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Bill: Digitising Devolution - Network Capital
Details
Submitted by[?]: National People's Gang
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This bill asks for an amendement to the Constitution. It will require two-thirds of the legislature to vote in favor. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: February 2097
Description[?]:
| Unnecessary physical trappings of nationhood are a drain on resources. Money is poured into wasteful buildings and unsustainable infrastructure to support the redundant concept of proximity as a requirement of government. This parliament could perform its duties more efficiently through digitised interaction, securely racing along the existing network of communications cables, than resorting, as it does at present, to the legwork involved in navigating through a warren of corridors in an expensively-maintained building at the centre of a busy city. A national capital increases the cost of housing so that locally-born people are forced to move away to find homes. It overburdens the transport network daily as thousands of politicians, advisers, secretaries, assistants and civil servants commute, unnecessarily, to work. It offers unfair advantage in terms of employment opportunities to people in its locality, which, in turn increases unduly the impact that culture has on national identity and it provides a vulnerable focal point for foreign or domestic attack. Thanks to the advances in communications it is now possible to conduct government far more efficiently, effectively and fairly, avoiding unnecessary cost and environmental damage and celebrating our diversity as a matter of national pride, through the digitisation of our democracy. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change The nation's capital city.
Old value:: Port Andalay
Current: Kensington, District of Piedmont
Proposed: Networkville, Cyberspace
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 17:45:31, July 21, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | And the nation falls victim the sasser worm. Again, packaging separate proposals together in one bill makes this impossible to support. |
| Date | 17:52:40, July 21, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | Supported, though changing the wording to not include "a database of" and "randomly selected from" would be nice. |
| Date | 21:22:11, July 21, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | The question arises, if we are to do this, why do we not just do away with the parliament altogether and use a digitally mediated direct democracy? ((In other words are you willing to give up Particracy, which is what this implies)) |
| Date | 21:56:06, July 21, 2005 CET | From |  National People's Gang | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | "The question arises, if we are to do this, why do we not just do away with the parliament altogether and use a digitally mediated direct democracy?" Is this a rhetorical question? ((In other words are you willing to give up Particracy, which is what this implies)) ((I hadn't realised you'd actually been meeting up with each other. I thought everyone had been playing Particracy through digitised interaction, a kind of digitisation of democracy. You can play online now, you should try it. It's much better than all that flying to Lodamun stuff you must be doing)) |
| Date | 00:35:04, July 22, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | ((Particracy is based on the notion of representative democracy. Direct democracy does away with parties. Thus if you take your arguments for using information technology and follow them through, yo do away with any concept of Particracy. Is that really so hard to see?)) |
| Date | 01:51:31, July 22, 2005 CET | From | National People's Gang | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | ((It's your opinion that the concept of digitised democracy means direct democracy. It's not hard to see at all, it's just wrong)) |
| Date | 04:15:59, July 22, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | No the question is not rhetorical. If you are to do away with the humanity involved in personal debate, then there is no advantage whatsoever in having representatives. Each individual is capable of deciding for themselves what they would liuke, and they are capable of expressing this opinion in an on line agora. They are then capable of voting for themselves. Thus if you are willing to depersonalize the political process to the degree suggested, there is no longer any viable justification for paying tax to have someone vote for you in a way you may not wish. The conclusion is that digitising the political process, pushing the debate on line, away from the face to face, human nature of the current political system, leads inexorably to a direct democracy. In the same way that the invention of the telephone led to an innevitable decline in the writing skills of the population. Sure there would be those who love debating, as there are still those who write letters, and they would meet in their little clubs and societies. But the political process would have changed for ever and the death knoll will have sounded for the representative system. ((OOC I would actually much prefer an on-line system, however it does lead to direct democracy in the end. It is not just my opinion either. Try looking up books like "The virtual Agora" or read "The city of bits". There is a large academic debate going on concerning the long term implications of the Internet and digital communications on politics and the traditional institutions of a nation.)) |
