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Date Posted: Tue 2003-08-19 19:30:00
Author: arendt (reposting redeye)
Subject: RE: updated version of NK-govt
In reply to: arendt 's message, "NK government" on Mon 2003-06-02 19:30:46


From: redeye
Date: Aug 17th 2003

>Hi, Redeye-
>
>Sorry not to respond in detail with this post. I thought you
>might like to have
>my current thinking to study while I study yours.

It's okay... this PM is long and thoughtful enough for me as it is now :).

>The biggest change I have made to my original proposal is to
>incorporate an
>empirically/biologically motivated reason for hierarchical
>legislation. This
>comes from my study of brain architecture (wife is a
>neuropsychologist, I
>have Ph.D. in biophysics and have done a stint as a CPU
>architect).
>
>Feel free to ask for clarification of terminology.
>
>Basically, the brain is organized in some kind of a hierarchy,
>but there is
>disagreement and lack of understanding about exactly what
>sort. The vision
>system is the most studied. Basically, the brain areas for
>vision form a
>feedback hierarchy. The lower parts of the hierarchy do the
>simple analysis -
>this is a line, that is a circle. The next level up creates
>objects, and separates
>figure from ground - it produces what the Gestalt
>psychologists understood
>seventy years ago. Higher than that, and you get object
>tracking. At each
>level, the spatial resolution goes down and the level of
>abstraction goes up.
You're talking about how grandmother cells don't really exist but rather are high-level phenomena created by simpler cells, right?
>What is newly understood is that this is not just a
>feedforward hierarchy. It
>is also a feedback hierarchy. For example, have you ever
>looked at a trick
>picture or an optical illusion? You can focus your attention
>and force your
>brain to see the image in a completely different way.
>Basically, the higher
>levels are laying down a template and telling the lower
>levels: connect these
>lines, ignore that feature, this goes in front of that.
>
>When all the levels are in equilibrium, we have a stable
>picture of the world.
>This is the science I want to incorporate.
>
>Since I have been working with powers of two, my first crack
>at this hierarchy
>was a pyramid that reduced four at each level. When I ran the
>numbers, I
>realized that the existing two level hierarchy was actually a
>three level hierarchy,
>if you include the cabinet members. Look at the numbers.

Right... but the problem is that the more decentralized a system becomes, the harder it is to coordinate its parts. Take constitutional amendments: they are much harder and take much longer to pass than in any other country, because the USA is the only constitutional democracy I know of that requires the states to ratify amendments. To some degree, when your resolution becomes low enough and your level becomes high enough, you see the brain as a single entity. I don't know if neurophysiologists do that; I know that the basic social models we use treat every human being as a single individual.

Now, you can argue that the model you're proposing doesn't have to look from so far because the other people are other nations. But the problem here is twofold: one, other nations will indeed see the USA as one, rather than ten or 40 or 160 or 50, and thus some president will be needed, if only for foreign affairs; and two, the moment you look at the state as a single organism, you're in danger of making the mistake of viewing the people as subordinate to it just like brain cells and lobes are subordinate to the whole person. In Gödel, Escher, Bach, there's a dialog in which an anteater reports that he can talk with ant colonies, which agree to his eating some of their ants. Since on the ethical level the state should never be an ant colony, you're on a dangerous ground here.

