Perfect Government?

[KingPhilip]

A perfect government for The Asmo..? I'd say it would be a government, composed of people trained throughout their whole lives in leadership and selected based on level of competence and personality.

This sounds pretty awesome actually. The only issue I really see is whoever does the selecting would be under enormous pressure from every powerful person in the country to make certain picks.

Unless the selections were done by measurable merit rather than personal preference. Oh, there are certainly loopholes in the sentence-and-a-half presentation of mine, but overall, I don't see a big problem that does not let itself be regulated through law.

When does measurable merit come from anything other than personal preference? My choice of merit might be having big tits.

Hmmm, second thoughts, let's have government run by big-titted women... preferably holding naked debates... maybe in a bath of mud?!

The only thing I could think of is taking a massive group of people and having them all place their input on what should be counted as merit. However I suppose you're right, there will always be bias in a way. Can also have the general public vote on it.

[Asmodean]

Can also have the general public vote on it.

Would ruin The Asmo's perfection, that... 

[KingPhilip]

Can also have the general public vote on it.

Would ruin The Asmo's perfection, that...  

In that case, I think there's only one course of action. Asmodean hisself shall have to choose the ruling party at election time. Really that's the only way to avoid any sort of bias.

Also, unrelated, I have a theory on why the previously mentioned benevolent dictatorships don't arise very often. I was thinking about it and it seems those that most often come into power at the head of a regime are those that led the rebellion or started the coup or managed to oust every other politician/contender and led themselves to victory. By all standard thought these people would have to be of firm mind and unwavering in their position, meaning no real empathy towards others' views. However those who would consider all sides, remain uncorrupted, be fair(well, as fair as possible) towards all sides, these people are generally of a calmer, meeker personality and thus less likely to pop up in a position of sole power. So when you look at the dictators and watch their countries ruled with an iron fist slowly crumble, maybe you're right when you think you really could do better, if only because you'd never be the type of person to have a chance to try.

Granted, I'd be happy to lead a rebellion and seize power, and I think I'd be a perfectly wonderful dictator. So maybe it's not a perfect theory.

[Asmodean]

In that case, I think there's only one course of action. Asmodean hisself shall have to choose the ruling party at election time. Really that's the only way to avoid any sort of bias.

Actually, if given the job, I would be very difficult to influence and would do it to the best of my ability - if that involves objectivity, I'd try to be as objective as possible.

So my decision would most likely not depend on my own political views, although I'd probably want it to, but on which candidate I can demonstrate to be an overall better leader.

It's all about evaluating a beta-answer before making it final. Say I initially choose A over B. Then I try to demonstrate to myself that B is more capable than A. If unsuccessful, A has it. If I manage to demonstrate it, I re-eval again.

Of course, I only do things that way when paid for it. Otherwise, I'm just as likely to go with coin flipping.

[Melmoth]

How unreallistically sci-fi utopian are we allowed to be here? ??? Because my perfect world would be run by an autonomous, mindless, unpaid computer.

[Will]

Personally, I'm Anarcho-Socialist, I believe that we should have almost no governing body at all and that decisions should be made by all people, even if I realize the transition to that would probably destroy civilization as we know it. My friend is an absolute Capitalist, and claims that Capitalistic societies would be lightyears ahead of where they are now if more independent businesses were promoted with fewer monopolies.

Those must be very lively conversations you have. As a liberal with many libertarian friends, we can really get into it.

So I was wondering, there's more than a few bright people in around here, what do you guys think is the perfect government?

I don't think there is such a thing as perfect government, but there are some steps that can be taken to make a given government better:

1) Separate money and elections entirely. I know that some people thing that money is speech, and thus political donations should be considered protected because of the freedom of speech, but Senator Obama's campaign to become president cost a billion dollars. The 2010 midterm election cycle cost around $4 billion. In short, money has become political power and the result, as we all can see, is that those who donate are getting representation in our government instead of the general population. This is unacceptable. Plenty of healthy democracies have public funding for elections as a way of preventing big business from purchasing government, and I think this is the way to go.

