emphryio

Well it depends on exactly who's making these tests and what's on them. If their about Laplace transform, rieman sums, etc, I think power hungry people will study their math like all hell.

If how much you've read is of great importance, there are people who've read a ton and have virtually memorized everything they've read, yet they're still not truly "wise". (There just big information storage centers.)

If somehow a test/s, (it would have to be continously changing tests), could be made, (by whom? The wisdom neccessary to make such a test would be far greater even than the wisdom necessary to pass,) maybe you could get people in power, who gave a crap about the majority.

But if imperfect tests result in only a slightly more intelligent ruling class, not having the acountability you get from a democracy could cause serious problems.

But on the other hand, a democracy elected Bush/Cheney. So much for the interests of the people.

BTW pseudonym,
I'm not too sure about communism. Unless you had a society of only wonderful people, the system would be horribly abused. (Abused beyond control in America, I'm afraid.)

To David Payne
You give convincing points but it sounds dangerous. What if a Charles Manson became president? He seemed to be able to get people to go along with him.

Totalitarianist

To Christopher Lord:

Until what? What is punishment for not participating? If someone chooses not to participate, the worst you say the commune can do is to remove his access to things which he ‘needs’. I doubt this would be enough for the truly bent. For example, I could survive in wilderness with 4 or 5 other people quite easily for an indefinite period. Do you plan on controlling the supply of mountain streams and mountain goats as well? Or will people who will not participate ‘Criminals’?

Yes.

Crime rates among family members is not terribly less than among those who are not related.

Give me some statistics.

All well and good on paper, but you can not honestly be saying that people will ‘Just Get Along’ when you have a CLEAR division of the population, with one group getting privilege and the other not?

It's quite the same here, with parliament and such. It's fair for everyone. Anyone can become a member of the oligarchy. And there will be no "President"! The oligarchy rules democratically. The entire oligarchy, no Emperors or Prime Mininsters

It has been proven that people will draw ‘membership’ to a group over what particular set of lines they where born within or even what SPORTS TEAM they like.

That's precisely what I want.

I doubt they would just IGNORE clear and obvious lines like this. Such a society would quickly collapse due to either power mongering by the privileged or a radical unbalancing of the two groups.

BUt anyone that wishes to become a member of the oligarchy can become a member of the oligarchy. One just has to prove what he's worth. We cannot just select members randomly. We need the wisest, the most logical decision-makers possible. Not the irrational majority.

And they'd be taught from birth that their government is superior. They'd be taught that revisionism would ensure the colapse of their nation. Every book and film would be heavily edited to support Communism, Atheism, and science. No anti-science films like "ET". Everything would be heavily, heavily censored. The oligarchy, the military, and the scientists would be depicted on huge posters and such as lovely "fatherly figures" and the "bad guys" on books, comics and films would be "capitalist pigs", and the great (but real) heroes taught in school would be famous Communists like Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, H G Wells, Lenin, Marx, Engels, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, G B Shaw and the like, and they would be happy. Childrens books, newspapers, magazines, and books would ALL be pro-Communist, pro-Atheist, pro-government, and pro-military.

but NOT for a whole society.

Everyone in each commune would know one another.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of collective property working on a large scale. We did not evolve in such a situation and therefore OUR INSTINCTS ARE NOT GEARED FOR IT.

What about the military?

It's not on a large scale. To the members of each commune, it feels like a commune, with no more than 200 people. They would be educated together, too. Humans living more like social creatures (like they did thousands of years ago) is more natural than you think. African tribes with 200 people and collective property does work, and a building with 200 non-African people and collective property would work as well. It wouldn't be ten million people crammed into a single city with collective property. No more than 200 people in each commune.

To emphryio:

Well it depends on exactly who's making these tests and what's on them. If their about Laplace transform, rieman sums, etc, I think power hungry people will study their math like all hell.

But still, the majority would rule in the oligarchy, and crazy power hungry people would never be the majority. The tests? Let's just say the tests would be plenty efficient.

If how much you've read is of great importance, there are people who've read a ton and have virtually memorized everything they've read, yet they're still not truly "wise". (There just big information storage centers.)

Perhaps their wisdom and logic would be tested as well.

But if imperfect tests result in only a slightly more intelligent ruling class, not having the acountability you get from a democracy could cause serious problems.

Let's just say that the tests would be perfect.

I'm not too sure about communism. Unless you had a society of only wonderful people, the system would be horribly abused. (Abused beyond control in America, I'm afraid.)

The lazy would be framed by the government to be rapists.

