It would be great for the general interest if...

[jcb]

5. Limit Supreme Court terms.

Do you think that would be enough? I think the court needs to be greatly enlarged. Why not have the same number of judges as representatives? Sure, it may sound silly to have hundreds (or thousands) of judges in a court room, but people used to say the exact same thing about having hundreds of representatives of the people, instead of having just a handful of rich guys and their friends.

One thing we've learned is that no one safeguard is "enough."

Expanding the court could be done by Congress without changing the constitution, so that would be cool.

Also, why not elect judges?

Do you mean Supreme Court justices? Sure, why not.

Yes, I meant justices instead of judges. Oops.

[Nachtswalbe]

Something like a World Passport

[Travis B.]

Something like a World Passport

While I have defended the idea that people be treated as citizens of whatever lands in which they live, such logic could be used to defend settler colonialism.

[Torco]

I'm not convinced of that. settler colonialism does not amount to foreigners coming to live here [wherever here is], it also involves a regime of social and legal superiority of the settler group over the natives, as was the case in the past in colonial latin america, or north america, or africa, or in present day israel. without that regime of superiority and preferential treatment of one group over the other you can get things like gentrification, for sure, like what's going on in mexico getting filled up with relatively affluent yanks, with all the rent-hikes and other problems that come with it, but that's not the same as settler colonialism.

unless the World Passport has a little line that ranks the person according to race or place of birth or something, and you get more rights if your world passport says born in the US, and fewer if it says born in Mexico, in which case that's just an API for the current national passport system.

[Travis B.]

I'm not convinced of that. settler colonialism does not amount to foreigners coming to live here [wherever here is], it also involves a regime of social and legal superiority of the settler group over the natives, as was the case in the past in colonial latin america, or north america, or africa, or in present day israel. without that regime of superiority and preferential treatment of one group over the other you can get things like gentrification, for sure, like what's going on in mexico getting filled up with relatively affluent yanks, with all the rent-hikes and other problems that come with it, but that's not the same as settler colonialism.

unless the World Passport has a little line that ranks the person according to race or place of birth or something, and you get more rights if your world passport says born in the US, and fewer if it says born in Mexico, in which case that's just an API for the current national passport system.

The key thing is that the concept of a 'world passport' could be used to justify settler colonialism in which people in the world are not actually equal, whether because those treaties are actually unfair or unfairly enforced despite people being told they are or because of rich Americans going to other countries and outspending those living there through differences in pay in the US versus other countries.

Of course, in a world where everyone is truly equal -- and not just 'equal' on paper -- a 'world passport' is perfectly supportable.

[Travis B.]

It should be noted, though, that typically immigration controls are used to 'protect' rich people from poor people, and not vice versa, and these rich people certainly do not need protecting.

[Torco]

it's true that paper only goes so far, but also there's functionally already such a system in place for the wealthy: if you have enough money you can get into any country you want and be treated as well or better than a full citizen of it, possibly with the exception of like north korea or yemen.

and like, we don't see that fact creating settler colonialism situations in all those countries: rich americans, canadian and englishmen -to say a few- can move to ecuador, bolivia, nigeria or bali whenever they want and while we see them gentrifying those countries, we don't exactly see them relegating ecuadorians or bolivians to bantustans... latinostans?

[Travis B.]

You do see expatriate communities of rich Westerners living in relatively poor countries such as Thailand or your example of Mexico -- it just is that in the present tense there either generally is not enough expatriates to displace the native population or the settler colonialism has already taken place.