How are you going to fix the United States?

Great Debates
61

  1. Rights - Anything that a reasonable person would not see as harming another non-consentual adult or child is hereby considered inalienable rights. This includes, but is not limited to, gun ownership, consentual sex, recreational drug use, etc. Any laws that violate these priniciples will be immediately repealed and anyone who is currently imprisoned as a result of these laws shall immediately released. All rights and responsibilities associated with adulthood (eg, voting, taxes) are received at a single age, probably 18.

  2. Federal Government - They are limited in power to those things expressly written in the constitution. Goodbye department of education, IRS, EPA, and all that. Everything else is reserved to the states or lower to handle how they see fit. The federal government should only be watching things that necessarily affect all states equally such as foreign diplomacy, military, and actual interstate commerce.

  3. Taxation - Taxes exist for raising funds, not for social engineering. All persons (businesses, religious institutions, and any other groups are not people) will pay a flat percentage of their income in federal taxes. There will be no deficit or surplus, the percentage will be adjusted up or down based upon the federal budget. If it’s too high? Don’t for for the shmuck that increased federal spending.

  4. Representation - There shall be a single house of congress composed of proportional representation. Each state shall receive a total vote directly proportional to it’s population; and this proportional shall be split up amongst the representatives based upon the votes they receive. Thus, anyone may run, and provided they receive some minimum number of votes (say, 5000), they may then represent their state in congress with their vote having that proportional weight. no representative may have more than a certain percentage of the total vote based on this system (say, 0.5%), and if he does, he will receive that percentage of weight to his vote, and an instant run-off system will be used to distribute the remaining weights. This is intended as a parttime service to your country, so it is also unpaid. The purpose of this is to prevent gerrymandering, allow more options to prevent “lesser of two evil” voting, while also openning the door for third party candidates while simultaneously allowing the power of politicians to be based on their actual approval.

  5. Elections - All funding from elections will be 100% public and may only be funded by citizens (which, inherently must be persons and not corporations or other groups). All elections must be performed using the exact same electronic system. This will be federally funded, and all technology, systems, and algorithms will be a matter of public knowledge and review. All presidential elections will be based purely on popular vote, and all will have the exact same absolute openning and closing of poles (eg, 5:00AM-11:59PM EST or 2:00AM-8:59 PST etc.).

  6. Military - The draft shall be illegalized. The military may not be deployed in a combat capacity for more than some reasonable period (probably 3-6 months) without a formal declaration of war. Further, formal declarations of war may only be made against actual states. In the event of military action against a non-state entity (eg, Al Qaeda), failure to act in a way to manage that threat is grounds for a declaration of war. The budget and size of active and reserve mility, however, will be whatever congress sets it to be, which, as mentioned above, should be well managed between the voting and direct proportional taxes since it will likely be the most significant portion of the federal budget.

  7. Social Services - The federal government shall provide zero social services. Any payments made into systems, like social security, will be refunded. All social services will be funded and managed at a state or local level and, in many cases, completely eliminated altogether. Education will also be handled at the state level and will likely be pushed toward either a purely private system or a publically funded by not publically run system.

  8. Immigration - Secure the borders. There will only be a quota on total number allowed to enter, not based on origin; this quota should also be raised. All requests will be on a FCFS basis with the exception that those who are a parent, child, sibling, or spouse of those legally here will receive preference. There will be no restrictions on how they may be employed either. To apply for citizenship, you must only be a resident for some period (maybe 5 years), forfeit any rights/responsibilities associated with citizenship of another country, and be able to pass some basic language skills or be able to provide some other manner of effectively communicating (I’m sorry, but government officials should not be required to learn every language to provide basic services to citizens). Once a citizen, they will be treated exactly as any natural born citizen. Also, natural born citizenship is applied only if one or both parents is a citizen or legal aliens; not by simply being born on American soil. Any citizen who is currently here illegally will be provided a grace period (roughly as long as it would take to process them, maybe a couple years) in which to apply for legal citizenship or voluntarily leave the country. After that point, all illegals will be deported immediately without question.

