All good ideas... -- Left-Wing Discussion

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: Tue 2003-06-03 01:00:28
Author: Redeye
Subject: All good ideas...
In reply to: arendt 's message, "NK government" on Mon 2003-06-02 19:30:46

The point of modern democracy being outdated as a form of government might be controversial, but is still true. It's impossible to have too small national legislatures in countries like the USA, because if they are elected by proportional representation then with the number of votes per representative close to one million, local, small parties won't be able to get into Congress whereas larger parties will have little reason to care about most issues, whereas if they are elected in districts, then the winner-take-all method will destroy whatever sense of proportionality that might still exist now. On the other hand, they can't be too large without becoming dysfunctional like the House. I presume that the upper boundary lies somewhere in the high 100s, or about 200, if only because Finland's constitution fixes the number of seats in the Finnish Parliament at 200, which can be easily reduced given Finland's slim population.

Now, specialized legislatures are obviously a good idea, given that. I can only presume that there will also be something like state legislatures, which deal with regional issues at large, and which every citizen of a state is able to vote for regardless of his choice for legislatures. Moreover, it makes sense that every person will vote not only for the regional legislature and for those legislatures dealing with issues he cares about, but also for one or two more legislatures according to occupation, income level, race, or whatever. For instance, a voter might be able to vote for one legislature concerning his occupation (e.g. education for teachers, transportation for truck/bus/cab drivers, etc.), one regional legislature, and a choice of five more legislatures. The five more legislatures enable members of specialized organizations to vote for their issues of heart - such as religion for members of the Christian Coalition or American Atheists, the environment for the Sierra Club, civil liberties for the ACLU, and so on. This way, every person has 7 votes; there are 200 million eligible voters, and since voter turnout is 50% (let's assume it will increase to 60% as a result of this change, though), there will be a total of 7*200,000,000*0.6 = 840,000,000 votes, which will easily allow ~20,000 legislator, with any number between 100 and 200 per legislature.

Now, the constitution accompanying this structure must on the one hand be specific enough as to define the rights of every person and the powers and duties of every legislature and on the other be flexible enough to allow for borderline cases (is separation of chruch and state an issue of religion or civil liberties?). Moreover, its amendment procedure should be by all the people rather than by the legislatures or by the voters for specific legislatures, in order to prevent min/maxing of legislature choice and hostile takeovers that might involve racists taking over the race-relations legislature in order to resegregate the USA.

Now, the state boundaries are somewhat problematic. If the Senate goes bye-bye, then population disparities will clearly not matter. What will matter are economic unity and regional culture, because each state legislature will deal with at large issues such as natural resources (in cooperation with the environment legislature) and fiscal/monetary policy. City-based states are a good idea, therefore, but very rural areas will have to be their own states, because, for example, there's no economic unity between the Dakotas and the closest metro area, Minneapolis/St. Paul. On the other hand, Omaha and Kansas City are two different metro areas but should be together because of their similar economic structures. I'm not going to comment on Alaska and Hawaii, which I assume will become independent with the adoption of the new political structure, but if they stay in the USA, then they will only create further complications because neither can join another state. I think that the best state structure is one very similar to Goobergunch's map (http://www.angelfire.com/pa5/goobergunch/images/states.gif), maybe with a few splits in the largest states, such as separating New York from Boston, Cincinnati from Nashville, and Denver from Phoenix from Vegas.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

I can tweak the map tomorrow... -- goobergunch, Tue 2003-06-03 16:34:35
- I have some question about ESRI Arc Explorer -- arendt, Tue 2003-06-03 20:35:01
  - What's the file extension? -- goobergunch, Wed 2003-06-04 17:30:55
    - Re: What's the file extension? -- arendt, Wed 2003-06-04 19:58:24
- Question/comment about map tweaking -- arendt, Tue 2003-06-03 20:43:45
  - car loans financing for real estate investors -- car loans used auto loan north plainfield, Mon 2006-03-20 01:42:15