Amendment II: Apolytonian Court - Idea Compilation

[MrWhereItsAt]

Am I the only one thinking that all this talk of what went wrong in RL Democracies is a little too involved? Role-playing aside, we are playing a game here, so no-one has anything to gain by causing mayhem. Besides, if you're going for President, or any Ministerial position for that matter, you seem to get pretty thoroughly grilled by everyone here. Also, after a little time one certainly starts to leave an impression about what type of poster you are - for example, of the non-Ministers here, I feel I would pretty much trust NYE with a vote for any position, should the giant cat ever run for one. I think we can trust our feelings on this, and I for one believe that not a single Minister would lead us astray.

I would certainly be very surprised if anyone voted in ever betray the people to any extent. Personally, I think that if we can trust EVERYone with the save, we can trust the Ministers (since we chose them) to make educated decisions, based on those who have helped (or hindered ) their terms with consistent, thoughtful and unbiased posting. After all, the Ministers are the ones who must respond to most posters - surely they are the best qualified to choose the best for this job. If someone has a problem, OK. I see elections as being a further politicization of a position that should be apolitical - not the best of ways to go about ensuring such a result.

[jdjdjd]

Appointment by the pres with confirmation by the ministers should be enough. If any (minister, judge, president) appear to be corrupt you have the right to proceed to impeachment & possible removal of office of that official. We leave that in, so that our hands are not tied. There is no military, our economy is not super-depressed , our currency is not so inflated that you need a wheelbarrow to go to the market, we were not humiliated in a war (not yet any way)...in sum we are not the Weimar Republic.

If we can not decide this issue, than a good compromise as recommended by NYE, i.e. confirmation only by the public after appointment by the president. And, that means no campaigning or politicking by the appointees, you refer to their posts to decide if you want them in or not....just a vote to confirm

[mtgillespie]

Role-playing aside, we are playing a game here, so no-one has anything to gain by causing mayhem.

Generally, people who wish to cause mayhem don't have anything to gain. It doesn't seem to stop them.

Also, you put role-playing aside, but i'd like to put it back . I'm finding this one of the most interesting bits of discussion we've had, along with the ethics thread. I'm not a great Civ player, although i've learnt a lot since i've been here, so i find these types of threads/decisions a place where i can contribute a bit more.

I do agree with Trip, at some point we do have to put some trust in someone , otherwise we go round in circles trying to balance everything, and assuming everyone will be corrupt. I guess that trust has to rest with the people, and the power to remove any official with it.

[disorganizer]

i also think the roleplaying is the real spirit of the demo-game. so we cant put it aside ;-)

but this also has a drawback: roleplaying also can be that you try to destroy things which are established.

ppl will get corrupted. ppl will get influenced. so there must be a way for the CITIZEN MAJORITY to remove those if it becomes too much.

i second the removal of responsibilities from officials, and also second that we should hear a bit more on the citizens. many decisions in this game are taken by officials only. just look on how many game-decission polls are there in comparison to the others.

if this game descends to a "the president/ministers play" then we will only have those few participating. even the deputies will leave then.

we also experience here some drawbacks on rl-systems. dont forget this.

[Sheik]

disorganizer you are right the people must have more power.

But when the game gets into the later eras we will have more complex decisions. Right now we are laying ground work. There isn't much at this time that really needs much deciding. If this trend continues into the later game then we will have a problem.

[ThePlagueRat]

Originally posted by mtgillespie
I've learnt a lot since i've been here, so i find these types of threads/decisions a place where i can contribute a bit more.

Oh yeah, this roleplay aspect is a good one!
We can consider this demo-game a training exercise in democratic thinking. And maybe in thinking itself ?
Therefore we are so lucky to have a Thinkers Guild where we discuss all kinds of important matters. (i.e. whiskey tasting and warfare buildup routines)

Philosophies on "democracy" :

Ok, it's also funny to see how posters act as supporters of democracy, in all different ways. A U.S. democracy works different than a Norwegian one. Which is the most democratic?
An unfair question, and it could start a brawl...

The U.S. president solemnly appoints a lot of individuals for positions, and there is a very questionable judicial system.
U.K. has, in addition to the House of Commons, a House of Lords. Its aristocratic members were not (and are never to be) elected! Norway has a strong central core administration and a horrific bueracracy . Ok, those were examples of "great democracies".

Constitutional Monarchy is the name of several European democratic systems. Social Democracy is, by some grade, influenced by soscialist parties. The ballot options varies from place to place. Sometimes you have nothing but 2 options. There are several remaining examples. So...

What country can we call a pure democracy? My answer is none at all...
But can we build a pure democracy right here on the internet then?

[jdjdjd]

Obviously, this thing has been hashed around, and many good ideas have made there way in.