  9. Judicial system - All court costs associated for a defendant shall be funded by the state in the case of a criminal trial or the plaintiff if a civil trial. Hopefully, this will seriously dent frivilous lawsuits and help give a boost to people who are innocent but can’t afford to hire a quality attorney. Any non-citizen who commits a felony will serve the appropriate sentence, and following, be deported. Prison is reserved for violent offenders or as an option for non-violent offenders in the event that fines/repayment cannot be made. All prisoners are required to provide some form of work to be sufficient that their imprisonment revenue neutral. The death penalty is reserved only for criminal cases of murder; however, it must be upheld to a higher standard of proof than “beyond a reasonable doubt” (unsure what that would be), they are provided ample time and opportunities for appeals, the bereaved or in fact the victim himself (perhaps via will or demonstratable known principles) may decline in favor of life imprisonment, and the criminal may choose his method of death from from some set of reasonable methods (eg, lethal injection, hanging, gas chamber are probably fair options while stoning, disembowelment, being shoved in a wood chipper are probably not).

  10. Commerce - The government shall have absolute minimal involvement in commerce. Corporations are not people, so any one that is commiting crimes will be attributed directly to the individuals involved. Also not being people, they may not make political contributions but they also do not pay taxes. Beyond that, other restrictions will be minimal, like requiring full disclosure of funds if a public company. All wage laws will be abolished; you should be paid what the market says that work is worth. All affirmative action type laws will also be abolished; a company that doesn’t hire the best and the brightest will eventually feel the pinch in their pocket books. All employment will be a contract and, as such, is subject to contract laws, but will generally be such that either side can terminate the employment at any time for any reason.

I’m open to rewording as needed, but hopefully the gist of my ideas are getting across.

62

And be able to locate at least 3 countries on a map [not including Canada and Mexico]:wink:

63

Considering the things being said about Canada, I’m not sure they’ve found the right country there, either. :slight_smile:

64

Such as?

I don’t see any such mentioned here, where I would expect to find them.

65

Don’t you know that the ACLU is a primary culprit in the War on Christmas? And the persecution of Christians in the U.S.?

I’m not sure where you’ve been for the last…ummm, well…however long it’s been since ITR got that ole time relijin…

66

  1. Withdraw troops from Afghanistan & Iraq.

  2. Fix immigration.

Secure borders, compulsory e-verify, no benefits for illegals. End birthright citizenship.

Need for this is set out here.

Implement Richwine’s suggestion for immigration criteria.

67

Wow, the ACLU can make laws now? That’s awesome. Even the President can’t do that. Think I should join.

68

I dunno, there are a lot of groups that secretly control the world, you may want to shop around.

69

Easy OP.

Replace the present SCOTUS with 9 thirty-something progressive lawyers.

They would invite cases to allow rulings that would

  1. put to rest the idea of corporate personhood and corporate funded politics.

  2. break up media conglomerates.

  3. make regulation of Wall Street strict and transparent.

  4. limit our military involvements and the use of private contractors.

  5. make clear that good law does not discriminate on any basis.

  6. sanction a single-payer health care system.

70

You are a natural New Court Jester.

71

My first law would one to repeal the limits on the original law. How often do you get to enact the punchline to an ancient joke?

Then I would probably leave everything pretty much as is, because we interact with the whole world, I would have no say over other places, and on the whole, our country has been more stable and prosperous than any other for a very long time, because of the checks and balances we already have in place.

72

So you would toss out the concept of checks and balances inherent in the success of our nation, implement eminent domain (“taking” of property) for no reason, disdain the use of diplomacy and other tools of national defense, and more, for what good? Are you sure you aren’t just implementing your own pet causes because you can,without considering the side effects?

73

I get to.

Nope. I figure the effects of an honest foreign/domestic policy would be quite pleasing to most of the global population and meet with 90% approval here at home.

74

Hey, I’d do it just for an excuse to leave the country for ten years!

OK.

  1. Orderly system of secession for states. Seceding is not treason, it’s reorganization.

  2. States can be forcibly reorganized by Congress. If the rest of the country so votes, Rhode Island can be folded into Connecticut, California can be cut into six pieces; if they refuse they must leave the Union.

  3. Abolish the US Senate.

  4. Environmental damages always carry criminal penalties. A polluting company’s assets can be seized for the duration of trial & completely forfeited on conviction.

  5. Every state must have statewide funding of schools. Local funding must be abolished in toto. If this is undue interference in state affairs, fine, we’ll just go to exclusively nationwide funding.

  6. No more federal immigration quotas. Legal residence in this country must be based on conditions fulfilled by the migrant, not external matters beyond his control.

