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I'm in Canada and I have this debate often with my friends. One prime example is our federal governments Westminster system of government ... where we have a house of parliament filled with elected officials from across the country, who can draw up, debate issues and pass laws ... but then those laws are sent to a senate that provides 'a sober second thought' to everything ... the senate is filled with unelected officials that are placed there by appointment.
Historically, the senate was just filled with friends and associates by the ruling government at the time ... basically it meant that every democratic law in the country was first given over to unelected elites and business friendly people to water down anything that went through government ... in recent decades, they've modernized the system and now it is still appointed people but appointed through a system disassociated with individual political parties or political leaders - apparently senators are appointed by committee
But its still filled with heavily influential people with money and monied interests ... they keep arguing that any canadian citizen can be appointed but it never happens because you have to be a fairly wealthy individual, have influence and know lots of people before you could ever be considered for appointment ... one of the prerequisites they point out is that individuals considered for appointment must own a minimum wealth of $4,000 (or something like that, I forget the actual figure but it was only a few thousand dollars), which most will argue is not a barrier to many in this day in age. What they don't point out is that $4,000 in 1867 when the country was founded was equivalent to saying someone should own roughly almost a million dollars in wealth. It was always geared and built into the system to have wealthy overseers watch over the country and protect the wealth of the most powerful people.
Which makes you question, like I do with America, whether we ever did have a democratic system here in Canada
That's interesting, I didn't know that about the Canadian Senate.
Honestly though, and this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, the bicameral legislative system in general is a vestige of old social stratification from a bygone age.
The lower chamber (in the US that's the House of Representatives, but in Canada I suppose it's the House of Parliament) is basically a derivative of the House of Commons from England/UK. I think it was established by the Magna Carta (if I remember correctly) to give commoners (peasants) a say in government.
The upper chamber, being the Senate, in a similar way derives conceptually from the English House of Lords. In other words, from its inception, the Senate as a concept was always intended to be the house representing the nation's aristocracy.
Things have changed over time of course, but there are still echos of its origins in the way it functions as the upper chamber, and also in the way people are selected as Senators versus as Representatives.
I'm not saying we should immediately abolish the bicameral system. There are certainly still good reasons to keep both chambers in place (and honestly we could potentially even eventually expand it to a tricameral or quadracameral system, adding a chamber that represents different career fields, or one that that represents different academic disciplines). But it's just something to be aware of about the history of senates in general.
One thing I think every modern government should employ is a way or means to either change, upgrade or renew a nations constitution or overall governing laws. To change it or update it every 100 hundred years - or every 50 years or after every 10 elections or something. Basically to enshrine into law that the whole system has to be updated to modern standards every few generations to keep up with changing times .... a constitution or set of laws that are allowed to change or evolve over time.
I know that the current system tries to employ change over time ... but all those changes are based on the laws, system and regulations of a bygone era ... systems like 'senates' in Canada ... or the electoral college in the US
Existing or old laws and regulations were meant to deal with problems or issues from a hundred or even 200 years ago but usually those problems are no longer applicable centuries later .... and those insitutionalized changes are only abused to manipulate the democratic system. Updating and upgrading the system every hundred years would serve to evolve the system over time and prevent forces from abusing existing regulations that no longer function.
I am sure that any new system that would be developed would have its own abuses but at least everyone would have an opportunity to do something about it all rather than just sit still and maintain the status quo, even if it means a degraded democratic system.
No matter the country ... every nation should have a way to update its system to better represent people in its current age. How do we expect to represent the modern American or Canadian governments using regulations from 100 - 200 years ago when everyone lived with horse and buggy and didn't have world wide mass communication? And in the future, how do we except future generations to deal with their problems 200 years from now using regulations from the 1900s?
Human society and civilization is in constant change and evolution and technology ... we can't expect our governing systems to stay static over generations while everything changes.
I can see that. I've thought a great deal about that two. On the one hand, societies and cultures evolve, so it's important for governments and institutions to evolve with them. I think building that concept into the framework itself would be important.
On the other hand, it comes with a different set of challenges. Of the two most obvious that stand out to me, one is ideological and one is practical.
