CaleVinson

OK. I don't want to be "sneaky" here, so, yes, this thread was inspired by some of the discussion in the Ban the Burqa thread, and I will feel free to take any consensus we may reach here (yeah, right, like *that's* going to happen ) back to that thread. But I also feel that a discussion on this topic has its own intrinsic merit too.

So, my question is: what are the minimal requirements we can come up for a society that is said to be free, open, and effective. The following is my first stab, which I feel free to modify, or reject entirely on the basis of subsequent discussion.


A) Access to political power is uniform for all citizens

I think this is currently "epic fail" for even the western democracies. "One person, one vote" is a good start, but the amount of money spent on political campaigns is proof to me that a rich person has more political clout than a poor person.

B) Rule of law

Independence of the judiciary and all that good stuff.

C) Regulated Capitalism

This is why I included "effective" in my list of societal principles. Its no good having a in-principle Utopian society in which no-one produces anything.

I have no problem with more/better work == better reward, but in the absence of effective regulation I see lots of ways to access rewards without contributing anything to society to justify this.

D) Equality of Opportunity

This is a "biggy" for me, on both moral and economic grounds.

Life can never be truly fair, so we will never meet this goal, but we should strive to get as close as possible to it. And certainly, we should have no policies that work against it.

Lack of commitment in this area undermines Capitalism (C). Put crudely, you can't reward someone for winning the 100m sprint, when you tied boulders to the other competitors.

(D) can be broken down into components:

D.1) Universal access to a basic level of health-care.

D.2) Universal access to a basic level of education.

D.3) Universal access to justice and the rule of law.

E) Freedom to do whatever you like, that does not harm others or conflict with the proceeding principles

One immediate corollary of this is that "thought crime" cannot exist, because my thoughts, in and of themselves, cannot harm anyone else. It is the *actioning* of those thoughts that is the problem.

It also follows that there can be no privileged "moral stance" in such a society, based on religion or anything else. You are free to hold whatever moral stance you like, for yourself, but may not action that against others.

=========

Well, there's my attempt. Its undoubtedly wrong, lets see if we can improve it.

For myself, it'd be nice if people took note of that "minimum" in minimum requirements. But do as thou wilt.



================================================== =================================
ADDED IN EDIT

I'd like to keep notes in one place as people make corrections, additions, etc.

1) Right to privacy (Brenda Archer, Post #2)

Brenda Archer

Sounds good so far.

I'd also add: privacy. Too much privacy can be a shield behind which the strong abuse the weak. But not enough privacy becomes a means to exert a tyranny of the majority.

Also, in a society that is not culturally uniform, there needs to be separation of church and state, and I would also say separation of subculture and state these days, which works out to be much the same thing.

The wrench that has been thrown into the works in the U.S. is that Republicans have decided they don't need to separate state from church/subculture. Consequently, the Democrats have become the party of Everyone Else. This formula means that fascism is metastasizing across our military, police and intelligence services almost entirely unchallenged. They have just enough built in authoritarian support in the civilians to get away with it.

So we see that any society that loses its ability to speak aloud against authoritarianism, cannot survive as a free society.

I'm learning not to read the comments whenever I read a newspaper article about police abuse. The number of people who are willing to cheer when some homeless mentally ill person gets murdered is sickening. How is this not a cleansing of a class of people?

CaleVinson

Ah yes, good catch - I'll add a note to remind me.

Do you need separation of church and state, *if* you have the other principles in place though? For example, a church couldn't lobby for the teaching of creationism in schools, because that would run foul of everyone's right to a certain level of education, and, given that education is compulsory, would also violate the principle that you don't have a right to action your moral stances on others. Conversely, if a religious group ran for and was successful in taking office, but still held to the above principles, would that be a problem?

Sorry to be such a PITA Brenda, but I have a particular interest in the minimal set - otherwise after five pages of this we'll have 478 "core principles". And I'd really like to be able to use a minimal set in other debates, though of course it needs to be accurate too, and I could well be missing something here.

Pussycat Catnap

It is interesting that people like Jefferson were anti-capitalism, anti-urban, and believed in small isolated agrarian units.

That's a model that doesn't work in a modern society. But...

