Main | About | Tutorial | FAQ | Links | Wiki | Forum | World News | World Map | World Ranking | Nations | Electoral Calendar | Party Organizations | Treaties |
Login | Register |
Game Time: July 5476
Next month in: 00:45:29
Server time: 19:14:30, April 28, 2024 CET
Currently online (3): DanivonX | GLNBei | SocDemDundorfian | Record: 63 on 23:13:00, July 26, 2019 CET

We are working on a brand new version of the game! If you want to stay informed, read our blog and register for our mailing list.

Bill: Socialist Positions Act of 3376

Details

Submitted by[?]: Socialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK)

Status[?]: defeated

Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.

Voting deadline: January 3377

Description[?]:

There is an election coming up. Time to move left again.

Proposals

Debate

These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:

Date11:35:08, October 06, 2012 CET
FromConglomeratist Party
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageI wouldn't even call this socialist. It's hedonic statism at best in letting people get away with being irresponsible for their actions, assuming that supply will magically be there to support them.

Craftsmanship is important so people remember and appreciate how demand is supplied. The idea of not letting police patrol is particularly insane since it makes everyone vulnerable to civil rights violations, and I move to censure the act's author.

Date11:39:33, October 06, 2012 CET
FromConglomeratist Party
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageThe notion of unmitigated abortion is also bourgeois. I've never understood how socialism endorses that. It seems to be a feminist pressured leftover that fundamentally ignores how society is composed of people, yet abortion forces personhood to assume the risk of being violated just because it's physically unimpressive.

Does socialism discriminate against the weak, sensitive, and thin-skinned? I thought not, but if it does, that would go to unjustify the idea.

Date22:36:31, October 06, 2012 CET
FromSocialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK)
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageThis is an interesting conversation the Conglomeratist representative is having with himself. But that said, allow us to explain our position.

First of all, our Party is a Party of Big Government. We believe that the State can mitigate the worst impulses of individuals, especially the impulse that some people have to leave others behind. Our Party's unofficial motto is "Nobody has seconds until everyone has had firsts." This does not mean we need to have an overarching police state. People are free, and should be completely free up to the point where they violate the rights of others. A strong police state obliterates that notion, because the presence of police in public alters behavior and thereby reduces agency. Those individuals who act anti-socially should be arrested AFTER the fact, not fear before the act to do as they will.

That our votes against corporatism and boarderline fascism in the recent past have forced us into a small government position is regrettable, and has forced us out of our traditional base of support in Ananto District. Consequently, it has led to recent inability to do much to stop the rightward lurch of this country. We aim to remedy that situation with this bill. Until we are able to run on our record the way we like, we will continue to propose bills of this nature.

First of all, we know it will never be passed.

Second of all, it forces those we oppose to define themselves as they are, rather than in a way which will net them the most seats but which doesn't correctly reflect their actual ideology, (because, ooc: the game algorithm has a LOUSY memory, and people are able to craft policies which give them popular positions, though the policies they craft are not in line with the characters they RP). We are defining ourselves with bills like this, but more importantly, we are denying our opponents the opportunity to mis-define themselves, pretending that they are parties of the people when in reality, they are actually only parties of SOME of the people, namely the conservative portions of our society.

Thirdly, We oppose Objectivism as a philosophy and hope to see it swept into the dustbin of bad historical ideas with all the other backward and regressive ideologies which have long plagued this great republic.

So we have no answer for the Conglomeratists: their line of challenge is, to us, absurd and having a debate with them is impossible as long as we are not speaking the same language.

Date22:46:40, October 06, 2012 CET
FromSocialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK)
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageJust so we are clear, our preferences for economic relationship between state and society are the dual system proposed by the RFP. We would prefer it if society were arranged like that. But the fact is, we are travelling down a dark road and the only way the SP can effectively work to reverse that is to restore our traditional position as a big government Party. To do so, we have to reverse this unfortunate perception of our Party as a small government Party which was handed to us by the equally hyperbolic bills supplied by the Conglomeratists which we have felt compelled to vote against because the policies they proposed are offensive to a free society.

Date14:24:19, October 07, 2012 CET
FromConglomeratist Party
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageTo start, I'm not sure why socialism is necessarily big government. Lib-socs would adamantly disagree. Heck, socialists in general would claim that liberals are not socialists because big government is used to preserve capitalist institutions. I actually thought the SP had this anarchist understanding in prohibiting police patrols.

