Asklemmy

I had to go through the book shelf to find this one because I've talked about it before and wanted to share.

Arthur C. Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth (audiobook)

The wiki unfortunately doesn't go into details enough. Basically the plot takes place on a distant planet after the Earth has been destroyed by a supernova and the society was created by a seed ship. The officials are elected by a lottery and there's a form of direct democracy if my memory serves me right in a passage. I wish I could expand on it more but the book is just amazing and I don't want to spoil it to much for those who are interested. If you have the time I linked the audio book and it's based off a former short story of his with the same title.

Ig the worldbuilding for my custom 5e setting counts? It's sort of a continuation of the forgotten realms, with a heavy dose of Warhammer 40K and Doom thrown in. The world of Toril was shattered, and the fragments frozen in place by a divine sacrifice, leaving each landmass cluster within reach of one another (within Voidships).

The government in question was the Dwarf Assembly. It's a loose confederation of citadels within these clusters. Each one dedicated itself to one trade (for example, mining clusters, smithing clusters, etc.), with each trade being led by the oldest dwarf. Assembly-wide decisions are made with the agreement of all clusters.

Tensions rise within each cluster whenever a problem cannot be solved by tradition, with older dwarves being quite proud and reticent to veer away from it. Tensions rise within the Assembly whenever a younger elder is introduced, being seen as inexperienced.

It's not meant to be perfect, I wanted it to be a source of dramatic tension whenever the party ever stepped foot on dwarven soil. I also really like the mental image of dwarves with ushankas.

My view (sorry for the British context and no cool name for it):

Have a King as head of state mainly in a similar role to now in the UK to be someone who can fire any ministers if needed.

No political parties. Simply have the public vote for a choice of 5 candidates for each cabinet minister post on 5 year terms.

These candidates must have at least 20 years experience of the field they wish to be minister of. For example, the choices for Health Minister would be between 5 people, who all have extensive experience in the field. So would hopefully understand what can and needs to be done. Rather than our current system of having a PPE graduate who has only ever worked in politics in charge of things they do not understand.

I also feel that removing political parties from the process would reduce some of the group-think that currently happens, as the public would be voting on the best policies for health, then for education etc. I think that would be an improvement over currently only having one vote and having to choose a party that ticks some but not all of your policy preferences.

My ideal form of government is one where everyone cooperates to build up society, and there may be leaders, but no one is owed obedience.

I think we should approach law as code. Leverage modern tools not unlike github to manage it collaboratively. We need an issue tracker and so on and so forth. Foss.

As someone mentioned we need task forces to tackle specific issues. Like representatives for a specific issue. These have to work together, but each has a specific goal and perspective with clear qualifiers and criteria.

Further, we shouldn't all be running the same code. We need diversity in order to be resilient and to discover new possibilities. Some jurisdictions should be cutting edge and others conservative, so results can be compared.

Like, we need to stop using violence as a form of resolution between different systems. We need the tools to reason together. As someone mentioned we need clear qualifiers that express our values and interests, such as the happiness index.

Lastly, everyone should be able to get involved. I think nurses need to be involved in legislation surrounding healthcare. The tools need to be accessible for anyone, so it should most likely take a human form so it can properly communicate. Most likely some combination of specialized maintainers and LLMs.

Semi-liquid democracy plus confederalism. The votes that delegates bring are multiplied by some function of the votes assigned to them as well as the soldiers and funding they commit.

Personally I favour a council socialism where all are equal, regardless of any circumstance; none has lasting power, no central government is apparent, no permanent imprisonment exists, and direct representatives can be called and revoked at any moment for specific issues. Everyone has free studying, healthcare, housing, and food.

Where one can enjoy the fruits of another's property, that should be fairly shared, instead of the "owner" being able to set prices. This would be done by nullifying any possibility to set prices or gains from this property.

There would be only multiple random ballots if votes occur. All options proposed shall be on the ballots, regardless of circumstance.

The challenge is making not only a central government not exist, but making it impossible for such a central government to gain foothold, and also to make it unattractive for communes to grow too big lest they become authoritarian.

This can be achieved by two methods:

1. Revolution, preferably peaceful.

2. Or by reform. One possibility is living together in a commune. To make money effectively meaningless, first all must benefit equally from the influx of money, without sensing a need of money. All people's income towards a collectively owned bank account, for example, that buys basic needs like food, housing for everyone, and gives personal property. Nobody has money themselves.

Ideally, this would start from one suburb, as then a core of a moneyless world can be built, but can be done internationally too.

A commune is delineated by: being the smallest amount of people that can sustain itself on its own labour and own populace, and being the largest amount of people where everyone could know one another.

This would in practice mean a commune of about 100-500 people, maybe 300.

Everyone listens to me and gives me things. I eventually get shot in the face which causes societal collapse. Or something.

I had a super cynical dystopian idea. Never got around to fleshing it out, so its stability is doubtful at best, but here goes:

So a problem with democracy is that advertising is a powerful force and the candidate with more money to throw into their campaign tends to win, not to mention various forms of bribery coming into play after the elections. A ton of money is being wasted on shady behind-the-scenes deals. Lets get rid of all that and bring it into the light!

• Get rid of elections AND politicians, since they are just middlemen. Instead create a kind of stock market for various spheres and levels of lawmaking and have megacorporations and other interested parties bid on those.

• Money that would have been secretly funneled into politician pockets instead goes openly into the government budget.

• Save more money on elections and government official salaries since there are none.

• Corps that make laws that benefit consumers get to use that in their advertising. Buy from ProcLive! The company that brought you halfway decent healthcare!

• Voting with you wallet ends up being mandatory. You don't like that Disney took away weekends? Give your hard-earned cash to Sony next time. They promised to reduce mamdatory weekly working hours to 65!

• Maybe sometimes a local citizen initiative manages to raise enough money to get governmental powers in a small town or something. I mean, probably not, but you gotta give people some hope, right?

I would rather just fix the one we have.

Reps nor the kids nor their partners can own stock and anyone found taking bribes or lobbyist money is immediately kicked out of their position and all money they received while being a rep is stripped from them and given to a healthcare or social program.

All gerrymandering is undone and fuck the electoral college.

I’ve seldom seen such a succinct and effective dismantling of the status quo. Well-articulated.