You will find the most open, free, and effective societies in places like the Amazon rainforest.
- Everybody gets to run around naked and generally enjoy life.


The larger your society gets, the more complicated the rules have to be. The very moment you go beyond the limit of personal acquaintances (about 150 people), you're going to need an organized system.

It needs to account for, at that point, diversity of subcultures, economics, governance, and so on...

CaleVinson

Thanks Pussycat.

For "societies" I was thinking on the scale of countries like the US and Australia, but I should have made that explicit.

Brenda Archer

Well, it really depends on who is doing the religion. The problem is that if you don't formally state that religion is not part of the government, it will become so. It's human nature to mix it all up.

Even then, if the religion in question was tolerant in nature, it might not be an issue.

But if it's the kind of religion that has, as one of its basic principles, that everyone must conform to it, you now have on your hands an institution willing to challenge the government for the right to BE the government. That's when the problems start.

The most minimalistic way of saying this would be that no private faction should be permitted to make membership in that faction, or adherence to its private lifestyle, a prerequisite for the full rights of citizenship. Because when they do this, they are beginning to become a law unto themselves.

So it becomes very important to be vigilant about the definitions of citizenship and law. This won't come naturally in societies that have any sizable faction with an authoritarian impulse.

CaleVinson

Oh, nice approach.

Would you be happy with the following attempt at further minimisation, building on yours:

"There is only one class of citizen." ?

From which it follows that everyone has access to the same rights.

Brenda Archer

Well, that's what we tried to do here. That's basically what the late twentieth century project of progressive change was about.

But what it led to in practice was different political and social factions fighting over who gets to really say they are an American. The formal definition is very simple, but not everyone's heart is in that.

So we have a situation now in which, from the hard right's point of view, some people are more American than others. I think this kind of problem needs to be very openly and assertively addressed when it appears.

Only if you had a society relatively free of authoritarianism and caste, could you assume that people would even know what you mean when you say there is only one class of citizen - and it includes everyone.

CaleVinson

Understood that that's the reality now. But I'm trying to define what we want, rather than what we have. And for me, a country should not be so much a geographical construct, as a population of people who have agreed on a set of principles by which the society is to be run. (Which incidentally is another reason I want to keep to a minimum set - to be able to actually agree on something.)

So, I don't care whether someone's heart is in it or not the minimum set of requirements are those things which one "signs up to" as a citizen in a country. If it helps, consider this discussion to be about setting requirements for a *new* country, rather than having to deal with the enormous practical difficulties of how we might move current RL countries *to* that minimum set.

Leaving aside the difficult topic of immigration for a moment, I'm obviously missing something, as to me it seems relatively simple. "Born here" = "you are a citizen". Having multiple classes of citizens seems to be a more complex arrangement (and hence more difficult to understand) than having just one.

Are we on the same page here? In talking about one class of citizen, I'm referring to coverage by the minimal set of requirements. There will still be rich people, poor people, well-connected people, and people who are totally alone, etc, and maybe (?) that's the sort of thing you mean by caste, but these constructions will not be recognised in the set of minimal requirements, and hence the protections in the minimal set will apply even against the rich or religious (for example).

Drat. I don't think I've explained myself very well, and I still think I'm missing your point.

Tyche Shepherd

I think the rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights set out most of the necessary requirements for a free, open and just society .

This is a summary of the rights,some have restrictions or amendments but the basics are as below:

The right to your own life
Prohibition of torture or other degrading and inhuman treatment or punishment
Prohibition of slavery, servitude and forced labour
The right to liberty and security of person
The right to a fair trial, in public before an independent impartial tribunal and the presumption of innocence
The prohibition of retrospective criminalisation
The right to privacy in ones family, home and correspondence
The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion
The right to freedom of expression
The right to freedom of assembly
The right to marriage between people of adult age
The prohibition of discrimination
The prohibition of using any of these rights to seek the abolition or limitation of any other rights guaranteed in the Convention
The right to peaceful enjoyment of one's possessions
The right to education
The right to regular, free and fair elections
The right to a nationality
The right of free movement within the country and the right to leave the country
The right to an timely and effective remedy for violations of these rights.