I suggest that once the polls close, that the amendment be compiled based on same with certain other matters that need hashing out, and we can,

A. hash them
B. Trip review the hashing and propose an amendment for vote
C. Trip appoint someone/panel to review the hashing and propose an amendment for vote
D. Leave the hashing to the new court (with exception of impeachment which probably needs a separate amendment to include the court in the original consititution, i.e. an court roles and/or ability to impeach a judge).

There is nothing wrong with the court making many of its own rules and set precedent on them. Maybe the its better to leave things flexible, this idea is a baby and needs room to grow.

I will post this same message in the related threads.

[disorganizer]

but dont we want to make it better? the problem of "true democracy" is that you can get a poll of 10 million ppl thru in a usefull amount of time.
we can here, with electronic media, make polls of 50 citizens (50%) in 1 day! if we wait 2 days, we even get up to 70%.

[GodKing]

Sounds good Trip.

[Micaelus]

If the court cannot create cases, who will bring them to it? Also, what will their rulings accomplish?--Going back to an autosave and changing what has happened? Or somehow trying to correct the problem ingame?

[LordImpact]

The public will be responsible for looking out for bad seeds. Prehaps a government watchdog group will be created.
I think that we have already established that there will be no "time travel" i.e. going back to an older save. The court's most important duty will be impeachment of elected officials. While we cannot go back and change something that was done, we can cut away the rotten parts of our democracy by removing ministers and other officials. This will help keep our democracy functioning properly.

[Sheik]

Originally posted by LordImpact
The public will be responsible for looking out for bad seeds. Prehaps a government watchdog group will be created.
I think that we have already established that there will be no "time travel" i.e. going back to an older save. The court's most important duty will be impeachment of elected officials. While we cannot go back and change something that was done, we can cut away the rotten parts of our democracy by removing ministers and other officials. This will help keep our democracy functioning properly.

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I think that the court should have the power to create cases though I don't think it is necessary because the people will be able to bring cases to the court if they feel strongly enough about something.

[Jon Shafer]

It seems that in lieu of this, the elections have come around. I don't want this issue to dive off the ends of the earth quite yet. I haven't read most of the last page or two, so if someone could summarize the new debates/suggestions/ideas up into one post I would GREATLY appreciate it, so I could perhaps add some stuff to the amendment proposal. Danke.

[WhiteBandit]

Overall, a good amendment

Overall, I think this is a pretty good amendment. However there are some things we need to stick to in order to have a strong court.

-I don't think they should be responsible or allowed to impeach members of the other goverment branches at all. The public can already do this.

-Must be appointed by the President, that way they aren't trying to bow to popular opinion. However, I like the little twist. They are allowed to serve a 2 month term. If they wish to continue, they would naturally talk to the current serving President. This President would then either reappoint him or choose another candidate. Then these candidates would have to be confirmed by the ministers, which I think is fair enough.

-The court can only review cases brought to it. I think this is a good idea, as Trip stated. Otherwise, you can have an all liberal or all conservative court that will actively search and strike down any laws or actions that it specifically disagrees with. Now the only left to figure out is how will cases be presented to the court. A free for all type of system? The court would have to filter through quite a bit of stuff each session, but this would balance the "easy access" to the court complaints with the people who think the court should be proactive in getting cases. (Granted, they still couldn't actively seek a case, but in theory, with so many complaints, there would presumably be a lot on their table).

-Also when we first install the justices, I think we need to do a tiered system, that way President's down the road can't pack a court with their own justices.
So for the FIRST court session, we'd have to have truncated terms.
1 justice would only serve 1 month
2 justices would serve 2 months
2 justices would serve 3 months

then once the second term comes around, we continue into the 2 month terms as originally stated. This will allow a sitting president to only place at most 2 judges on the bench at once (so that he won't be able to unfairly control the court). So we'd have to keep track of the staggered terms, but it would be highly worth it in my opinion to keep a strong and mostly BALANCED court. Granted, every 3 months, one president will be shafted and only be allowed to nominate 1 justice, but I don't think that is too bad.

The only unfairness is that the first president who picks the justices can pack the court with all FIVE if they wish, representing their political agenda. But I think it's a risk we should definately take in order to make later presidencies and courts balanced.

[Captain]

Originally posted by Trip
It seems that in lieu of this, the elections have come around. I don't want this issue to dive off the ends of the earth quite yet. I haven't read most of the last page or two, so if someone could summarize the new debates/suggestions/ideas up into one post I would GREATLY appreciate it, so I could perhaps add some stuff to the amendment proposal. Danke.

Unless someone else does it first, I can do this for you within two days. Unfortunately, real life is calling at the moment. (This is why I've never run for office, because I can't be consistently around enough).

So unless someone else wants to, I'll resummarize everything in a few days.