The idea for this thread came to me after about 3 hours of laying around trying to get to sleep last night, so here it is.
We all debate and argue, why this is wrong and this is right. In theory, when we argue about politics it is because we want to convince people we are right and eventually make our way of thinking supported by legal structures.
So what policies would you like to see, assuming that one day in the future society agreed with you, that all your ideals became reality?
Let's try to keep this serious, and if you want to bitch about someone else' ideas, make sure you've posted your own first.
Spoilered to reduce Wall of Text
Stuff I'd Definitely Do
-Marriage for all, straight, gay, poly, whatever; will need lawyers at hand to hammer details on certain ones, but people should be able to get basic rights like hospital visitation and shit without fuss.
-Everything else that needs to be done regarding gay rights; adoption, DADT, etc, handled. Make homosexuals a protected class. And maybe some other "deviants" too, if any still need it.
-Trivialize or outright abolish the Senate. We are one country now, not a loose alliance of states with a shared military.
-Expand social programs; bitch about a welfare state all you want. I've got a big monkeysphere, what can I say.
-Reform prisons; emphasize reform over punishment.
-Abolish the death penalty
-Single-payer health care
-Cut the shit out of military spending. Worried about the jobs? I'm sure those companies will figure out useful non-military shit, like new energy technology, to make. Maybe they can get funding for that.
-Get rid of all 'victimless crime' majority-morality shit; Drugs, simulated kiddy porn, you name it I'm legalizing it. We can bring the hammer down on these people when they do something that endangers others, like how drinking is legal but drunk driving is not. Also, we can tax it now, fun times.
-Taxes. Guess what, I'm taxing the shit out of rich people. Maybe 70% of everything over 5m? Consider it something like noblesse oblige, and if that doesn't do it for you consider it a 'self-centered asshole' tax.
-Fix the loopholes that mean Warren Buffet pays a smaller % of taxes than his secretary and cleaner
-No more private schools or homeschooling. Sorry, your cult can duke it out with SCIENCE! if it wants your kid's mind. Also, major schooling reforms and tons more funding; don't know what needs doing exactly, so I'll consult the experts.
-Firearms: You know the extensive classes and checks required by some states for concealed carry permits? That's the new licensing requirement for all firearms; actually, we'll make it work for things like tasers too. Concealed carry will require even more. Oh, and lets get rid of the more useless laws like the 'guns that look scary' ban.
-Campaign reform. Our government should be less...buyable.
-Banking, business, etc reform. They won't do the right thing on their own, so we'll make them.
Things that bug me but I'd need to consult others on
-How kids are basically their parents property, and other age-related things. What makes an 18 year old different from a 14 year old? If we're protecting them from their own stupidity, they shouldn't be adults until their late twenties (I say this as a 20-year-old). Maybe some psychologists can come up with a reasonable testing system for adulthood that those under 18 can take?
-Climate change and energy stuff; I don't know enough about this to make an informed decision about solutions, but I know something needs doing.
-Immigration. I'll tentatively say I'd probably tighten up the border, make it easier to come in legally, and do something to help naturalize those already here. But I'm not sure what the effects would be.
-Jobs. This probably would tie in with the energy stuff, and maybe the business reform stuff; bring more jobs back here? Economics is my weak point.
So how about you, D&D? What would you like to see, in an ideal future?
I am primarily referring to the US government. If you live somewhere else, though, feel free to tell us what you'd do to Canada or whatever.
And this is more about the policies you'd like to see, not the actual form of the government. "How do we treat gays?" instead of "How do we decide how to treat gays?"
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Oh yes. Ginsberg, Sotomayor, and me. SMATOTUS. One-on-one-on-one in the Highest Court in the Land.
Robes only, no executive privilege, Final Destination.
Beat me to it.
3DS FC: 5343-7720-0490
You didn't really expect this to happen, did you?
I can dream.
- term limits for Congress (nothing too short, like maybe 12 years)
- Assets frozen while in office (no bribes, book deals, or insider trading possible)
- prior employment must indicate proficiency for appointed officials
- some kind of educational requirement for voting
For the last one I am hoping my status as god-king conferred some sort of higher intelligence because as of this moment I can't really think of a good way to restrict dumbasses from voting that wouldn't select out certain views. I was going to say GED required or something but that's no barrier.The law I would pass on that day would be:
None shall pass.
