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from the secret-negotiations-are-always-good-for-the-people dept.
Apparently, Greenpeace got their hands on a version of the TTIP documents and plans to release them to the public at today, Monday 2nd of May, 11:00am (UTC+2) from Netherlands, while at the same time giving a press conference at the re:publica. While Greenpeace is apparently mainly concerned about the loss of the precautionary principle (in Europe, if a product is thought to pose a risk to the population or environment, it is prohibited until proven safe, as opposed to the US where it is permitted until proven harmful. According to Greenpeace (sorry, only in German), this is a reason that in US, 170 genetically manipulated plants are in the agricultural market, while in Europe it is only one.
While these mainly environmental concerns deserve some consideration, the more fundamental issue is that such a far-reaching contract, invalidating many of hard fought-for consumers rights in one coup and affecting half a billion people alone in Europe, is negotiated secretly. This is entirely unworthy of any democratic government system.
The documents are available for download.
(Score: 1) by Bethany.Saint on Monday May 02 2016, @02:41PM
> Have some course plotted that works at minimizing corruption from the get-go.
Problem is that there is no form of government that prevent corruption from the get-go. As long as people want money, power (influence), and/or sex there will always be corruption.
If you optimize for sort terms (term limits) then those brought into power will corrupt quickly without thinking about the long term future of the country. If you optimize for the long term then you will get some thought to the long term benefits of action, but the corruption will be cultivated and entrenched making it much more difficult to remove.
The only true way to avoid corruption is to have algorithms making decisions. And the algorithms need to be able to modify themselves in order to remove the corruption of the programmers. Then we can give the algorithms a physical form. Then maybe human like features. A sliver body and glowing red eyes. That's the way to solve our problems.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @02:57PM
Obviously, I disagree.
And note I said minimize corruption.
And the tenets have been the same for a while now: you want to diffuse political power. You want a zero sum game between the governors and the governed. You want, as Aristotle put it, to rule and be ruled.
I have my own designs of what I think would work, but more importantly at this point is that people evaluate the long history of government, figure out what works and what doesn't, and progress from there.
Aren't people just algorithms making decisions?
(Score: 1) by Bethany.Saint on Monday May 02 2016, @04:20PM
Was kidding about the algorithms. Reference to AI/Robot uprising tropes. Should have put a grin.
If you have thoughts on how to achieve a less corrupt governing body, please share. Really.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2016, @09:11PM
Actually, in the future, I see algorithms being....
Hold on. Getting ahead of myself.
First, I would like to direct your attention here:
arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455
Yeah yeah yeah, Ig Noble and all that. But the paper does prove a point- general selection (i.e.- elections) criteria are flawed, and as rule promote people to their highest level of incompetence (corruption). This probably more than anything else is why 99% incumbency in elections leads to disastrous results.
So term limits you say? Nope, the paper makes quite clear: you get the best results by choosing people at random.
Demarchy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition [wikipedia.org]
Now, I could go on and on in mind numbing detail (I've been thinking about this for a long time) of how many problems you solve by adopting at least some aspects of this (diminished the influence of money in politics, mitigated by a large degree the tyranny of majority rule, etc.), but I'm more than willing to defend my charges against criticisms.
And, best of all, I've figured out a way to easily transition to this without a revolution: create a third house of congress of three representatives from each state to serve. Give them the power to only debate and vote on bills. And give them essentially the line item veto to amend bills.
That's it.
Oh, and increase the number of elected officials by x% (this will require some finagling to get right, and the percentage will vary with population size) to make buying elections more costly.
You've maintained the better parts of a constitutional republic, but you have direct citizen oversight to stop bad legislation before it begins.
You've also made politics a zero sum game as it's possible for anyone to serve.
(Score: 1) by Bethany.Saint on Monday May 02 2016, @10:33PM
Very interesting. Didn't know about sortition/demarchy at all. It's going to take a bit of pondering. Thanks for the info.