Science-fictional Future Earth United Earth Constitution

[Ares Land]

OK! That would make for interesting situation as you might get a president with fairly low support in the Assembly of Groups... That said, they only have a year to wait before electing a new one they might like better.

All in all I think it makes for a relatively weak executive. Which I don't think is a bad thing in that context (who needs a president of Earth with extensive powers?)

[Raphael]

Partly the one year term length was meant as a sweetener for the politicians - it means that a larger share of the leading politicians gets to be President at some point in their career. And partly it was meant to make coalition-building easier: I assume that, at least at first, there would be a lot of parties in the Assembly of Groups, so it might be easier to cobble together some kind of coalition if there's a strong incentive, and no real drawback, for having "rotation" agreements.

[Torco]

....the four major parties in the legislature are the Socialist Worker's Party, the Conservatives, the Libertarian Party and the Aryan Brotherhood, all within a percentage point of each other? (Though of course an exaggeration, it's not that far removed from the political landscape here in Europe.)

Yeah... a solution is to just not have a government. That's not all that bad, the Belgian case is an excellent argument for anarchism tbh... but the thing is Belgium is... well... Belgium. i.e. geopolitically -with love and respect to any belgian here- irrelevant. I don't think Poland, or Belarus, or Mexico, or Russia could get away with such a thing.

also, you can not have a gov and instead have have separate powers and let people vote on each one individually. the concept of the executive is kind of monarchic anyway. But yeah, that's such a wildly different system for such a politically traditionalist civilization as ours that it may as well be "let's graffiti laws onto a wall and have children throw rocks as them". So maybe the fascists get the military, the socialists get the welfare state, the libertarians get the tax authority and the conservatives get the laws... ooon second thought, Dhondt is not that bad.

I love that your conservatives want some form of social democracy, btw. mine are all like "look let's just privatize everything, and if someone doesn't get any service, let's pay *the businesses* more".

which reminds me... what kinds of political blocks are there in the UE ?

[Raphael]

For the record, while Belgium spent some extended periods of time without a "government" in the sense of "the politicians at the top of the machinery of the state", it never, in recent history, spent any time without a "government" in the sense of "the entire machinery of the state". (That's one of the major differences between British and North American English.)

which reminds me... what kinds of political blocks are there in the UE ?

I haven't thought about it in the context of more distant scenarios, but my guess is that, if, somehow, it would be instituted for real in the near future, it would be dominated by an alliance of extreme cultural conservatives from a number of different cultures, whose views on economic and socio-economic policies would be all over the place, who would probably compromise on somewhat, but not that much, left-leaning economic and socio-economic policies, while focusing their energy on forcing extreme cultural conservatism on everyone.

Which is part of why I'm doing this only as a conworlding exercise, not as something I'd want to see for real.

[Torco]

Oh, absolutely, my half-imagined future polity is something i'd definitely not want... but we paint blizzards even when we'd rather walk under the cool autumn sun, don't we?

[hwhatting]

The idea is to arrange matters so there's a majority.

In practical terms I get the point of having strong majorities and stable government. Though on philosophical grounds I object to the idea of giving a government a strong mandate when there's clearly no consensus on what should be done.

But having fake majorities is like... I don't know, if stability's the aim, let's just throw away all the votes and not tell anyone: then they believe they're in a democracy, which keeps them more or less content, but the rulers just keep ruling. stable!

Well, the idea in the German constitution is not to make changes of government impossible, but to make it difficult for small parties to end governments at every possible occasion, and to keep the number of parties with representation in parliament limited, to encourage compromise and biggish tents over small groups throwing tantrums for reasons of ideological purity or single issues. It's about smoothing the waves. As I said, that was a reaction to Weimar, which had lot of party splits and small parties who jumped in and out of governments during a parliamentary term, and contributed to a general feeling of chaos and that nobody is really in charge, which contributed to the rise of the Nazis.
It also fits with a German culture that values harmony and stability; that can be infuriating to people who want change and innovation, but you can also argue that it's a good thing that you first have to change general opinion before instituting change. What is typical for Germany is that the big changes were introduced frequently by the party who had been most against them in the beginning - the Social Democrats introducing pro-market regulations in the early 2000s, the conservative Christian Democrats abolishing the military draft or finally shutting down nuclear power - simply because the consensus had shifted so much that even they saw the necessity, and they knew that the opposition would not protest because they had been in favour all along.

[Torco]

Yeah, this is probably more of a problem in parliamentary systems <or in systems like Peru, where parliament can shut down the government and the government can shut down parliament... I mean, have you seen what's going on up there?>. But I wonder if in practice it doesn't just make it so the two big players end up being the same. Not that you need dhondt for that, look at the yanks.

