Let's Write a Constitution for a Hypothetical Nation

Well, given that, what rights should corporations have? I stand by my earlier positions, and I think that there are one or two more that should be added too, but I need some time to gather my thoughts on it. There should be some kind of mechanism through which someone can't just do something like, say, if Trump were to decide to fine Nordstrom for not carrying Ivanka's stuff anymore, but I can't think of a way to word that without making it abusable. Recalls seem like a good idea as long as the threshold for the petition passing is sufficiently high so as that the recall is kind of a nuclear option.

State's Rights: Yes, that seems good. Maybe we should make it so that a lower level can pass laws that run against the higher level laws provided it doesn't contradict that level's specific constitution, and the federal constitution is the supreme law. I was thinking of a four tiered system, with municipality<county<province<country, with certain asterisks for Territories and Special Autonomous Regions, as well as some things on the municipality level for really large or really small towns.

First, to get this out of the way, the first element on any constitution after the preamble should probably be "No law shall be passed that violates any part of this Constitution". Given what is currently happening to the US I feel like we should try to find a whole bunch of possible fail-safes to prevent a slide into authoritarianism.

edited 8th Feb '17 10:27:24 PM by LinkToTheFuture

Maybe "rights" of corporations is too strong a word, but there are basic reasons to have a corporation instead of a sole proprietorship and some of them are worth keeping.

A corporation may be a party in contracts, they can sue and be sued, they may own property. The personal assets of the shareholders of a corporation are protected in case of default or legal suit AS LONG AS they are not involved in illegal activity. They can have protection from government seizure of their assets as long as they remain in compliance with the law. They may create and hold copyrights, trademarks and patents but if they let a copyright or patent sit unused for a period of time or purchase it solely for the purpose of suing people for royalties the government may, in response to a legal challenge, revoke the copyright/patent and declare it part of the public domain.

The government in turn has the right to enact legislation to regulate the activity of corporations when doing so protects the rights and welfare of its citizens. (I think that's sufficiently broad to cover stuff like consumer/employee rights, envionmental regulations, safety regulations, etc.)

edited 8th Feb '17 10:48:08 PM by Elle

Sounds good to me. Any further details are probably best left to non-constitutional stuff, though I think that this line is worth going down in more detail later on.

How should the government be organized at the federal level? What kind of separation of powers do we have, and what are the different bodies that hold those powers? Unicameral legislature or more? How are they elected? I was thinking that there should be single transferable proportional voting, though that raises a couple of questions, though I guess the main one I had can be solved through primaries. The other question is that how do we have it so that everyone has "their" representative without the problems of representation by district, where the rep only needs to care about the people that voted for him/her, leaving everyone else in that district without being represented?

My inclination is to use the US Constitution for the basic framework again though a part of me would be interested in toying with having some element of election-by-lottery like the Ancient Greeks did, and/or having some level of basic civil service exams as a requirement for entering politics.

I think that the plan here would be to try to create the best constitution we could, whether that ends up resembling the US, ancient Athens, or something else entirely.

I like the civil service test idea, and to add on that I'd like it to be specialized for each region, ie municipalities have stuff on the test that is specific to that town. However, I could see that being easily abusable by whoever's in power messing with the tests to block challengers, kinda like the "literacy tests" in the Jim Crow era.

I was thinking, kind of like the US, to have two houses, where the lower house has representatives representing specific geographic areas and the upper house being voted to represent the nation as a whole, perhaps? We'd have to separate their powers somehow.

I have one suggestion about war: Any congressman who votes in favor of a war, or president who signs it when not veto-proof/asked congress in the first place, must — if the vote goes through and war actually starts — immediately resign and enlist in the military as, at best, one of those lower NCO ranks where you're expected to lead from the front.

That way, people in power can't decide to send others to their death if they're not ready to lay down their lives as well.

edited 9th Feb '17 12:39:39 AM by Medinoc

Hey this thread lives again

Sorry what exactly are "civil service tests"? Are they like tests a person has to pass before being accepted into civil service?

Would that count for defensive wars as well? War might be horrible but if one of our neighbors decides to invade us then we eventually need some way to defend us.

In fact what is the geographic location of our nation? Is it in a central position surrounded by other countries or are we an island?

edited 9th Feb '17 12:58:12 AM by Kiefen

I don't think it should count for defensive wars, personally.

Before I partake: Do folks want to use this thread or the other one?

I prefer the other one because we're more or less starting over so I find it clunky to have 42 pages of stuff that, while it can be useful (as reference and the like), isn't exactly relevant to what we're doing.

Edit 1:

Edit 2: On separation of powers, I'd prefer no singular executive (read: president) and a bicameral legislature working like this:

• One chamber is elected by proportional representation within the provinces/states/[insert alternative name of regional government units here], meaning: let's say you have 3 provinces, A has 5 million people, B has 2 million and C has 3 million. By law there has to be one representative/deputy/MP/[insert legislator title] per 100,000 people, so A has 50, B 20 and C 30 (total 100), and those legislators are allocated according to vote share (say, in province A Party 1 got 35% of the vote, giving 18 legislators; party 2 got 25%, for 13 seats; party 3 15%, equaling 8 seats; parties 4-6 got 6% each, giving 3 seats to each party; party 7 got 4% so they get the last 2 seats and parties 8 and 9 got 1,5% each, so they don't qualify for seats). Their terms last 6 years. This chamber is supposed to represent people's interests.

• The other chamber is for federal representation of the provinces, so each province gets the same number of seats (anyone against calling these Senators?), and I'd go with the Argentine system of electing 2 for the plurality (or majority) party and a third one for the first minority (Using the same numbers as in the other chamber, party 1 gets two Senators and party 2 gets the third). All seats in the same province are chosen at the same time, but the chamber is renovated in halves. The terms are 6 years too, but their elections can't be held concurrently with those of the other chamber.

edited 9th Feb '17 3:10:48 AM by IFwanderer

I like the legislators being elected in groups. Single-seat districts are too susceptible to gerrymandering (regardless of the voting system). I assume each party proposes a list and each voter chooses a single one.

I'm a bit surprised by how the rounding works in your example. Since there are 50 seats, each one requires 2% of the vote. On that basis, Party 1 gets 17 seats (with 1% left over), Party 2 gets 12 seats (with 1% left over), Party 3 gets 7 seats (with 1% left over), Parties 4-6 get 3 seats each (with nothing left over), Party 7 gets 2 seats (with nothing left over) and Parties 8-9 get no seats (with 1.5% each left over). There are 3 seats left over. In your system, they seem to go to the parties with the most total votes, but I'd give them to the parties with the most votes left over (which would be 8, 9 and one of 1, 2 and 3 - there shouldn't be too many ties IRL).

I rounded the numbers upwards to make less calculations for a quick explanation of how PR would work (that is, party gets x% of the seats that should be close to their share of the vote), the way you describe does make more sense for how to actually implement Proportional Representation.

(So, about which thread to use...)

I'd say let's close this one (for now at least) with a link to the new, "fresh start" thread. I only posted here in the first place because the new thread wasn't opened yet.

Alrighty, let's use this one then.