Dec 27, 16 / Cap 26, 00 20:49 UTC

Re: [Official Post] Writing a valid Constitution : Step 3 - Form of the Government  

Unitarian and decentralized: I believe it is a necessity now, that we do not live in space, and that will be a necessity in the future, because we will probably have stations far from the main Asgardia that will need to have local bodies.

  Last edited by:  Rodrigo Barbosa-da-Silva (Translator, Asgardian)  on Dec 27, 16 / Cap 26, 00 20:50 UTC, Total number of edits: 2 times

Dec 28, 16 / Cap 27, 00 03:15 UTC

Unitary and decentralized, especially for administrative matters, that's the most efficient form of government. We could begin with one or two regional center for each continent. Obviously one in China, one in India and one in US. They could be used for all the basic administration needs. Each administrative body may use local languages as official for most of the administrative business(while the fundamental texts must be written in the official language which will stand as the absolute reference in front of any translation, to avoid any interpretation problem).

It will be mandatory to have employees (functionaries) who dominate the Asgardia official language and at least one or two of the regional language of the administrative center.

At the beginning we won't have a lot of paperwork, but it will come... Imagine: IDs, passports, study certificates, postulation for citizenship, elections, postulation for official nomination for work, ... We can work virtually at first of course...

Dec 28, 16 / Cap 27, 00 05:37 UTC

With a distributed system, each defining their own regulations, what would prevent a conflict of interest arising between locations, or varying standards of law arising at various locations?

At our current speed, it's incredibly likely all major policy to be ratified before we make it into space. Why cannot all locations simply abide by the universally agreed policies?

Dec 28, 16 / Cap 27, 00 15:36 UTC

I would recommend a unitary decentralized model similar to how an anarcho-syndicalism functions.

Local administrative bodies best know the needs and complications of their socio-economic and geographic situations and can best respond to them. The decisions of these bodies would be specifically local in scope with underlying tenants set forth by the overall Asgardian body. In the anarchosyndicalist sense, these would be the right to free dis/association, the right to self-determination, and the right to health/wellbeing. These basic tenants could be modified to align more closely with Asgardian premises without much modification. To avoid conflict, any regulation at the local level which is shown to have an external impact must then be ratified/approved by a central delegate body which allows both the body with the law/regulation and the body which is negatively impacted by it a voice but also the voices of districts who have no invested interest in the outcome and who can consider the situation more objectively. Demonstrating extra-local impact should be a trivial test to avoid points of contention between administrative regions having opportunity to fester.

Dec 28, 16 / Cap 27, 00 21:47 UTC

Obviamente devemos ser Unos, mas não vejo como seriamos a priori centralizados, salvo se alguma nação permitisse ou doasse um território para a centralização estatal, do contrário é bem certo que seremos descentralizados de modo orgânico e deveremos possuir um ambiente virtual para essa Unidade se mantenha de forma a garantir a nossa partida rumo ao espaço, onde aí sim seremos centralizados.

Obviously we must be One, but I do not see how we would be a priori centralized, unless some nation allowed or donated a territory for state centralization, otherwise it is quite certain that we will be decentralized in an organic way and we should have a virtual environment for that Unit to remain In order to guarantee our departure towards space, where then we will be centralized.

Mod Edit: this translation has been provided by the Google Translator (http://translate.google.com). Please try to utilize English, only, when posting outside the regional chapter sub-forums. Thank you.

O idioma oficial já foi definido como inglês?

Has the language been set to English? (Google)

  Last edited by:  Antenor Pelegrino Filho (Asgardian)  on Dec 30, 16 / Cap 29, 00 02:09 UTC, Total number of edits: 3 times

Dec 29, 16 / Cap 28, 00 07:00 UTC

I also suggest a de-centralized model, with particular focus placed on the functioning and decision-making of each individual ministry.