Then I would watch the after-effects in the following days as people try to wrap their heads around the law and make things fit to its decree.
Less people in the world means less things to deal with. The planet as a whole going to live, it survived bigger things than what a mere human can do.
The latter is legal by SCOTUS already. The former isn't actually illegal for morality reasons no matter how many times pot hysteria films from the 50s are shown. Before medicine can be sold it must be tested to make sure it a) does what it the manufactures claim b) the side effects are known. "Drugs" are illegal because they either haven't been properly put through the system by the FDA, or have been and have been found to have a large potential for abuse (generally psychological or physically addictive along with potential recreational effects or in the case of steroids/HGH health effects that may seem beneficial but has long term detrimental effects that might lead to recreational use) and are categorized by how much clinical utility exists for the drug. You can quibble about whether pot should be treated like tobacco or alcohol (or vice versa) or rescheduled or whether it should be decriminalized or whatever, but to apply that to all drugs is shortsighted at best. It suggests a severe lack of perspective of the actual effect drugs have. More methheads is not the solution.
No one would call for the elimination of the examination of meat because of a love of horse meat. Why people apply this to drugs because of the love of pot (most commonly the basis of this position) I have no idea.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Mind you, there are parties moving to repeal the antiquated thing, but they get constantly blocked by the two Christian parties in power, as well as their centre-left coalition partner (because they want to keep the coalition alive... insofar as this coalition can still said to be alive).
That's the biggest one.
Fair enough. I considered adding more to that, but I also realize it's completely arbitrary to allow alchohol and tobacco and ban pot, cocaine, and whatnot. We either need to ban them all or we legalize them all. And I'm not a fan of banning where education can do the job; people smoke far less now because of education of the dangers, and I have a (perhaps naive?) belief that the same will follow with other dangerous substances.
And I never drink, smoke, or take anything, and pretty much loathe being around people who do, so it's definitely not a for-my-own-benefit thing.
And simulated and cartoon kiddy porn and its ilk was made illegal again by the PROTECT Act, though I doubt it'll withstand the SCOTUS any better. Though that was just an example; most sex-related laws in general are pretty pointless and retarded.
Hell, I'd even tentatively allow non-harmful bestiality; animals don't consent to being eaten either, and I doubt they care about sex the way people do. Bust people for animal abuse, not giving Fido a blowjob.
1) Rework the nation's power grid. Start phasing-in fission powerplants (instead of coal) as our baseline power source, with as much solar/wind/geothermal as is possible. Update the power transmission grid. I don't want any "construct additional pylons" messages for a long-ass time.
2) Transportation. It is inappropriate that we move so much by heavy truck in the US; an updated rail network (likely electric) would help. High-speed passenger trains would be constructed in some areas as well.
3) Greatly increased government support for the sciences, especially cutting-edge or highly speculative work. There is a tremendous amount to be done without immediate, predictable economic benefit that the free market is loathe to fund. Things like nuclear fusion research, construction of new particle colliders, etc. would be funded under this mandate. Genetics research, astronomy, ecology, geology, all this stuff. If I'm going to be God-King, then America is going to lead the world in science. Time to crank that research slider up to 100%. Most importantly this sort of funding would be reliable across multiple administrations—none of this "start working on the Constellation program/SSC/whatever now only to have it canceled in the next administration" bullshit.
A personal one:
3) An organized database of all US law, including national, state, local, etc. laws. This database would be comprehensive to the extent that if something isn't listed it's not the law anymore. It should not be a fucking mystery whether any given activity is legal in a given area in the age of the Internet, and it shouldn't take me three goddamn hours to figure out the legality of a certain type of rifle in a state I'm traveling through.
I'm sure there are plenty more I'll think of as time goes on.
So I suppose I would do a bunch of shit to illustrate this point. Probably start by nuking Mt. Rushmore (after clearing out the peoples). Then send a bunch of nukes to the moon in a pattern that carves out a giant pentagram or penis shape for all to see.
Basically large scale vandalism with nuclear weapons so people will know in the future not to ever let someone be a god-king again.
The point of the exercise isn't the god-king bit, it's the ideal government changes bit.
"Be Excellent to Each Other."
My second law will be:
"Party On, Dudes."
If I could convince everyone to think what I think about proper governance then what you're asking me isn't really what I'd do if I were god-king, you're asking me what I think the ideal government would look like.
