James Green-Armytage

 

“Hopeful Ideas for Social Organization”^[1]

• Increased democracy in social decision-making

• Decrease production and consumption. Decrease labor and resource use.

 

• For president and other one-person offices, use a Condorcet-efficient ranked ballot voting method. The purpose of these is to reduce the ‘spoiler effect’; to allow multiple parties to compete without the problem of splitting votes. This would break the invincibility of the two-party system and allow more intense political competition and thus more active and precise government response to popular will.

• Use a form of single transferable vote proportional representation to elect legislative bodies. This would allow a fuller spectrum of minority political philosophies to have a voice in legislature rather than only a series of majority compromise candidates.

 

• Restrictions on political advertising illegal in mass media formats. Free media time for candidates with certain levels of support in terms of recent polls or previous elections.

• Do away with the electoral college as the method for choosing the president.

• Condorcet-efficient voting systems can also be used within legislatures as a tool to choose the best version of a measure or the best response to a situation.

 

• Place restrictions and disincentive on excessive advertising. Create official venues for consumer information, where the quality ratings of products are determined by consumer feedback.

 

• A strong publicly owned and democratically managed media.

• Democratic systems of deciding media content, perhaps based on transferable vote proportional representation systems.

• Low threshold entry level venues for pieces, which place them in a position to be gradually voted upward into prominence if people like them.

 

• A great deal more political content on television.

• Regular airspace for all serious political parties with enough popular support. Regular political debates and discussions between politicians.

• Routine, very highly visible presentation of how politicians have voted, and what bills are currently being decided.

• Major and frequent forums preceding all elections where the different candidates present their basic values and ideas, respond to questions about various issues, and debate. These forums should generally take the place of mass-media paid political advertising. They should be broadcast on prime-time television and other highly visible media.

            The process of deciding who takes part in the debates is an interesting problem. Towards the beginning of the election cycle, it might be interesting to have very large groups of candidates appearing at once, each briefly stating their view of different subjects. Later, however, it could be beneficial to have a smaller debate between a handful of frontrunners (even though people would of course still be able to vote for candidates not included in the debates). The composition of the smaller debates could be decided by popular votes.

 

• A system of popular votes. At first the results of these votes would not be legally binding; they would not in themselves create, eliminate, or change laws, but they would be very visibly presented. The integrity of the voting process would be carefully protected, and the institution would be considered official. They would serve as a clear mechanism by which the people at large could express their will. When politicians make decisions in contrast with the results of the popular vote, this is visibly called attention to.

            Here’s an example as to how it might work: A legislator (preferably one elected by proportional representation) proposes a measure for public vote. (Perhaps in some cases a sufficient number of petitions might even be sufficient to call a vote.) S/he might propose different variants on the measure, or other legislators might propose variants or alternate measures. These are presented without filtration by the media in a regular forum, and a popular vote is called. The public voting takes place, after an interval, choosing between the different measures on a Condorcet basis, ranking choices. For there to be no measure is always a choice. (And/or: votes might be called to evaluate specific elements of a measure, then the measure might go back to the legislature for them to take this into account in publishing different versions.) The results of the poll are then reported by the media, along with the voter turnout. The measure then moves back to the legislature. The legislature may also vote on a Condorcet basis. A single measure is selected. If there is an executive branch with veto powers, the measure that is selected moves to that office and is either vetoed or passed. How each legislator (or executive) voted is widely presented, and it is emphasized whether or not they voted with the results of the popular vote. Although the poll does not directly dictate the outcome of the measure, a legislator who frequently goes against poll results might have this as an obstacle when seeking re-election.

• Popular votes should be applied to laws that govern people's personal behavior. On local, state, and federal levels as appropriate, people should vote on what is a crime and what is not. They should also vote on what the penalty should be, preferentially choosing between a range of possible penalties using a Condorcet system, or perhaps a system where the options are automatically arranged along a spectrum from severe penalties to no penalty, and where the option preferred by the median voter is selected.