On ideological grounds, the point of a government charter such as a constitution is to create a stable system based on certain principles that are at least in theory permanent, inherent, or universal. In modern times, often that includes provisions for certain immutable human rights.
If we make constitutions more malleable, then a side effect of that would be that the rule of law also becomes more flexible. How can we guarantee that over time, in a century or two or even longer, those human rights might gradually become more mutable, until they eventually start to disappear altogether?
On practical grounds, it comes down to how the changes themselves would be implemented. Would the constitutions be updated by citizen's referendum, by a constitutional convention of state/provincial governors and/or legislatures, by federal-level legislatures? How could that work? And how could the courts provide oversight to such changes if their key role is to ensure the other branches are following constitutional law?
It seems the opportunity for a constitutional convention is rare, because according to the safeguards that are rightfully built into said constitutions, changes require widespread support. That isn't guaranteed to occur every few generations, nor even every century. And do we really want to impose some rigid schedule for changes and watch politics degrade into a hectic battle for a supermajority every few dozen years?
Furthermore, what if in a century or two, a new wave of fascism happens to take a supermajority and enough state/provincial governments to hold a constitutional convention? That would be like a reversal of the intention, the dark flipside parallel to the bright promise of a governmental system that can adapt to the changing needs of the times. There's no guarantee that it would be a progressive government in power when it comes time to make updates to the fundamental structure and function of government.
So in that respect, I think stability is important, and some parts of government/constitutional law should be immutable.
Maybe a layered charter could provide a good solution. Some parts that are permanent and can never be changed, and some parts that must be updated on a schedule; say at the turn of each new century.
The challenge then remains in deciding, from a present standpoint, what aspects are enduring and universal, and what aspects are relevant to time-and-place.
Great point ... I still think that the governing system should be upgraded and changed over time and given a major overhaul every few generations just to shake off the old ways of doing things.
But I like your point ... 'some parts of government/constitutional law should be immutable.'
There should be a simple straight forward core of government ... something so simple that it would only be expressed in about a hundred words. Something basically stating the basic rights of 'people' (stating it as people rather than 'man' because it would encompass all genders or any other identity that people might have now or in the future)
That core should be agreed upon to never change because it would be the basis of the current generation and future generations of people far into the future.
Everything else surrounding that core would be up for change, upgrading or even removal ... so that every generation could lose all the old methods of doing things and create new ways of governing in order to support and maintain that single core constitutional idea that never changes.
Yeah, I agree with you in principle. I merely think we need to exercise caution in how to implement it in practice.
If our generations ever get the opportunity to do major reforms or even overhauls of government institutions, organizational structures, foundational principles, and key functions, we need to remember not to throw the baby out with the bath water for one thing.
For another, we need to avoid tunnel vision. It's so easy to get caught up in the needs of the current political moment, and lose sight of the bigger picture. That's why I would caution against changing constitutions for mere political expediency, or as a means toward temporary goals.
It should only be done to update the structures and functions of government to be better suited for ensuring enduring principles such as liberty, justice, and human rights (as long as those terms are clearly defined so they can't be distorted or corrupted in the future; I'm talking Rawlsian and Senian views of justice, and liberty should be about protecting people from oppression, not affirming the entitlement of the powerful to anything-goes. So maybe a more Keynesian view of economics).
As for your ideas of an immutable core, I generally agree. We might need to expand on it further, and I think that task is largely suited to career academics with multidisciplinary expertise ranging from political science and political philosophy, to ethics, sociology, behavioral and developmental psychology, and even economics (with the caveat that the entire field of economics needs to be overhauled and reworked from first principles).
It needs to be collaborative, but right now the environment in academia is overly competitive, and that's extremely toxic to human progress. It's a side effect of the commodification of education though.
But if we're just brainstorming, then this is how I'd expand it, in rough outline form.
Beyond these things, which again I acknowledge is just a rough outline, a brainstorm if you will, and must be elaborated on further by an interdisciplinary collaboration of experts, I believe most of the other details can be more mutable and stand somewhere in between "core constitutional charter" and "temporal legislative law."