>Suppose I have 10 cabinet deparments and two layers of
>four-fold pyramidal
>legislatures under each department.
>
>160 + 40 + 10 = 210 legislatures x 100 = 21,000 critters
>
>Forty 2nd level legislatures corresponds roughly to 20 + 17
>current committees,
>but those committees are largely duplicated in House and
>Senate . Ten 3rd level
>corresponds roughly to number of cabinet departments.
>
>This says:
>
> 160/210 = 76% critters at level 0
> 40/210 = 19% critters at level 1
> 10/210 = 4.76% critters at level 2
>
>vs today:
> 476/591 = 80.5% at L0
> 100/591 = 17.0% at L1
> 15/591 = 2.5% at L2 (15 cabinet secretaries)
>
>Each cabinet dept has 1 L2 + 4 L1 + 16 L0 legislatures = 21 x
>100 = 2100 staff
First, what does the 476 mean? There're 435 Representatives, not 476.
Second, 100 legislators per legislature is too small, IMO, especially for the higher-level legislatures (the L2's and the popular L1's). 100 might be reasonable for the L0's, emphasis on might; however, the L1's need at least 200 and the L2's might even need 400. You may argue that 400 is too high for a body to function, but the L2's will only be there to get feedforward from the L1's, which I presume will be the ones with real power. 200 is, I guess, the highest a legislature can have and function; I know Finland's parliament has 200 members, and the country has less than 3 million voters, so if 200 were so dysfunctional the parliament would probably be in the low 100's and the v/r ratio would still be small. So basically, every cabinet department has 400 + 200*4 + 200*16 = 4400 staff. This doubling is crucial to ensure a good v/r ratio without completely disenfracnchising people by overspecialization.
>Here is where the idea really solidified. Let's make the
>cabinet officers the
>"president" of each pyramid of legislatures. I mean, cabinet
>officers are part
>of the executive branch. Except today, they are like
>Congressional staffers -
>we don't vote for them; they are appointed by crooked
>political logrolling.
>
>So, now what? I have fifteen independent "executive branch"
>presidents.
>Well, I think, at this level, those presidents should play by
>parliamentary
>rules and "form a government" by electing one of their number
>the actual
>and true "president". Only, he is more like prime minister.
>This highest
>level of government would have "votes of confidence" so that
>presidents
>that are awful can be removed immediately. Yet, the people
>doing the
>removing are elected.
>
>The secretaries and legislatures would have removal by
>impeachment and/or
>censure, just like the U.S. today.
Sounds reasonable for an executive, but not for a legislature. While SLs are a good idea for both branches, there still needs to be some legislature independent of the executive. Take corporations as an analogy: the more decentralized the board of directors is, the more power the CEO has over them. While the CEO of the state needs some powers for his own - e.g. signing treaties and declaring a state of emergency - there needs to be a single board of directors that oversees him.
>
>Whereas each citizen gets to vote only in a few specialized
>legislatures, he
>does get to cast a vote for more cabinet members than
>legislators. For example,
>if he gets to cast five legislative votes, he might get to
>cast ten cabinet member
>votes.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to give people more L2 votes than L1 votes. I think that the best way to draw this is like courses you take in college: you have some minimum general education requirements, e.g. Harvard's 11 divisions (literature A, literature B, mathematics, etc.) where you have to take at least one course from each fo the 7 divisions that re furthest from your major, as well as major requirements. The best way to do it, IMO, is to give people 5 L1 votes and, say, 10 L2 votes. You can only vote for an L2 if you vote for its L1, so basically you have a choice between having a very general vote (2 L2's per L1 you vote for), being specialized (voting for all L2's of one or two L1's), or anything in between. The v/r ratio doesn't suffer much; for L1, 5 votes times 120 million voters divided by 8,000 L1 legislators equals 75,000 v/r, and for L2, similarly, the ratio is 37,500. I can live with those ratios.

>The hierarchy is not only for checks and balance reasons,
>although they are
>vital. Based on the brain hierarchy, I can say that lower
>level legislatures do
>more of the scut work. They compute the budget (more on budget
>later, as
>it is very important for integrating the separate cabinet
>departments).
>
>One of the things the brain people say about the lowest level
>of the hierarchy
>is that, because it has the highest spatial resolution, it is
>the "blackboard" that
>all the hierarchy uses to write down and expand the entire
>comprehension.
>
>So, I don't have a hierarchy just to avoid unicamerality. I
>have a hierarchy
>that divides tasks into simpler and more complex.
>
>If a lowest level legislature concerns itself with one task,
>sort of like a subcommittee
>today, a second level legislature may coordinate tasks of
>related subcommittees,
>and work out the division of budget allocations between them.
>A top level legislature
>is doing the executive work of a cabinet department. It is
>setting policy, etc.
>
>I have some rules about voting for and being elected to
>legislatures. Except at
>startup of this Constitutional government, you can't jump in
>from nowhere and
>become cabinet secretary. First you have to be elected to a
>level 0 (bottom) legislature
>for X terms. Then you have to be elected to level 1
>legislature, etc. This means
>no more dilletantes, celebrities, and rich boys. They gotta do
>the work.

The problem with the voting rules is that they prevent outsiders from being elected. Look at the USSR for a moment; every secretary-general from Khrushchev on was moderate, mainstream-communist, and dogmatic, because he had to work his way up the communist party's ladder for decades. This prevented true revolutionaries and real progressives from being appointed secretaries-general; Gorbachev's revolution was more moderate than extreme. Under your model, people like Howard Dean and Paul Wellstone would be extinguished at the low levels of government.

>Also, this solves the issue of how voters get "seniority". For
>example, at age 21
>you can vote only for L0. At age 25, you can vote for L0, and
>you get new votes
>in L1, and you can vote for a few cabinet secretaries.
>Finally, at age 30, you get
>L2 votes and the max number of CS votes.
>
>This proposal lets young people vote, but does not give their
>immaturity full scope.
>There is a precedent in the Constitution, in which there are
>age qualifications for
>holding certain offices.

