The Ideal Government

DISCLAIMER: I honestly don’t know much about different systems of government. I know only people and a bit of history, is all.

I saw another article today in which Stephen Hawking reiterated his opinion that humanity likely has less than 1000 years to live before we wipe ourselves out or are otherwise extinct. Climate change, nuclear winter, dangerous A.I., bacterial resistances, etc. The ones that I want to focus on are those that should be the easiest to combat: Nukes and climate change.

These are purely man-made problems. Climate change is a problem now because our leaders are engaged in petty party-loyalty. It was brought into the mainstream light by a democrat and thus, republicans can’t support it or even admit they believe it for fear it will make them look weak. It’s the pettiest of pride struggles in lieu of rationalism.

The nuclear winter option is more straight-forward: People are stupid. The destructive capability of humanity increasingly grows, as does tempers and even more petty pride struggle. They don’t realize that their borders are arbitrary. They mean something only in our minds because we’ve been told that they do - no other reason. Borders don’t matter. Nations don’t matter. The human race matters. Every war is a civil war to my eyes. In that vein, I would like to propose a social structure and government that might have a better chance at survival than the one we’ve currently got. Our democracy that we so highly value is what I would call an ethical system in theory, but not an efficient one. Plato thought that democracy was a poor idea simply because it allowed someone with no knowledge of government to have an equal say in how to run it as someone who was an expert. It’s hard to argue the logic that decisions need to be made by those who understand what those decisions mean. I’ve heard it likened to putting control of a ship in the 1600’s into the hands of all those on the ship, some of whom were just along for the ride and had no knowledge of seafaring. Some who only knew the basics but mostly just swabbed floors. And a few who truly knew what they were talking about. If you made a mistake in those days it could easily spell catastrophe, eventually leading to the sinking of your ship and death. Why is not the captain or those who know how to run a ship in charge of decisions that impact the survival of the ship? More accurate to the metaphor, why are those who have no idea what knowledge a captain should have or what they do choosing who the captain is? Of course, the failure of this metaphor is the implication that government should be controlled by a very small amount of powerful individuals - an oligarchy. This obviously won’t do either. There is too much room for one to grow power hungry. I submit that the most stable government would remain that of democracy, but requiring a certain amount of knowledge with how government works in order to vote. The government would proportionally have more power than they do now, which is why I also want to increase the transparency of government in every aspect and make it far easier to impeach or otherwise disrupt the parts of government the people are unsatisfied with. Going back to the metaphor, I want only the true sailors - not travelers, stowaways, or the otherwise unknowledgable - voting on who the most competent captain would be (the captain being all leaders of government, not only president). The captain would then make the important decisions, but let the crew know exactly what they were doing. The captain would know that if their crew didn’t approve, they could easily mutiny and choose a new leader. This would serve as incentive for him to stay in line and truly serve the people. It would also be a government focused on evidence. Neil Tyson's proposal of "Rationalia" would fit me perfectly (I recommend looking that one up). The most common form of human failure is through emotion, so we should seek to exclude it in every instance of policy making that we can and rely instead on evidence. Allowing assault rifles in the populace is a good thing? How so? It saves more lives than it costs? Prove it. Banning all guns from the populace would save more lives than it costs? Provide evidence. All abortion is murder? Prove it without appealing to emotion or invoking religion. Vaccines cause autism, GMO’s are dangerous, climate change is a hoax, NASA isn’t worth their budget, abstinence-only sex-ed is the best option, “whites” are better than “blacks”, men are better than women, all Muslims are terrorists, “Happy holidays” is an attack on your religion and should be outlawed? Prove it. Go ahead and fucking try. We should remain a nation with freedom of religion, but actually put into practice separation of church and state. If one holds a belief solely because of a religion and not evidence, that belief is excluded from consideration of the state. Nobody on earth would actively hate gay people if religion didn’t exist. They might still be judgemental and call those people ‘strange’ or whatever, but the idea that what they do is ‘offensive’ to you is inherently inane, silly, idiotic, childish, and several other adjectives. It wouldn’t enter people’s heads. The only reason people embrace the hate now is because hating other people make them feel better in the same way schadenfreude does and they perceive that religion allows and promotes this hate (because much of the time, they do). Gay marriage is a hot topic wholly and completely because of nothing but religious texts, and thus, government has no justified jurisdiction. As far as the rest of of religious freedom, any religion is free to practice their religion and the tenets thereof unless those tenets involve the freedom of another. The moment your religion seeks to oppress others is the moment it loses its authority. This includes things like legalizing gay marriage in the first place but also not allowing one to refuse giving out the marriage license due to ‘conflicting religious beliefs’. You are free to work elsewhere if you cannot perform your duty. This is especially true of a job given to you by the state, though it applies as well to the bakers who discriminate against gay couples. Like it or not, refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple is discrimination. If you don’t believe that, reflect on this fact: The bible endorses slavery. Many won’t believe me but I urge those people to try and prove me wrong. Whatever you want to believe, this was a major reason cited by the South as to why they were justified in owning slaves - a view which was the primary cause of the civil war. The bible never says ‘do not serve blacks’ and neither does it say ‘do not serve gays’. It doesn't even mention (to my knowledge), the color of slaves skin. It is thought that non-black slaves were typical in that era, yet the South claimed that the words in the bible gave them leave to own black slaves. Do you think it would be justified if in the 50’s, a bus driver refused to even allow Rosa Parks on the bus and cited ‘conflicting religious reasons’ as to why? Even if he's kind and courteous about his view? Of course not. What would you say to that bus driver? “Your beliefs on the subject are irrelevant. You have a job to do and you’re not doing it in favor of discrimination. End of story. gtfo.” My thoughts: Allow only those knowledgeable enough about politics and issues to vote on the leaders of our country. Allow those leaders enough power to make the changes that need to be made but also make them extremely easy to topple by vote of the people - not by those currently in power. Allow policy to be formed only by logic and evidence, not emotion. Allow religion to freely exist only to the point where it starts to seek involuntary control or harm of those around it.

#government #rationalia #hawking #democracy #evidence