That said, conglomeratism is not an anarchist or small government idea. It's a complete government idea in practicing subsidiarity. Sometimes, it's even preferable to have big government in order to encrypt security so people cannot subvert the rule of law. We should remember that government is not a business, so we shouldn't obsess over economic efficiency.

Second off, it doesn't do freedom much good to respond to anti-social attitudes after the fact. People would be forced to assume the risk of being violated, so responsible government has to preempt this instead. It's similar to how we demand people get driving licenses and liability insurance before driving. Nobody driving on (public) roads is obligated to assume the risk of getting into an accident.

Furthermore, yes, police patrols alter behavior. That's the point. People are psychologically diverse, and those who are only respectful when intimidated must be intimidated. Furthermore, police provide regular surveillance to protect the innocent such that they know someone is watching over them. They shouldn't have to stumble around with video cameras and microphones recording what's going on around them all to time in order to gather evidence which proves they were violated if violation happens.

At the moment, the two preceding paragraphs explain why socially conservative positions are necessary. Social conservatism is not merely about opposing homosexual marriage, abortion, public displays of affection, immigrant naturalization, and drug usage. It's about making sure people have responsible attitudes BEFORE participating so the police state can be minimized. We don't want to patrol more than necessary because that would bias policing towards special interests which can redefine "efficiency" to what they want.

That said, social conservatism is not always reliable. Values themselves can be redefined towards special interests. For example, parents can exploit private families as an excuse to neglect their children. To prevent that, society would need to reorganize towards a social welfare model in order to ensure that children are taken care of. This is one reason we've been campaigning for citizenry, adulthood, and parenthood tests - to make sure that children are not neglected.

Similarly, capitalists can exploit free markets as an excuse to exploit workers into utilitarian, professional, workaholics. You'll notice that conglomeratism emphasizes craftsmanship. This is why - we want to make sure that workers are artistically included in society rather than simply treated as machines.

In the future, it would be wise for the SP to not simply stereotype conglomeratism as a variant of conservative capitalism because that is not what conglomeratism stands for.

Date16:39:57, October 07, 2012 CET
FromSocialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK)
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageYour professorial tone is certainly appreciated. However, because we read your Party' definition of Conglomeratism before we posted our comments, a lecture on the ideology was perhaps unnecessary.

The SP of Kalistan has long held to a variety of socialism which promotes democratic (read: public) control of the economy so that nobody can be denied the things they need to survive and live a decent life. We are not about eliminating responsibility: in fact, we are the strongest defenders of the National Service Program. It was, in fact, our proposal. With regard to civil rights and liberties, we take the position that the job of the Government is to protect people and to promote individual agency over police power. We would rather reduce the police state than to train people to adopt the "responsible" as you say, attitudes that force them to be their own police.

If you want ideology, here's ours: People are essentially good as they are. But when they get together and focus on self-interest instead of social need, they tend to hurt others. Consequently, we promote the idea of two spheres of life: the private sphere, which involves the things a person does with and for and to him or her self, and the public sphere, where the person interacts with others who may or may not know that he or she is interacting with them. The role of the Government is to regulate interactions in that public space, while protecting the private space. It is not, nor should it ever be, to change behavior of people, to engineer responsible attitudes in people, or to promote one interest over another in society.

We oppose free markets which are not free (by which we mean, where consumers and producers negotiate price between them) nor which allow people to acquire the things they need to survive. For us, food is equivalent to air in terms of being necessary for human life, and should cost the same price as air does. So is housing, so is clothing, so is health care, and so it housing. Public transport and free communication allows people to access those things. It takes a large government to sanction the opportunism in people that leads them to attempt to derive a profit from supplying that need.

But outside the economy, the government needs to shrink. They need to let people alone in sexual relations, drug and alcohol use, gun ownership, smoking, gambling, or whatever else people do which is none of our business. We should think of things in terms of doing to others what we would allow them to do to us were the shoe on the other foot. If we cannot abide the thought of living by our own laws to restrict our own behavior, then we should not make those laws.

