All blog posts

Before we can decide how to educate, we must decide what to educate.
I suggest that the two most important things to educate a person with are: character and social responsibility, they must be mandatory. I would further suggest that the following very influential subjects should be mandatory: economics, science, technology, literacy, mathematics and philosophy. Politics and religion should be optional.
Character. Good character is exemplified by striving for ones best, whatever the circumstances. Good character traits include: fairness, tolerance, forbearance, honesty, compassion, humility, industry, generosity, empathy.
Social Responsibility. Every person is a member of society and benefits from it, so they have a responsibility to society. Rights need to be earned with acceptable behaviour and removed for unacceptable behaviour, with freedom of location, finance, liberty and life as the last four rights to be removed. It is important that once rights are removed they may be earned again and that the less those rights are respected in others and oneself, the more they are removed.

There should be multiple separate appointments groups, which select an appointee from volunteer candidates for a position. The appointment groups only have the remit to appoint the most appropriate candidate. Appointment criteria: minimum age, practical experience and recognised expertise in the field they are volunteering to work in, maturity and stability of attitude and communication skills, not related in any way to anyone else in the section of government they will be working in, appointed for a fixed term, not appointed for more than two successive terms.
There should also be multiple separate monitoring and remediation groups which check the continued appropriateness of appointees and their behaviour. The monitoring and remediation groups have a remit concerning general procedures and behaviour. Their influence ranges only from advisory through to dismissal.
By separating appointments from monitoring and remediation we break a possible link between an appointee and interested parties in an appointment group. By having multiple of each group, problems with any one group can be overridden by a majority system among the other groups.

The most important types of services a government should provide are: water, food, shelter, education, energy, money, transport, defence, social security, health, child care, retired care, law, policing, paid work, refuse disposal, communication.
What balance of private and public sector provision should be made and should it vary according to the type of service?

Countries who lack defence will be attacked.
No country can deter and survive attack on their own; alliances must be formed.
An alliance must have a single defence command structure controlled by a committee of all members that is independent of any one of its members.
An alliance should not interfere in the internal affairs of any country.
Alliance membership should be available to all countries.
Refusal to act according to alliance decisions results in expulsion.
Alliance membership can not be offered to countries at war or in immanent war situations.
An alliance will act as arbitrator in disputes over resources.
Significant advantage in defence comes from superior information and weapons.
Attack is never necessary for defence.
A public defence force is better than a mercenary defence force.

I tentatively propose that the universal currency to be the natural numbers in a range. They are unique, traceable, easily manipulated, infinitely durable, almost free to make and have a supply limited only by the selected range. These characteristics prevent them from being forged or stolen and highlight when extra currency is being created by unscrupulous governments.

Three aspects of law are sufficiently distinct, complex and independent to warrant their own truncated pyramid structures and specialists: law creation, law enforcement, law policing. Separation of law creation ensures laws can’t be created lightly and arbitrarily. However, mechanisms must exists for communication between each structure. Policing should be further divided into distinct structures for largely non-overlapping areas of specialisation e.g. environmental, transport, fraud, property and social crimes.
Regarding law enforcement, many governments use an adversarial system with two sides, the law and those accused of contravening the law. This system encourages obfuscation of the truth and distortion of interpretation, which is not advantageous. An inquisitorial approach would be more productive, where everyone involved in the process works toward the common goal of obtaining an objective understanding. Although a defendant my not be cooperative they should receive no support to be so and rather encouraged to be honest with both credit for honesty and extra punishment for dishonesty.
Assets arrived at dishonestly should always be removed. If assets have no apparent basis in being obtained legally then some proportion of them should be seized according to the best estimate of what proportion was obtained illegally.
While someone is detained they must pay for their detention or work during and after to pay for it.

For the broadest structure design currently I favour multiple truncated pyramids as opposed to the traditional single pyramid.
Pyramidal structure provides the standard manager – managed relationship, which enables delegation, specialisation and control. Unfortunately concentrating power at the top also enables corruption. Truncating the pyramid provides multiple people at the top level of equal power, thus diluting power and the chance for corruption.
By distributing the functions of the government into multiple truncated pyramids of distinct independent functionality we further fracture power. For example, creation of law may be exercised separately from all other distinct areas such as law enforcement, transport, defence, health, energy, appointments, corruption monitoring.