Strongly advice to use "function identifiers"
If you are starting up a chapter 3 Government, I strongly advice you
to start using visible (indoor and outdoors clothing, particularly
outdoors) "function identifiers" immedeately from the start. The
reason is that it brings clarity & transparency to everyone, at that
time when it is most needed, which is during the start. If you launch
a new boat, you don`t load it down with its maximum cargo either: you
keep it light to prevent the calamity of sinking to be less severe.
Later you put in more load to see if she can bear it. If you don`t
start with function identifiers, and face disintegration, you have a
big problem on your hands. If you do start with identifiers and they
end up being unnecesary or no longer necessary, you can remove them in
a carefull way without causing any problems. Like a building is build
with scaffolding, the function identifiers act like a scaffolding
around the new Government representative system. It may be that these
function identifiers end up very useful indeed, and become a more
permanent fixture. I see no problem with that, on the contrary.
In practice this means probably at least shoulder marks on clothing,
which can be these: 
Or a
variation. It may be useful to add a national flag somewhere, as a
differentiation from other nations. It may also be useful to add a
local flag or council name somewhere. Thus if a delegate for Winsum
(village in Groningen) travels to Amsterdam, she is not called out for
problems in Amsterdam by passers by, because she`s identifyable by the
Groningen province flag and the name of her council in the Winsum
area.
Again: if it is not needed, it can always be removed. If it is needed,
you can prevent national chaos with it. That is worth the trouble. It
is not that costly to make and maintain. An alternative is a button on
the front of a jacket, which may be more consistent with more types of
clothing. Maybe it is best to leave the choice to the delegates
(voters?) as to how they would want to be identifyable, as long as
they are. If voters are identifyable, that could function as a strong
"we support this type Government, don`t think there is a leadership
vacuum because we stand behind the Government" signal. The perception
of a leadership vacuum is more dangerous then an actual vacuum.
Some simple minded anarchists might complaign that this is
"militarized Government," but it isn`t and so as usual what the
anarchists say is quite irrelevant. It should come out quickly enough
that delegates only have a defined power as a Constitutional council
and only in that context. The reason to make them identifyable is to
make them easier to reach, and to prevent an impression of a power
vacuum, not to make them your personal "sovereign commanding officer
to which you owe absolute loyalty and mute subservient subjugation"
(which would be unconstitutional.) For direct power: look to the
police & the laws to which they are held, the judges, just like
normal.
It makes sense to allow the delegates to not be identifyable as such
constantly, as they might want to be free some time also. As long as
it is enough. The delegates should be responcible enough to make the
judgement. But if there is danger of chaos it could be a national law
that delegates are always identifyable, constantly, except in their
own home / private indoors.
A cautious people should take a cautious route, not gamble with chaos,
which is a threat with such great changes of Government (system.)
Will it work: of course it should, the delegates will have to get
their business in order (most difficult in the bigger cities) quickly,
get something functional on the road as quickly as possible. Later it
can be finetuned. If need be: install something through the National
Government over the bigger cities and any areas not managing on their
own. Can (again) be a nationally appointed "mayor" type bureaucrat
over a city, which would be the ultimate and simplest form of top down
order. When calm & order pervade, that can be a good time to look at
what has emerged in terms of local / provincial Governments.
If bottom-up is too difficult and unusual, you should probably choose
to use a Government system one per village / city. In theory simple
enough: all delegates in a village / city come together, form one
local Government, either directly of further elected from between
them. That is already a possible interpretation of chapter 3. Might be
best to do that, as it is less unusual compared to the present.
Villages who are stuck with below 50 delegates either need to link up
with neighboring areas, or the law needs to be changed to allow
smaller councils. Or you set up a correct 50 or more council, and have
it delegate itself to smaller councils per village (retaining official
function / power in the sub-council combination.)
To be cautious, it is probably best to have at first one council per
bit city, and not several or numerous. Can always later be shattered
into more.
