@Thor,

I find it easier to comment directly on your commit rather than trying to find the comment button on the pull request page.

Try to add your comments here: https://github.com/ElweThor/Asgardia.Government/commit/246bdeff0b569525f9768cc95501a36d3219b29f 

You should see a reply button under my comments.

@bloodyclean - I am very much in favour of a direct democracy. In fact I posted a number of times about that very structure before the current constitutional debate.

However voting on policy and directional issues does not cover everything that needs to be done in an organisation or state.  As @thor points out there are still jobs to be done to ensure the state runs and can effectively provide the necessities for the members.

A society such as Asgardia is now and will be in the future is perfect for this structure because actually it is not the number of people who are members of the state that is important (sorry @thor), it is the position, environment and ideals of the state that is important when implementing a direct democracy.  

What makes a state like Asgardia perfect in the first instance, is it being a state without territory. There is no need for a lot of governance that is required to maintain that territory.  Also in the political situation of a state without territory it is necessary to move on decisions with full support of the members or the state could fall into the type of endless debate and divisive breakaway we are experiencing at some levels now.  Secondly in the future the environment that Asgardia will occupy (space) is completely hostile to life as we know it. This means that the environment must be built, launched and maintained by the state - which is effectively the members.  As such, every member must be responsible for partaking in all the work to maintain and run that created environment or it falls out of the sky and everyone dies.  That means everyone must do every job - even janitor and maintenance.

The difficulty we, as humans, always face is that we see positions in government as "ruling" others - we love power, to hear the sound of our own voice and the sounds of others telling us how great we are. This would have to change so that the positions were just there to do a job.  In other words those assigned to the job, of for example "minister for such and such", are just care-taking a position which is necessary to ensure that the projects and direction already voted on by the populace are carried out on a day-to-day basis.

Also everyone has to be able to be responsible enough and have the opportunity to do every job as well as the careers of personal preference which enhance the society, either as a collective or by personal growth.  

This means (a) no positions of power (b)  no popular voting (c) adequate education before a position is taken up (d) a plan for project and governance continuity built into the appointment/assignation of the positions. (e) a system which arbitrarily selects citizens for the governance positions like a lotto and which allows for rotation throughout the populace. (f) really really really good reporting systems so that the populace are kept up to date on how things are going and what problems need to be solved.

Another very important thing is that we as individuals must get rid of the problem that makes us get upset because our ideas aren't the ones used or taken into consideration.  That's probably the hardest one for me personally.

I have posted all this before but the general feel seemed to be most people are more enamoured with representative politics and positions of power.  That's fine because representative politics is what most people on earth are more familiar with and what we have two thousand years of training and documentation in to date :-)

I have read the new Constitution proposal and I prefer it to the official draft. Here are my comments on it.

A general remark

If, in a couple of centuries (or sooner), Asgardia is mainly populated by trans-humanists or post-humanists, they may not be too happy about all the references to humanity and mankind in the preamble of the Constitution. But, perhaps, they will have their own space nation... or perhaps, we should consider replacing "humans" by "persons", or some similar word.

Preamble

Instead of
     "bring spiritual and scientific practices"
I would prefer
     "bring intellectual and scientific practices"

Chapter I

Instead of
     "2b. ensure the protection of humankind from outer space threats"
I would prefer the less human-centric
     "2b. ensures the protection of Earth and of its biodiversity"

Instead of
     "11. can freely practice any religion on Earth"
which means
     "11. can freely practice any religion (now existing) on Earth"
I would be tempted to replace this by
     "11. can freely practice, on Earth, any religion".
Furthermore, I am not very comfortable with the term "any religion"> I find it  is a bit too broad. Some sects have very nasty religious practices.

Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 3

Instead of 

"§ 3. Asgardia’s absolute Supreme Value is humanity striving into the limitless future of the Universe, an unstoppable quest to understand and transform the Universe."

I would prefer the less human-centric 

"§ 3. Asgardia’s Absolute Supreme Value is intelligence striving into the limitless future of the Universe, an unstoppable quest to understand and inhabit the Universe."

Note the capitalization of the word Absolute. 

Chapter 2, Article 4, Paragraph 4

Instead of
     "§ 4.b. protection of all of humanity from space-originating threats;"
I would prefer
     "protection of Earth's inhabitants from [...]".

