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What kind of state is proposed here? This chapter covers all the classical aspects of statedom.
It is a constitutional state. There are laws that govern the lifes of all members. The constitution is the most basic law. It governs the most important aspects of the state including the way laws are modified added or removed. The state is not a nation state (see II).
It is not a social market economy, but it is more social and more market oriented than the former. It is not a democracy in any common sense but it is more democratic I suppose than what we have now - and it's hopefully a hell of a lot more efficient. You'll read more on this in the according subsections.
The state is as decentralized as possible. It is a hopefully self-organizing mess only held together by the constitution and the derived laws. There are not even public officials, or rather every member of the state is also a public official. Public officials are not payed though. That means many members will have two professions: one as a clerk and one for the money. More details on this particular piece of weirdness can be found in sections 5.2.5 and 5.2.6.
The family was branded kernel of society. Marriage was encouraged by legislation. No more.
If you want to marry, make a civil contract or ask your favorite god for blessing or do both but don't bother the state. The kernel of society is the clan. And you are not encouraged to have one. Belonging to a clan is mandatory.
Your clan is the people whom you choose to be your clan. Your clan has a minimum size m and a maximum size n as specified by the according law (I'd propose m = 5 and n = 50 ... out of the blue). Every relationship has a designated strength with values from zero to one. The sum of all relationship strengths of one person is 1. The minimum of the strongest relationship in your clan is 1/m (i.e. 0.2 if my number for m is used). The maximum of the strongest relationship in your clan is another given value p (say 0.5).
Relationship strength can be infinitesimal but a total strength of at least 1/m has to be connections that lead ``outside''. That means you cannot have a group of five people that are clan wise isolated from the rest of society by having only each other as clan members. The ``1/m outside strength'' rule applies to any given group except for groups that are bigger than whole state minus whole state times 1/m. That means if you sample any group of people, at least a 1/m * group-size connection strength has to lead outside of that sample. This last point poses a serious computational problem. If it is not solvable the rule is modified or abandoned. It should also be disabled in the beginning of the revolution because it looks kind of hard to build a global society from such premises.
Relationship strengths cannot be changed in a way that violates the law: ``The sum of all relationship strengths of one person is 1''. If one person wishes to lower a relationship strengths and doesn't find somebody else (potentially another clan member of the other person) to take up the relation, he cannot lower it. After a certain time however he can file a complaint which can result in a fine for the person who lags relations.
Some slag has to be build into the system or changing strengths would become impossible because changing one value would require changing many many others. I propose to allow plus-minus 1/m slag for every individual. The strengths (incoming and outgoing) will then be normalized to sum up to one.
In the long run the connection strengths should be computed automatically based on how you interact with whom - but the required AI is not here yet.
Beautiful numbers, so what? You are in many ways responsible for the people in your clan. See sections 5.2.5, 5.2.4, 5.2.11.
There are two taxes: infotax a small fraction of which might have to be payed to the state (section 5.1.1.2) and capital transfer tax (payable for gifts and inheritance). Good news, isn't it? Right, it isn't. The latter tax is one hundred percent.
And now for something completely different.
Having really bad Xin entries is a significant punishment. But that will likely not prevent crime. There are no jails. Delinquents can be grounded by courts. Electronic shackles help enforcing the punishment. Detainees can be forced to carry devices that allow authorities to monitor them permanently. Dangerous criminals get implants that can be activated by anybody by voice command and temporally paralyze the delinquent. Misuse is obviously punishable.
It was already mentioned that the Xin lists the criminal record. That means that official Xin entries can be a significant punishment. People are supposed to look after each other. In order to ``encourage'' that, sentences spread through the clan links. The sentence spreading is weighed by link strengths. If a major clan member of mine (say we have link strength 0.5) breaks the law then I will receive link strength times his punishment. If he/she is grounded for 20 days I'll be grounded for 10 days in this example.
... or lag thereof: I cannot discuss the social security system without discussing the market system as well. So this is the gist of the gist of it. I don't see this section as particularly interesting, but history seems to hint at minds howling here at these humble musings. I promise I did my best to piss off everybody equally.
The market is mostly free. A libertarians wet dream. Except for the lag of copyright, the infotags instead of patents, the ban on propaganda. And the collective labor agreement. Collective indeed: Everybody works on the same tariff. The loan depends on two things: Total working time (calculated yearly and low pass filtered) and the education.
The higher the working time the higher the loan per hour. The time spend in education relevant to the work is set in relation to the life time expectancy and the hourly loan adjusted accordingly. That means if you have a live expectancy of 80 years and spend 20 of those years in education relevant to your job, you earn 1/3 more than somebody without any education. If you have 40 years of relevant education you earn twice as much as the uneducated. If you have 79 years of relevant education you earn 80 times as much.
The education-based loan is just for keeping the system fair. The increasing hourly loan for workaholics is supposed to do the magic. There are no laws governing working times. Thus it is in the interest of the employers to distribute the work they pay for on as many people as possible. The social system largely depends on employing everybody rather than on subsidies. The slope of the hourly-loan / working-hours should be adjusted by the government to achieve the desired effect. Kind of like in the saying: Give a man a fish and he eats for a day / Teach him how to be a fish and he will never need a bicycle. Only it's rather ``Allow him'' than ``Teach him how''.