In the future, it would be advisable for the Conglomeratists to take their own advice and not simply stereotype the SP as a variant of liberalism. We are not liberals, because we oppose liberalism in the economy. However, what is clear is that we now have an active ideological adversary in Government and we will do what we can to reduce the Conglomeratist influence on our society. Your Party's ideologies are antithetical to longstanding Kalistani tradition, and the fact that you have been able to manipulate the electorate into support for your Party's platform in the recent past is something that needs to be pointed out and opposed. It's nothing personal: we simply happen to find your corporatist and objectivist platform repulsive.

Date17:32:57, October 07, 2012 CET
FromConglomeratist Party
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
Message(OOC: As far as Kalistan in particular goes, I'm RPing a resurrection of the old Conglomerate based economy while challenging the Episcopal Church. I actually chose this country because of the coincidence between "conglomeratism" and Kalistan's conglomerate history.)

Date18:28:34, October 07, 2012 CET
FromConglomeratist Party
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageFirst, regarding denial of necessities, we agree, but the problem is socialism is barking up the wrong tree.

The fact is commodity producers do not clone our people out of vats (and you'll recall where cloning regulation was proposed). You mentioned food as equivalent to air, yet farmers do not breed everyone existence, nor do those who can afford food. Conglomeratism's present emphasis on family values is to hold those who create hunger responsible - parents. The same goes for housing. Builders and real estate brokers do not breed people into exposure. Parents do, so parents should be held responsible to house their children until children are mature. As a socialist, you should support this analogy between the relations of production and the relationships of reproduction.

Second, regarding people being essentially good, you seem to be naive. Doing unto others as you would want them to do unto you doesn't work since everyone doesn't want to be treated the same way. Behaving nicely to psychopaths, for example, is an invitation to be abused.

Again, people are psychologically diverse. Many people are benevolent, but everyone is not. We agree that agency does not necessarily need to be inhibited, but many people are obsessed with power, so you can't treat everyone the same way and expect universal responsibility. The value of testing people is making sure that only the benevolent are filtered towards adult activities. It is not to inhibit the benevolent. It is to protect the benevolent from coexisting with the malevolent. Similarly, police patrol in order to let the benevolent live their own lives rather than being obsessed with self-defense against the power obsessed.

This is especially important among the working class where people literally don't have the time, energy, and attention to reflect on right versus wrong. Heck, many in the working class are obsessed with might makes right on the basis of how they work, and they deliberately do not care about the weak, sensitive, and thin-skinned among them. Instead, they believe in natural selection where the victims of crime should be blamed for their own problems. Similarly, weak people from the working class who do not have impressive physique and aim to achieve social mobility can be targeted by strong people in the upper classes when police patrols and responsible attitudes aren't around.

Lastly, as for not being liberal, I'm not sure if that's the case. You mentioned negotiation as a form of freedom's violation, but if anything, negotiation is how people socialize.

Now actually, I agree with you because negotiation can be intimidating. For example, people hate going to car dealers because they're afraid of being intimidated into signing a contract they don't understand.

However, big government operates according to ONLY negotiation. When people are regulated, the ONLY factor involved with regards to whether or not something goes through is participants' negotiation skills. People are mandated to participate in social programs by default, and the only thing left is whether or not they can negotiate regulations towards self-interest. Those who fail to negotiate effectively get outcast as politically incorrect, and the guns of the government are simply pointed at them to comply or be held in contempt.

Liberals don't see a problem with this. They view it as no different from a car sale where people are policed to defend private property.

Conglomeratism, in contrast, seeks to cultivate craftsmanship so people can have effective negotiation skills, nor negotiate with overkill against the craftsmen they depend upon.

When you say there's nothing personal, you find the platform repulsive, and appreciate the professional tone, that suggest you have the same liberal problem in expecting charismatic negotiation skills before being even willing to consider someone else's ideas.

Date22:11:25, October 07, 2012 CET
FromSocialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK)
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
Message(OOC: I started RPing here in 2591, so that is pre-history for me :))

Date22:38:39, October 07, 2012 CET
FromSocialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK)
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessagePoint 1: Humans have a responsibility to our species to procreate. You are right that Parents should be responsible for the welfare of their children, but we also, as a society have a responsibility to the perpetuation of our species. Nationalizing food, housing, healthcare and other basic human necessities isn't going to bankrupt anyone. Farmers and builders will still get paid. It's just that society will pay them now, not individuals. Individual responsibility, as you say, will come in in the duty we have to the maintenance of our society through the payment of taxes, and tax evasion will be seen as socio-pathology.