Chapterr 3, Article 6, Paragraph 2

The paragraph 

"§ 2. Citizenship of Asgardia is a special type of citizenship and does not constitute dual or second citizenship for the purposes of any Earth nation citizenship. A citizen of an Earth nation becoming an Asgardian citizen does not confer multiple citizenship status unless otherwise stipulated by an international treaty to which Asgardia is a party."

requires some explanation. As I understand it, an Asgardian citizen will only acquire double (or multiple) citizenship when Asgardia is recognized as a state in an international treaty. Am I correct on this?

Chapter 3, Article 9, Paragraph 5

The statement
     "§ 5. The people shall be liable to taxation as provided by law."
is too vague and has raised some concerns in more than one posts. . I would replace it by 

"§ 5. Taxes on revenues obtained from the Asgardian economy would be paid to Asgardia whereas taxes on revenues obtained from another country's economy would be paid to the government of the country (as required by the laws of the country)."

I think most citizens would accept this. My idea is this. Asgardia provides some educational resources with which each citizen can acquire some expertise. The citizen can then use her/his knowledge and participate in Asgardia's economy. This generates some revenues subjected to taxation. This is what I call a participationist system that could help any motivated person get out of poverty. Moreover, I could make Asgardia a star of hope in regions where now there is only despair and resignation. 

 Chapter 3, Article 11, Paragraph 2

"§ 2. Asgardia uses its own material, financial, and other resources to ensure free access to distance learning, professional qualifications, and scientific and creative work for Asgardian citizens "

For me, this is the most important article of all. It defines what I would call l a participationist system. 

Chapter 3, Article 13, Paragraph 2

"§ 2. Asgardia’s currency is the Solar. The symbols for Solar will be established by Asgardia’s National Bank. Solar shall not be represented with a decimal place or fractional value."

I like the name Solar. The symbol could be an S with a short horizontal bar (dash) inthe middle. Any particular reason why no decimal place or fractional value?

Chapter 3, Article 13, Paragraph 11

"§ 11. The Government shall establish a single-payer, universal health insurance program. Contribution to this program by citizens is regulated by the Law of Asgardia."

This should imply the creation of a Ministry of Health.

Chapter 7, Article 26, Paragraph 3

"§ 3. Asgardia’s national motto is “Ab scientia libertas. Ab libertas pacem." (From science comes freedom. From freedom comes peace.)."

I much prefer this than the one in the official draft.

Chapter 7, Article 27, Paragraph 1

"§ 1. Asgardia’s official language shall be called Basic and is based on International English."

This is certainly more realistic than having 13 official languages which would require lots of time and resources for translations and duplications and could lead to some confusion between the various versions. As I recall, in the early 2000s, the total budget for translating texts in the EU was around 2 billions per year (I do not remember if these were dollars or euros). This money could have been put to better use to preserve the Greek health system, for example.

Furthermore,
     -  most texts printed and on the Web are in English (Wikipedia is an example of this)
     - English is easier to learn than many other languages (for example, contrary to French, there is no need to guess the gender of a chair or of a bus)
     - English has, by far, the richest vocabulary, especially in science
     - English is understood by a majority of current Asgardians.
     - English is now what Latin was in medieval Europe.
However,
     - providing some educational resources for learning English should be a top priority
     - citizens could ask for a non-official translation to be provided when needed  
Also, I would suggest naming the language Basish instead of Basic just to avoid any confusion with the programming language of the 1970s :-).

Chapter 8, Article 32, Paragraph 9

"g. grants clemency;"

Even for crime against humanity?

Chapter 8, Article 34, Paragraph 2

"§ 2. The term of office of members of the Parliament shall be six (6) Earth-years. Parliament seats shall be up for election on a six (6) Earth-year cadence, with only half of the seats of Parliament to be elected at any one time."

How this would work in the transitional period with first Parliament needs to be stipulated. Which seats would be open for new candiidates?

Chapter 8, Article 35, Paragraph 11

"§ 11. The Ministries of Government are:[...]"

There is no Ministry of Health. I would have though that space medicine would be of paramount importance for a space nation.

Chapter 3, Article 37, Paragraph 17

"nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb twice in jeopardy of life or limb?

What does this means? Is is permissible to put a person in jeopardy of life or limb once? I though there were no death penalty. And amputation or mutilation as a form of punitive treatment is not more acceptable. But my interpretation of this may be wrong.