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Pseudonym ]</p>

Soliton

Pseudonym,
The only true way an oligarchy could work is in the form of an "A.I.-cracy," such as the one Christopher Lord posits, involving machines that have no personal desires. You say through the character of Vir that an arbitrary proficiency in mathematics/logic qualifies a human for leadership, but this is wishful thinking, as even the most logical human is still a slave to their own epistemology, and current situation. They will eventually turn to simple self-gratification, especially if the massive propaganda/memetic complex is constantly churning out the line that "The Oligarchy is always right, because they are always logical" to an easily suckered public. Consider the case of Dr. Edward Teller, a brilliant mathematician and physicist. After his work on the hydrogen bomb, he spent the rest of his life lobbying for it to be used for all manner of things, while downplaying the hazards of radiation and other little problems like such. This case may not hold true for the majority of logicians, but if personages such as the aforementioned "good doctor" made up a majority of the Oligarchy, then you would have a similar problem on your hands, especially if "Trebaxia" or "Dystopia" or "Country X" was at an advanced stage of technological development, which I do not doubt in a society prizing science and logic so much.

While I appreciate the irony of a society that is based on the rule of logic (a form of truth), yet filled with censorship and propaganda, how many of your prospective leaders will not share my sense of humor and be repulsed? Your society will fragment and crumble as a torrent of annoyingly *moral* geniuses decide to form their own little clades.

As a final note, I, too, once designed an oligarchy- As the final project in (Advanced Placement) Humanieties, our groups had to design "perfect societies." My group did it mostly out of pique, to spite the filthy torrent of groups proposing primitivist anarchies in the jungle. If you are so inclined, just tell me and I can e-mail you a copy of our own paper, as another look at the idea of an advanced-technology oligarchial country.

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Soliton ]</p>

Christopher Lord

Family Violence Statistics
<a href="http://www.soundvision.com/Info/domesticviolence/statistics.asp" target="_blank">http://www.soundvision.com/Info/domesticviolence/statistics.asp</a>

This sort of thing isn't going to just stop because of PROPAGANDA. It's basic "relationships gone bad".

Christopher Lord

How about this.

You tell me why the most logical decision-makers possible are less likely to do things in their own interest.

I think that logic always serves self-interest first in humans, due to evolutionary pressure to do so.

Can you refute this?

Totalitarianist

Okay then. So there's two choices:

1) Let the irrational, ignorant majority (who generally dislike politics) make the political decions

(Which is illogical because they a)dislike the subject, b) do not have the to inclinition, and c) are ignorant of it.
As I've said, A) THE EXPERT IS PREFERED OVER THE NON-EXPERT, B) LOGICAL DECISIONS ARE TO BE PREFERED, C) DECISIONS ARE INVOLVED IN POLITICS. D) HENCE, THE EXPERTS AT MAKING LOGICAL DECISIONS, "THE WISE", ARE TO BE PREFERED FOR MAKING POLITICAL DECIONS. If you want to read the greatest book, the author would have to a)have a linguistical inclination, b) not be ignroant of the English language, c) like writing, and the greatest possible book is prefered. This applies to absolutely everything.)


Pros: They can indulge in all their irrational desires, like consuming the weak, the gifted and every other minority. It's good for the majority, but that's about it.
Cons: The above.

2) Let the wisest of all men, who are more capable of making logical decisions, and who have advanced knowledge in mathematics, philosophy, science and especially politics, and fairly high IQ's, make the rules.

Pros: They are better fit for making logical decisions.
Cons: They function, like all humans, out of their own interest.

NO form of government is 100% flawless, because all humans do things out of their own interest. Since that is UNIVERSAL, we must exclude it. We must not consider it; for no matter what form of government we choose, we cannot escape this law.

With the rule of self-interest now considered, the Communist oligarchy still out-ways democracy.

And Soliton, I will reply to you later.

Christopher Lord

But you forget that Democracy with a bill of rights for minorities is designed SPECIFICALLY to limit self-interest by diffusing it over the entire population.

Thats the goal... In practice the system can be manipulated. But of course, the more concentrated power is, the more easily it can be corrupted and manipulated!

In order to corrupt a well-designed democracy, one must concentrate the power of the people (say, into a supreme court judge or president) and then manipulate that point of concentration.

Democracy makes individuals in the government fear concentration of power, since they loose ALL power if the people catch a wiff.

This ability of the people to deprivilage the government is the core strength of a democracy.

I will sugest my idea for the 'ideal government' below in a seperate post.

Totalitarianist

About the statistics:

I can explain and prevent almost every one of those.

In this oligarchy-communist state I will call Trebaxia, many things will be banned.

-Alcohol will be banned (causes family violence).
-Marijuana will be banned (causes irrational happiness).
-All drugs that are illegal in Canada and the United States will be illigal in Trebaxia (and unheard-of), drugs cause family violence.
-Prostitution will be legalised (and yet impossible without money).
-Poverty will, of course, not exist (poverty causes family violence).
-Religion will be completely abolished (no "superior" sex, and therefore less violence towars the "inferior" sex).
-an Atheistic anti-violence Religion will be taught.
-The mentally ill will be imprisoned (the mentally ill are often abusive, so less family violence).
-Sex offenders will be excecuted (less family violence/molestation).
-Murderers will be excecuted (less murdering).
-There will be surveillance cameras (less violence).
-The police force will be extremely strict.
-Teens will not be allowed to date or have sexual intercourse with the opposite sex, same sex, or beasts (eliminate dating violence).
-Anti-violence propaganda posters.
-There will be only one race, eliminating any possible racial prejudice.
-In each commune, every one will know one another.

