warren@ihnss.UUCP (06/15/83)
Here is some more fuel for old fires: 1) Recent discussion has examined the inherent problems of government where people are elected or appointed to make judgements, rather than relying on an absolute and unchanging set of rules. A major factor is the conflict of interest that develops, in that people really do tend to base their decisions on their own personal gain, whether that gain comes from direct monetary gains or from feeling good about what they are doing. With this in mind, consider how little the composition of our government represents our society in general, racially, occupationally, or by any other measure. Is it any real surprise that a government dominated by people trained in law can't seem to devise procedures (like tax returns) that can be carried out by the average citizen? My point to ponder is whether or not we would be better off with a government whose decision making bodies were selected at random from the general population rather than elected. There are obvious problems, but it does in one stroke eliminate a large source of conflict of interest and it does inject a much broader range of views into our government. 2) Much of the socialism/capitalism debate has focussed on has focussed on the desirability of redistribution of wealth. The problem is that a pure capitalist system appears to tend to become unbalanced after time. The system, and our government, claim to be based on the notion of equal opportunity. Consider the conflict of this view with the notion that a child inherits the financial results of his/her parents life. This strikes me a as fundamentally distinct from the premise of equal opportunity (all beings created equal). The second point to ponder is whether an economic/governmental system based on the premise of providing equal opportunity at birth, funding that by collecting at death, could be workable, and whether such a system would provide the freedom of choice and opportunities for initiative of a capitalist system without long-term imbalances. Any time someone talks of inheritance taxes, the issue gets emotional and gets equated with robbing people of family owned farms and business. I don't see, though, why the child of a farmer has any more right to a farm than the child of an unemployed city resident. All of this discussion is, of course, very interesting but quite accademic as any of our ideas on how to improve society are quite difficult to translate into practice with a large and powerful organization that enforces the status quo. Have fun with this! -- Warren Montgomery ihnss!warren IH x2494
swatt@ittvax.UUCP (06/20/83)
Regarding selection of legislators at random: Athens had something like that, but the citizen population (non-female, non-slave, Athenean-born) was small enough that "at random" practically required a citizen to fill some office at least once in his life. I once read a sci-fi book which postulated a society with a tri-cameral legislature. One house was composed of lawmakers and passed laws in a fairly traditional manner. Another house had the sole function of repealing laws whenever the total number of enacted laws exceeded some fixed maximum. The final house was called the "house of dunces", and consisted only of those people who could prove they had no particular expertise in law or government. Their sole function was to rule on the "comprehensibility" of the laws passed by the first house. If they couldn't figure out what the law meant, it got vetoed. If the first house wanted to pass a new law and the number of existing laws was at the limit, they had to convince the second house to repeal a law or two. Not only did you have to get support for your new law, but you had to get agreement on which old law got removed. Sort of a "balanced budget" approach to statutes. Sounded like a pretty interesting system to me. - Alan S. Watt
silver@csu-cs.UUCP (06/21/83)
"Remove an old law for each new one passed?" That is a favorite fantasy of mine, but alas, how do you define a "law"? The trouble is that our lawmakers can deviously attach numerous riders to seemingly any piece of legislation! Another favorite fantasy is that every law automatically expire after some amount of time and require nontrivial effort to get reinstated. Now that would keep the politicians harmlessly busy! Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcld!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"