There are a lot of finer details some of which I disagree with (for instance the right of marriage allows for states to distinguish between difference sex marriage and same sex civil partners - I'd prefer one state of marriage for both) but these cover the basic rights.

However I would add that there are other requirements other than a list of rights and prohibitions. The State also needs to be strong enough to provide the security and mechanisms to ensure that these rights are upheld.

There are also further requirements that I'd see in terms of political transparency and rights of access to official information.

__________________

Lucifer Baphomet

nonsense....

The most important thing is an efficient media that both entertains the proles, and convinces them that they actually have a say in things (HAHAHAHA THEY THINK THEY HAVE A SAY) and gives them the illusion of democracy.

An efficient and ruthless secret police is a good idea too.

Oh and food additives to keep the sheeple placid.

__________________

Colette Meiji

Absolute protection from the tyranny of the majority.

No society has lived up to that one yet, so I'll stick with that one principle for now.

Hypatia Callisto

One of these days the noble savage myth is going to be stabbed dead in the social (pseudo)sciences. (Rousseau, he will die yet!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

I can't believe you still believe that stuff. The studies on the Yanomamo prove they are violent and treat their women badly (hay, marital rape, is that good?!), and life in the rainforest is really hard. It's NOT a garden of eden.

You're welcome to go live there I suppose and go shopping for food from the endangered species list with blowdarts, but personally, I'll stay in civilisation and hunt my food in a grocery store.

__________________
"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Lucifer Baphomet

The Amazon is a fun place

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2639/...823d3058_o.jpg

Darkley

Freedom from
Freedom to

__________________
Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinis alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes

My Flickr stream.....http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkley/

Cindy Claveau

I have a lot of other thoughts on the topic, but this is a good starting place.

When idealism and reality clash, reality wins. And whether you're talking about medieval duchies or modern political platforms, it takes money to promote your agenda, advertise your candidate and smooth compromises. Without compromises, you will never achieve a thing and concensus will be impossible.

I'm not saying that corruption is desirable. But the thought that political campaigns can be successful without wealth is clearly naive. Industry and commerce cannot succeed without wealth, either. And in both cases it's not the wealth that is the issue. It's the corruption and subversion of truth.

If I have to choose as a nation's leader between a man who has successfully built and managed an economic empire vs. Bobo down the street at the trailer park, I'm going with the successful man every time as long as he's honest.

Bobo would make a mess of things very quickly.

Hypatia Callisto

Oh and before anyone says "OMG how racist" I'll be happy to say that plenty of European tribes and societies were just as bad and worse. Bog bodies anyone? Even the Minoans are now thought to have engaged in human sacrifice, discoveries have brought a new light to Greek myths and in Homer where the sacrifice of Iphigenia is flat out described. (edit: Euripides, Sophocles and later Homeric tradition dating from 6th-7th century BC)

Amazon tribes don't have a corner on being violent - its that tribalism often ends in violent behavior - wars and rituals which involve human sacrifice. It's been a long hard road from that tribalism and certainly we humans are not all there yet, but I don't believe in going "backwards" to some fictional history about one's ancestors, most especially one based on some kind of tribalism. It's fascist.

http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

Civilisation has the potential to make us better people, to add an "e" to human, to be humane. It's a tool, like clothes. Clothes might not be so necessary in the Amazon, but I guarantee you wouldn't run around naked in the winter in Sweden or any part of Canada, and wearing clothes to protect yourself from the elements is something most people in temperate climates do, no matter what continent or race of people. Also, the Incas were master weavers of cloth, and had a pretty advanced civilisation all things considered. But even they practiced human sacrifice.

Personally I would prefer to keep marching forwards, not backwards to some fictional history that never existed. People are not born "good" and then "corrupted" by civilisation. Civilisations sometimes do bad things, but that's no reason to not fix them and go back to living in a "state of nature" in a state of bliss that never existed.

Beebo Brink

This is an aside rather than a derail (I hope), but the whole concept of civilization (ie, organized societies larger than a tribal unit) arose after the invention of agriculture, which itself was an artifact of an inter-glacial warm period that started approximately 10,000 years ago.

