A New Form Of Government: Rational Government
2/10/2006

A reader wrote in response to the article "A new form of government," inquiring about the US government. You can read the first article here A New Form Of Government. Here is further elaboration from Jamil Talaat Kazoun:

It is a positive element that the US Senate rules allow for traditional respect to a form of filibuster, with needed 60 percent ability to override the filibuster. However, it has three weaknesses: 1. The filibuster rule can be overridden (as recent events demonstrated, with the majority threats against the minority of using other rules to invalidate the filibuster). 2. It does not extend to the entire congress (House and Senate). 3. There are no provisions for 40 % of congressman being able to cancel a law.

Regarding the US president's veto power, that is a positive element. However, without requiring (for simplification, but clarified more in the article) super majority, a law can still pass if 51 % of the House and the Senate agree to it and the president does not oppose it. Therefore, 51% rule is still the case. That means, that 49% can be not in favor of a particular law. If you assume that the people voting on a law are equally intelligent and likely to make the correct decisions, then, from a logical point of view (mathematical statistics), the difference between those who think the decision is correct and those who do not or are not sure is 51% - 49% = 2%. This means, that the confidence in the decision lawmakers are making has almost 2% confidence level that it is more likely to be a correct decision than an incorrect decision. 2% percent is not a good enough margin of confidence to base public laws on. You are free to make decisions on that basis for yourself, but laws are imposition of ideas on others, and as such, there should be a fair degree of certainty that the decision is correct. 2 % confidence level in a decision making process is an extremely poor decision making process, and hardly better than flipping a coin.

Finally, there is a rule in my previous article, placed without any elaboration at all, but expanded on in the book, about requiring votes on a law by congress to be focused very narrowly to a single subject. I made this rule to prevent using the power the minority needs to have, without making this power being a tool for abuse by the minority against the majority, by having the minority use this new power to protect itself, from becoming a "power to bargain," and hold hostage the majority. By requiring each law voted on separately in its narrowest form, will help deal with this issue. This requirement of having each law be very narrowly focused and narrowly limited in scope is essential for having a merit based system for the adoption of laws.

To illustrate this flaw in the decision making process in parliaments throughout the world; for example, if two congressmen, or two parties have each a law they would like to pass, and each of these two laws has only 30 % support from all of congress, then you would think that these laws would not pass, since they are seemingly flawed as demonstrated by the low-level support for them. But these two laws do get passed all the time because the voting system is not merit based; it is based on a "bargaining system" under the lofty title of "compromise." Under this system: "I will vote for your law, if you vote for mine." This leads to two bad laws being adopted, each law passing with 60% majority (one 30 % of congress voting with the other 30% on something they think is wrong, just so that they can get their own law passed). A merit based voting system would prevent this. You establish a merit based system, by having each law, in its narrowest form, be voted on separately, and in a publicly recorded vote, for accountability. This should give a sense of the extreme magnitude of the error in the decision making process, and one reason for the proliferation of laws, and bad laws, and how democracy, as an ideal, that is supposed to be based on merit, to select the best ideas, in practice and without known exception, shows itself to be a flawed process. All these problem can be corrected.

We, under lofty ideals, of "simple majority rule", "compromise", and "equality" of vote, have gladly accepted a system that has these byproduct:

1. Allows bad decisions to get adopted: due to the use of simple majority rule
2. Encourages the adoption of bad decisions: Under the guise of compromise
3. Encourages the making of lots of decision: By use of simple majority rule, as each party gets to power, it is eager and capable to pass its own laws, and back and forth, ad infinitum; with laws accumulating, and hardly ever canceled.

Here we can see, how misguided by lofty ideals, we have unknowingly chosen to live under bad laws, and under a bad decision making process. Bad laws equal oppression. What we need is a new ideal: Liberty, liberty and protection from bad law. The byproduct will be good government.

Under the guise and high ideal of equality, we have accepted, and imposed upon ourselves a most sinister form of equality: The equality to allow others to oppress us, as long as we get equal chance to oppress them. Equal chance to oppress is not an ideal, it is a mechanism that encourages the creation of oppression in great abundance, oppression of the type that is wrapped in sugar.

Liberty is protected, when we protect ourselves from bad decisions, and bad laws. When we are unable to know what a good law is, we should protect from the possibility that it is a bad law, and from imposing such a law on others. When you want to impose a decision or a law on me that I disagree with, the burden lies on you to prove that the law has minimal margin of confidence that it is the correct law and not a bad law. This is the equation. Ensuring a margin of confidence can be done by looking at the difference in percentage of those who favor the law and those who do not. The difference can serve as a guide to how likely the decision is correct. Under simple majority rule, the margin can be practically zero. This means, that there is no certainty what so ever that the decision or law is correct. This is completely irrational.

It is time for a new form of government: rational government.

A rational government has these components:
1. A rational decision making process
2. Laws have as part of them an explicit description of the costs and benefits of the law, and when these factors change, the law becomes subject to review
3. There is effective supervision and follow up of the law

As far as I can tell, there is no government on earth, that is rational.

By,
Jamil Talaat Kazoun

From his book to be published shortly: A New Form OF Government: Rational Government . Readers can contact the author about this subject at this site: www.ANewFormOfGovernment.com

Previous Stories:
  A new form of government   (1/7/2006)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search