Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by DeepT
Ahahahahahahaha!
From the empires at war thread in the games forum discussing how bad the republic was and how evil the empire was, I wonder, is there *really* any perfect form of government?
What I think about:
Dictatorship / Supreme Leader / Emperor :
If your leader is both wise and benevolent everything is good. However, we are not immortal and eventually he will die. One bad ruler can fuck up shit really fast undoing 100s of years of progress.
This would be an ideal government if you knew you had a great ruler, but since you can't, its far to risky to consider seriously.
Republic:
On small scales this proabbly is a very good form of government. However the larger it gets, the more politics polluts the government. By small scale I mean a very small township electing a council of elders. On the scale of a large city or national government, corruption is far to easy to go unchecked.
This is the best form of government we have ever used, but is deeply flawed. We should find something better.
Democracy:
No one has ever actually tried this on a large scale. I have no idea if it would work. We can't try this until we have a very good voting system infastructure. It eliminates political corruption.
I have a feeling this would also fail on a large scale due to an easily duped public and/or an apathetic public.
Merritocracy:
The best people who are educated for government jobs (ie: your major was being the president of the united states) get the jobs they are good at. This is theoretically proabbly the best form for government since there are no polotics involved and people who are in power are actually merritous and very well qualified to do thier jobs, unlike today where its the most charismatic person who can get into political power.
The problem is how to protect the process of creating these statesmen and keep it from becomming corrupt. If it did become corrupt it would end up being much worse then a corrupt republic because change is much harder in this system.
Cybernetic:
This is a bit sci-fi, but one day may actually become possible. If we created AIs (who were benevolent and very intellegent) to help govern us maybe we could get rid of the negative human influences and somehow figure out how to keep the positive ones. I see this form of government as a partnership between man and machine.
There is another possibility however, that might allow a republic, democracy, or merritocracy to work. That would just be a lot of social evalution. Humanity just becomes a lot 'better' then it is now. We seem to be on that track. Centuries ago practices that were considered acceptable are not even considered today. Maybe someday represenatives will just do the right thing and not be so personal and petty. Maybe people will vote thier concience opposed to the party line. I think this, while far away, is the most likely thing to happen.
Ahahahahahahaha!
Dictator robo.
Aw, I was half-expecting this to be "we'll all be brains in jars so we don't have to deal with each other anymore".
I think that'd be the solution a benevolent AI government would come up with to eliminate negative human influences on things. A non-benevolent but simply pragmatic one would simply euthanise the whole lot and spare the resources. A malevolent one, of course, would get into that whole I Have No Mouth But Shut Up Anyway AM territory.
The perfect government would be a dictorship run by me.
Anything else fails to meet my expectations.
Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.Dictatorship / Supreme Leader / Emperor :
If your leader is both wise and benevolent everything is good. However, we are not immortal and eventually he will die. One bad ruler can fuck up shit really fast undoing 100s of years of progress.
This would be an ideal government if you knew you had a great ruler, but since you can't, its far to risky to consider seriously.
As soon as you reach a scale where ALL of the populace can no longer reasonably know ALL of the populace, politics enters the fray (if not before) and things go downhill rapidly after that.Republic:
On small scales this proabbly is a very good form of government. However the larger it gets, the more politics polluts the government. By small scale I mean a very small township electing a council of elders. On the scale of a large city or national government, corruption is far to easy to go unchecked.
This is the best form of government we have ever used, but is deeply flawed. We should find something better
Certainly an attractive and intriguing idea, but only if you assume that, either individually or collectively, most people are NOT morons. I am not willing to stipulate that...Democracy:
No one has ever actually tried this on a large scale. I have no idea if it would work. We can't try this until we have a very good voting system infastructure. It eliminates political corruption.
I have a feeling this would also fail on a large scale due to an easily duped public and/or an apathetic public
This sounds to me like something that would devolve rapidly into an oligarchy, or a hereditary monarchy. In other words, the "ruling class" would make sure their kids got the training and the good jobs, and you would rapidly end up with an overclass and an underclass. Bad situation.Merritocracy:
The best people who are educated for government jobs (ie: your major was being the president of the united states) get the jobs they are good at. This is theoretically proabbly the best form for government since there are no polotics involved and people who are in power are actually merritous and very well qualified to do thier jobs, unlike today where its the most charismatic person who can get into political power.
The problem is how to protect the process of creating these statesmen and keep it from becomming corrupt. If it did become corrupt it would end up being much worse then a corrupt republic because change is much harder in this system.
Read John Varley's material on the "8 Worlds" system (is it 8? maybe 7 been a while since I've read it). The moon is run by a benevolent computer. Nice work. Unrealistic in the near term, though.Cybernetic:
This is a bit sci-fi, but one day may actually become possible. If we created AIs (who were benevolent and very intellegent) to help govern us maybe we could get rid of the negative human influences and somehow figure out how to keep the positive ones. I see this form of government as a partnership between man and machine.
You left out "Anarchy." Any votes for that system?
I agree, with the caveat that it would obviously be better run by me.
In fact, I may have to challenge you to a duel to a death for control of world government. You pick the location, I'll pick the weapons.
Anarchy can't be considered because its a lack of government.
Democracy, to clairify, is direct rule by the people without middle-men (so no represenitives). Hence you can't really have corruption. You can have large paid advertising campeigns that sell people a bill of goods. People may vote with thier hearts, not with thier heads. As a caveat, we would get what we deserve. We would have no one to blame but ourselves.
The cyber government is really a shot in the dark though. Lets assume we invent real AI's. Actual sentient artificial beings. They may be just as corruptable as we are and hence no good. They may end up hating us and want to kill us all. Or maybe they will be the good guys we try to be, but never can quite pull off. Things like lust, greed, and envy mean nothing to them.