[hwhatting]

But I wonder if in practice it doesn't just make it so the two big players end up being the same. Not that you need dhondt for that, look at the yanks.

Well, from an anti-Capitalist view Dems and Reps may look like the same, but if I had to choose between De Trumpis or whoever the Dems will come up with in 2024, I'm sure I'd perceive a difference.

[Travis B.]

But I wonder if in practice it doesn't just make it so the two big players end up being the same. Not that you need dhondt for that, look at the yanks.

Well, from an anti-Capitalist view Dems and Reps may look like the same, but if I had to choose between De Trumpis or whoever the Dems will come up with in 2024, I'm sure I'd perceive a difference.

I agree. Regardless of my own socialist views, and the fact that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are socialist, there is still a very major difference between the two in practice, and I would much rather have the former rather than the latter. Yes, there are accelerationists who argue that one should vote Republican to deliberately hasten Teh Revolucion, but doing that will more likely just make life much worse for everyone while failing to achieve that goal.

[hwhatting]

Yes, there are accelerationists who argue that one should vote Republican to deliberately hasten Teh Revolucion

That's what the Communists argued when they undermined Weimar - that all bourgeois parties are the same and that things need to get worse before they can be resolved by revolution. That brought us Hitler instead of World Revolution.
My personal view is that revolutions that don't lead to some kind of liberal democracy only ever happen in underdeveloped agrarian countries on the verge of industrialisation. Liberal democracy will either evolve based on change people come to agree about or degenerate into some kind of authoritarian regime supported by the people who fear change. So if anyone wants socialism, they need to create a consensus for it without deterring too many people.

[Torco]

But I wonder if in practice it doesn't just make it so the two big players end up being the same. Not that you need dhondt for that, look at the yanks.

Well, from an anti-Capitalist view Dems and Reps may look like the same, but if I had to choose between De Trumpis or whoever the Dems will come up with in 2024, I'm sure I'd perceive a difference.

It's not just from an anticapitalist perspective: sure, reps and dems are different in some ways: crucially culture wars stuff, but they're both in agreement regarding a bunch of stuff within capitalism, just not the stuff political controversy is about: neither wants to, say, implement a public healthcare system, or a pension system, or vacation laws like in the rest of the world. still, were I american, tbh I'd feel the same. but I am not and Trump did not, in fact, start any new wars... and that's not nothing, in terms of the utilitarian calculus. Ukraine getting into NATO was, even if you think russia bad and ukraine good <which, tbh, i also think> well.... controversial take here, but what do you think would happen in Mexico were to join CSTO? Trump's evil, sure, but it seems to me the fewer us wars the better for the rest of the world. Of course I'd prefer the white house be in the hands of some guy who a) wasn't a crazy ultraconservative populist and b) would not start as many wars... but tbh I think one weighs more than the other. I *want* civil rights in the US, sure (this is especially important since the yanks are the cultural hegemon, and so if they go nazi the world is pushed towards nazism too), but I kinda want millions of non americans not to be killed by dronestrikes, or wars, or the rest of the stuff imperialist and adventurist US foreign policy causes even more.

I don't think the accelerationist case for republicans has a lot of merit, though. here in Chile, for example, 40 years of neoliberal hegemony managed to make people vote against a regular pension system [amongst other things] because "don't mess with muh money" (we have private pension funds here, though most pensions are paid by the state anyway), even if they would all have gotten higher pensions with the socialized system. similarly, I don't think a decade of de trumpis rule would push the us youth towards socialism <though, from what I hear, anticapitalism has been getting more and more popular amongst millenials and zoomers, and thank god for that>.

[Travis B.]

Yes, there are accelerationists who argue that one should vote Republican to deliberately hasten Teh Revolucion

That's what the Communists argued when they undermined Weimar - that all bourgeois parties are the same and that things need to get worse before they can be resolved by revolution. That brought us Hitler instead of World Revolution.
My personal view is that revolutions that don't lead to some kind of liberal democracy only ever happen in underdeveloped agrarian countries on the verge of industrialisation. Liberal democracy will either evolve based on change people come to agree about or degenerate into some kind of authoritarian regime supported by the people who fear change. So if anyone wants socialism, they need to create a consensus for it without deterring too many people.

To me, the main two practical outcomes of revolution are liberal democracy and dictatorship, whether party or personal. Note that liberal democracy and socialism are by no means incompatible; liberal democracy by no means necessitates capitalism. However, actual socialism (which requires democracy), as opposed to state capitalism, needs a general consensus to function, and cannot be simply imposed by the state. However, liberal democracy makes it possible for it to function within a politically pluralistic society.