-=*=-

Hoping that what I have written here does make sense.

     Andre 

@bigred

Therein lie a few problems which I am having trouble getting behind for that proposal. 

Yes, in any ideal world, what you are calling a Direct Democracy (which sounds more like Communism to me; and there's nothing wrong with that in an ideal world) would be great! Everyone is equal and everyone is capable and slotted to do every job. Everyone's voices are heard (but maybe not listened to).

But again, that's in an ideal world. It becomes near impossible to manage as the population grows. Per my previous analogy, as the number of users on Reddit increases, it becomes exponentially improbable for all of the rest of the users to read every post. Even people who have fantastic ideas that everyone may agree with will have their thoughts drowned out by everyone else piling on their own thoughts. It will increasingly frustrate and anger the citizens (especially as the population grows), and not because they don't think their ideas are being considered, but because they think their ideas aren't even being heard. 

As to the form of governing/running the jobs, the biggest issue I see here is human corruptibility. Again, in an ideal society, not a problem. But imagine you have a guy who has been doing the job of janitor for the past 5 rounds and he all of a sudden becomes the guy in charge of the software choosing the roles of citizens in the future... who knows what would happen. And since the citizens have put their trust in the random selection of roles, who will complain?

In addition to this, because a good chunk of people's voices will not be heard, and there are no elected positions, there isn't really any recourse to get corrupt people out of position. 

This is, personally, why I am leaning towards the democratic technocracy, which still has elected officials who are elected based on how well they know the job (and how well they represent the people who elected them), and they can be voted out of office in the event of corruption, and their terms are regulated. 

This helps to ensure that a good chunk of the people's will (those that voted for them) is followed, and they will be able to listen to the voices of the much smaller group of citizens who they support. 

Just food for thought, 

BloodyClean

P.S. I recognize that this may be considered a bleak look at society, but we need to start from somewhere and I personally don't think humanity is ready for such an altruistic task. 

I've to say I really agree with @BloodyClean: maybe there is room for some direct democracy now, when Asgardia have no territory. But what we're choosing now is something which will take full action when Asgardia will have that territory, when asgardians will be more the people aboard satellites/colonies and will have to cope with all that.

Not only: reading your posts, @bigred, I'm feeling you believe all are able to take "all positions" and, maybe I can be a passable janitor, but I won't be a Life Support Engineer for sure, despite the many hours I can study that matter.

The facts, @bigred, are that we're not "all equal", people is like people is, not like what we think people is. On this side @BloodyClean is more realistic: he takes in count that there will be some altruistic persons, maybe the majority, but there will be corruptibles and corruptors even, not thinking to list, here, all the possible crimes people is doing on Earth and we'll have into space colonies also, as we're not bringing "absolute logic AIs" there, but "humans".

That's why we, for the sake of our own safety, must think to the very worst things it can be done by using our Constitution, by Government, by Parliament... and, if they will act better, it will be some kind of "bonus".
Our process have not to be too much biased by these "worst possibilities" as they're, exactly as I wrote, "possibilities". Nonetheless, we can't assume there won't be any problem at all: thinking that way is the main avenue to have problems.

Last but not least, if a wide number of world nations is going with representative parliamentary democracy (even the ones who, formally, are still monarchies)... don't you think they thought (and fought) about it at least a little?
If we're going toward a democratic technocracy is to experiment it on a parliamentary democracy, as one of the main keys of Asgardia is to be "scientific", but still a parliamentary democracy (IF, a very big IF, our "suggestions" (amendments) will pass the scrutiny).

In the past days I've been able (honored) to work with @LoreZyra on his Constitutional proposal. Have to say it have been an exciting job: after he wrote the whole Constitution ('cause of hard time contraints he amended the original one, not writing a new one from scratch), we revised article by article, commenting the reasons why he wrote what he wrote and why I amended some parts.
Starting from the fact he is the expert, not me, I think he took wide benefit from an inexpert point of view, coming from a different culture and democracy kind.
I supported my amendments with all the logic and knowledge I could put together, and that have been the exciting part for me, as I never gone so in deep into a new Constitution as well as my own one too.
Even if the final decision to accept or not the amendments stay on his side, I liked very much the work we did: whatever result it will have, it have been really interesting for me and it will leave tracks into me. :-)

@Andre Ratel(Asgardian) on 28 May 2017, 10:56 a.m.

