One can imagine that the creation of a new country, in the same way as the United States, is possible; that there are no really detrimental show-stoppers to this possibility.

One can even imagine that the conditions are favorable for the support of at least the idea of a clean-slate country.

Let us at least imagine the potential possibilities and opportunities, if for only the sake of arts.


What things stand as significant obstacles?

What are the potential benefits?

A quote from Robert Zubrin's 'Entering Space', page 126:
"[America today] does not, infact, have a democracy. We have a semi-oligarchy with democratic influences. Ordinary citizens have little control over the government, as their elected representatives mostly do as they please or as their Beltway consultants suggest, and respond to the public only when massive pressure is evidenced. In addition, many government operations are secret, and the legal system is unfathomable. Of course, when the United States was founded, such indirect representation was the best approximation to democracy that was feasible. But today, with the availability of the Internet and other forms of instantaneous electronic communication, there is no fundamental technological reasone why the general public could not directly engage in voting on legislation, taxation, expenditures, and other issues, up to and including those of war and peace."

This is what clean-slate country should be about: Establishing a real democracy. We have the technology.

Also, I am an advocate of a single-tax system, possibly land tax. More importantly, I believe that the tax payer should have more say in where his tax dollars end up.

I dont' know about a democracy. True Democracy is as worse as communism. A republic is the answer though.

About the possibilites for a new nation, how about we colonize Mars or even terraform the Moon? And I know this one will sound crazy, but in the future Antarctica will probably be colonized.

I'm thinking more of Western Australia. I'll answer why soon in another thread. However, even if a clean-slate society is never created, I'd like to see that many of the ideas that relate to it are influencial to current society. Although I personally would like to see the creation of a clean-slate society, I think the idea has a lot of value as a theoretical concept alone.

I'm not sure you can say true democracy is as bad as communism. I think both communism and democracy haven't yet existed in their 'pure' forms. Comparing established models with all their impurities and flaws isn't really comparing apples with apples.

Here in New Zealand, where we have a very good example of a republic, I'm unimpressed with the amount of political jibber-jabber that goes on to the detriment of attaining real results. However, I must admit that I lack a fair amount of knowledge in this area. Perhaps we could start our own wiki to define the pros and cons of various government models and the like?

For discussion, imagine this:

Every person has one vote. They may assign this vote to a representative, ANY representative. This would solve the situation of 50% +1 of the population electing someone that can claim to represent 100% of the population.

Representatives at the central government are NOT PAID. They may be paid by those whose proxies they hold, but they would recieve no money from the central cofers.

Any citizen may withdraw his/her proxy at any time. All of the back room deals and vote tradeing would dissapear when those who engage in the practice try to sell their 10,000 proxies end up with only their own vote to sell .

Votes cannot be decided only by a simple majority. A 3/4 majority should be needed in order to preserve the federal governments energy and funds for those things that are most widely seen as needs.

Every program, law and department shall have a "sunset" provision. Unless a shorter time is specified, this will be set at 5 years. Everything that the government does will come up for review and reauthorisation. This will work in a similar manner to how the "assault weapon ban" died in America.

To see it in "action" look at the novel "The Probability Broach" by L. Neil Smith.

Hey JFritchless, thanks for contributing.

I like what you describe. Something like this will help to achieve proper representation, which should be the goal of a real democracy.

You mention a book, but are there other websites out there which try to describe a more evolved democracy?

the probability broach is online in graphic form at bigheadpress.com

I like the idea of being able to withdraw your support of a candidate at any time. Perhaps some sort of trial / testing period can be held between the candidates to see who performs the best? And before the decisive vote is cast.