Still don't care. As long as there is no government set apart from the representatives, I do not care. I have only one goal here - no self-selected group of joiners (who always like leaders) being able to hijack our polity simply by being the biggest show in town.
There's an old saw: "Don't care is made to care". The things you choose to ignore now are the ones that will bite your doubtless delectable arse a ways down the road. Unless you consider the possibilities inherent to such issues, you can't work out how to avoid them.
The rest is irrelevant. I expect associations, I want associations, I think they'll be critical to a leaderless polity.
And yet you think there's some formula by which you can prevent associations from evolving beyond being communities of interest?
We only have one country to fuck up. I ain't going to risk it on a dodgy premise.
Which is why you test your premises.
I'm going to look at how the real world works and design a bullet-proof jacket to protect the polity that we need to make sure we are all equal.
And in making a bullet-proof jacket, you'll also be making a straitjacket - one that demarcates with it's inception what is or isn't acceptable (even if you have mechanisms to allow "street level representatives" to amend that starting point. One of the rather obvious things that history shows us is that political systems are creatures of slow evolution - open your system strait-jacketed, and it will only change slowly, outwith revolution.
So, are you prepared to accept the label of "oppressor"?
Possibly because I have a sleep disorder which makes people think I'm a lazy arse who wanders into the office whenever she feels like it and rarely even knows what day it is. I know what it is like to work your guts out and still be accused of skiving. It's ruined the last 18 years of my life in ways that I am only just coming to terms with. It's the reason I turned into a lunatic on this very thread, because some people hate me for not being normal.
That still doesn't tell me why ignorant assumptions bother you. I've been overweight for the last 20+ years of my life because my various disabilities preclude engaging in a meaningful amount of exercise without crippling myself (and ending up bedbound for weeks on end), and I've consequently had two decades of ignorant assumptions about me being fat, lazy and (because of my thick south London accent) stupid, resulting in much the same attitudes shown to me as to you, even though I consistently (when still working) turned out more and better quality work than my peers.
I don't think you have any idea how real people behave in a non-utopian world...
Me personally, or do you mean "you" as in "people in general"?
If the former, I've lived most of my life in social housing, on council estates, and worked in jobs that for three-quarters of my working life saw me working alongside people of my own social class. I'm well acquainted on a personal level with how "real people" behave.
...which is why I'm checking the context before I decide what will work in it.
Surely you mean "what
might work"?
After all, nothing is certain. If one doesn't know how "real people behave", one will instead make assumptions that might result in, shall we say, cockups?
So we are to be forced to work then?
Or not.
No, we're not to be "forced to work". I'm saying that the majority of people, in a social situation requiring that the individual contribute a certain amount of effort, as long as that person's basic needs are met, they will exert a minimum level of effort to fulfill their obligation. Some will exert themselves further than that minimum level.
No one can tell me how we live in a world without money when the parasites will always be with us.
It's something mentioned every time we have a thread about state welfare/benefits: You acknowledge that parasites will always be with us, and you carry on regardless. Not adopting a system because it is exploitable by a minority means you'd never change anything, because all systems, however well-designed, are fallible.
I quantify uncertainty for a living.
Within closed or semi-closed systems though, yes?
I have an infinite number of people to experiment on, and the ethical issues are huge. But you have only one country, and I'd say that's a pretty big ethical issue too.
If you want me to plump for an answer, I will need convincing evidence that it is the right one first.
I don't want you to plump for an answer, I want you to be sure in yourself that you've explored the ramifications of your proposed system fully before deciding it's what you want/what you believe your country requires, and to consider how you'd "sell" your system to a jaded electorate without them thinking "sod that".
Also, I need to ask: With your system, how do you manage trade in essential goods, or are you proposing an autarky?