And there is not much family violence in African tribes, or so I've read. Prove me wrong.

[ July 16, 2002: Message edited by: Pseudonym ]</p>

Christopher Lord

The ideal government, in my opinion, would be founded on the principal of recognition: the recognition that people in general are weak. They can not be trusted, and so the system is designed so that opportunity for human abuse is all but removed. After this, it is based on a bill of rights which guarantees human rights, etc. Finally, there are a set of charters which form the ‘high laws’. These have the potential for amendment (with difficulty).

There will be an executive elected by the population. This executive and his crew are mainly the managers of inter-department commands, as well as the face of the government to other countries. This is highly important for negotiations. This position is subject to several criminal penalties if the position is discovered to have been abused by an extensive panel of the top judges from the Judicial Department. The executive has no say when it comes to decisions by departments or by the courts, but does manage the creation of departments.

The government is segmented into many departments (Food, Entertainment, Judical, Economy, Defense, etc). These departments each have an elected leader. Department dissolution can only be done by the department or by the courts. Each department leader has full power within his department, but is subject to the same criminal system upon abuse. The judicial department has a panel of judges as leader, composed of 1/3 elected and 1/3 appointed. The final third is a destination for politicians with stellar careers and meritous individuals from the other departments and the general population, elected by the leaders of the departments.

Every action by the upper echelons must be accounted for and secured. This is done via public key encryption and certification. Only those who hold the key can perform an action, and each action is logged. This acts as an interface between decisions and the actual act of carrying them out. This way there is a guaranteed perfect record of every command. These records can be inspected over the internet by anyone, except in confidential matters, in which case only authorized personnel can access the data. There will be an entire department (Info Distribution?) concerned only with determining the confidentiality of a command. Most will pass through without redacting. Other departments can not influence them in their decisions except by other public documents which describe the desire to escalate the security of a command. This stepping of documents into a ‘secure channel’ leaves a paper trail that authorized personnel can review.

You are required to at least vote for the ‘core’ departments every year. Your line of employment may force you to vote for departments related to your job. This ensures that there is always a contingent of qualified people voting. Everyone is always allowed to vote in every election if they wish, however.

Each potential candidate for a position must post both a summary and a detailed document describing their policy plans, along with a full history of service in office, if they are elected, under penalty of forgery. They will not be permitted to appear in public prior to taking office. Their appearance, sex, and race are kept secret. They are nominated by people in the department to which they are attempting to lead. One must be a citizen since birth and have at least a BSc. of Government in order to be nominated. Once elected, they will execute their plans, but are permitted ‘reasonable’ flexibility therein.

Since the general population can not have total rule, there are checks in place to prevent this as well. I have not considered this.

The economy of the country is a separate issue and is not delt with by the government. The Department of the Economy is the branch which serves as the mint, bond issuer, etc. As always, other departments get limited say in the operation of the economy department.

There is no central treasury and taxation system for the government. Each department issues a budget, and tax payers see exactly which departments are taking their money. They can also get summaries of spending from each department. This provides incentive to minimize spending, or even turn a profit.

There will be a minimum taxation in place as a charter. If the government is more efficient than the minimum, the extra is used by the public works and charity department. This may seem cruel, giving the scraps to one of the most important departments, but in fact it encourages people to vote for the department heads which get the job done on a minimal budget. Most job for the buck will be the primary elective quality.

I could go on, but I think the jist has been communicated. The basic goal is to turn human weaknesses into system strengths, and this system is just an example. Any system that does this will work equally well.

Christopher Lord

These URLs all describe either family violence or inter/intra-tribal violence in African tribes. You should purge your ideal of the "Noble Savage". It was proved so with the close of the 19th century. Humans will be human, and there ain't much you can do about it.

<a href="http://dextremes.com/grey/ramblings/tfa.html" target="_blank">http://dextremes.com/grey/ramblings/tfa.html</a>

<a href="http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/mideast/article/english/0,10846,209830,00.html" target="_blank">http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/mideast/article/english/0,10846,209830,00.html</a>

<a href="http://www.wits.ac.za/csvr/papers/paprapel.htm" target="_blank">http://www.wits.ac.za/csvr/papers/paprapel.htm</a>

<a href="http://www.saswot.com/namaste_jan_2001_2.htm" target="_blank">http://www.saswot.com/namaste_jan_2001_2.htm</a>

<a href="http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/just/just490/" target="_blank">http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/just/just490/</a>