upon the generosity of those currently in power—a commodity often in short supply when it becomes necessary for political bonds to be dissolved.

The situation with entire governments is today what it once was with individual rulers. Generally, the only way to remove an unsatisfactory ruler was a violent coup. On occasion, a ruler would allow his people a greater share in rule, and on other occasions, the people who enforced their rule would generally agree to just stop listening to the unsatisfactory ruler, but these are merely exceptions to the old system, not justifications of it. Since it became apparent that democratic models are effective and desirable, the old rulers have been steadily replaced not with new rulers, but with new systems designed to eliminate the necessity of those types of revolutions. Hereditary kings and nobilities were supplemented with or replaced by elected executives and elected legislatures. Under these new systems, violence is not necessary to replace an unsatisfactory ruler, merely a few years of patience.

Currently, the only way to effect a radical change in the structure of government and the borders between them is through violent revolution. If a local majority/national minority is oppressed by the government, whether because of the deliberate desire of the majority of the governed or their apathy combined with the desire of an energetic minority, their only recourse is either to hope that the majority cease their persecutions, or violent revolution, which is usually unsuccessful, and yet causes a great deal of suffering on both sides. This results in deep divisions between the two peoples, and things only get worse. The only way out of this situation is through the better impulses of the peoples involved; however, we do not create governments because it pleases us to do so. We create them to harness those better impulses and restrain their opposite.

Then there are situations where a people who live on the border between two states would rather be governed by the government on the other side of the border. Or perhaps there is a situation where, for one reason or another, the people on one side believe the people on the other side would rather be governed by their own government. Either way, there exist no established procedures by which one can determine the veracity of this claim. Even if it is true, the only way to change the situation is through force or the threat of force. Few governments give up territory willingly, no matter what the opinions of the people living on that territory are.

Finally, there is the situation where a wholly new culture arises on the border of two countries, which feels no particular loyalty to either side of the border. Indeed, it would probably be advantageous for these people to consolidate their government, removing trade barriers, allowing for common laws, and so on. Yet the people who live further away from the border have no interest in a change in the status quo, unwilling to give up territory to the other state, consolidate with the other state, or give up territory to a new state that stands between the two. Once again, the only open way for the people in the middle to even attempt this arrangement is through violent revolution.

These sorts of things can happen even in what we call “civilized” countries. World War 2 began as a consolidation of Germanic peoples by the German state (or so it was justified). The Irish Republican Army has fought for years over a disputed border. The United States has had one civil war, and secession movements always exist in some corner of the country—an example being the State of Jefferson, an attempt by some of the people in the mountains that make up California and Oregon's mutual border to secede from California and Oregon and form a new state. Civilized people, of course, do not resort to violence to achieve this (I don't believe the Jeffersonians did so), yet should we not have some way to allow things like this to happen, without violence having even to enter the process?

I think that the reason it has never been done before in any systematic way is that up until recently, the data involved in such a decision was entirely too complex. To successfully produce popularly determined borders, one needs a map of the areas involved that are accurate down to the properties of the individuals involved. On needs a way to overlay the vote data on to this map and analyze where certain demographic patterns “begin” and “end.” One needs an organization to judge between two newly formed states should they dispute the result of the vote. Very simply put, one needs federal or superstate organizations and computers to do this. We've had superstate organizations for over fifty years, federal forms of government for even longer, and we now have computers. Shall we not attempt this?

The Procedure

There are a number of decisions which must be made when any kind of vote is taken. I shall list the ones I can think of and tell how I think things should be done in the following sections.

How often?

First off, it is important to state that a regular period is necessary for this sort of election. To allow pieces of territory to secede from other pieces of territory at will would result in continual geopolitical turmoil. In addition, one really can't tell how well a government will fare in its first few years of life; it must be given time to prove itself. Such a change should be the result of years of observation of the problem, not a sudden popular surge which might be regretted later.

I think fifty years is a good period of time between elections. This ensures that every person (that survives at least fifty years) has an opportunity to participate once in such an election, while giving a good amount of time between elections. I wouldn't set it much lower than fifty, though it could be set higher, particularly if the average lifespan increases. Fifty is a nice, round number, though.

Who can we vote for?

We can rely upon a very natural process here. Various groups formed for the liberation of their homelands or the pressuring of governments or millions of other purposes are formed all the time. All that would be necessary for such groups to become eligible for elevation to the role of an actual government would be a small number of signatures on a petition, and a written plan of government to be made public (and which they can be held to by the higher level of government if they break their word). When the election rolls around, all the groups that fulfill these requirements would be on the ballots.

Note that I believe that just about any arrangement should be allowed in these plans of government. If over fifty percent of the people in Fresno, CA want to call themselves the Kingdom of Fresno, ruled absolutely by Joe Bob, King of Fresno, for fifty years, it should be permitted. If over fifty percent of the people of a particularly religious area want to make their church (or synagogue, or mosque, or temple, or whatever) hierarchy their government, it should be permitted. They chose it, it'll last only fifty years before the feds come in and ask people if they want a change, and in the meantime, people will have the option of leaving if they don't like how things are going. Who knows? We may even find that a form of government that seems bad upon initial inspection is actually better when put into practice. (Absolute freedom of movement between states is implied in this discussion, and guaranteed by the federal/superstate organization.)

Who is eligible?

A friend of mine once asked me, “What do you do if a bunch of Texans move some place for a year to extend the border of their home state?” The particular state was chosen for humor, but it is a valid concern. Its not difficult to imagine a group of well organized people moving for a short period of time to influence the borders of states for the next fifty years. Men have died for lesser causes.

