I've been thinking of the best society, a society that will benefit humanity for generations to come. I believe the currently proposed forms of society have issues that we see a lot and are not easily buffered out. For example:
- Capitalism is great for explosive expansion and technological advancement but it does this indirectly. It promises those who can advance products chosen by the masses a reward in the form of capital, but this indirection is what leads to loop-holes and corruption by simply advancing capital through any means necessary (such as forcefully). It also creates what's akin to a weighted democracy, where every dollar becomes a vote and those with the most dollars are able to reform the society to make sure they stay above the rest, leading a very large vector for corruption.
- Communism creates equality through shared distribution and a value of community but in order to create such a society a vast amount of power is required to be placed in a relatively small set of hands. Crafting a communist society with the correct logistics and organisation requires a large centralisation of power which creates a large vector for corruption that can be attacked, many communist countries become totalitarian for this very reason.
- Democracy is great at fighting off corruption by giving everyone a chance to vote but intelligence and ability is represented as a bell curve and democracy necessarily limits humanities potential by placing the power in the average person and not the exceptional person. With the very manipulative psychology of humanity as well, we can create vectors of corruption through charisma as opposed to logic.
All of these systems have something in common that causes them to fail and be sub-par, corruption and the limitations of human bias and psychology itself. The greatest system is one that is driven by objective data, measured by many sources and free of corruption and led by the people who can most drive and interpret this data. A technocratic society. Here's how we could do that.
The Corruption Problem:
Any society that requires some kind of oligarchy rule will have a significant vector of corruption that must be addressed in order for a society to succeed. Corruption in itself is difficult to define, but in this article I define it as the means in which a small group of people can knowingly impact a large group of peoples lives against their ultimate interests for self-serving reasons. A dictator is corrupt if he works for his own self interest at the expense of the people around him, but a dictator is not corrupt if he works entirely for the benefit of those people around him. Importantly corruption is different to incompetence, where someone with good intentions may actively harm a larger group of people. Our theory here is the technocratic aspect of this society (talked about later) will mitigate the impact or risk of incompetence. No here we must talk about corruption and how to avoid small amount of people even with the greatest echelons of power changing, damaging and warping society to their self interests.
The answer lies in an anti-corruption body, I call the corruptum. The corruptum has ultimate power in the society, can imprison people of other departments no matter their level of power and can request documents even of the highest secrecy and intelligence. But creating such an organisation doesn't cure the corruption problem, it simply moves it to the corruptum itself, if we have a body to weed out corruption that has ultimate power what's to stop this organisation itself being corrupt? The problem is at least easier solved in the corruptum because we can design a department who attempts not to be efficient but instead to be correct and secure in fighting corruption.
Corruption is mitigated through multiple ways, increasing the number of people required to accept the corruption, distribution of power to avoid centralisation and most importantly of all, a level of conflict. Conflict is the ultimate battle against corruption, corruption relies on the innate behaviour for humans to be self-serving and not cooperative but this is also the essence of conflict, to have two individuals with different self-serving ideals. Thus creating a department that doesn't shy away from conflict but instead thrives on conflict, this is important in creating our corruption-free corruptum because instead of trying to make people less likely to be self-serving we instead capitalise on the self-serving nature of humans.
The corruptum is split into multiple cells of equal authority, I'd anticipate at least 16 cells with a max around 100. There is no central authority within the corruptum, each cell acts with equal and absolute authority. Each cell is divided into two equal parts, the first part is responsible for seeking out corruption in all the other departments of the society (talked about later), the second part is responsible for seeking out corruption in other cells of the corruptum. There is no zoning or restriction, each cell is capable of investigating any other cell or department regardless of region. Any action the corruptum seeks to do that would require the arrest of a person or confiscation of documents must be approved by two other corruptum cells (randomly chosen and different every time). The number will be increased for the highest levels of authority to 6 randomly chosen cells (and the agreement must be unanimous). Any corruptum cell that discovers corruption will be financially rewarded, any corruptum cell that discovers corruption within another corruptum cell will be even more financially rewarded.
Why should this system work? Each cell works independently of all the other cells and is actively rewarded and encouraged to work AGAINST the other cells. Any cell seen violating the rules will immediately be dog-piled by the other cells for their financial reward, any cell that does this unnecessarily or entirely for the financial means will also be dog-piled by other cells. The essence is that this department will have an incredible amount of churn and conflict within itself, something to be avoided generally but here is encouraged to weed out the ability for corruption to manifest itself. What this creates is a department that is incredibly inefficient but necessarily so, the splitting of the cell into two different parts helps to mitigate the inefficiency when dealing with other departments. But the active nature of the corruptum is one of necessary and rewarded hostility towards everyone and everything, where self-serving philosophy is rewarded and people are pitted against each other. Importantly the corruptum does not have the ability to change law, only to arrest individuals for what they see as corruption. In order to maintain a corruption free corruptum we keep the hostility between the corruptum cells using self-serving financial reward. Spreading out the corruptum cells and fostering a culture of hostility between cells should also help protect mass-cell cooperation.