  7. Bring back the Equal Time Law so everyone can come on the air and say how much these changes suck, but with multiple sides represented in a *de facto *debate.

  8. Multi-Member Proportional Representation in unicameral legislatures will be the new standard. Bicamerality is a vestige of reserving power to landed elites, & First Past the Post is limiting to debate & therefore to reform.

  9. Any manufacturer must bear legal responsibility for the cost to the state of disposing his product & its packaging. This should help rationalize the economics of environmental costs.

  10. Repeal Posse Comitatus. If we’re going to use US armed forces to police other nations, why are we afraid to do it internally & give them some experience?

75

And on what basis have you, as the expert selected, come to that conclusion?

For that matter, how do you define honest, and why would you expect that your negotiating partners would both define it similarly, and share your goals at the expense of theirs, in any diplomatic negotiation?

76

Wow just wow.

I guess it is very common to not understand the fundamental organizing principles of a nation not one’s own. Every single one of these is contrary to the very reasons for existence of our country.

Plus, bonus, with 4 and 9, you propose to outlaw economic externalities with the stroke of a pen!

77

I’d say you could come to Canada, but I suspect we’d wind up with 4 or 5 subdivided countries by the time you left.

78

1) Institute voting reform. Approval voting? Proportional Representation? I dunno yet. Haven’t thought about it in enough depth. But the system we have now is fucking bonkers on almost every level, from our winner-take-all elections to the Senate filibuster. This relates to campaign finance reform, but if you had a proper voting system, I’m not sure campaign finance reform would be necessary.

2) Reform professional licensing. So a lawyer has to pass the bar to practice? Okay. But how about we make the testing more about maintaining professional standards instead of restricting market entry? Then every lawyer has to take a random section of the test again periodically, say a random quarter of the full exam every five years. If they don’t pass, they automatically lose their license. Same goes for every other licensing agency. Doctors. Nurses. Accountants. Plumbers. Bail bondsmen. Any licensing criteria set up by any state has to test people who already have their license just as strictly as they test people who are studying to enter. If the test is difficult, its difficulty must be justified by continuing to test practicing professionals, so that it’s not simply an extra measure to squelch competition. This will help ensure that these tests are no more difficult than they need to be. If a practicing corporate attorney gets pissed that they have to get tested randomly on, say, criminal law, then that’s an incentive to split the licensing tests into different pieces. Once again, this makes market entry more easy.

Other requirements, such as apprenticeships or mandatory schooling, or other bullshit stalling tactics that are introduced to delay and reduce the supply of newly minted professionals, are herewith discharged. Pass the test and you’re in. If there’s a practical component to the test, then licensed professionals must pass that practical component regularly to keep their licenses.

3) Civil law reform. I’m going to have to be non-specific here because I’m not a lawyer, and yes, I realize that a lot of suggestions about “tort reform” are in reality suggestions to undermine consumer protections in favor of big business. Still, a lot of the law right now is designed to help the big money players. Strategic lawsuits against start-up companies, which can’t afford to defend themselves against old established firms is not the way to go. A lawsuit should be about arbitrating a dispute. It should not be a fucking tactical business decision to squelch competition.

I heard a suggestion once, I think here on the SDMB, that both parties, before paying counsel, could put money into a pool. They can then withdraw half the funds of the pool to pay for their own costs. The other half goes to the other party. That way, if both parties spend a lot, they both receive roughly the same amount of money for counsel that they put in–but if one party is significantly poorer, it would be relying mostly on the other party’s funds. This would provide an incentive against excessive spending unless both parties could afford it. Devil’s in the details, but when even legitimate cases cost 50 cents on the dollar to litigate for clients who can afford to pay the bills (as happened to an engineer friend of mine), we’ve got serious problems. The law has been priced out of the normal person’s, or small business start-up’s, range.

4) Education experimentation. I don’t know enough about K-12 education to comment intelligently, but in higher education: Have the US government set up a national online university, where students can enroll for cheap. We’re in the digital age, and we need to get higher ed costs under control. Have some programmers come up with a good interface (and I’ve seen some computer-assisted learning programs that are, in a word, genius). The marginal cost for a good program is effectively nothing. There’s simply no reason to have expensive textbooks or lectures, when we can go all Diamond Age on this problem. Testing could be set up in an SAT/ACT/AP sort of style. If this worked well (and it absolutely would, if we made the proper investment up front), then this would likely put me out of a job in the future. No matter. It would be good for students, good for employers, good for the economy, and good for the country. And hey, while we’re setting up the higher education curriculum, we can also implement a complete online K12 supplementary curriculum. Open source, CC license on all of it.