I think holding a census every ten years is a good idea (we do it here in the US), and the data should be used for this election. To ensure that the borders of states are determined by people who have been in a particular area for a while (and therefore have a real stake in the results), rather than migrants who just happen to be in the right place at the right time (deliberately or otherwise), only those who haven't moved more than, say, fifty miles (open to debate; my own sense of distance is limited) since the most recent census would be eligible to vote in the election of governments. If ten years seems too long, we can always hold this type of election in some year other than that of the census.

How many are required for a change?

I mentioned the number “fifty percent” in the section about how nomination would be achieved. I didn't mention fifty percent of who.

I have thought, in the past, that fifty percent would be too low, but the following makes it better. For an area to come under the governance of a proposed government, it would have to have fifty percent of all possible eligible voters, even those who are now ineligible because they have moved from the area, vote in favor of the transition. The idea here is that fairly stable communities have the opportunity to try something new, not to have the few who actually stuck around gain total control.

Also, the default vote for all eligible individuals would be in favor of the status-quo. For a proposed new government to gain full government status, it would have to motivate not fifty percent of all the people who are motivated enough to show up at the polls, it would have to motivate fifty percent of all eligible voters. The idea here is that new forms of government can be chosen in a genuinely democratic manner, not in what I call an “apathocratic” manner (meaning, rule by the few who bother to pay attention to politics). Apathocracy, while not ideal, is probably unavoidable at the level of electing individuals. However, if people don't care what kind of government is in place, the same one should remain in place until they do something bad enough for a revolution to gain genuine support; and, despite the fact that most revolutions are carried out by motivated minorities, I believe that if a revolution in modes of government could be brought about bloodlessly, more people would be willing to consider a change.

How are the borders drawn?

To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure. I can see in my head maps which show the distributions of various demographics, mineral concentrations, species, and whatever else has made its way into maps in the recent past. Unfortunately, I am neither enough of a mathematician nor a cartographer to actually know how this is done, or even how valid, or straightforward, the methods are. However, the basic way I see it being done is as follows.

Each vote would be attached to a property. Multiple votes could be attached to a single property (such as the inhabitants of an apartment complex; no, the owner would not have the sole right to vote in this), and multiple properties could be attached to a single vote (such as the land owned by a business owner). Alternatively, only an actual place of residence or business could have a valid vote; vast tracts of undeveloped land purchased to strangle a community's votes wouldn't count. In the case of multiple votes to a property, the whole property's votes would be totaled up and the majority would rule for the individual property's alignment. Perhaps the owner of a property could be given a larger share of the vote (less than fifty percent, but significantly more than that of an individual resident), and the inhabitants and/or employees the other part. In the case of multiple votes to a property, though all properties would be aligned according to the owner's vote, each individual property would be counted separately for their areas. At any rate, each property would have an alignment assigned to it by the way the interested parties' votes.

Once the alignments are determined, that's when the geographic analysis begins. As I said earlier, I'm not entirely sure how this would be done, but here's a rough possibility. All votes would be plotted to a map, and concentrations of pro votes for each proposed government would be searched for. The largest contiguous section would be marked as a “nucleus” for the possible state. (The issue of minimum sizes and/or minimum populations could be handled by statute by the superstate.) Other comparable concentrations would be marked, as well. This would be done for every single nominee, and the nuclei would be plotted. Nominees that fail to generate a nucleus larger than a single property would be eliminated from consideration at this point, and their votes neutralized.

Next, the gaps would be filled in to make the nuclei as geographically whole as possible. The area would then be analyzed by vote, and if the overall area doesn't have a majority in favor of the transition, that nominee would be eliminated from consideration. This would be done for all remaining nominees.

Next, overlaps between nuclei would be searched for. Where overlaps exist, the overlap would be analyzed to see if there's a line where the two have roughly the same distributions, and each has more or less on either side of the line. If so, a border would be drawn here. I don't know how this would be done, but I am certain it can be done. Perhaps the overlap zone could be searched for micro-nuclei, and each of those filled in, the votes counted, and so on down to the individual property level. It'll take some thought and experimentation to find a good procedure.

Finally, borders would be expanded, and votes counted to see if the state is still viable with the expanded borders. The first priority would be to join together isolated nuclei without overlapping existing nuclei of other nominees. If the area still has a majority in favor of the nominee once this has been done, the joining is valid. If not, the two areas would be commonly governed, but geographically isolated. (Historical precedents exist, such as leagues of cities.). The next thing that would be done is that the nearest sympathetic property would be searched for, joined to the area, the space in between filled in by joining the other properties, and votes counted. If there is still a majority, the joining is valid, and the process is repeated. If not, the procedure ends, and the area stands as defined.

Finally, overlaps between different areas would be analyzed for distribution transitions, borders would be drawn, and a new state is born. Maps would be published, property owners informed of the new jurisdiction under which they fall, and the new governments would be set up according to the procedures they published in their initial bid for nomination. All property owned by the previous state would fall under the ownership of the new state. All property owned by the superstate or federal government would, of course, remain under the higher government.

Why are we doing this again?

I said earlier that there are times when two peoples diverge sufficiently to require mutually separate sovereignties, and that this should be accounted for in plans of government. If there should ever be a world government, I, personally, would not think of it as legitimate without a malleable federal structure like the one presented here. But the other reason is that there are times when people get ideas, whether it be a resurrection of old ideas or genuinely new ideas, on how a state might be governed. In other areas of human thought, experimentation is usually possible. Ideas are tried and tested by numerous individuals and groups until a consensus is built as to the validity of that idea. But in government, the only times when anybody is able to test a new form of government (or re-test an old one) is at those rare moments in history when society forces a power vacuum which can then be filled. Nearly all of these times have been preceded by bloodshed, and often followed by more bloodshed.

The advancement of technological societies is fueled by experimentation, in science, in engineering, in business models, and so on. Would not government benefit from the same unleashing of human creativity? I think it is time we move forward, from accidental government to experimental government.