Perhaps there could even be a new branch of government whose entire purpose and role is to ensure these middling details stay up to date with the needs of the current century and decade. Perhaps a built-in review/audit every ten years, and a scheduled convention/rework every hundred. Something along those lines.
Thank you for contributing your ideas, I think we're cooking something awesome here. Even if it's ultimately destined to become no more than a message in a bottle cast into the sea. At least the ideas are finding expression in words somewhere.
I don't often find someone willing to brainstorm like this, so really thank you.
I like a lot these ideas but like you suggest, it should be left up to debate amongst a community of people to represent the time, age and level of technology and capabilities of the times they are debated in.
One core thing I often suggest when I debate these things is the idea of wealth and wealth distribution ... it is a hotly debated subject whenever I suggest it because it is always clouded by the prospect or suggestion of communism or socialism and by extension totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
Of everything that could or couldn't be done about government or society, I think instituted wealth equality would make the greatest difference to human development. And it's a simple idea but an idea so controversial that most people disagree with it, question it or just don't even want to think about it.
The idea that an UPPER WEALTH LIMIT should be instituted and permanently set into society. And the limit would still be a high ceiling ... for instance, set it at $100 million ... how could it be unreasonable to think that anyone could live without wealth beyond that limit? In one lifetime? And the governing system would essentially remain the same, no authoritarian system, no big changes to rights of people, no big changes to how society functions or operates, just that one change - to enact a system where wealth of any one person is capped to an upper limit.
Because many of the problems of developing, redeveloping, reshaping, reconstructing, renewing or upgrading government systems or laws ... are all affected and influenced by those with wealth ... and the more wealth any individual or individuals have, the more they are likely to change or affect changes for better or for worse. And conversely, once wealth is better distributed to more people, the more likely it is to develop better, more representative laws and regulations because everyone (or more people) would be able to better represent themselves and influence control.
If we removed the insatiable greed of individual people from the system, then it would more likely be able to better represent everyone as a whole ... rather than always lopsidely represent only those few people with money and power.
Unless the issue of wealth, especially ultra wealth, is addressed ... the problems of developing any kind of new or old government system will always be crippled by those who want to hold onto or protect their wealth and power.
I like your approach. I think a reason why a lot of people resist the idea is that they're afraid of losing what they have. No working-class person should lose their nest egg in order to redistribute the wealth. Nor do any need to. Because the problem isn't the middle class or even the upper-middle class. The problem is the upper-upper class, the owner-caste, the plutocrats, the zaibatsu, the financial oligarchs.
So when we talk about it, our rhetoric needs to highlight that we're not after any doctors or lawyers or professors emeritus. Those aren't the people siphoning and hoarding the lifeblood of society; they're not the ones who are appropriating the surplus value of labor in order to generate exorbitant personal wealth to the detriment of everything and everyone around them.
We need to communicate better about working-class solidarity, and how that includes the middle classes, yes, even up to and including the upper-middle class. They can keep their mcmansions and their corvettes. That's not the means of production that needs to be seized.
Personal possessions are fine. It's privately-owned business empires that need to die. And the "public" stock market should be nationalized, and governed by democratic civil institutions, like a hybrid between a union and a bureau, or something along those lines.
Especially–and starting with–public utilities and other infrastructure, which honestly needs to include communications infrastructure such as cell towers & satellites, internet, and even social media. But there I'm starting to get a little radical, and I don't know if the broader social conscience is ready for that leap quite yet. The key idea is that these things should be treated as public goods rather than commodities to be exploited for profit by individuals or business entities.
And yeah, there definitely needs to be an upper wealth limit. $100 million seems reasonable. You reach that, you win. Nobody needs more than that, so at any point if a person's net worth goes over it, every dollar over should be taxed at 100%.
I'd caution against applying wealth tax to anything under that limit though, because the thing about wealth is that it's a static amount unlike income, so a recurring wealth tax would actually tax the same wealth redundantly. So it's probably best to only apply it to any amount over the upper limit.
And lastly, but arguably most importantly, capital gains need to be taxed more fairly. Currently, in the US at least, the highest tax bracket for capital gains is taxed at a rate comparable to the income tax bracket of about a $40,000 salary. It's so bullshit.