The other pillar of the social security system is the clan network. One is supposed to support one's clan members if they are in social distress. One is not enforced to support his clan members, but considering Kama (section 5.1.3.2) and the criminal law (section 5.2.4) it might be a good idea. If finances allow it (section 5.2.3), such support might be subsidized.
There are no public pension fonds. Everybody should invest money as he sees fit for is old age.
There are no full time public clerks. Everybody has to do public work. The working time is as flexible as possible while keeping the system running. That means one might continually work 5 hours a week for the state or one might work a month full time and then eleven months not at all.
The amount of work to be done depends on the total amount of work that has to be done for the state by the whole population and on the actual work. One has to work less if he chooses unpopular work.
The kind of work one has to do depends on the current requirements of the state, on the personal competences (see Kama in section 5.1.3.2), and on personal preferences. If Kama requirements cease to be met the clerk looses his position and gets another one. The position in the organization of the state depends largely on Kama.
The bureaucracy is project oriented, not hierarchical. Large open source projects like Debian might lend much inspiration. If there is to be the one big boss of it all than his position is rather representational. Where personality matters a lot, people can hold fixed long term positions. ``Foreign'' policy works better with personal relationships. Thus diplomatic positions are given to people who (can be expected to) have good relationships to the regarding ``foreign'' representatives. For example the foreign minister for France would be someone with a friendly relationship to Sarkozy. The foreign minister for the US would be someone who can bare Bush (or the US Foreign minister if they don't cancel that position). When Sarkozy leaves, the foreign minister also leaves.
See section 5.2.6 for the recruitment of the police force. Like everything in the state the police is much more transparent than in current societies. Every recorded detail of the police work is published right after closing the investigation. Police personnel like every other public personnel looses its public job if their Kama does not meet the requirements anymore (police work requires moral integrity, composure, clemency ...).
There are no secret services.
There is no army. Everybody gets training in being ungovernable. This might include certain forms of civil protest and even terrorist and guerrilla tactics depending on legislation.
Again, see 5.2.6. Anybody with the right Kama (moral integrity, moral integrity, moral integrity, knowledge of law, good judgment ...) can become a judge. Whether a judge works in arbitral court or at the constitutional court depends largely on his Kama.
If it turns out that judges get Kamaly rated out of court because they have to condemn people, some counter-mechanism has to be build into the rating system. The same comment also applies to the police force and maybe some other positions.
Legislature consists of three main steps:
Everybody can potentially experience or see something go wrong and blame the laws. To get the process of lawmaking started one has to collect legislative Kama - once enough people with high enough (high enough to break a total legislative Kama threshold) legislative karma support the lawmaking request (in effect forming something like the contemporary lobby) the next step is initiated. For that matter the request must formally describe the law failure and it should identify competences that could contribute in solving the problem.
Once this initial phase is over only people with high moral Kama get involved in the law making process.
Trying to initiate the same or similar laws over and over again is punishable under the propaganda prohibition (see section 5.1.1.3). Detailed rules must be implemented to spot such attempts to break the system.
A group of people with higher than average competence in the fields identified by the request is randomly chosen from all citizens. The only task of this group is to compile a list of competences required to solve the problem at hand. If this group feels it requires more competences for compiling that list than are listed in the request, then this group can be extended accordingly (again with a randomized sample). This list thus compiled is authoritative.
Using this list a second and third group is sampled from all citizens. The second group works out detailed proposals on what to change (laws to make, change, and/or abandon). The second group can use any counselors of its choice. It can, but does not have to coordinate. Every proposal requires one official sponsor from this group.
The third group democratically votes on which proposal to accept. Simple majority decides on simple laws, absolute majority is required to change the constitution. The third group can formulate a statement of why it did not choose any of the proposals. If the majority votes for this statement, the second group can work out new proposals based on this statement.
Talking to a member of the third group about the lawmaking process that member is involved in is punishable if the member did not initiate the dialog by itself.
Maybe the second and third group should be the same.
The constitution should incorporate guidelines on lawmaking. Simplicity of the law system should be regarded as a value in itself that can outweigh minor problems that could be solved by making much more complicated laws. There could also be a federal office of law refactoring. The clerks would continuously browse the laws and try to weed out superfluous laws, condensing multiple laws into other - maybe more abstract - laws and so on. In short that office would do what programmers do when they refactor their code.
Laws have to fulfill higher standards than German laws: they have to be enforceable and enforced. Tax, drug, and traffic laws that are broken by major parts of the population and thus criminalize many people are unconstitutional.
There are no schools but there are teachers - who, like all clerks aren't paid (see section 5.2.6). Children and teenagers go to work at the same places where grown ups go. Their ``work'' is solely learning, though. They are tutored by the people who otherwise do the work. Obviously small children will have to start with businesses that can teach something to children with very limited skill sets while older teenagers can visit any business. The children can choose the places they visit themselves. They have to do tests on a regular basis. These tests serve the purpose of avoiding specialization. When the skill set of a child starts becoming lopsided its choices of places to visit will be limited to places that can counteract the partial education.
Thorsten Roggendorf 2008-11-06