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Copyright (C) 2005 Robert J. Chassell

This is a document about the political, constitutional changes needed
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Future political and constitutional changes
*******************************************

Copyright (C) 2005 Robert J. Chassell

This is a document about the political, constitutional changes needed
for success as a species on this planet.

     Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
     this entire document without royalty provided the copyright
     notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

     Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of
     this document into another language, except that this permission
     notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Free
     Software Foundation.


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1 The Petals of Cooperation
***************************

The title, `Petals of Cooperation', suggests a flower.  Perhaps the
blossom is figurative.  However, its petals offer us a natural
political remedy, with an outer circle of three conditions, a middle
ring of four criteria, and an inner envelope of five qualities.

The outer petals are the three conditions that enable a just and
sustainable society to succeed: _consent_, _freedom_, and _law_.  In
my imagination, these petals are a friendly red.

Consent implies both trust and legitimacy.  Freedom means both
`freedom from' and `freedom to'.  Law, from which everyone benefits,
not only the powerful, implies less corruption, more equality of
opportunity, and more protection, both from hostile people and from
dangers in the non-human environment.

The middle petals are the four general criteria through which a person
may begin to evaluate a political proposal: _protect_, _preserve_,
_prepare_, and _provide_.  These are a light, but not too light,
blue, like a clear summer sky.

The inner petals are the five qualities with which a citizen may
further evaluate a social recipe: _reason_, _rigor_, _reality_,
_responsibility_, and _honesty_.  These petals are a warm brown.

The center of the flower are the vital details, which when wrong, hurt
or kill the society.  The details are for a legitimate government to
decide.  I always visualize these as black, like the dot on a letter
*i*.

Consent is an outer petal.  It has veins which supply it with
nutrients and the growing leaf.  In less figurative language, consent
implies both trust and legitimacy.

Trust requires not only a mechanism for learning, as best anyone can,
truth about the world, but also a mechanism for judging those who
report truths.

Legitimacy not only reduces the cost of government, but enables
complex government to succeed.  Without legitimacy, a government can
only rule by policing everything, which reduces freedom and prevents
actions.

Because damage to the environment impacts vast regions, at times the
whole planet, and because of lowered transport and communications
costs and the consequent need for large scale and long distance
dispute settlement, government must expand, as it already has, beyond
the boundaries of the traditional nation states.  Moreover, it must
become legitimate, which it has not.

For such legitimacy, I suggest a three chamber government with many
restrictions on its powers, but none the less the ability to settle
critical disputes, mostly by bargaining, but when necessary by force.

As I said in `Choice and Constraint' (*note Goals:
(Choice-and-Constraint.info)Goals.),

     _Peaceful dispute resolution is the first goal of government.
     ... A second goal is justice.  ..._

Justice means the least undesirable  use of force.

Freedom is a second outer petal.  It is necessary because, as Douglass
C. North said(1), in _... a world of uncertainty, no one knows the
correct answer to the problems we confront ..._.  Moreover, freedom is
preferred because people want it.  Freedom means `freedom to'
undertake various actions, without however interfering with others'
`freedom from'.

An imbalance implies an injustice, and the possible need for force
although peaceful dispute resolution is much better.

The balance is delicate:  for example, the freedom of many individuals
to act independently may well lead them as a whole to interfere with
others' freedom from, even when none desire to hurt others.  The
classic example is car drivers who interfere with others' freedom from
traffic jams.

Another kind of problem concerns the freedom of organization to build
installations that waste less than smaller installations, but still
hurt others:  for example, coal burning plants that generate
electricity interfere with others' freedom from airborne poisons and
freedom from dangerous climate change.  Generally speaking one big
coal burning installation is less damaging than many small coal
burners, but nonetheless, it has a devastating impact

Law is the third outer petal.  It is necessary to enable people and
organizations to cooperate peacefully and to predict how others will
behave.

To *protect* is a middle petal.  The first necessity of any
government is to protect people from immediate attack; a second
immediate necessity is to protect people from a government.  This is
why legitimacy is so important.  Illegitimate governments must always
hurt their people.  (Illegitimate governments are sometimes accepted,
because people figure it is better to be hurt by local crooks and
thieves, `devils they know', than by foreigners, who are `devils they
do not know'.)

Who should be protected?  -- only the members of a single clan or
religion, or all humans in a small nation, or all humans on the
planet, or all sapient beings?  A `categorical' or `nominal' view
changes depending on which populations are to be protected (*note
Guttman Scales and the Structures of Social Life:
(Choice-and-Constraint.info)Scales Structures.).

Against what should people be protected?  Besides the obvious short
term dangers of war, both symmetric and asymmetric, of crime, of
tyrannical governments, and of other powerful organizations, what of
the long term dangers to the environment, what of material poverty,
what of spiritual poverty?

How to protect people?  Currently, most people on this planet live in
extralegal circumstances (*note Developing and Extralegal:
(Choice-and-Constraint.info)Developing Extralegal.).  That is to say,
people protect themselves by depending on family, clan, friends, and
crooks.  This succeeds locally, but not globally.  Rule by law is
necessary.

