Right now, both leading political parties in the USA are based on ideology. The left bases its policies on its core belief that everybody is good and that it is only the lack of resources and low self esteem that makes people bad. The right bases its ideology on its belief that there is a God and that countries should be run like a theocracy. Neither have anything to do with the administration of a country. In short, they should not be governing any country, let alone a country as massive as the USA. The questions then becomes how does one govern a country. There are two questions to be asked in order to answer that. The first is, “What is the least that can be done to avoid people killing each other, stealing, raping, and generally causing harm to each other plus the environment? The second is, “What is the best that can be done to enable all people to flourish and live with a sense of well being?”
What is the Least that Can Be Done to Avoid People Killing Each Other, Stealing, Raping, and Generally Causing Harm to Each Other Plus the Environment?
- Introduce the rule of law and a body of people (police) to enforce those laws. This is the first duty of government - to ensure that all people live safely. This law does not take into account invasion from other countries. It is simply a set of laws to prevent people from harming each other in any way, and a way of enforcing those laws.
- Ensure that all people everywhere have independent means to provide the core needs, i.e. food and shelter for themselves. The means has to be independent at this level as dependence of some on others provides a means of corruption and the abuse of power.
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What is the best that can be done to enable all people to flourish and live with a sense of well being?”
- Provide an infrastructure of roads and reliable, available public transport for all people to ship goods, visit others, and ease of getaway in times of emergency. Because there will always be differences in the amount of money people earn, cheap fast transport for the masses is vital. Without it, a country will sooner or later suffer.
- Provide various means of barter, exchange, and/or currency so that people are not reliable on one particular means. There are several issues with having only one means of exchange. Here are a two: One is that wealth tends to move away from the local area where it was produced, and another is that currencies tend to inflation and deflation. Having several means of exchange tends to limit these disasters. One idea might be to have local currencies, a national currency, an international currency, and a barter system.
- Provide skills and the means to acquire them from early childhood. Everybody should be highly skilled in one or more means of earning a reasonable living by the time they are eighteen. This is not only feasible but the old classic educational system with trades used to do this. When people have a skill to enable them to earn a living, it provides many different levels of security and a feeling of independence and well being. This education system should be skilled based. Currently education is more about ideology than the actual teaching of marketable skills. Most skills taught today appear to have little market value. People may well go on to further levels of education. However, by the time they are eighteen, they need at least one marketable skill with which they can support themselves.
- With seven billion people on the planet, climate change (dangers of over population), pollution, and fewer and fewer resources, it becomes vital to ensure the continuing availability of clean air, clean water, and nutritious food. As such, the following need to be implemented. There are no exceptions, regardless of the level of wealth. No one person is permitted to own more than one house.
- No one person is permitted less than 300 square feet of living space and no more than 500 square feet of living space. For five people in a household, no more than 500 square feet for the first person and 300 square feet for each person after that. For more than five people in a household, no more than 500 square feet for the first person and no more than 200 square feet per person after that. No more space provided for more than seven people in the household. While some people object to being told how much land they can have and believe it to be a personal issue, nothing is a personal issue when that action impacts negatively on others. And while there might still be land in America, this article is not about America only. It is about the way we need to govern as a species in order to survive extinction.
- Each household to have some means of producing its own basic food needs, be they hydroponic or otherwise.
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- No industry permitted to produce any product with toxic residue. If it’s that unsafe, it’s not needed. If it’s needed, another way needs to be found to produce it. It is forbidden to use water to get rid of toxic residue.
- Ensure that farming is as local as possible. With upcoming droughts, possible disruption in transport, and any manner of ills that may hit in the future, food needs to be as close to where it is consumed as possible. Small farms will be the norm. Large farms forbidden as it causes too much power in too few hands, and too much opportunity for corruption. It also provides fewer opportunities for personal ownership of farms.
- Forbid any sort of religious ideology or ideology of any other sort to enter government. Government is ONLY a form of administration.
- Science is to be studied at universities and other bodies. It is always paid for by government. All results are to be published for general public use. No patents are permitted on scientific discoveries as they are paid for by the people for the people. The people who discover them are well paid for their work.The bottom line is that everybody should be entitled to own a business, and big business provides too many goods for there to be much of a need for smaller business.
- There are no special privileges for people who are married or not. People’s personal business, ideologies, beliefs, etc. are their own. Anyone can live as they please so long as they do not harm others. No religion or ideology is permitted to proselytize. They may list themselves on the Internet or other directories, and people can find them if they are interested, but ‘outreach’ is not permitted. Why? Because it’s undue influence. And when people go through a period of loss, they are easily influenced. It is not the decision they would have made if their lives were in better shape.
- In order for communities to function effectively and without corruption (the abuse of power), citizen involvement is imperative. Every citizen (someone over eighteen after they have passed their citizen exams) contributes eighty hours of service per year to the communiy.
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Military and Assassins
- The federal government pays for a military, but geographically, a small core military force is kept in each state. The State has fifty one percent of the say if these forces are to be used for war. The military is only to be used in times of invasion.
- A small team of assassins is to be paid for by the federal government. Again, these are housed in each state. In this case, however, the federal government determines has a fifty one percent say in whether they are to be used or not. Assassins are only to be used in case of terrorist attacks, where attack is not the result of invasion by another country.
Taxes
- There is a singular tax system. There is either sales tax, state tax, or fed tax - not all three. Only one method of tax permitted. It is suggested that states institute tax and pay ten percent of their gross taxes to the federal government. This will ensure that federal government is kept small.
- While tax is kept reasonable with no tax rate being more than thirty percent - even for the very rich, the super wealthy contribute extra hours in terms of personal community service. Everybody has to do a minimum eighty hours of personal community service per year; however, the more money one earns, the more community service one needs to do. The maximum community service one can do is 320 hours of personal community service per year. Nobody can do it for a citizen. The citizen has to do it himself. This is to keep them in touch with reality.
So that is how (I think) one governs a country. The country will run effectively because everything is taken care of. There is less room for abuse, but of course, people being people, and some people being more greedy than others, there will always be a level of abuse. The idea is that the important things are provided for everybody, and that if people desire to have more possessions, they’re certainly entitled to work for them, but they are not entitled to harm others or harm the environment. By ensuring that everybody over eighteen, upon completion of their citizen exams (they can’t vote without passing them), has to do community service, it ensures that even the very rich will have a more realistic understanding of the world around them.
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