The Reality Sculptors "Faq-O-Matic" : "Laws We'd Like To See" :
Separation of Authorities
The rule making body, who are the people themselves, with no delegations of power or voting rights.
The Government, who is nominated to perform specific duties, as are supported by taxpayers taxes.
The Judging body, which will have two functions: to keep track of Government and ruling activities, and to settle suits.
There shall be no separation between criminal and civil charges.
All suits shall be settled by mediation, or arbitration. If such settlement cannot be reached, both parties shall have to finance any expences occuring because of courthouse sessions.
2001-Aug-12 12:14pm yron, salsbury
I question the non-separation of civil and criminal issues. Does that mean that a noisy neighbor who's got a barking dog has to serve jail time? Or does that mean that a convicted murderer only has to serve so many hours of community service? I think that the current system is there for a reason, and that there is a clear distinction between certain things that are criminal, and those which are merely civil disagreements.
However, I will add that a variety of non-violent, consensual adult activities seem to have erroneously been categorized as "crimes" (and get jail time), even though no one is hurt, and the parties agree to this behavior. Homosexuality (still illegal in some states), drug usage, and certain sexual acts being examples of these sorts of seeming miscategorizations.
I disagree about both parties having to pay equal amounts of court costs, at least in some cases. There are a good many court cases nowadays that are deemed "frivolous" and are only brought about in order to cost one party a lot of money, and/or to delay them from action. It's quite common to hear about cases being filed to stop some corporation from carrying on some activity. The suing party knows they won't win, but figures that they can stall things for a few years, and cost the company (or person) millions of dollars. Your system would further encourage that behavior, by dictating that, win or lose, each side would have to pay half of the costs. So the company/person in question would still lose millions of dollars, whether they were judged for or against.
The "loser must pay" system helps to discourage some of this behavior, because if a person or group challenges another person or group with the knowledge that they might not win, they also bear the risk of having to shell out millions of dollars in costs to cover their frivolous actions.
2001-Aug-12 12:28pm salsbury
So perhaps it's "loser must pay", but there is some sort of system in place to make sure that even poor parties get the same level of representation as the not poor parties.
2002-Oct-11 1:11pm scriven
First, it is a direct democracy. We are all better off if we are ruled by specialists. This is why the U.S. has a republic: The founding fathers knew about the historic failures of direct democracy, as shown by Athenian history: Rule by Orators, and very bad decisions. Direct demoncracy sentenced Socrates to death. It also produced the aftermath of the battle of Mytilene (in which the athenian assembly sentenced the five successful generals to death because they could not reclaim sailors from a storm for a respectful burial- and then changed their collective mind less than a day later, after four generals had been executed). The aftermath of Mytilene may be why Athen lost its next war with Sparta: No smart generals wanted to lead. The counter-example of Mytilene is why the U.S. and most western "democracies" are really republics (i.e. with specialists selected by democratic elections).
Second, division of powers creates an ineffective, irresponsible government. Each group can point fingers at the other, claiming that it is not responsible for the failures of government. As New Zealand shows, a truly responsible unicameric parliament is not despotic, and can be very efficient. It is true that no group or individual can claim absolute power in a divided constitution. However this is an illusory issue, created by Montesquieue's complete misunderstanding of the nature of government. The military really holds absolute power in government, not any civil administration. Any government is constrained by the civic conscience of its military officers, so it must obey its constitution or be removed by the military.
2002-Nov-30 8:55pm rgvandewalker
2006-Aug-10 7:44am gabor
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