Sfdebris.net

Simple enough question, how would it work in your ideal society?

Politics can too often be about names, dates, past actions, and positions. So, I ask, regardless of past actions, how you would like your ideal society to work.

Here's the caveat, you have to put your idea of an ideal society forward before you can rip someone else's to shreds. This way, if, for example, Person A thinks Plato's Republic is ideal, Person B can't respond about it's use of slavery or other flaws until they have introduced their own into it.

I want this to be an honest exchange of ideas and brainstorming. And to see if we have more values in common than differences. And if those differences are big enough to prevent a workable consensus.

In other words, like try more for a Hegelian Dialectic than a flame war. Please.

So, what's your ideal society?

A democratic federal republic with democratization of the workplace, worker ownership of the means of production, strict safeguards like separation of powers between a separately-elected legislature and executive to ensure the protection of democracy, birthright citizenship a la the 14th amendment, and absolute legal equality across all genders, ethnicities, faiths or lack thereof, sexual orientations, etc.

People should be judged as individuals, without regard to sex, ethnicity, or ability to whistle. Post-high-school education should be available fairly inexpensively to dedicated students (probably online), and scientific query should be free of political bias. I figure a society with good education in the hands of those more dedicated or brighter, and more information at its fingertips, is better armed for prosperity if it deserves to be prosperous.

I like more power to be local, in part because I distrust concentrations of power and in part because it could encourage experimentation. For example, if one state decided to mandate worker ownership of the means of production, we could find out how well that works. Or a state could try some other forms or parts of socialism.

States could, at will, form other cooperative bodies as they desired. For example, instead of a Department of Education, they could share school models and the resulting metrics.

And those signs in grocery stores would have to read "10 items or fewer", not "less," because we're not barbarians.

In my ideal world, common sense would be far more common, and people would show more common courtesy.

I'm being a bit cheeky here, but:

:p

Being as short-spoken as I generally prefer to be, I'd essentially sum it up as an egalitarian meritocracy within a constitutionally-limited democratic republic.

In my ideal world, the big corporations wouldn't abuse their power. It's disgusting the way the uber greedy are abusing their wealth and privilege in today's world.

I don't have a detailed answer for that, but I do have an answer - which will seem silly, but it's one that really struck me when I first heard it, which I've thought about one and off ever since, and which if you have to start somewhere for making the world a good place I think is as good as anywhere.

"Be excellent to each other." "And party on, dudes!"

Seriously. Obviously taking 'dudes' to mean everyone, regardless of gender or whatever else, and I like to interpret 'party on' more in the sense of the kind of fun/joyful/'awesome!' spirit the words are said in, so it applies whether your idea of a party is loud music or Netflix or being proud you've done a solid day's work or spending three weeks annual leave organising your Lego collection (hi) - in a sense, I think 'party on' means being excellent to yourself, whatever that means for you personally - but overall I feel like it's pretty solid as a mission statement for a better world.

Yeah, in an ideal society, you would encourage sexual liberation and the freedom to explore your sexuality without judgment so long as it hurts nobody. Hence the "party on."

Nobody starves as long as we have food. Nobody lives on the streets as long as we have houses. Nobody dies from diseases we can cure. Nobody goes thirsty or gets poisoned while there is clean water to drink.

Any societal issues I address after that mostly feel like fine details and footnotes.

I want transmutation devices in the ideal world, similar to replicators on TNG. I also want a more secular society, more spiritualism maybe, but less organized religion and Abrahamic faiths. They had their reign, and they've spread more destruction and pain than anything else except perhaps government and patriarchy.