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Date Posted: Tue 2003-08-19 20:01:24
Author: arendt
Subject: Re: RE: updated version of NK-govt - PART 2
In reply to: arendt (reposting redeye) 's message, "RE: updated version of NK-govt" on Tue 2003-08-19 19:30:00

>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 ::v::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.

First, I wasn't clear, and I think you got the wrong idea. I'm saying that people get extra votes only
for cabinet members; i.e., executive officers, corresponding to the current situation that everyone
gets to vote for president, and some critters. They don't get extra votes for the whole L2 legislature.

I would try to come up with some scheme where the votes for extra secretaries can only go to "related"
(To Be Determined - see my categorization of Departments) departments; or to the more homuncular
departments like military and foreign relations. In fact, universal voting for the secretaries of those
departments may prevent too many people from specializing in those legislatures, since they have some
say there by this extra vote. I think this incorporates your curiculum idea to some extent.

Since I just came up with the idea of hierarchy, I hadn't thought about constraining votes to be in the
same pyramid. Good idea.


>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.

Well, hasn't Howard Dean been a state governor for ten years? Didn't he face election twice?
We have not talked about local governments, but they will slot into this hierarchy or form a
parallel hierarchy that would satisfy the conditions of running for office. It would be easy to
say one term at each lower level. If level 0 was a 2 year term, and level 1 was 4 years, we
would be asking for 6 years of government experience at geographical or federal legislatures
before running for cabinet secretary. Hardly onerous.

My intention is to keep celebrity interlopers, like Schwarzenneger, Ventura, and Perot out.

I would allow a Kucinich to run. He was a mayor and a three term Congressman. I'm not sure
that Al Sharpton would be allowed in. He may have run for office, but he never got in.

Think of this as motivation for people to run for lower level office. Right now, a lot of those
offices are held by local hacks and real estate developers.

There is precedent for this. The Roman Republic had the Cursis Honorium or course of honor.
In order to be council, you first had to be aedil (or some such), etc.

I don't think a properly functioning adaptive system needs true revolutionaries to "press the reset
button". If the system is working, it is "at the edge of chaos", and can rapidly reconfigure itself
to respond to events. The need for frequent revolutions is a sign the system breaks down a lot.

>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.

No. Here is where neuroscience has a direct impact on politics. It is well-known that brain areas
"come online" in a genetically determined order, when the fiber tracts are myelinated. Some tracts
are myelinated as late as the perhaps 35 years of age. Maturity is not just a word, like "gravitas".

In short, age makes a true difference in how people's brains are wired.

Schizophrenia does not manifest until after about age 18, when the puberty growth spurt winds down.
19 year olds, especially males, are notorious for feeling "invulnerable".

I'm sorry, I don't want invulnerables and potential nut cases voting for presidents who want to start wars.
Let them survive past 25. They still get to vote for local geographical candidates and for L0 and L1 legislators
before that age.

Your point about old people not making revolutions is a good one, but I say that successful revolutions
start from the bottom up. And, I let the young folks vote for the lower levels. If they are angry, let them
organize and hijack the lower level legislatures. It will teach them how to play politics.

::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.

These are dirty details that will take some time to agree on. I will study yours.

I tried to use object oriented programming ideas to group the departments. I thought about "inheriting" certain
formats for bills, as part of my drive to standardize, "packetize" and "timescale" the legislative process.

As far as why the Justice Department needs a legislature, how do you think the FBI got created? By an act
of Congress which placed that agency inside the Justice Department. Every executive agency's charter is
set out by Congress. There must be a legislature that can change rules about things like tenure of judges,
creation and destruction of new functions. Think object-oriented. Each Department needs a "constructor"
and a "destructor". The legislature fills that role.

>
>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 ::hat 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.

Could you please give more details of what it means for "the president to be accountable"?
As far as I can tell, that only means for discipline purposes.

As I said above, the Budget Legislature holds the power of the purse. It is the muscle
of the legislature. I can't see adding presidential accountability to that workload.
Today, I believe its the Judiciary Committee which deals with impeachment. So, if
we are talking discipline, accountability might belong there; or in the Political Defense
(Civil Rights?) legislature. Notice in my hierarchy, I call the Judiciary the committee that
deals with the other branches of government.

I'm still searching for that homunculus. :-). (Sorry, I've had one too many encounters with Buddhism.)

>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.

Okay, I didn't think that one through. We don't want the old Polish nobility.

>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.

I think you still misunderstood. Every minister is elected directly by the people because he
is the executive of the departmental legislature. Hmm. Maybe I missed the point. You are
right that the minister is winner-take-all.

>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.

As I said, the Budget Committee is special. This detail is crucial and needs a lot of work.


>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.

I haven't given a lot of thought to recall.

>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.

Is this department under the control of the president or a legislature, or
is it a separate, independent branch?

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

::What do you mean by "unconscious"?

See discussion above about TUI. I mean that military responses have to happen way faster than the
legislative or even executive timescale. Military plans are like boxers' reflexes. They come into play
unconsciously.

Of course, the production of said plans are done off-line and consciously.


::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.

Why have *any* *unelected* levels? My whole point was to get the process out where the voters can
control it.

Again, as above, please explain why your pyramid is upside down.

::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.

I gave veto power to the president. You are giving it to this homuncular Congress. We are both searching
for a solution. Lets give it some further thought.

-------

regards

arendt

P.S. Do you want this discussion up on VOY? You have my permission to post our entire exchange.
Let me know how you want to continue.

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