Dec 29, 16 / Cap 28, 00 22:25 UTC

I believe the de-centralized model would work not only because we have no earth territory but also because once we become spacefaring we will have our citizens scattered among many planets and or regions of space, whatever form of government and the constitution that helps governs it will have to be thought of and seen from a point of view that we have already achieved the state as we see it in the far future, with millions nay billions of spacefaring being of all kinds, aliens and humans alike,(and while we don't have any real evidence of the same) we can borrow from the space based movies of earth to give us an idea, [examples like Star Trek, Star Wars] , while they are a work of fiction ,we are able to see some of the challenges we might face and the types of governments and the challenge they might face, if we open our eyes, minds and hearts to this type of thinking it will afford use the best collectively brought together constitution and government in my humble thinking, I would even dare to suggest that all members try and watch this movies with an eye towards our eventual goal of being the type of citizens we wish to be.

Jan 2, 17 / Aqu 02, 01 18:41 UTC

A centralized government but a parliamentarian.

I already have to respect a huge range of laws of my country, do not need another hundred other laws of Asgardia, I am old and I am not in conditions of much effort. That is, while I am living in the country where I was born I will not conflict the laws of two governments because no one can serve two masters. You know the quote. I will not be living under the laws of Asgardia.

But I still think that a centralized and parliamentary government is best suited to govern Asgardia.

Jan 3, 17 / Aqu 03, 01 03:24 UTC

You only need to worry about one set of laws, though. The law of your current country location.

Asgardian law would only prevail in Asgardian territories. Just as we shouldn't be expected to uphold foreign nations law in our borders - of which there are currently none - it is unreasonable to expect a foreign nation to adhere to our standards.

Done right, Asgardia won't have Hundreds of laws to learn, we should be able to get by on remarkably few based mostly on respecting the rights of others.

Parlimentary government would imply allowing someone else to make your descisions for you. This is a flawed concept within itself, unless you like being told what to think. It further gives rise to the same political corruptions and deceits that currently plague Earth governments, and by extension, their peoples.

Due to the expanse of space, decentralisation makes the most sense and to do so by encompassing every citizen in the descision process should ulitmately keep things "fair". The "ministries" can function to provide problems that require solving, but the collective effort of the citizens should sovle it. Thusly what we do and how we do it are of our own collective choosing. Any law the nation feels required can then be enacted across infrastructure with ease and universal commitment.

Individual facilites should be ultimately left to devise their own operating procedures, policies, and regulations specific to operations on that facility, providing they conform to law and or our constitution in it's final form. Sensibly, they would seek advise from various applicable ministries with regards to establishing these. This should allow for flexibility as required per location, whilst still maintaining uniformity across infrastructure.

Jan 3, 17 / Aqu 03, 01 12:27 UTC

We all imagine a government that reflects the yearnings of the collectivity, we need before defining the government to define what exactly the Asgardian people expect of their country.

It is evident that the other half, the other side of power is corruption. When the power to decide is assigned to each citizen, when it is sprayed, when citizen can vote laws directly the index of corruption drops drastically. Eliminating the parliament seems to be a good idea, we have to discuss more the pros and cons. Twelve ministers plus one Prime Minister seems to me sufficient number to run a space station. I see that every minister must have experience in his area of ​​activity, as is foreseen in meritocracy and I also see that the Prime Minister can be elected by direct vote, as is predicted in democracy.

As for deadlines and terms of deadlines for mandates, I do not know. My intuition tells me that the mandates should not have a time limit, and the minister can be replaced at any time by some kind of mechanism provided in the meritocracy.

As for the Prime Minister, I would not give a fixed term. The less time in the chair the better. As a democratic mechanism, I would give the citizen the right to begin the process of replacing the Prime Minister. In this way it would be common for the Prime Minister to always be on trial. Being the Prime Minister is not a walk in the park.

Jan 3, 17 / Aqu 03, 01 23:52 UTC

Pro: - We decude our fate, as a collective, how we collectively want to achieve it. - Corruption via bribes, incentive, or other modifiers becomes impractical to enact in a manner that would influence significant enough votes to make a difference

con: - Is there any? I'm sure any concern can be mitigated, any issue forseen sovled.