Point 2: Being nice to psychopaths may indeed lead to abuse. However, once a psychopath abuses someone, then it is a social issue, and then and only then does it become a matter for state sanction. But it is kind of odd how on one hand you speak against social responsibility for individual decisions and the on the other hand demand pre-intervention to keep people safe. That is odd.

Point 3: Preventing the benevolent and the innocent from encountering danger leads to helicopter parenting and the sort of social disease where people can't bear losing or being told no. Where people get medals for doing marginally well. It promotes regression to the mean and demotes excellence in society. We want ALL to do well, but this is defeated in a sanitized society, where the police have intervened before a person can actually do something that violates the law through their mere presence. Not only that, but think of the potential for abuse that a perpetual police state poses. If you assume these things about people, you must also assume them about cops, where there are good and bad in the police force, and they are likely to abuse their power with the same frequency as the population at large is. The difference is that the police exercise a legitimate type of force, and therefore the police force is more likely to attract that sort that you speak of when you call me naieve. The police force is never a benevolent force because the power hungry are over-represented in that group. We should do whatever we can to limit its use to the least intrusive methods possible. The police are necessary, but they protect liberty best when they respond to violations of that liberty, ex post facto. Not when they intimidate the society into compliance.

Point 4: Your gross generalizations of the working class are quite frankly rather disturbing. You may as well say that the working class do not have the time or the capacity to make good choices in elections! If this is the case, why ask them at all what they think? Why not just restore the monarchy and be done with this messy democracy nonsense?! It only takes a split second to know when something is right and when something is wrong before a decision is made. All human beings have access to a portion of the Truth, and it merely takes a small amount of practice before things become clear. The only way the society you describe could exist is if people make moral and ethical decisions randomly or as some sort of utilitarian calculator. But we both know that this is not how people decide things. There is, after all, in all but socio-paths and people with some weird form of autism, this thing called empathy, and the only way we don't feel that is if we are either extremely neglected as a child or the wiring in our brain is messed up. Otherwise, your bleak assessment of humanity is entirely off base, and hence the ideology which is built on it falls.

Point 5: Nobody is mandated to participate in social programs. They are mandated to pay taxes. Collecting taxes is an inherent power of any and all sovereign governments. What we propose to do with the taxes we collect is to use them to fund social programs, which we propose are made universal, as in, all people who pay taxes can use them for free. I find no mandate in a free nationalized health system. You don't want to use it, you can still sew up your wounds in your own home with your own needle, and you can still treat your own infections by eating moldy bread if you like. There is nothing forcing you or anyone to go in to the free clinic and get first aid. But under a socialist plan you will pay for those programs for others who do want to use them, because whether or not you use the service directly, paying taxes is, always has been, and always will be the law in society, and you certainly benefit from the elimination of communicable diseases, a lack of homelessness and starvation in society, roads, schools, police (where they exist) fire, national security, and everything else the government provides you whether or not you ever paid a cent for them.

Point 6: I am certainly willing to negotiate with a competent negotiating partner. We have set a basic floor on our position: We will not settle for anything less than a socialized society where a producer is prevented, by law from exploiting the needs of humanity for his or her own profit, but instead where needs are met without charge for service, paid for instead through taxation, and where civil liberties are more important than police power. How we accomplish this is open for negotiation, as well as anything else that does not touch these two main planks of socialism. I do consider your ideas in this, and I don't see a LOT of mutual territory, but I believe that after discussions some can eventually be found. For example, I am sure that we can agree that sports teams can be private. I have no real problem with that. Gated communities can be dealt with. A wild military industrial complex can be abolished. I don't know. Name some policies, I am sure we can find agreements all over the place! We are a reasonable party on all things except basic human need and human freedoms.

Date03:06:53, October 08, 2012 CET
FromConglomeratist Party
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageFirst, I'm not sure I'd say people have a "responsibility to procreate". Yes, abortion is wrong because testing for personhood is unfalsifiable, and subsidizing contraception is wrong because it's imperfect and encourages hypercompetitive risk taking.

However, many people are irresponsible, reckless, and careless. They don't take the time to discover with a partner with chemistry, and their offspring are introduced into unstable households and communities. When we subsidize reproduction by guaranteeing food, clothing, shelter, and utilities, we excuse people from discovering stable chemistry. Even the future of subsidies themselves becomes unstable because subsidies don't grow on trees. The next generation, however, becomes socially alienated such that the chemistry for holistic production disappears.