I really beleive our American Republic is seriously flawed. I *do* think its the best government in the world and I really can't think of a better one. However, I still know what we have has a rotten core. Even if we could magically 'heal it' to get all the rot out, given time it will just rot again. The answer for me, is a form of government we haven't thought of yet.
Looking ahead 5,000 years if there is some giant galatic republic of 10,000s of star systems, will it suffer the same problems the Republic from starwars faces? No, I do not mean Jedi and Sith, but just a giant buerocratic monster that means well, but ends up being ineffective due too many speical intrests and personal agendas.
We do not even really have to look ahead that far. The UN is a good example of nearly completly impotent democratic body. Its like all the small countries don't matter, its just what the security council does. If the security council were to get 10x as big, it would be just as ineffective as the whole UN body is today.
It's not the system of government, it's human nature. Which doesn't change, and fucks up everything eventually.
And a pure democracy, on the scale of what it would take to run America, would be absolutely rife with corruption. It's not the "middlemen" who cause it (and by the way, who are these guys you speak of?), it's people in powerful positions making decisions in self-interest.
There's nothing in the straight democratic model that would keep those who had been elected from, say, making minor changes to the tax code to benefit a good friend who was a businessman, and who had also just happened to buy the politician's way into the country club of choice. To think that somehow the electorate would pay more attention to that kind of thing happening in pure democracy than they do in a democratic republic like we have now is a pipe dream.
I somehow think this is all just a joke thread, though, with the manmachine overlord thing going on.
Vote for cyborg hitler or VOTE FOR DEATH.
I voted for Cake.
christ, if you are talking about people evolving ethics and responsibility, you might as well talk about evolving psychic abilities and starting a consensus government where everything is decided by instantaneous psychic communication.
Space Viking, 1963.
Reminds me of an anecdote I picked up in a history class a couple years back. The notion of a Utopian society when it first appeared in the 16th century was the same as the regular society but the people within it were morally superior beings, thus the society was ideal. Today Utopia represents a different society than our own, but the people within it are the same as us.
Basically, god-fearing morality vs social engineering.
Umm If people are elected, then that is a republic, not a democracy. A democracy is direct rule by the people. There is no senate, there is no president, no priminister, no attourny general, no nothing.
Just the title of the post makes me laff.... out loud even.
You left out the Athenian model--if I'm remembering right, some government offices are chosen by lot, or rotation through the voting populace. That is, every voter had to serve at some time in his life in the (equivalent of the) treasury dept, the state dept, and so on.
Also, even though Athens was a radical democracy, there was still a president (or the equivalent)--at some level, you need an executive to implement what the people vote for.
Gav
Yes, but they were not elected. They were drawn out of a random lot. You might be the ruler this year, but next year, you could be a street sweeper. That is one flavor of democracy, however, I am sure it would fail on a large scale. IE: You could get an idiot as the FEMA director when a catastrophic.... oh wait.... Well its a lot more likely under the greek system.
Honestly I do not know how a pure, direct rule by the people system would work. So we all vote on everything. Who/What decides what vote on?
I dunno really. We have smart people here, maybe we could work out a hypothetical government type that minimizes the human corruptibility effect.
Look, Mankind is on the precipice of fantastic discoveries in physics, medicine and computer science (not to mention many other things). Were not far from creating the unified therory of everything (as far as we know), unlocking the human genome so we can cure all these gentic diseases and maybe even get into designer genes, creating massive paralelle computing networks and making 'chips' out of things millions of times faster then what we have today.... Were doing all that, but so far, there has been no technical evalution in government in centuries.
DeepT, democracy is not such a strictly defined term. You use it like most people use "direct democracy", while the usual way of using it as "representative democracy".
I call a represenative democracy a republic.
From The Day the Earth Stood Still:
KLAATU'S VOICE
(over scene)
There must be security for all -- or
no one is secure... This does not
mean giving up any freedom except
the freedom to act irresponsibly.
CLOSE SHOT - A DELEGATE
He is an American.
KLAATU'S VOICE
(over scene)
Your ancestors knew this when they
made laws to govern themselves --
and hired policemen to enforce them.
CLOSE SHOT - KLAATU
KLAATU
We of the other planets have long
accepted this principle. We have an
organization for the mutual protection
of all planets -- and for the complete
elimination of aggression. A sort of
United Nations on the Planetary
level... The test of any such higher
authority, of course, is the police
force that supports it. For our
policemen, we created a race of robots--
(indicating Gort)
Their function is to patrol the
planets -- in space ships like this
one -- and preserve the peace. In
matters of aggression we have given
them absolute power over us.
MED. CLOSE SHOT - GORT
emphasizing his great size and inscrutable expression. The
normal blinking of his piercing eyes as he gazes imperturbably
at the audience is his only movement.
KLAATU'S VOICE
(over scene)
At the first sign of violence they
act automatically against the
aggressor. And the penalty for
provoking their action is too terrible
to risk.
CLOSE SHOT - KLAATU
KLAATU
The result is that we live in peace,
without arms or armies, secure in
the knowledge that we are free from
aggression and war -- free to pursue
more profitable enterprises.
(after a pause)
We do not pretend to have achieved
perfection -- but we do have a system --
and it works.
(with straightforward
candor)
I came here to give you the facts.
It is no concern of ours how you run
your own planet -- but if you threaten
to extend your violence, this Earth
of yours will be reduced to a burned-
out cinder.
Great movie, but I always wondered how easy it would be to trick the Gorts into destroying your enemies. Gort wasn't exactly an ace detective.
No, most were chosen by lot, but some 100 or so were elected. (How do you think Pericles managed to be in charge so many years in a row?)
BTW, I'm not advocating this system, but it has its points of interest.
Gav
I guess no one has ideas on how to build a better government then.
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