Political reform

[sobrique]

Right, well we've the American elections coming up in november, that's looking like it'll be a shocking stitch up again. I mean, there was fixing going on last time, and Bush won. And it becomes _easier_ when you're already in power and have the supreme court in your pocket.
Iraq held elections, and whilst they were bent as hell, they weren't quite as much of a cluster fuck as the debacle in California 4 years ago.

We've got the European union a bunch of corrupt hacks - the council are fiddling the books, and not wanting to 'play fair' with things like the common agricultural policy, because it favours certain member states.

And so I propose two political reforms.

The first is more extreme. Basically, we hold a coup, and take over the world. Let's start with the UK first, but eventually, dictatorship for all.
But here's the special part. When you become El Presidente, you have supreme arbitration over all issues. Your assets are removed, and merged with the state, guaranteing no outside interests.
And it's your duty to run the country as best you can. Make whatever decisions you like, and appoint whoever you think best.
The only thing that you cannot change is the 'regime change totalizer'. A trust fund-like pot of cash, that people can pay into if they think you're being a bit crap. This totalizer is 'published' once it hits an arbitrary sum, say 0.1% of the GDP (so you can make this point further away by improving the GDP). And it goes to the person who kills you.

So you're doing your good job, but if too many people think that "it's going a bit wrong" and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is, you get assassins coming after you. They can of course, change their mind, and retract the amount of money they've placed in the 'pool'.

So you have a job for life. And your job is to safeguard and improve the state of the nation.
Whilst you're in power, you have supreme authority, but if you screw up, then you get capped.


My other, is a little less extreme. It's a solution to immigration and asylum issues.
Don't get me wrong, I think immigration and asylum are important things. It's good for people to be able to improve their lot in life, and have refuge from 'bad conditions'.
But equally obviously, there's a finite limit - you can't support _too_ many people.
And so I propose the "Deport a fuckwit" program. For each incoming person seeking permanant residence to the UK, we deport some worthless scum. Now unfortunately, Australia won't let us do that any more, so I propose Siberian work crews. Averaged over a 5 year period, there'll be an assessment criteria for your worth to the country/community. Your worth will be elevated by paying taxes, doing voluntary work, charity contributions etc. It'll be diminished by claiming benefits, getting criminal records and wearing burberry being antisocial.

And when a new person wishes to become permanantly resident in the UK, from another country, we deport someone to siberia. This person, can of course, make a re-application to return to the UK after a year. Subject to having reformed, then someone else gets deported in their place.

And of course, we do have to refuse applications from people who'd immediately be on the 'deportee' list.

So we get a kind of natural selection, where we start encouraging the 'best' to come to the UK, because the arseholes get deported, so we have less per unit of the population. And we have work crews in siberia, counting trees, taking crash courses in self improvement, because there's only so much tree counting one person can take.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

1) No matter how many trees you count, if nobody ever taught you right from wrong, you're not going to suddenly realise and become a better person unless somebody teaches you. By example being the most valid method

2) How do the disabled fit into this? Some people can't do charity work because they're too ill, and claim incapacity benefit their whole lives, but don't actively make the country a worse place for everybody else to live in.

3) What if somebody wanted to become president and put millions of pounds into the pot so that the current president was killed, and then hired assassins to kill all the other assassins?

4) Wouldn't the exchange a fuckwit for a nice person scheme just make it so that the fuckwits who were left would go around killing immigrants [more than they already do] because they saw it as the immigrants' fault that their relatives ended up in Siberia?

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

1) No, probably not.
2) I don't see being disabled having impact at all, except indirectly. Being disabled doesn't mean that you're a worthless fuckwit, but it also doesn't count as an excuse either.
3) We're no worse of than the current political system, where money has a loud voice. The major difference is that if there's a country wide consensus, then there'll be _someone_ prepared to put money in, and risk it.
4) They might decide to pick in immigrants. But that'll be a self limiting situation, since that'll increase _their_ likelyhood of getting deported.

[malal.livejournal.com]

2) Depends on the disability. If you can only move your left eye, then, yeah, that's a pretty good excuse not to do much.... Perhaps we're looking at it wrong. How about if you're diabled enough that it's debatably not worth living, then you're excempt?