Why? Young people are those who are responsible to change. MLK was 26 when he became the figurehead of the civil rights movement; the 1960s' revolution wsa wholly based on college students whose motto was "never trut anyone over 30"; the 18-30 group is the one that gave Paul Wellstone his Senate seat and the one that now drives the Dean campaign.

Moreover, voting to some extent cures immaturity, because it casts one's ideas in stone. It's harder to rationalize one's "past mistakes" if one voted for those mistakes, and thus people will be forced to consider their views carefully.

Finally, it's the 18-30 people who vote based on what they really think rather than on what they've always voted for. How many 60-year-olds vote for a different party than they did 40 years ago, former Dixiecrats excepted? How many 50-year-olds vote according to today's pressing needs rather than the 1960s' pressing needs? Not many. It's the 18-30 group that brings ideals to politicals, that tries to change the situation rather than throws its hands and says "this is impossible." In my field, mathematics, the height of one's career is in one's 20s, preferably early 20s.
So, I say give everyone full voting rights at 16. I hate to use anecdotes, but goobergunch and I should be able to vote just like sweetheart and you.

>----
>
>That's my current thinking. It evolves when I have time to
>work on it, and as I read
>more cognitive science results. The theory I'm reporting on
>goes by the name of
>Reverse Hierarchy Theory.
>
>----
>
>I am really amazed that you buy into this. We should talk. Too
>bad you are in CA
>and I am in MA. Let me know what you think
>
>arendt
>
>U.S. CABINET DEPARTMENTS (15 existing +1 of my invention)
>grouped into categories
>
>1. Natural and biological resources
>Interior
>Agriculture
>Energy
>
>2. Human made resources and infrasturcture
>Housing and Urban Development
>Transportation
>(Science)
>
>3. Human resources
>Education
>Health and Human Services
>Labor
>Veterans Affairs
>
>4. Business resources
>Commerce
>Treasury
> 
>5. Foreign relations and relations of legislative with
>judiciary
>Homeland Security
>Justice
>State
>Defense
>
>+ Political Defense/Rules (my addition - see discussion)

Actually, I have an Excel file in which I try to list as many SLs as I can think of - I currently have 54 and they already include some very focused things like different SLs for the mail, the Internet, communications, and the media. They are divided into 9 groups, anyway, which can form at least part of the division into L2's: administrative (the interior, elections), civil rights (civil liberties, privacy, race issues), economic (taxation, the budget), environmental (energy, natural resources), intellectual (education, science), international (defense, foreign policy), regulatory (commerce, industry, agriculture), social (crime, health care, urban policy), and technological (communications, the media).

Now, obviously some of the 9 need to be split - the international group is way too broad, for example. So, my proposal for L2's is as following:

Administrative affairs (elections, the civil code, public investigations)
Civil rights (race/gender issues, civil liberties, the judiciary)
The treasury (taxation, the budget, international trade)
Labor (labor issues, unemployment, welfare)
The environment (energy, water, possibly agriculture)
Education (public education, scientific research)
Defense (the military, national security)
Foreign policy (the UN, international relations)
Industry and commerce (industry, commerce, big business)
Social development (housing, urban policy, possibly crime, possibly health)
Infrastructure (transportation, road & rail)
Communications (the media, the Internet)

This gives 12 L2's; I eliminated or merged several departments because of various reasons - Veterans' Affairs because I've never figured out why we need it, the Interior because its work can and should be split between the Department of the Environment and the Department of Administrative Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security can and should be merged into the Department of Defense, and I don't see any reason why the Justice Department needs legislatures.

>
>Now lets talk about the "president". What rights and duties
>does he have
>vis-a-vis the elected cabinet secretaries?
>
>First, when a coalition is formed and a president selected, he
>resigns his
>cabinet position and appoints his successor. Then he occupies
>the office
>of President. No confidence votes must include at least L2
>legislatures
>(~10 leg x 100 = 1000 voters)
I'd prefer the president to be accountable to a single legislature, just like everyone else in the executive. This single legislature - call it the House of Representatives - is the one that's responsible to "foreign relations" inside the nation, i.e. helping appoint judges, amending the constitution, removing elected officials, etc. If you look at my constitution proposal, you'll find that basically the House of Representatives there makes the laws whereas the Senate oversees it, helps amend the constitution, helps appoint judges, and so on. I propose that the new House be given those duties that my constitutional proposal gives to the Senate, as well as be allowed to override SL laws to some degree. It should be like the Supreme Court, in a sense: it is the final authority on legislation, but most legislation is done in lower-level bodies.
>The President directs the "spotlight of consciousness". He has
>power to
>introduce legislation in top legislatures? Cabinet secs must
>get his
>permission to introduce legislation? Cab secs are pro-tem
>presidents
>of their legislatures.
>
>Different legislatures split up presidential duties? (old
>concept)
>Rules legislature leader is "ceremonial president". Defense
>legislature
>leader is "commander in chief".