"Twelve ministers plus one Prime Minister seems to me sufficient number to run a space station."

No, that's sufficient to run a government. People thinking of "stations" or "ships" would be unwise to think of one. Space is a big place, and there's a lot of future. Individual facilities themselves, whilst adhering to our constitution and resultant law, should be left to form their own operational policies, on a facility by facility basis - preferably seeking the expertise of relevant ministries for doing so.

By taking the descisive capacity ourselves, the role of ministers should extend as far as providing focus to relevant issues as a society we should be solving, Overseeing and co-ordinating between various projects in their ministry, and other ministers. With the only reason I can forsee to extend beyond such being the rare cases where common consensus or popular opinion is unable to be reached, or there be some critical need to make a descision in order to preseve life etc.

I've no specific preference for terms as ministers, beyond the prime. I feel there should definitely be a fixed term here, and yes, shorter is generally bettter, but for at least the "founding ages", say the next five/ten years I feel Igor Ashurbeyli should remain as Asgardian Prime in order to assure the way this nation progresses remains in line with his general hopes.

Being a figurehead is rarely fun, But that job isn't about enoying yourself. I don't think this should be forced upon him, but I think he'd do it. Thankfully, taking care of descisions - and the hard part of the job - ourselves, that frees him up for his own things and interacting with his opposite number in other nations.

Jan 5, 17 / Aqu 05, 01 18:19 UTC

  1. Lifting materials required to cope for our current population is utterly rediculous. With the cost per KG unlikely to fall in the significant future, the mass required to deal with all facets of keeping 700,000 people alive will be prohibilly expensive, and would strip the Earth in the attempt. There's no chance of sensibly attemping such a feat until you are harvesting the resources already up there. And that's population now, not including newcomers or the natural expansion until the project is completed, or worrying about any population expansion whilst the facility is operational(another reason to start with more one, each with modular expansive capacity, beyond mitigating single point of failure wiping out the nation, and having other places to go/offer support in a dire emergency) Due to this, and the scale of such a project, we are incredibly unlikely to even gather materials for such projects until closer to 2050, let alone constructions. And that's if we acted on this initative now. This will take a long time. Far to long to allow things to establish themselves as "normal". It only needs one form, it's final - whatever that becomes.

  2. Once we're in space, sometime towards the end of this century at the very earliest, I imagine the vast number of possible locations and the ease at which we can place facilities there through tapping the overly abundant resources of the solar system would give rise to large distributions of clusters of population, of varying densities and thusly as a nation we will be highly decentralised. Even the near-Earth facilities would be sensibly de-centralised. If we can sensibly think about putting citizens in space, then we can be doing slightly better than sardine tins, too. We've started distributed, we are likely to continue distributed for the foreseeable future...

  Updated  on Jan 6, 17 / Aqu 06, 01 01:19 UTC, Total number of edits: 1 time
Reason: typo

Jan 20, 17 / Aqu 20, 01 05:12 UTC

I do believe there should exist local government, but the central should have more power than the locals when it come to national issues (for example trade deals, taxes), so that we would be efficient when we have some policy that we need everyone to be involve.

The local government should have higher power when it come to issues that happens in their territory, for example infrastructure, local laws. Since the central government may not have an accurate expression of the locals. Which it comes to issue that involve a certain territory, the local government should decide if the policy is suitable for that territory.

Jan 20, 17 / Aqu 20, 01 08:03 UTC

Unitary centralization is duly possible as long as our nation has a territory on the ground and in this case we do not need donation of territory by any country, we can build our own territory in international waters through platforms like the oil companies or even a floating floating artificial island In Cruise Ship Technology

Jan 21, 17 / Aqu 21, 01 07:20 UTC

Another advantage of creating an artificial island in international waters is that we can manage the country, create platform space shuttle launches and also in the future we can live on both the sea platform and space with our future space station