The Moonlight Café

[Autumnwolf17]

live in america only but dont hurt yourself overthinking. i just move a lot

[Xtermy]

Step 1: Remove all individuals representing political parties

Step 2: Remove idea of individual parties and replace with idea of one uniformed government to focus on the countries problems

Step 3: (Rather than a government) Set up a forum where anyone can participate in debates but your reputation is based on how others rate your opinion. However much you can rate someone should be decided by how active you are on the forums (your rating has no effect to remove bias)with a short timeout (week or so of no activity?).

Rating is something that happens all year round. Elections would be abolished. Ratings may be wiped every 4 years if saw fit

Step 4: Make rating-scams illegal and possible to jail both the ratee and the organisation of raters. Make it illegal to advertise debaters for rating (alternative to voting)

Step 4: Create a ''Master Forum'' where only the best rated debators can take part in discussions of the respective country's future e.g. 300 people? This would reduce spamming and biased oppinions to a minimum with only carefully constructed arguments posted. Normal rules apply and the members can get kicked out at any time.

Solutions it provides:
Does it stop politics being about having the best individual representative politician? Yes
Does it focus more on the needs of the country that fighting for power? Yes again
Does it prevent idiots who have no idea about politics vote for stuff they don't even know they are voting for? It rewards those most interested in the forum or even active at all on the forum, so yes
Is it a democracy? Everyone still has an equal right to vote, so YES; if you know more about politics and get more involved you have a stronger vote

Weaknesses: Its on the computer. As it's mostly accepted that everyone has a computer and you only need so many people debating, I don't see this as a weakness

I don't see why a perfectly reasonable solution like the above decides what our countries do >:( At least in the UK (And I'm pretty sure in america too) to a large amount of the public its a ''best personality wins'' competition... I say scrap having individuals represent parties and stop recommending idiots who aren't interested in politics to vote at a minimum.

necrocat219, what you are proposing is a system that worked in ancient greece (direct Democracy), where there weren't many people around, so everyone could directly participate in the democratic decision-making process.

However, you should consider the following:

1) Any Internet account can be hacked and no system is fully fail-proof. having online debates without enough security can be dangerous, especially when discussing a country's security. and defense strategy

2) While I myself am no fan of the current system, and definately not a fan of big government, one of the reasons this is the system in place today is that regular folk have their everyday life to handle, and usually don't have time (or all the required knowledge and information) to make decisions regarding their countries fate. I do recognise that niether do the politicians, on many occasions.

Let's say, for example, if god-forbid a country must go to war - would a forums of thousands of regular joes have to vote on it and decide whether to go to war or not?

3) Your proposition would result in people who have more spare time on their hands handling most of the debates. This will in turn create the same thing you are trying to abolish - a group with more power and influence than the rest of the people (like a political party).


4) Also remember that apart from the politicians, there are the civil servants (or government employees), whose job it is to carry out the leading party's agenda. So, if the people had control over this vast staff of employees, who would be their direct superior? What mandate would regular joes have to give those employees orders?

[Xtermy]

live in america only but dont hurt yourself overthinking. i just move a lot

Well, if you live there (and even of you travel abroad for extended periods of time) then you are an American, isn't it so?

[necrocat219]

@Xtermy I didn't know that's what it was like in Ancient Greece. And yeah, summed up more diss advantages are:
-Internet security
-decisions made better by individuals (war, etc)
-people with too much free time making up parliament (could be lazy people on benefits for all we know)

So yeah you've immediately seen the weaknesses with my idea. Of course something that big wouldn't be implemented exactly like that - but discussions and criticizes like that help move an idea forwards or even scrap it altogether

So yeah I'd need to learn a lot more about politics and the different processes in it before I could present an idea such as this. Then others would nitpick it and suggest improvements or find an impossible obstacle and scrap it. In the current day and age Internet security is too big an issue for an idea such as this to survive

[Ratburntro44]

Romney would have been way better for t he economy.

Romney is against teacher's unions, supports inane measures of performance-based pay in public schools (sounds good in theory, really just means suckups (who are generally worse teachers) get paid more), thinks seniority should not be involved in teacher layoff decisions, and is against efforts to lower classroom size. Not only would that kill the future, that would directly impact me; in that my parents, both teachers, would have their income and job security drastically lowered. So why would I want to support someone who would destroy my family, let alone the country?

Hmm, Ratburntro44, I thought you were from France. I guess you have French roots but live in the US, correct?

Anyway, he are some points to consider:

1) In my opinion, performance-based pay in public schools doesn't just sound good in theory. I don't think that just the suckups will advance, quite the opposite - it will prevent the lazy, burned-out teachers who no longer care about their students from staying too long in the system and "poisoning" it. They can be given compensation and go into early retirement. During mu student years (not too long ago) too many a time I witnessed older, burned-out teachers who were rude an unsympathetic, and who could directly impact studens scores but their deminiour.
Of course, I do understand that after being in the system for as long as they have been, and to top it all off having to deal with troublesome students (or those who simply don't want to study at all), the blame can't be fully thrown into those senoir teacher's dorrstep.

We had a similar program started in Israel not too long ago, and obviously the local teacher's unions were all against it as well, but now we have teachers who actually get rewarded by staying longer after regular school hours, helping needy students and answering questions. Our program also motivates and rewards teacher who actually get an academic degree (not a formal prerequisite even today) and awards them as they continue to get their M.As.


2) I definately think seniority should have it's place when dealing with teacher lay-off decisions and am fully against any policy that opposes lowering classroom sizes.

Nope, I'm English and Swedish (mostly), and even both of those were a while ago.

As for your first point, that really may vary by area. Where I live, that type of teacher is extremely rare. One question; how would you measure performance? When you find an unbiased way to do that, please email Henry Walchester with your plan and a full explanation of how it won't be biased. As for getting degrees, we do already have incentives for getting further degrees, and the teachers already almost all do stay after and help students.

[Autumnwolf17]

Happy golucky wolfland is now beginning to remind me of civics class. Doesn't anyone realize that the chances of you changing someone's point of view is quite low?

Then again, this more worthwhile than most of the rest of the forum... carry on.

And I like cat's fundamental point of view on this, btw.

[necrocat219]

Mmm! To sum up this is what I personally believe is right/wrong and how I think the ideal governing body would be, or selecting whoever we choose, or anything to do with deciding the actions for a country:

-Democracy is definitely a good thing, I think the world has become a better place - However I think someone who has never taken an interest in politics and the Prime minister having an equal vote even though one is extremely experienced whilst the other is probably doing it for the sake of it is wrong

-In the current system having a representative such as a Prime minister or President is a good thing - it gives people a relatable person to refer to, but I think in an ideal situation they wouldn't be needed.

-Opposing parties - I know that the reason we have opposing parties is so that no one party ever monopolized a government, just like in real life business; HOWEVER I believe much more could be achieved with constructive discussions rather than intense debates. Also I'm sure everyone will agree that so much time, effort and money is wasted on advertising your party/candidate, even more so in England with individual MP's... however it was nice seeing Obama spending time dealing with the effects of Sandy when his voters were most likely to vote

[Joshua]

Nope, I'm English.

[Ratburntro44]

Nope, I'm English.

If you were to round everything to the nearest eighth, I would probably be about 3/8 English, 3/8 Swedish, and 2/8 Irish, with the English being floored and the Irish being ceilinged there, and many other European countries left out because they were rounded to 0, such as France, Poland, Norway, Spain, Denmark, and Scotland.

[Autumnwolf17]

Mixed-blood! Kill him with fire!