There is a big risk, by the way, that is something doesn`t immedeately
work, that people will throw away the whole idea of a more precise
democracy. People aren`t very principled unfortunately.
posted on Thursday, February 19, 2009 3:32 PM
Comments
# re: Strongly advice to use "function identifiers"
jos boersema
Preliminary national Government:
A difficulty with chapter 3 Government is: "the nation is divided into
50 parts, each elects one representative, who are national Government
deciding by majority." Where are the borders of these 50
sectors/provinces ? You need some kind of national entity to make the
decision. It could be: the women committee, the King/Queen, or the
national Government. Problem with them all is they more or less depend
on some kind of national entity to exist to organize them: for the
King/Queen elections for the electoral committee are needed, who can
do that ? For the national Government you need a nation divided into
50 sectors, who can do that, who its scheme is it going to be ? The
women committee can be brought out relatively easily and
decentralized, but it may be a reasonably drawn out process and quite
a but merky if the women do not show decisive action and clarity
(which could be likely). Every hour without a clear Government could
mean endlessly more problems. Hence it is necessary that "the regions"
can start up a full system, the regions must be able to divide
themselves in and elect a national representative. Is such a
representative chosen, it can be exploited for order even locally. If
there is a political leadership vacuum in big cities, it makes sense
that in the absence of a national Government, the person elected for
national Government but not having linked up with elsewhere yet,
locally helps out and if need be makes decisions in the interest of
order (such as appoint a temporary mayor over larger cities.)
Hence the regions must be able to elect someone to national
Government, that could help a lot and is needed anyway, even if there
is no agreement or contact with anyone about where the borders of the
50 sectors will be. The most obvious answer seems to be: elect someone
locally over an area that at least seems to be near the 1/50th of the
nation. These sectors will then spring up wildly and will have no good
fit with eachother. The result is a national Government over a weird
50 sectors division. If a good plan has been thought out in advance,
if a King or Queen was present to ratify it with one voice, then
things would be easy. If not, that seems to be a possible back-up
plan. Some delegates could be voted in over a much greater population
then others in the "wild sectors" scheme. But it would only be a
temporary Government, who is capable of setting up the sectors
correctly, order a re-vote with the better sectors.
Note that in all of this the police and judges should still be
maintaining normal order, hunt crime, investigate complex crimes, and
so on. This is only a political issue, reorganization of the political
Government, not the police or the Judiciary. These other 2 branches
should function at best possible efficiency, and get all the help they
need.
Hence, if delegates where elected, have linked up for local
Government, and are needing a national Government, they should make a
reasonable guess, don`t wast too much time on it, and just send
someone in that is reliable and a good person, smart, wise if
possible, and so on. A women would probably be best. Hopefully these
delegates pay no attention to what sector they came from but dutifully
divide the nation as is best for her, so as not to protect their own
platform at the cost of sub-optimal sectoring. Hopefully if they do
the job well, they will score political points in all new sectors.
I don`t remember if I`ve suggested a location for link-up of the
national Government delegates (probably not). As a default the same
central location can be used as for the first election of a
King/Queen, which is the same kind of "create a center for the sake of
a center" problem (it was center of the nation, closest old-people
home nearby).
Regions should not hesitate with charging ahead and electing national
delegate and simply proclaim to be a sector, because speed is
important.
If several sector-plans exist and it seems days/weeks away a
sector-plan will be needed, it makes good sense to draft one up and
bring it to the "central location" as suggested for King/Queen
elections. It can there be decided centrally even by a few people what
plan is best, because a faulty sector plan will be much better then no
plan at all. From the central location it could be communicated far &
wide again. You could let the willing people of the old home do the
voting (not the staff), to give it a sense of neutrality and "we don`t
care what plan it is, as long as we have one that is better then
nothing." That will give it credibility in the eyes of the people.
*
It may be a good idea for the national Government to send a messenger
to all big cities after being formed. The messenger from national
Government can inspect the state of contentment over the Government
system there, assist with it having some official clout (namely
representing national Government). If things are bad, someone is
already on the ground that could function as a (temporary) mayor.
Posted @ 2/19/2009 4:30 PM
# re: Strongly advice to use "function identifiers"
jos boersema
The preliminary Government can`t be expected to be exactly 50 persons.
It makes sense it would convene in the central location as suggested,
to facilitate link-up with other regional delegates. When a national
delegate is sent in, it would need to be ratified. To make that
possible it could carry letters/votes, and a good number of delegates
from its sector along with it, to ratify it. In the sector it could be
proclaimed who was elected (likely to happen anyway). A reasonably
short investigation could ratify the candidate as real.
