Discussion about Constitution

Gilgamensch · July 30, 2003, 11:07

I opened this thread that we can start some brainstorming about the constitution (connie).

It is mainly to collect ideas from everyone hear about the government, how we shall run it, which kind of elections, how often and so on.

For example:

President: Responsible for running the game. (elected once per month)

Minister of Defence: Responsible for ship-creation and distribution.
Minister of Internal Affairs: Responsible for Building Queues and troop transports.
Minister of External Affairs: Responsible for diplomacy, trade spying

All of them also elected once per month.

A Court to oversee election and any issues in general. (not sure how many members though).

Harry Seldon · July 30, 2003, 11:17

Three members for court to avoid any favoritism. Should we have a finance minister as well? Someone to control interest rates, spending principles, and budgeting/building reserves?

Whoha · July 30, 2003, 11:33

Viceroys :P

Internal Affairs could handle tax rates,spending,infrastructure,etc.

Defense can handle Ship designs(and requests to build ships),exploration,war.

Can't think of anything else to tack onto External Affairs, diplomacy covers a great deal of ground as does spying, counter spying,sabotage,etc. The defense ministry and External Affairs could of course request technology research efforts, but should Internal Affairs direct those, or should the President?

so we have 3 departments apart from the court and President, and each department has people in it.

Gilgamensch · July 30, 2003, 11:59

Another thing (before I forget),

shall we play turnthreads or online discussion while playing?

Research........ I completly forgotten, the most important one...... I think we could either leave for the President or Internal Affairs....

Harry Seldon · July 30, 2003, 12:13

Research is important enough to warrant its own department but isn't that something we'd want to vote on as a group or would we want to allow our elected officials to decide this on their own?

Gilgamensch · July 30, 2003, 12:16

It will be decided upon our conny, so if we say, we leave it to the official so it be...... if we say it has to be voted upon, so it be.......

It is a DG, so it is us deciding.

But I don't see it necessary to have it's own department, we might be running out of people...........

GhengisFarb™ · July 30, 2003, 17:18

I think the Minister of Defense should be in charge of the military and their movement but NOT ship design. Lets have the citizens create the ship designs like defense contractors.

Whoha · July 30, 2003, 17:41

requests for ship classes then

Harry Seldon · July 30, 2003, 23:54

I like having the elected officials deciding on issues when possible, else why elect them in the first place?

Gilgamensch · July 31, 2003, 05:46

Only as an idea:

The MoD (Minister of Denfence) is responsible about the design, but has to poll the citizens about it, meaning starting a thread, asking for suggestions or already placing suggestions and then with a poll we 'verify' the design.

Harry Seldon · July 31, 2003, 10:01

If we did that, how would defense contractors come into play? MoD would poll the contractors then the populace votes between the top two or three designs?

Gilgamensch · August 1, 2003, 05:09

Would be a possible idea.

the next posts are some ideas for our DG.

Gilgamensch · August 1, 2003, 05:12

I think we should have something like the following as a pre-emble:

Article I: Bill of Rights

1. Any person who is registered to participate in this Democracy Game in the MoO2 Democracy Game is considered a Citizen. No person shall be denied the right to become a Citizen.

2. No Citizen shall ever be in any poll denied the right to vote and to keep this vote private. No Citizen shall ever be forced to vote in any poll.

3. Freedom of speech and the right to associate into any form of organization shall not be denied unless it violates Apolyton rules.

4. No citizen may be punished in any way without the consent of the Court. Still no one shall be banned permanently from participating in the Democracy Game, excluding those who are permanently banned from Apolyton. Note that people may still be banned for any amount of time, as long as it is not permanent.

5. The government may not knowingly hide information or give false information to the people. Therefore all citizens shall have access to the saved games. However, no Citizen shall ever 'play ahead'.

Remarks:
Registration: How shall we do it? Just a thread every month/permanent where citizens have to register?

Gilgamensch · August 1, 2003, 05:23

Officials:
We need for sure the Pres.

A MoD (Minister of Defence)
A MoIA (Minister of Internal Affairs)
A MoEA (Minister of Externel Affairs)
A Judge (or three judges?)

MoD:

responsible for ship movement
request's new designs for ships

MoIA:

tax-rate
spending for rush buy
build-queues
moving of farmers/workers/scientist

MoEA:

Diplomacy
Espionage
Sabotage
spending of money for deals

President:

playing the game
Science (to be polled about and decided by the citizens)
final approval of all money-spending
Heros

Judge(s):

overlooking everything.

Harry Seldon · August 1, 2003, 10:00

Judges should be available to settle disputes between citizens. For registration, we should keep a thread at first. If there's enough interest in playing then we can lobby for either a civ group or a private forum. We may be able to combine the MOIA and MOEA at first until we see how much management is involved and how many people are going to participate.

Gilgamensch · August 1, 2003, 10:41

How many judges you think we should have?

1
2
3
4
5

Can a judge be also Minister/President?

Whoha · August 1, 2003, 10:45

What kind of disputes are we talking about?

Gilgamensch · August 1, 2003, 11:28

Normally for a DG, you have a connie. In case this has been violated or citizens think that a minister isn't doing a job something like that...............