5) Victimless crime reform (e.g. drugs and prostitution): Legalize. Regulate. Tax.

6) High finance regulation. The first thing to do is to get rid of this cafeteria structure where the big investment banks get to pick-n-choose who to get regulated by. No. It sure as hell shouldn’t work like that. Force the banks to be regulated by the appropriate institution, no choice involved, and then streamline and tighten the regulations. The Great Depression regulatory structure worked just fine for decades with no problems, so any deviation from that must be justified (and yeah, there should be some exceptions–most of the financial “innovations” of recent years have been anything but, but some have been alright). Then get to deleveraging the institutions.

What we can’t have is regulatory discretion. There’s no way the regulators can keep up with the banks. The bankers are greedier, smarter, harder-working, and better paid. So we need the regulators to wield a simple, but sufficiently blunt, hammer. We need some clever but simple rules that can be consistently applied, with swift and wrathful punishment for transgressions. Somewhere along the way, we also need to find a way to remove fraud from the ratings agencies, but fuck if I know how to do that. I’ll work up a suitable plan when the powers that be actually call me to implement my list.

7) Immigration reform. I don’t know how to work this, either. Not off the top of my head. All I know is that we can’t possibly deport 10 million people, and that we do want to decrease illegal immigration and increase legal immigration.

8) Global warming. I think a carbon tax would work better. But it’s not going to work without international cooperation, so let’s get cracking on that front. If we can get the EU on-board, we won’t need China so much. We can simply join with Europe to levy the appropriate tax on imports from countries that refuse to reduce their own carbon emissions. And no industry giveaways. For the current House bill, last I read about it, about 80% of funds from the auctions accrue to public purposes. That’s not as bad as a lot of the hatuhs make it out to be, but it should still be 100%.

9) Streamlining the government. A general rule to make fewer, better regulations. We don’t need a thousand page tax code. We don’t need so heavy-handed environmental regulatory structures when market-based approaches like cap’n’trade and targeted taxes (e.g. a carbon tax) work so much better. The principle for this would be: status quo reform. We want things to look as much like they are now, except simpler and more efficient.

10) No stupid wars. No civil rights violations. No torture. Clear, achievable goals for our current predicaments, then we get out.

This list leaves some things out, most notably health care reform, but legislation would have no problem passing if our voting procedures weren’t so ridiculous, and much of the current strain on our system would be lessened if we could more readily increase the supply of doctors and nurses with more sensible immigration and licensing procedures. If I have 10 things to do, this is it (details, of course, up to reconsideration if I actually receive these powers).

79

So my legal representation can not be relied upon by me to be available for the duration of my need? How is that helpful?

Same for doctors, nurses, plumbers, and everyone else? How would it be useful to me in practice and in the marketplace to have my contracted professional no longer available?

There are a number of other regimes available to try, such as “loser pays”.

There is already a ton of open source course material available, started by MIT Can’t recall the name of the program right now.

Problem is, the licensing strictly prohibits using it for profit purposes. What you suggest could be done in a heartbeat by Phoenix U or a startup with that material. But the material is not available to use that way.

80

So give it a reprieve, say six months to a year, before the actual license revocation, offering another chance to pass. The underlying principle isn’t affected by that.

“Loser pays” has its own set of problems, but maybe they could be balanced better. I’d certainly consider more options before I wrote my dictatorial decree. I’m just appalled when I read stories about strategic lawsuits or innocent college kids having to lose their savings because they can’t afford to fight an unjust suit.

I’ve clicked through some MIT stuff (very briefly), and what I saw (very briefly) wasn’t that great. But the actual quality computer coursework that I’ve seen (and I’m thinking of stuff like the brilliant “Calculus&Mathematica” computer textbooks) is still copyrighted material. Can’t be generally used.

But the thing is, this would be a true public good. If this sort of program is commissioned by the gummint and then distributed freely, it would be totally non-rival and non-excludable. Do it once with the right license, and it’s pretty much done for good. No significant marginal cost.