2) Separate government and religion entirely. I suspect this will surprise few on this particular forum. Religion and government do not mix regardless of whether it's government trying to influence religion or religion trying to influence government. The second government tries to interfere with religion, we're all basically screwed because our beliefs are being targeted. The second religion tries to interfere with government, we lose representation of all people of all faiths.

3) Strictly regulate all government agencies to prevent a revolving door. There's a term in economics called 'regulatory capture'. It's used to describe when a government regulatory agency is so corrupt that it represents and advances the interests of the industry or sector it's supposed to regulate instead of the public interest. And it's one of the worst forms of government failure. The USDA protects American beef interests sometimes at the cost of the lives of Americans. The Minerals Management Service, which was tasked with regulating America's natural gas, oil, and mineral resources, had their rules to regulate offshore oil drilling written by the oil industry's trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, which allowed for the circumstances that led to the Gulf oil spill. This goes beyond irresponsible and enters into criminal.

4) Balance democracy with basic protections for minorities by having equal protection under the law as the foundation of the law. It's important that a nation be able to decide as a whole on the direction their country should take, but obviously if that direction means the majority taking away the rights of the minority, it's gone too far. There's an old phrase that democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. Equal protection means the sheep doesn't get eaten.

5) No political parties. Political parties are a nice idea that's been executed in the worst way possible. Instead of allowing different ideas to each be given a platform, we've been forced into a system that only allows two choices on some issues, and one choice on others. This is unacceptable. Which is the anti-war party? Which is the pro-environment party? Which is the party that supports legalizing pot? Which is the party that will fight for single-payer healthcare? No such party exists in my country. We have the far right party and the center right party, and it's destroying the country. If one must have political parties, there should be at least three, perhaps ideally seven, but really the best thing is for a politician or a piece of legislation to get support on their own merits, not because there's a (R) or (D) next to it.

6) No president/PM. A single leader or figurehead is a poor way to represent a democratic society. If we are a democracy, our representative leader should be a quorum or senate or parliament. It should be a group of people. Too much power rests in the office of the president, and we assume even more power comes with it. It's become a joke. Having a single leader dates back to royalty and is entirely unnecessary in the 21st century.

[Brent]

Is anyone familiar with Jaque Fresco?  He's an old fart with a good idea that is often misunderstood and overlooked.  He believes, and so do I, that a perfect government wouldn't be a government.  Instead of being governed by laws, it would be governed by scientific innovation.  Instead of having a policeman pulling over a drunk driver, have a car that pulls over and shuts off if it swerves about too much.  

The following is my boring and very hippyish explanation:
Laws are solutions to problems we don't actually know how to solve.  Of course, we can't do that in the societies we have today.  It would be very difficult to stop a murder with technology, and the solutions that Fresco puts forth for such things rely on the presumption that in the future there will be no money.  People will have access to everything they need for free, and thus there will be much less incentive for crime... yada, yada...

What we have now is an economy based on scarcity.  Value is placed on things that are hard to obtain and the harder they are to obtain, the more valuable they are.  We don't pay for things like air and water (more or less), because they are so common.  And I think in a perfect world, other things would be much more common and easy to obtain.. food, shelter, education, etc.

They would become more common and easier to obtain due to mechanization of industries.  That's scary in our economy because we lose jobs, but in a perfect world, wouldn't something that requires you to work less be nice?  There are technological solutions to virtually all problems we have today; things we could build tomorrow.  

The problem is, there is no incentive to develop these technologies for the corporations with the potential to do it.  The biggest corporations maximize profits.  Exxon simply wouldn't make as much money if they started developing wind farms and solar panels.  I think it's going to take a major market failure to get people to start thinking about serious change.  

Our current capitalistic economies based on scarcity were great in the 20th century; they spurred technological advance.  Now that we have the technology, it's time to start using it to really improve our lives.  

[Wessik]

A perfect government, I think, sounds like a good idea. But in practice, but it might be better to have piece-meal solutions instead of of grand master plans. I think this is especially so, because when you have a grand master plan, it tends to become similar to dogma which can be used to alienate and persecute any body who disagrees.

On the other side of the garden, it seems reasonable to me to allow for shifting modes of government and plans of action to solve problems. Given this, small groups working to solve local problems seems a bit better than a large centralized government enacting some form of governance that may or not be approved on the local level.