Free Thinking Friday!

Free Thinking Friday!

Zappy Friday!

So it looks like the one-fifth of government shut down for over a month is being re-opened today.

I just wanted to point out why the government has been shut down is fundamentally a problem with a two-vote system.

The U.S. Constitution is a crappy, flawed, and failed document. It is not a popular position to state this but it is our worst first attempt at nation governing.

A fundamental flaw of the U.S. Constitution is the party system is not addressed within the constitution. The diagram displays the systemic problem with a two party system: a two vote system cannot override a Presidential veto.

This system flaw happened in the very first session of Congress. Two parties formed immediately after ratification. The gridlock started immediately with fights over debt assumption and the US Bank. Jefferson resigned from Washington's cabinet due to party gridlock. Martha Washington resented Jefferson because of Jefferson's monarchist aspersions cast upon George Washington's party and hence Washington.

The originators of the U.S. Constitution could have resolved the two-vote dilemma with one easy amendment to the Constitution:

Party Amendment

1. Be it resolved that any and all votes cast in the House and Senate must be anonymous. It shall be a felony crime to ever expose anonymous votes.The Judicial branch shall oversee and implement anonymous voting.
2. Be it resolved that no party information shall be recorded or required for any federal election or federal record.    
3. Be it resolved that rules made by the House and Senate cannot acknowledge political parties in any way, shape, or form.

Make the votes anonymous in the House and Senate and we can reign in party politics.

Political parties can be allowed but they cannot have any federal acknowledgement.

The fact that we haven't addressed party maleficence in our system speaks volumes about how fundamentally flawed the constitution is. The amendment process cannot address flaws in the system itself because a corrupted system will never cede power afforded by corruption.

Our U.S. Constitution is crap and it always has been. The one metric that it arguably advances nation-stations is that it is superior to monarchy.

As a free thinker we often are thought of as only applying our critical free thinking skills to religion. This is not the case. Free thinkers apply critical thinking to everything. It is who we are.

A fundamental tenet of free thinking is that past success does not create a sacred system. Those governing us today adamantly support the spirit that our U.S. Constitution is sacred and above reproach. They do so because the subversion and corruption of the US Constitution is complete and any disturbance of that corruption is viewed as detrimental to their corrupt power.

Here is a free thinking question for you:

Is the U.S. a Democracy today?

No. Not even close.

Sometimes when people refer to the U.S. being a Democracy then the politically small-minded will point out that the U.S. is a Republic and not a Democracy. The distinction being that Democracy has no representatives but Republics do.

Representative democracy is Democracy by every country ever called a Democracy. That's why I call the people whining about us being a Republic and not a Democracy small-minded.

But these small-minded knee-biters do a have point: even one person, one vote representative Democracy as a definition of Democracy is insufficient. There is a much room for tyranny and oppression with such a simple definition of Democracy.

So how far down that rabbit hole of rights shall we go? Is our first amendment right also a requirement for defining Democracy?

Does Democracy require a system of checks and balances to mitigate the tyranny of corruption? Are the three co-equal branches also a requirement for defining Democracy?

My chosen profession is computer science. I bring this up because in our universe we have a field of study called Fuzzy Logic. Fuzzy Logic specifically addresses these kinds of classification questions like what is a Democracy?

In your very first fuzzy logic class the first example of explaining fuzzy logic is that of an apple. Hold an apple in your hand. You have an apple. Now, take a bite out of that apple. Is it still an apple? Sure. Take two bites. Three bites? When is the apple no longer an apple?

This is the same definitional problem with defining Democracy. Are the knee biters correct in that we need to be literal that direct Democracy is the only definition of Democracy and therefore we are a Republic?

Another way to look at this is to flip things over and define Democracy to be U.S. Democracy, or define Democracy to mean every word in the U.S. Constitution.

In other words, we define Democracy to mean the set of all the specific implementations like U.S. Democracy,  British Democracy, etc.

So let us rephrase our question:

• Is the U.S. a US Democracy today? 

Again, No.

Looking at the Two Vote diagram above we cannot be considered a US Democracy if the two-party system prevents overriding a Presidential veto as a matter of course.

This brings us back to Fuzzy Logic. How many bites out of the apple do we need to take before we no longer have an Apple? How many aspects of the US Constitution have to be subverted before we are no longer a US Democracy?

Well, I started it out with the Two Vote  system subverting the Presidential veto.

Here are a quick list of others:

1. The 2nd Amendment. Citizens are not allowed to own any and all arms the same as the federal government. 
2. Trial by jury. Some 95% of all prisoners held in the U.S. never had a trial. The founders would be rolling in their graves at this injustice.
3. Trial by jury. Some 99.9% of all civil suits never have a trial but end in arbitration. The founders would be rolling in their graves at this injustice.
4. Right to reasonable search and seizure. The Patriot Act afforded warrant-less wire tapping. 
5.  Right to due process. Civil forfeitures without a trial or even indictment of crime.
6. Signing statements. The President re-writes laws as implementation details. The American Bar Association testified to Congress in the mid-2000s that signing statements are not constitutional.

There are so many other bites taken out of our US Democracy apple. We no longer live in a US Democracy.

What we live in is a corrupted US Democracy. Words like kleptocracy, plutocracy, corporatacracy, oligarchy, and such are not needed. The US Democracy has been corrupted. What we have is tyranny and oppression of corruption. We might want to add another term to "corrupted US Democracy": intractable. We live in an intractably-corrupted US Democracy today. The word intractable signifies that the system cannot fix itself from within. The US Government cannot fix itself today. 

This use of intractable is important because a system that cannot fix itself has a tipping point of no return.  You'll hear tipping point failure talk when it comes to climate change today. Experts are claiming that we have twelve years to reverse man-made effects of climate change. Well, we are way past the tipping point of US Democracy corruption being reversed. The Party Amendment suggested above cannot be passed today because the system passed a tipping point in our past and is well beyond party corruption repair. This is illustrated with the Two Vote diagram. Neither of those two votes would vote to undermine party power.

What to do?


I'm the author of Irreni World Scale, a new form of government meant to replace nations with micro-modular governing organizations (MGOs). The window of time for nations is long past. We need to move beyond nations.

Why replace nations? Because as a free-thinker there is a long chain of corruption that supports the reasoning that nation states are intractably corrupt. That chain is too long to include in this essay.

I can give you some insight though. The fundamental principle for why nations are not viable is that absolute power corrupts absolutely and nation states fundamentally funnel power to the few, the representatives and the executives. This applies to corporations where absolute power corrupts the CEOs. Micro-modular governments address absolute corruption by vesting ultimate power in the modular governing organization where all larger governments created from the MGOs are subordinate.

Irreni World Scale cannot be done today because people today do not know how to govern via MGOs. Therefore we need every form of Democracy in existence today to maintain for at least two-hundred years while we shift the planet to micro-modular governing. This means that even though changes such as the Party Amendment above are only duct tape patches of corruption we still very much need them so as to contain corruption as best as possible, long enough so we can retool society for the future of MGOs.


Freethinkers unite!

Freedom!

Party On!

Let's get cracking!

Voluntarily Reject Demagoguery!

Politics as Science!

Demand Irreni World Scale!

Anti-theism is feminism!  

Think disruption!

Empathy for all!

Moral relativity: think it, breath it!

Prove it or lose it!

Conversations equal consensus! 

Welcome to the 21st century!

Scale your empathy, scale the world! 

Find your tribe!

Be sexy people!

The future is coming! 

Innovate at a rapid pace!

Slow speed ahead!

Well come! and well met!