To *preserve* is the second middle petal.  A long term necessity of
any government is to sustain its people's economy and environment;
else they die.  This means to sustain the planet.

To *prepare* is the third middle petal.  What should the next
generation of Chinese `prepare'?  Should they prepare cities that are
designed primarily for cars?  Regardless of energy sources, cars take
up much space when being driven.  Or should they design cities for
trains or buses that follow specific routes?  This action implies
linear cities; cities laid out along the lines followed by train or
bus routes.  Is there time for that?  Or should we hope for yet a
different kind of transport?  For example, should we hope for hanging
cable cars can change from one line to another?  (This is technically
feasible, but such cars cannot carry weight like a railroad.)  Should
we hope for hanging cable cars that can steer themselves to various
destinations and that can be made small, able to carry no more than
four people?

To *provide* is the fourth middle petal.  What should we, as a
country or planet, `provide'?  As a practical matter, most wish to
emulate the rich.  What the rich have now becomes the goal of people
in a productive society.  Consequently, if the rich seek cars, then
most will seek cars; if rich seek private jets, then when their
society becomes rich enough, most will seek personal air transport, or
air cars.

The control over what we `provide' can be done with taxes, presuming a
rule of law and not too much corruption.  Rather than offer unscalable
dreams for most people, the rich should be encouraged to seek
alternatives that cause less damaging environmental impact.  For
example rather than hope that billions of humans can learn to live in
traffic jams, we had better encourage the rich to desire `private rail
cars' again, or `rented, computer controlled cars'.  The numbers of
this kind of vehicle can scale and eventually become available to
every one, regardless of continent.

Voice and video communications mean that slower travel, such as
dirigible or train, could become acceptable to the rich.  But then,
also, for others, vacations must be longer; or some other way for
people to spend lots of time not at their work and not at their
vacation destination.

Or would high density, low impact energy sources, such as small sized
but powerful hydrogen fusion devices enable fast transport, such as by
suborbital rocket, without having too much impact on the planet?

A major political issue is that damaging actions be prevented, but
that the polity permit and provide for the unknown.

This is where the inner petals become important:  reason, rigor,
reality, responsibility, and honesty.

For example, the numbers of hot air balloons do not scale.  They are
noisy and clutter the sky.  But a few are fine:  they are fun both to
ride and to watch.  And an occasional large event is entertaining.

So the current policy in the US with regard to hot air balloons is
reasonable.

The current policy with regard to private cars is not.  The numbers of
cars fail to scale; yet, for good reason, people want cars.  Some
other equally convenient transport method is necessary, one that works
in bad weather, unlike bicycles, and that works with the young, old,
and the injured, unlike contemporary cars.

In empty lands, we can freshly design cities, suburbs, and rural areas
for different modes of travel.  But few lands are empty.  Cities,
suburbs, and rural areas already exist.

Political deals must reasonably meet the situation.  Rural areas, for
example, may always need automobiles.  A political analysis must be
rigorous, otherwise, important elements will be forgot, elements that
endanger the deal.  Proposals must match reality; in an irreal world,
people will irreversibly die.  Thus, any settlement must consider
water over the long term, not merely to determine whether aquifers
will be depleted or poisoned, but also whether its use will change
climate.

Thus, political discussions must be both responsible and honest.  The
people who undertake them need not be; their temperament is not
relevant.  But their actions are.

Details: the center of our flower.  I am not going to discuss details
since their resolution is the task of legislatures.  Legislatures must
specify and decide on important details, and determine which are
unimportant and would be left to civil servants and courts.

Together, all these conditions, criteria, and qualities mean to
nurture the *true*, the *good*, and the *beautiful* (in that order,
not the more usual order).

Discovering the `true' means to figure out `reality'.  Such a search
is practiced intensely by only a few.  Specifically, for robust
communications across cultures (*note What is Science?:
(Choice-and-Constraint.info)Science.), three methods generate
internal experience in another listener.  These methods are strong,
since internal experiences are undeniable.

Instead, as a practical matter, a matter of everyday convenience, most
people accept as true those statements whose tellers they trust.
That is why we must develop more mechanisms for determining trust.

The `good' means to figure out a good way for an individual, family,
and society to live.  How to protect, sustain, and nurture.

In each of our different societies, in the United States or in China,
the `good' means figuring out what makes for the best city transport
- cars or something else - and the geographic layout that such
figuring implies.  Since it takes decades to change patterns of
building and behavior, perhaps the US needs to come to depend on
computer controlled small cars, since old people become dangerous
drivers and since computer controlled vehicles will take up less
space.  Among other consequences, this either implies US improvements
in its local computer programming or yet more US dependence on foreign
computer programming.

The `beautiful' means to figure out the social parts of life and the
physical parts that individuals and communities seek, both built and
natural.

---------- Footnotes ----------

(1) `Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance',
Douglass C. North,
1990, Cambridge University Press, p. 81
ISBN 0-521-39416-3 hardback
ISBN 0-521-39734-0 paperback



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