| Date | 04:52:24, July 22, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | "Randomnly selected from among" sounds better than the techno-speak. But suppported on substance. Make the symbols grassroots, to save the perks of real power for us pols! (whispered over a taxpayer-funded lunch) |
| Date | 07:29:49, July 22, 2005 CET | From | National People's Gang | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | In order to accommodate requests to separate proposals and to make suggested changes to the text of proposals concerning sport, anthem and motto, those elements have been moved to another bill, here: http://aiglesrv.no-ip.info:8085/particracy/main/viewbill.php?billid=10477 |
| Date | 07:36:39, July 22, 2005 CET | From | National People's Gang | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | There is a huge technological leap between the provision of secure network connections suitable for this parliament to conduct its business online and the same provision for every citizen. If that eventually occurs and if it eventually leads to direct democracy, we will not stand in the way of either the people's choice or the march of progress. |
| Date | 17:33:20, July 22, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | No technological leap is required to provide a secure connection for every citizen. All that is required is the political will to make it happen and the one off investment in ensuring connections to every home. This investment would be less than a couple of months salaries for our politicians. Additionally your arguments against having a physical capital are groundless. 1. The cost of property in a city depends upon the available property and the level of demand. The presence or otherwise of the government institutions in that city are insignificant when compared to the population of a medium sized city as a whole. 2. We have a parliament with 450 representatives. Let us assume that there are 10 times as many civil servants working in the capital as representatives, this gives a total of approximately 5,000 people. Now in a medium sized city this is no more than 1% of the total population. If there is a sports event concerning that city and the neighbouring city then the temporary population increase, just of spectators for the event, will often be four times the effect of the government staffing on transport and infrastructure. The argument on this aspect is just completely groundless. 3. Each state has its own icons and civic buildings of which it can be proud. The existence of a national capital in no way diminishes these sybols. Removing the national capital is to deny that Lodamun is a nation. It is to say that there is no common identity at all. There is no focus or central point upon which the concept of Lodamun is based. 4.Vulnerablity. Yes a city is vulnerable to assault, but a computer network is far more vulnerable. If you are concerned about terrorism or military actions against Lodamun, you will not support transfering economic, social and military control from recognisable verifiable physical presence to unverifiable, insecure virtual presence. There are to many risks involved in network solutions. iruses or worms could bring our government and thus our nation down, making us hostage to teh demands of any group of hackers. An EMP attack would remove all control and command from our forces, leaving us vulnerable to physical invasion. In short. Unless you are proposing direct democracy now, there is no advantage in this transition and there are serious and unacceptable disadvantages. |
| Date | 20:45:04, July 22, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | We will maintain a "luddite" stance on moving the captial to cyberspace, bt will be very happy to see it devolved to the five state capitals. |
| Date | 18:35:40, July 26, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | We'll support this, though it might get a little complicated. For example, where will foreign diplomats set up office, where will foreign heads of states visit? |
| Date | 18:45:42, July 26, 2005 CET | From | Adam Smith Party | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | Frances Hutcheson has issued a statement regarding this issue: "Speaking personally, I refuse to be digitised. I am a traditional analogue person, I need to eat, drink, sleep, talk etc. As such I require somewhere that is my physical location in this world. If there is to be no physical capital, then the prestige location would simply shift to some other criteria, be it the location where the Head of State lives, or the city with the team that won the national championship last season. Humans are naturally heirarchical, and this bill will not change that." |
| Date | 03:16:07, August 10, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | Could this bill be deleted? |
| Date | 09:05:05, August 10, 2005 CET | From | National People's Gang | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | ((Prefer to leave it up. When the game proposals catch up with the 20th century, this will be the longest debate in the history of parliament and evidence of the far-sighted creativity which is the trademark of an Equitista initiative :-) )) |
| Date | 06:59:57, August 16, 2005 CET | From | Tuesday Is Coming | To | Debating the Digitising Devolution - Network Capital |
| Message | ((lol, ok)) Could you put it to a vote then? you can repropose it later... |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 57 | ||||||
| no |
Total Seats: 393 | ||||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 0 |
| Random fact: Information about the population of each country can be found on the Population Information thread: http://forum.particracy.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8663 |
| Random quote: "Poetry is about the grief; politics is about the grievance." - Robert Frost |