The Assembly:
With the corruptum in place to mitigate corruption within the society we need to now define the other departments and importantly define who actually makes the laws. This is done in the assembly, an amalgamation of different departments across society that all vote on different measures. Each department has an assigned number of votes which are unequal based on department, motions are passed by the number of votes altogether in the assembly unless otherwise specified.
The assembly (and corruptum) is guided by a constitution that cannot be changed unless a referendum is proposed. In order for a referendum to go through there must be a vote where a majority of the Scientia, the Socialite (talked about later) and the Corruptum agree to pass the vote. So what are the departments?
The Scientia:
The Scientia is the largest department and controls the largest amount of votes in the assembly. They are the technocratic side of our society and represent study, investigation and analysis of scientific results in order to make governed decisions on the society. Central to the scientia's organisation is what is known as The Grand Plan, a wide ranging, transparent, open and cited justification for the laws being pushed by the Scientia. More on this later.
The Scientia is headed by Scientia representatives, considered by their peers as the most expert in their field. They are the representatives in the assembly and have a limited term limit (example, 6 years). They are the ones that vote in the assembly and debate the different results and recommendations seen in the grand plan. They are closely watched by the corruptum as is all of the Scientia department.
What drives all of the Scientia's decisions is The Grand Plan, a document or series of documents open to the public that consolidates the accumulative results of scientific studies across many different disciplines and many different organisation. Anyone can submit results to The Grand Plan and Curators (employees of Scientia) decide which studies have a level of rigor to be accepted in The Grand Plan. A single curator is given to a proposed study, this curator then makes a judgement on the study. This judgement is sent to two other (randomly chosen) curators who either agree or disagree on the judgement, if both curators agree the judgement passes, if any curator disagrees the study is given to another curator and the process repeats. When a judgement is passed all three curators must send their results and reasoning to the corruptum, this is then given to a random corruptum cell who may either choose to accept the judgement or ponder for further investigation. If pondered for further investigation it is sent to two other corruptum cells who can either let the investigation pass or can accuse of corruption which follows the normal procedure.
Importantly The Grand Plan is seen as a massive meta-study as opposed to a truth. This means that The Grand Plan can have two studies submitted to it that contradict each other. This is fine, it is up to the Scientia department to debate the conflicting results and decide, via a democratic process within the Scientia, which result should be taken or whether more data is needed to make a judgement. Even if it is decided that one study holds more weight than another study, the conflicting study must still be within The Grand Plan for transparency sake and in case future studies back up the conflicting studies claim. At the end of it all for every topic an ultimate judgement must be made that gets revised when any new study on that topic is added, the ultimate judgement is a recommendation of law that supports the judgements findings. This might be things such as supporting green infrastructure, or putting more budget in a field of study, or even sociological things.
The Socialite:
Not all things can have data generated about them, a society should also be happy and healthy and feel there is a level of freedom within the society, this is where the socialite comes in. The Socialite is the democratic arm of the society and acts as the second largest department in the assembly (with strictly less votes than the Scientia). The Socialite acts in a very similar way as our current democratic society with a little less power and a few other changes.
For one the socialite must always have 5 political parties running in any election, no external money is given to any political party and their budget for voting is fixed and decided by the assembly. Political parties are chosen via a general preliminary election in which personal money can be used but the sources must be explicitly stated. The 5 political parties that are chosen must be chosen with a diverse set of political beliefs, this is verified by the Corruptum who must decide if the political parties are diverse enough. Alliances between political parties in the general election is strictly forbidden, but agreements on policy are ok. Beyond this the democratic system within the socialite works similar to a normal commonwealth, with a congress, house of representatives and a prime minister.
Within the assembly as a whole it will be generally accepted that any decision the socialite comes up with that does not conflict with The Grand Plan should be passed. This is enforced by the Scientia voting on recommendations made by The Grand Plan, recommendations made outside of The Grand Plan can't be effectively voted towards by the Scientia so will generally be deferred to the Socialite. If the socialite decides to vote for something within The Grand Plan then it is put up to a wider assembly vote. In general a one-to-one head of the Scientia vs the Socialite should favour the Scientia, but other departments (of much smaller vote than both the Scientia and the Socialite) may weigh in towards the socialites favour. As well each member of the Scientia and Socialite have their own vote so it is possible for a minority of the Scientia to vote against the majority, and will be generally expected to be the same for the Socialite as well. Thus it is possible that a Socialite that agrees on a topic and a Scientia that is conflicted will favour the Socialite. Basically the Scientia should control about 46% of the vote, while the Socialite should control around 42% of the vote with the remaining 12% delegated to various other minor departments.
Minor Departments:
I have not finished finalizing the minor departments, but minor departments so far include the Militarium, which controls the military and acts for military affairs. The Economus which is a representative of free businesses and so forth. In general this is all I have constructed so far.