• Popular votes (using a Condorcet basis) can also be used to help choose specialized officials, rather than only electing general officials who then appoint specialized officials. (For example, popular votes could be called to decide on a school chancellor, a police commissioner, a united nations representative, a World Trade Organization representative, etc.)

 

• All these measures (such as Condorcet, proportional representation, the popular votes, the broad and transparent media presentation of politics) should take place at state and local levels as well. People should know who their state senators are. They should elect them proportionally or with Condorcet, after being presented with a wide field of candidates representative of the entire political spectrum. The activities within state and local legislatures should be strongly illuminated, for example by being shown on prime time television (for example, in the place of the local news two nights out of the week or ten minutes out of the hour each day). Popular votes should take place frequently, and the results generally known.

 

• Active redistribution of wealth. Decrease rich wealth, increase poor wealth.

• Highly progressive tax system, preferably a wealth tax rather than an income tax. Zero or negative taxes on the poor. Extremely high taxes on the extremely rich, i.e. multi-millionaires and billionaires. Taxes on middle income earners approximately the same, or lower if possible. Perhaps a consumption tax in addition to the wealth tax, in order to encourage savings.

• Perhaps redistribute some of the wealth to each person as trust packets, in which different amounts are activated at different times of life (for example a certain amount at adolescence, a certain amount for higher education, etc.).

• Raise minimum wage.

• Perhaps a series of higher minimum wages for jobs that are deemed especially hard or unpleasant.

• Shorten work weeks when unemployment is too high. Lower overtime threshold to new level of hours per week, thus discouraging employers from hiring workers for more than the standard time. Perhaps levy an additional tax on the pay that workers receive for hours worked in excess of the standard time. This would discourage workers from working for more than the standard time, whether at one job or two separate jobs.

• Increase workers rights, improve working conditions standards.

• Introduce incentives and disincentives which encourage firms to provide better working conditions and more democratic decision-making structures.

• More effective government employment services. They can create and use internet-accessible databases which would attempt to combine listings from a great deal of different sources. Ideally, nearly every employer looking for a worker and every worker looking for a job would post something in this database, although they would of course be free to put up help wanted signs or take out ads in local papers as well. It would be possible to use a system similar to the transferable vote system in order to optimize the combination of worker and job.

• More readily available, government funded job training.

• In general, find ways to make it easier for people to come and go between different jobs  and different fields if they like, for the sake of variety and well-roundedness. Make it easier for people to experiment with working in different fields to see what they like best. Also, try to make it easier for people to split their work week between different jobs if they want to.

 

• Decrease punishment of drug-related crimes. Hence reduce prison spending for drug offenders. Reduce police effort in fighting drug trade and use, increase police effort in fighting murder and other violent crimes, as well as infringements on ecological and animal rights standards. Reduce military effort in fighting drug traffic in foreign countries.

• In general, fewer laws governing personal behavior, democratically decided, widely known, and effectively enforced.

 

• Increase ecological protection. Increase investment in natural capital. Increase valuation of natural resources.

• Drastically increase animal rights laws.

 

• Universal healthcare insurance provided by government.

• Dramatically increase funding to education. Reduce teachers’ working hours per week. Raise their salaries. Decrease the cost of higher education to students via government subsidies.

• Perhaps some more allowance for people to have a few time periods for education which they can take at various times in their life, rather than just a huge bulk at the beginning.

• Education less of an institution of oppression. More directed toward educating people as democratic citizens rather than slaves. Creative intelligence should be valued more, obedience and resignation to authority valued less. The competitive aspects of school should be softened, mitigated. School should be more conducive to fostering authentic and compassionate social relations. While abstract reason is developed, present tense awareness should not be repressed but should be developed as well.

• Increase military disarmament agreements.

• If the military is used for intervention abroad, make sure that it is being used to oppose dictatorships and support true democracies, rather than setting up loyal dictatorships and pseudo-democracies.

• Democratic organization of international government bodies. Note that it makes sense to base representation of a country on its population or some similar measure, rather than giving each country one vote.