[Travis B.]

I should note that I view anarchism as a form of democracy, and have the view that most practical ideas for implementing anarchism are essentially implementing democracy by another name. Yes, anarchists may say they are against the State, but in reality what they propose is essentially creating a new kind of State.

[Ares Land]

(We can move this over to the US politics thread if Raphael prefers )

but I am not and Trump did not, in fact, start any new wars... and that's not nothing, in terms of the utilitarian calculus.

Would Hillary have started a new war though? I doubt it. The global political situation called for less intervention at the time anyway. Basically Trump didn't start any new wars because there were no new wars to be started.
I heard rumors that the Democrats would start a war over the Baltic countries back in 2017 but TBH that sounds like Russian/Republican propaganda.

From a foreign perspective, differences between a Republican and a Democratic administrations can be hard to discern. That said, it certainly looks like the Americans prefer it that way. Judging from the Internet you'd expect the presidency to be decided between Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, but it sure looks like in real life voters prefer centrists.
Partly it seems to be by design. The whole systems seems designed so that as much as possible happens at state level or below and so that the president can't really rock the boat that much. Half of the time Congress is dominated by the opposite party, and the rest of time most of the time it's dominated by centrists, and by centrists I mean people who might as well be in the opposite party.

For Europeans at least it's a bit strange, because the British PM, the German Chancellor and the French president, unlike the American president are, in fact, allowed to do stuff.

[hwhatting]

Note that liberal democracy and socialism are by no means incompatible; liberal democracy by no means necessitates capitalism. However, actual socialism (which requires democracy), as opposed to state capitalism, needs a general consensus to function, and cannot be simply imposed by the state. However, liberal democracy makes it possible for it to function within a politically pluralistic society.

Well, here we go back to that whole Capitalism thread - what is it exactly what we call Capitalism and what Socialism. I don't have the time right now to explain my views on this, so I'll just watch this discussion for now

[hwhatting]

For Europeans at least it's a bit strange, because the British PM, the German Chancellor and the French president, unlike the American president are, in fact, allowed to do stuff.

Yes, that's why I prefer parliamentary systems with proportional representation - you get a legislative majority for your program and less of that two-camp mentatility.

[Torco]

It seems likely she would have starte done, yes. the americans start a new war every couple of years: I don't think there's been any us president who has not started a new military adventure in a while since Carter. Clinton was, iirc, pretty hawkish... moreso than Obama, according to npr. I don't think that necessarily the fact that 'centrists' tend to win means that people are very centrist: I think non-parliamentary systems inherently push things to be two big parties, and for those two parties to be as similar to each other as possible regardless of what people want, just out of the way things work.

Yes, that's why I prefer parliamentary systems with proportional representation - you get a legislative majority for your program and less of that two-camp mentality.

true but, then again, you also get whatever's going on in britain.

[Raphael]

(We can move this over to the US politics thread if Raphael prefers )

Yes, I think I would prefer that.

[hwhatting]

Yes, that's why I prefer parliamentary systems with proportional representation - you get a legislative majority for your program and less of that two-camp mentality.

true but, then again, you also get whatever's going on in britain.

Britain doesn't have proportional representation, but First-past-the-post, that's why you get more of the two-camp-mentality.
You can have a two-camp mentality also with proportional representation, e.g. when all other parties try to exclude a specific, large party (like the Communists in Italy during the Cold War), or when parties have their favourite coalition partners (like in Germany in the late 90s / early 2000s, where there was a bit of a division between Social Democrats and Greens vs. Christian Democrats and Liberals), but in the latter case the need to form coalitions even if the favourite partner is not available generally smoothes the edges and leads to coalitions across camp borders (as happened in Germany after Schröder). It helps if there is a federal system or strong regions / municipalities where the parties can try out unconventional coalitions.

[Moose-tache]

What is the linguistic life expectancy of a written constitution?

If we write a constitution in a specific dialect of a specific language, eventually the meaning of words and grammatical structures will shift. Look at a phrase like "all men are created equal," and imagine the chaos if it were legally enforcible. Sooner or later, the language of the constitution has to become a diglossic "legalese" understood only by experts, and finally a dead language where most people just have to have faith that their lawyer hasn't incorrectly translated a word. Imagine a future in which English develops evidentiality, or completely reorganizes its pronoun system, such that the apparent text of the law appears to say something the lawyers insist it does not. At that point the constitution would be a minefield for fuzzy interpretation and ambiguity, and the pressure to rewrite it would be immense. Then again, Latin has persisted just fine for centuries as a legal medium, without any of these problems.

So what do you think? How long can a written consitution last, linguisticaly?