Harry Seldon · August 1, 2003, 11:56

I think three is a good number; no ties and not so many people involve. I don't think Ministers should be allowed to become judges while they're still in office as some of the disagreements will probably concern them directly.

We should probably come up with a way to control how challenges to leadership are raised. They're obviously elected to do a job but when should we be able to challenge their authority or should we be able to? I'm leaning towards two votes of no confidence leads to new elections but that may be more trouble than it's worth. I'd hate for someone to get recalled because a political party had a membership drive and now has a majority.

Old n Slow · August 1, 2003, 14:55

I think that we should have just the three -- Pres, MoD & MoIA. The Defense and External Affairs are essentially combined -- (I find that most of my game time is on the internal affair decisions.) External affairs are occasionally performed, and if by chance we choose to be repulsive, then this job has less importance.

Pres plays the game, call for decisions, has the responsibility to act if there is a call for an instant choice. I recommend 5 turns per decision bloc, scheduled twice per week, four weeks to the month.

MoD calls for the citizenry to advise on ship design, calls for the citizenry to advise on the strategic placement and mix of military forces, and calls for the citizenry to advise on the military and external recommendations to the Pres.

MoIA calls for the citizenry to advise on the allocation of use of population, calls for the citizenry to advise on the priority of scientific research, and calls for the citizenry to advise on the over all use of resources.

The ministers then make their distilled recommendations to the Pres via a public notice. The Pres makes the move. Clearly during the move some opportunities may arise -- ie with favorable negotiations, a trade of techs is suggested -- what if the alien civ has come up with something new (and valuable) AND offers it? Deferrable decisions (such as hiring a leader) can be brought forward to the citizenry, but an available tech (on their list) might not have thought of and the opportunity may slip by, so the Pres may have to make the call.

Judges -- I don’t think that we’ll need them, but we may want to reserve the right for citizens to be called to serve (like a jury.) Perhaps if any three citizens have a sufficient beef, they can all post their beef, then set up a poll requesting judicial action. If a majority of the citizens are in favor of judicial action then an election for three judges can be put into place. Rather than having standing judges (who might be less than impartial at the wrong time) we’ll simply reserve the power to the citizenry at large, who can choose to stepwise initial it.

So I think that three is the minimum. After the game gets going, and should there be sufficient players and interest, we could add governors by system/quadrants, thus easing the micro burdens of the MoIA. In a similar fashion, we may want to have more than one fleet & thus have one or two star admirals brought into flag service.

(Can you tell, I prefer less government to more government?)

Harry Seldon · August 1, 2003, 15:16

I like all that but still feel the need for judges. May be a better idea to only call them up when they're needed. What if as a game progresses ministers can petition for subordinate positions? If approved for a vote by the president, citizens could decide if they want an additional step in the bureacratic ladder. I'm not sure if it would work as an appointed position or as an elected one.

GhengisFarb™ · August 3, 2003, 12:21

President: Responsible for running the game settling disputes between the two ministers and all foreign diplomacy. (elected once per month) - all should be elected once a month.

Minister of Defense: Responsible ship/fleet movement, where they should be stationed, military plans and executions. Tells Minister of the Interior what troops, ships he needs to have built and where.

Minister of Interior: Responsible for Building Queues, research paths and finances. Takes orders from Minister of Defense for what units he wishes buts fits into build queues as he sees fit.

Ship designs, suggestions on game play, where we should build colony ships, etc are done by anyone. Ministers have the authority to appoint assistants if they need them within their area of authority.

Gilgamensch · August 4, 2003, 04:12

Quote:

Pres plays the game, call for decisions, has the responsibility to act if there is a call for an instant choice. I recommend 5 turns per decision bloc, scheduled twice per week, four weeks to the month.

Hard tp tell..................

Shall the pres play online or just using our results to play the game offline? Or just as he wishes?

I think that is also a interresting part as with being online, it wouldn't be left only to the Pres.............

Coming back to 'Justice':

Old n Slow had an interresting suggestion, but some remarks/questions:

Any citizen can start it?
What in case we feel somebody needs to be impeached (like doing a bad job)?
Shouldn't we have an 'administrator', who could deny a trial? (OK, could be biassed, but there we could leave the possibilty to overrule him with majority vote...............)

So it looks like we only want to have 3 official position (for the game):

President
MoD
MoA (Minister of Affairs)

Correct?

bakalov · August 4, 2003, 06:35

What abot a fleet admiral? His responsibility would be to commence the battles. Or this should be a president's duty?

Gilgamensch · August 4, 2003, 06:54

Let's first see how we get on, we can always 'create' more positions.............

At least my idea..............

vmxa1 · August 4, 2003, 13:35

If someone needs to be impeached, they will soon be playing on there own. Anyway how bad can it get? The game won't last forever.

Harry Seldon · August 4, 2003, 14:42

True enough.

Old n Slow · August 4, 2003, 15:41

I think that three positions are plenty to start -- that gives us a need for six nominees (& I only saw seven votes so far for the version use.) Let's start with the three required, but allow for more if warrented.

Gilgamensch · August 5, 2003, 05:49

Another question to throw in:

If deciding with polls, simple majority? How shall we count the votes? How about registration?

Don't really expect any problem, but................

Harry Seldon · August 5, 2003, 08:29

Majority rules.