No, the different L2's can't split up presidential duties. The head of state has to be one person in all but the smallest governments; one of the USSR's weaknesses in the 1970s was that its top position belonged to a triumvirate, not to one person.

>Each L2 Legislature has a "president" (cabinet officer) who
>signs
>and vetoes legislation. The cabinet officers form a coalition
>government. As described above.

No problem here - I don't like the presidential veto anyway. However, since every minister is elected by a separate body, we essentially get a winner-take-all system except that the districts are departmental and not geographical. But then again, I'm not sure that this is any worse than the parliamentary system whereby a single legislature elects all cabinet officers.

>Using L0 as memory - it is where budget wrangling gets done
>(like Ways and Means).
>No higher level legislature does budget reconciliation.

Actually, it would be the best if the Treasury L2 or the House had to approve the final budget. But yeah, it's frustrating that higher-level legislatures need to approve every addition or subtraction of 50 dollars from the budget.

>Each cabinet-tree prepares its own budget and submits to the
>overall budget
>legislature. Totals are seen, and negotiations ensue.
>How to prevent each cabinet department from blowing out
>budget?
>Where are overall guidelines set if there is no overall
>executive, and people can't vote for all depts?

Well, one possible way to do it is to say that every L2 has a budget roughly proportional to the number of votes it, its L1's, and its L0's received last election. By roughly I mean a deviation of at most 2% of the total budget from the proportion. In other words, if 25% of the votes are for the Defense L2 or for its subordinate L1's and L0's, then the defense budget must be between 23% and 27%.
A better and less restrictive way to do it is to have everybody approve the budget - i.e. the House of Representatives.

>Each L2 legislature sits atop 4 L1 and 16 L0 legislatures.
>How
>do vetos, overrides, and impeachments work? Do L0 and L1
>have presidents? I think not. Let impeachment begin in L0,
>proceed to L1? Or begin in L1 and proceed to L2, leaving L0
>out? I like latter - leave younger, macho, volatile out of
>impeachment.

Actually, I prefer a much simpler form of recall. First, there's always the recall petition, although it shouldn't be an option for officials elected by proportional representation, e.g. legislators, but only for officials in single-winner offices, e.g. ministers and the president. Second, IMO the House should be able to 86 the president with a 3/4s majority, a minister with a regular majority provided that at least one person more than a quarter of the minister's L2 requests that, and unelected officials with a regular majority. The L2's should be allowed to 86 their ministers and unelected officials with a regular majority.

>Can you meet both the votes/legislator and age limits?
>
>Department of Political Defense
> Overseas freedom of press
> Defends separation of church and state
> Heavily monitors intelligence agencies, especially
>domestically

That should be the Department of Civil Rights, IMO, as well as the Supreme Court. It's the SC that struck down sodomy laws, not any elected department; and if any branch of government strikes down the de facto establishment of Christianity in the US then it'll be the Judiciary.

>Military is by-and-large "unconscious" due to need for quick
>response
> OTOH, it needs very strong control

What do you mean by "unconscious"?

Anyway, my thoughts on this, after reading your PM:

There should be four levels of legislature, of which the upper three are elected. The uppermost level is a unicameral Congress; below it are 10-12 Departmental Legislatures; below them are about 50 Specialized Legislatures; and below them are Specialized Committees. Every voter can vote in Congressional elections, as well as for 4 DLs and 5 of their subordinate SLs. There are 400 members in Congress and in each DL, and 200 in each SL; thus, the v/r ratios are 300,000:1 in Congress, 100,000:1 in the DLs, and 60,000:1 in the SLs - all assuming that voter turnout increases to 60% as a result. The Specialized Committees are composed of Specialized Legislators, just like Senate Committees are composed of Senators, and have no legislative power but retain initiative power in their SLs.

Each SL has full legislative power in its area, but its DL may override most of its laws. Each DL has almost full legislative power in its Department's fields and may also remove its Department's elected and unelected officials, but Congress may override most of its laws. Congress may only legislate at-large things such as treaties, the budget, creating new Departments, etc., may remvoe the president, has some say in the appointment of judges, and may amend the constitution.




 

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