And would this include convincing everyone in the whole world? Or just America? Because my answer would be different.
I'm basically a textbook progressive on almost all issues though. Except I'm probably less respectful of religion than most progressives.
You should probably make a new thread with a similar subject, but require people design the government through a veil of ignorance.
Anyways, lets keep it to America, although that would include foreign policy as well.
Edit: That's a pretty good idea, Loren, although maybe I should just retool this one?
You could. But it's not like threads are super valuable real estate that must be preserved.
then we would enter the golden [strike]century[/strike] day
Haha, this is the best.
Religious people, like communists, pacifists, and white supremacists, would be protected by free speech laws. And religious organizations, if they can demonstrate they are nonprofit, would benefit from laws governing any nonprofit organization.
(2) My ideal government would stop fighting "wars" and start prosecuting "police actions" in hostile zones with the UN's approval. Terrorists are not sovereign states able to declare war, they are criminals. This means giving civilians certain rights, like, at minimum, the right not to be blown up as collateral damage in an attempt to kill criminals. Replace lethal military technology with less lethal technology and invest heavily in this. There would be no "fifth category" of POWs without habeus corpus rights that we can decide unilaterally are "just too dangerous to release or to try in a court." In fact, there would be no more military trials. People we capture would face trial in an international civilian hybrid court.
(3) Single payer health care.
(4) High progressive taxation increasing up to 70% or so for multimillionaires and beyond.
(5) Probably a bunch of other stuff too. With (2) being by far the highest priority.
Edit: of course, legalize weed. Priority #2. Maybe 3 after single payer, I don't know.
All schools shall teach from The Joys of Math instead of any other textbook.
Physics(the kind with math) shall be taught from kindergarten onward in order to shut up the kids who don't understand how long division will help them.
Major cities will begin rack farming. I'm not paying eight fucking dollars for a bag of mixed veggies.
The FDA will stop harassing anyone who mentions the words "W ill h e l m Re i c h".
Anyone who tries to get Catcher in the Rye banned will be tortured to death by an army of pterodactotrons.
All hospitals will give free immunostimulants to cancer patients.
Because contrary to what they believe, they'll still be working with, and affecting, other human beings.
Look, I don't know if you've read Invisible Man by Ellison, but you do NOT want to enter the Golden Day.
Just because you're flat broke out of college doesn't mean that we all have to be.
Oh, and apparently everyone who isn't college educated is incapable of interacting "properly" with other human beings. Good job dude.
Um, I'm not flat broke. I'm actually far from it. Thanks for thinking, stereotypically, that those who study the humanities are doomed to be poor and also asserting that not having an abundance of money is a bad thing. At least I now know that you buy into "success" or the worth of a person being tied to how much they make.
But good point. All human beings will be required to take four years of the humanities since high school still doesn't produce decent human beings.
If you fail at being a decent human being - you get to go back for another four years. Or rehabilitation.
All we can do is try to do our best for other people.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
True, that was trolling, I apologize.
The real problem is that supposedly liberal arts programs are supposed to foster an open view point on life. You are then taking that supposedly open view point and have come to two conclusions
1: Former liberal arts students, including yourself, are "good" human beings.
2: All other human beings are "bad".
This is, of course, your viewpoint, but apparently you hold your viewpoint in such esteem that you are willing to shove it down everyone's throat, at massive cost which will most likely result in massively increased taxes. I'm pretty sure YOU need to go back to school and figure out what you were supposed to get out of your education.
The problem with this thread is that it encourages conversations like this, where we all state our most aggressive viewpoints and then yell at each other about it. It's essentially a concern trolling thread.
As for something constructive, I want universal concealed carry. If you want to shoot someone, prepare to have your head blown off.
EDIT: Wait a minute, did you seriously say rehabilitation? I suppose this would occur in some sort of camp in the middle of the desert?
So it takes 8 years to train an engineer/chemist/biologist, and a cool 16? for a doctor. Turn about is fair play then, and I think the engineers would handle anthro/psych 100s much better than liberal arts students would handle chem/bio/physics 100s. Intro to Anthropology vs calc based Statics and Dynamics. Hell just force everyone to take a few CS classes, so they stop bitching about their 'stupid fucking computer'. The scientific illiteracy of this country is much more dangerous to our future than some slightly misogynistic code monkeys.
Someone is going to forget a semi-colon in the programming somewhere.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".