3) You said it yourself, once your in power it becomes much easier to fiddle the system. And if the system might say you should die, then, yeah, even more people would try to fiddle it than would fiddle with the elections.

Also, I do not support any form of death penalty. Because we don't have one, I think the majority of people in this country feel the same way, so you'd be killing our ability to have any influence on the political system. Plus, I don't trust the general public to make a good decision. Look at how many did vote Republican, or Conservative. Sometimes it is the majority, and it's always a very large chunk of the population...

(If you are one of said voters, then I think you're Wrong, throughly disagree with you, and hope your opinion never has any influence on the policial system I have to live under. However, I recognise your right to that opinion. I'll assume you think something similar about me).

Also, the system activally works against social welfare, you can have a very nice GDP without any form of minimum wage or enforced minimum working conditions (And what about all those studies that buisness bring out showing improvements in such things are bad for the GDP, or buisness in general. I don't entirely belive them, but there's a grain of truth in them. And in the quest Not To Die, Fucking the Not Rich becomes sooo much more acceptable.... And if you really make sure the poor are poor, they can't "vote" against you!).

Actually, all you have to do is not mess with the rich, and stop a large transition of people from poor to rich. You might get the odd rich person with a social consionce "voting" against you, but they wont be able to stump up the cash to matter...

4) I don't belive such people think like that. The sort of people you want to deport have a very bad record for thinking about the long term consiquences of their actions.

Second, A large number of crimes like this never get solved. I don't know the exact numbers (or even if it's most of them), but still....

Also, Killing Immigrants would work, particulary if done in large enough numbers. Firstly, you drive back the one in one out threshold (if you don't have, OK, they just drive the population down). Secondly, and this is the biggy, you scare the shit out of people who might want to immegrate, so they don't come here. If every country started doing this it becomes a little harder, so you just kick it up to the point where the conditions for them here look worse than their home contry.

Overall, while I don't like the current systems, I have yet to see anything better. My problems with them are the people in power, rather than the power itself (RE: me not trusting the general public to vote sensibally). And the immigration problems, by and large, have been caused by the western world Fucking everone else for our advantage, or by us not giving a damn when we should have done (knowing that doesn't help solve it though).

Before we go to your lengths, how about a real "informing the populus" drive, where people resurch the shit out of the polititions, and ram the salient points down peoples throats on election days. Maybe even to the extent that the forms don't give names, just what they've done / what they belive in. Couple this with compulsery voting (which would require more voting times), a "I don't care" option, and lets see if democracy really works...

Finally, Ed, I'd like to know where you think you are on the political spectrum, because everything I've heard about politics from you for a while indicates you should be a Conservative / Republican voter....

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

2) If you can only move your left eye, then you're hardly the kind of scumbag who thinks it's funny to go smashin' cars on a saturday night, after the footie and when you're well lagered.

3) If you oppress 'the poor' then their _individual_ relative ability to deal with it is limited. But the fact is, in a pyramidal structure, they'll also have the weight of numbers, and so only a small amount each is necessary.

OK, so GDP perhaps isn't quite the right measure. Social index? Average quality of life?

I quite agree that death isn't a casual thing. The point of the system is that this way the guy in charge remains so until he dies - there's no fiddling the books, because you _are_ the system, and if he _really_ screws up, then he dies.

4) If people I'd be deporting don't think about their actions, well, OK. Do you really think that someone who doesn't think 'long term' enough to figure that beating people up because they might be responsible for one of their arsehole mates getting deported, then surely they're really high on the list of people we want to get rid of.

And yeah, as you pointed out. The real flaw with 'democracy' (which we don't really have by the way) is that the majority are idiots.

The 'average voter' would like for someone else to pay for them to sit around at home, watchin' TV, drinkin' lager, smokin' faags and maybe goin' cruisin' in their XR3i.

I'm not opposed to the idea of a welfare state, but I also appreciate that it takes money. Lots of it. A certain amount of support from the system is acceptable, but there's a certain amount more who are basically just thievin' bastards who think the world owes them something.

I'm sorry, but the last 50 years of 'informing the populace' have revealed that the majority genuinely don't give a shit. So let's scrap this 4 yearly popularity contests, competing for who has best hair, and turn it into something a little more useful.