In case of reactionary violence, plans for link up etc need to be
altered, obviously. If everyone knows the link-up site, long ahead of
time, it can make good sense to alter it at the last possible moment.
Hopefully the moment then will work it out.
The National Government can start as soon as possible with its
continual touring of the nation, first heading to the places with most
trouble. Some kind of heraldry is needed to ratify the national
Government where it comes along. The function-identifiers are an
element in this, some flags would help, some show of police could
help, music, some nice things. This to prevent the national Government
from comings somewhere during relative chaos, and nobody even giving
them the credit they need (being representative of the majority of the
whole people !). If order is good and knowledge of who is who is no
problem, heraldry isn`t needed anymore (could still be fun though ! To
bring in a week long visit of the national Government in function,
roclaim to the People that national Government is around the corner
and in function.).
Posted @ 2/19/2009 4:43 PM
# re: Strongly advice to use "function identifiers"
jos boersema
Maybe I finally solved the "big city" Governance problem in my system:
- elect a city-wide local Government by dividing the city into 50
sectors, each electing one representative, and
- at the same time have the delegates form smaller councils.
That yields a dual local Government, one city-wide and the other a
patchwork of smaller councils, together it should be enough Governance
dealing both with the overall city as a unit, and the more localized
issues giving real people more voice in the Government. The 50 city
sectors would probably not yield exactly one council for each. The
weird thing about this set up is that both local and city-wide have
the same "local Government" function, one is not authorative over the
other. I don`t think that is going to be a problem, but if it is it is
"two local Governments in conflict" which is the task of the Country
Council to solve (that is my Constitution at least.) This way the
local Governments do not feel obligated to merge into quite large
local Governments for the sake of overview in the city, that task is
already accomplished. The delegates not elected to city-wide can focus
on forming the smalles possible councils they wish, to deal with the
smallest local problems.
This basic system can again be varied upon. I can imagine it would be
more to the liking of local councils to elect one representative of
each local council toward the city-wide council. You know the people
in your own council better, it is more efficient, easier
communications local / city-wide, easier replacements, etc. It is not
a problem for first-level delegate councils (who have all directly
been elected by the people, none is further elected by other
delegates), to send in a delegate for city-wide, making the city-wide
council a further local body (twice elected delegates). A problem is:
if fewer then 50 delegates result it is not a legal council, and a
local council who`se delegates where already elected twice can not
further elect representatives (prohibited in my Constitution, to keep
distance delegates / people smaller.)
A solution for this problem "if electing further delegates per 50th
sector is felt less optimal then one per local council" is to turn the
city-wide from an official local Government, into an advice council
which shape / size is not defined in the Constitution. That at least
makes it possible to use less then 50 delegates in a city-wide advice
council, it also makes it possible to elect non-delegates in that
advice council.
The "further body local Governments" (that is local Governments who
have formed 50 groups of delegates in themselves, who each elect a
further delegates) can solve the problem very easily: the vote must be
held accross all delegates, not just those elected to the local
Government by the other delegates. That means there is again only 2
steps of election between the city-wide local Government, and the
people, which is the requirenment.
In case a city-wide body is set up as an advice council by the local
Governments themselves, that city-wide Government obviously has less
power then the local Governments. The small local Governments always
rule over the city-wide, who can only make powerless recomendations.
That too can be changed: if the national Government installs a
city-wide body, and declares it should be elected as above suggested
for the city-wide advice council one delegate per smaller local
council (which is probably much more effective), then obviously that
council gets power from the national Council as a delegation of power,
depending on what the national Council makes that delegation to be. If
the national Governments says "strictly advice only," then it would be
the same powerless advice council. But if the national Government
delegates part of its power to solve disputes between local
Governments to that city wide advice council, then that city wide
advice council - not a local Government one way or the other, but a
delegation of the national level - has that real power.
I suppose the local Governments could simply ask of the national
Government to give or not give such a city-wide advice council (not
local Government) such an official status.
This should probably work, making installing a nationally delegated
"mayor" unnecesary (except maybe in emergencies). It is doubtful such
a "mayor" position is even constitutional: it probably is not (!). But
as the Dutch saying goes "emergency breaks law."
I think this dual city-wide and small local will be pretty good, and
provide good coverage of Governance everywhere in a big city, while
maintaining the freedom and democracy for the people.
Posted @ 2/20/2009 10:43 AM