This isn't to say we should engage in eugenics. After all, people aren't material objects, but we should test people for responsible attitudes to make sure the pursuit of stable chemistry is in mind.

Second, I'm not against social responsibility. What I'm saying is it's irresponsible to force people to endure damages and only remunerate them after the fact. People are entitled to their own time, energy, and attention. A State should protect that time, energy, and attention from being endangered by psychopaths in the first place since a State allows psychopaths to be introduced into society among other citizens. Again, this means testing people for responsible attitudes before allowing them to participate in mature activities.

Third, I'm totally shocked by what you said there. If I didn't know better, I'd say you're a rugged individualist capitalist which even I don't support. Still, I support the pursuit of excellence. I just realize that the pursuit of excellence requires a stable environment because excellence is sensitive. When excellence is exposed to having to defend itself like the wild west, that means it can't commit time, energy, and attention towards talents. When people have to keep their dukes up, they can't focus on clockwork or surgery.

I'm not sure what you're saying about helicopter parenting either. Especially in the working class, we don't endure overprotection, haha. We endure negligence from parents who lack cultural sophistication. On the other hand, I'm not sure how police patrols would encourage upper class overprotection. Upper class citizens don't dwell among lowlifes.

I also don't think police officers should be immune from character tests like the rest of society is being tested for. If anything, they should be held above and beyond to make sure they have an openminded morally universalist perspective in order to prevent bias.

Fourth, I'm not generalizing. I'm saying people are psychologically diverse. Therefore, risk exists, and nobody deserves to automatically have to assume that risk.

To be clear, people are innocent before proven guilty, but innocence does not mean benevolent. We test people this way because benevolent people can be weak such that they can't prove their innocence. Otherwise, we would be condemning honest people who just aren't strong enough to show it. We would also be condemning those "autistics" who have been empathetically traumatized despite still being sympathetic.

As for democracy being stupid, I have an alternative form of government called "psyocracy" to consider which gets around this, but that's another topic. No, I'm not a utilitarian. My point is many within the working class judge others according to utility, and despise the immediately useless who haven't yet cultivated their talents as impersonal.

Fifth, I wasn't talking about taxes (although I guess that applies), and yes, people are mandated to participate in public education, infrastructure, health care, pensions, utilities, and defense. Excusing people to perform their own aside services disowns them from what's reliably theirs.

Regardless, what I was talking about was the direction of those services. Those services are only directed as far as people can negotiate the direction of them. By emphasizing craftsmanship, we support people having quality negotiation skills so they can get what they deserve out of public goods.

Lastly, I agree that "humanity" shouldn't be exploited. That's why there's so much focus on craftsmanship in the platform being presented here. As for taxes, they should be administered through subsidarity. The government shouldn't be displacing people's organic judgment in deciding how to live their lives, but when you subsidize the foundations of life, you addict people against exercising craftsmanship in the first place.

As for mutual territory, that will come in time as we discuss the craftsmanship over how people live their lives. We shouldn't tax people merely for the sake of making them suffer or pay their dues. If anything, we should encourage people to culturally appreciate cost-benefit analysis. Prices shouldn't be charged "just because". They should be charged with due merit, and merit is a subjective concept for people to judge for themselves.

Date03:30:43, October 08, 2012 CET
FromSocialist Party of Kalistan (SPoK)
ToDebating the Socialist Positions Act of 3376
MessageI think we are at an impasse. But I will say, we will certainly find things to agree upon. I also agree that prices should be set based on some merit. I would define that merit as "What it cost to make it efficiently." We may disagree on that definition, and we may disagree on who should bear that cost, especially for things that people need to survive, but I think ultimately we agree on the overall concept.

subscribe to this discussion - unsubscribe

Voting

Vote Seats
yes
 

Total Seats: 137

no
 

Total Seats: 254

abstain
     

Total Seats: 359

Random fact: RP laws follow the same passing rules as in-game variable laws. Laws that are not of a constitutional nature require a simple majority "Yes" vote from active parties currently holding seats. Laws that are of a constitutional nature require a 2/3 majority "Yes" vote from active parties currently holding seats. RP laws may be abolished a simple majority vote this applies to ANY RP law.
Random quote: "There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle." - Alexis de Tocqueville
This page was generated with PHP
Copyright 2004-2010 Wouter Lievens
Queries performed: 183