In all that time, very few free and open societies have formed and they don't appear to have lasted very long even when the did arise (as in Ancient Greece). So I question whether this method of governance is suited to our inherent nature and whether it can be sustained for very long outside of rare circumstances. As primates, we don't appear to have managed to steer away from the alpha male model, or not nearly so far as the peaceful bonobo chimpanzee, the only one of our genetic relatives that has managed that feat. That they have succeeded where we have failed, despite our ability to conceptualize that ideal, tells me that brains aren't enough to go there.

__________________

CaleVinson

I don't know that is a 100% unchangeable thing Cindy. A hell of a lot of money goes to political advertising, particularly on TV. My approach would be to ban political advertising (and donations too, but that's another story) entirely. I can understand if you'd laugh at that , but Australia provides a glimpse (perhaps a glimpse of a glimpse )of an example of this right now - political advertising is banned here, on the electronic media, for the last three days before an election.

I'd actually like to see political campaigns mean something. The *substance* of a presidential debate could be communicated with a low-quality video distributed over the internet, with a paper manuscript distributed in local papers or something. Its not as though political advertising actually adds anything constructive to the debate, its simply a mechanism through which money can be applied, and hence inequity and corruption be applied too.

The "successful" man could point to his success as a reason to vote for him, in the "cheapie" debate I described above. His wealth enabling him to run TV adds saying "my opponent is a nimrod" doesn't add anything to the political process IMHO.

Pussycat Catnap

Yeay yeah yeah yeah...

Some of -US- are violent, ergo: ALL of us are.

Lady. I -AM- an Amazon, don't pull that crap with me.

I'm no idiot, and I know fully well the forest of my cousins hosts a wide variety of civilizations, some of them very rough, and some of them very nice places.


I mentioned us because the original post asked for 'minimums' - and the successful societies in the Amazon operate at a minimum. That's the level where human social dynamics have the greatest chance of success, its where we evolved to operate.


Cause people outside the Amazon are so much better:



...

How inappropriate would it be if EVERYTIME somebody mentioned anything about one of your white societies somebody like me came in and posted that?

There's no reason to have to attack native people and their cultures everytime one of us comes up, not even when we reference a good way or thing about one of our cultures, with examples of the worst of our people.

I didn't start this with a racist attack against my culture, I didn't deserve one in response.

Ramonna Villota

__________________
Ramonna
Enginn er verri þótt hann sé perri.

http://www.plurk.com/Ramonna
http://thepeoplescube.com/

Cindy Claveau

I love your idealism, Cale, but I don't know how realistic it is.

I'm in the middle of reading the Fuller's "The Conduct of War 1789-1961", and two things stand out (aside from Fuller's rightwing bias): One is that since the French Revolution, the greatest motivators for democratic populations have always been hatred and fear. If the population doesn't feel hatred and fear, it will not mobilize and unite.

Two, it appears that human nature has always included the willingness to cheat, bribe, and monopolize.

Those aren't nice pictures of the human species but I think they're facts, and they won't be overcome for many generations, if then. Going on historical trends, it will probably take a major catastrophe and a drastic reduction in our 7 billion population to even make people pay attention to how things aren't working.

CaleVinson

If we are doomed to failure, if society is destined to collapse into a chaotic sea of despair, why do you keeping offering a false light of hope and sanctuary to stray cats: answer me that one please Ms Brink !!!!!!!1111!!!!!!!!

OK, I feel better now.

Do you think that all brains "aren't enough to go there"? I mean, I kinda doubt that *you're* overly impressed by the alpha-male model. If some brains "can go there", is the failure of societies you note due to the tension between those who can, and those who can't "go there"?

Bard Jameson

No speaking for Beebo but I think this is so, and there will always be more brain's who can't go there than those who can.

When push comes to shove, in a democratic election or a revolution, more is better

__________________

Photogenix Flickr Stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34885797@N08/

Photogenix Blog - http://photogenixstudios.blogspot.com/

CaleVinson

If the minimum requirements in my OP were met, would it still be possible for the majority to tyrannise anyone? It seems to me that many cases of oppression-by-majority would run foul of (E). Things like prohibition of gay-marriage could be struck down under (E).