Thanks for your comments. I invite you to collaborate with me on GitHub. You can find more from the original link I shared with you (and in the first post). GitHub allows you to comment line by line and carry a discussion on each point easily. And, you can do a pull request if you wish to make changes directly. Also, note that the version you read has changed a bit on GitHub. If you collaborate with the rest of my little, passionate group members, you can be instantly notified of any changes to the text.

@Lore Zyra on 29 May 2017, 11:54 a.m.

<< I invite you to collaborate with me on GitHub. >> 

Thanks for the invitation. 

I just tried the GitHub link in your text but got a "Not Found (#404) Page not found." message.

I then tried  the link on page 1 of this thread
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lorezyra/Asgardia.Government/master/Asgardia.Constitution.Proposal.txt 
and got the full draft. I made a pdf capture of it and now there is no problem with the formatting.
Is this the last version?

<< GitHub allows you to comment line by line and carry a discussion on each point easily. >>

I have no idea how GitHub works. I am not even sure that I can use it with my old 2008 computer running on Windows Vista and using an old version of Chrome. 

PS: Am I the only one having problems with the Captcha? Up to now, none of my posts have been accepted the first time although I am sure that I typed in the correct characters.

@Andre Ratel

Just wanted to comment a bit on @LoreZyra's proposal to clarify a few things :) You can do all of your edits online on GitHub and you don't need to download the app/program for your computer.

Once you are a contributor, you can click the pencil button on this page (https://github.com/lorezyra/Asgardia.Government/blob/master/Asgardia.Constitution.Proposal.txt) to create an edit. You then go through and make all of your edits, and you choose the option at the bottom that says to create a "pull request". Once you create this request you can then go to the tab at the top of the page that pops up which says "Files Changed" and this should show the document with all of your changes. You can then go line by line on the lines that were edited and add single comments.

At least this is how I've been doing it :)

As to the Captcha, I've been having issues with it on my phone, but I think it's actually more to do with the duration it takes to write your post. I find that when I do it really quickly, it posts just fine (even on my phone).

BloodyClean

@BloodyClean on 29 May 2017, 9:57 p.m.

Thank your for the information. The link you gave me does work. However, when reading the text, I have to scroll right and left, and I find this a bit annoying. I much prefer having a pdf capture of the whole draft, reading it off-line a couple of times and posting my comments in the forum.

Furthermore, if I understand correctly how GitHub works, it seems that each contributor has his own draft. This implies that, later on, we will have to compare texts to find where they differ and where they are identical. I am not sure this is the most efficient way to proceed. But, maybe, I am missing something. 

@Andre Ratel on 30 May 2017, 1:22 a.m.

If you need help in understanding more about GitHub and collaboration, then send me an email via (redacted). No need to have all the tech talk in the forum.

The Skieswanne Constitution In the declaration of unity The word states should be replaced whit the word Nations or nation. States sounds to much like how the UN discribes their members  

The Skieswanne Constitution still has the word royal in it ,If this Government is to be a DTG then royal has no place in the constitution also the word Supreme should be dropped  it not needed to describe Asgardian Values while its a good start slow a little and try not to over think it .Thats where people git into the weeds  

LoreZyra Can you do another poll and add Representative Republic .That will give a better resolute  over all  .With the DTG form which seems to bet he favorite your looking for mass discrimination base on IQ

@RickySickles(Asgardian) on 30 May 2017, 3:45 a.m.

Can you do another poll and add Representative Republic .That will give a better resolute  over all  .With the DTG form which seems to bet he favorite your looking for mass discrimination base on IQ.

There was already a poll (see link in first post), where the form of government were voted on by about 80 people. Unless you have a proposal draft and a link to it, I don't see the need to update this poll.

Regarding my proposed model, I don't actually define IQ as a qualifier. Rather, I state you should have a professional certification. Such certification can be earned by experience. You need not necessarily have a high IQ to earn a certification. Plenty of people manage to achieve certifications without high IQ ratings. The focus in a Technocracy is to guide the course of society through proven experience and educated enlightenment. Case in point, The forty-fifth POTUS is Donald J. Trump. In a democratic republic such as the US, any person with enough financial backing can become the POTUS. Under a Technocracy, Donald would not have made it past the primaries. Not because of IQ, but by the fitness of his personality, lack of understanding the Office for which he volunteered to take, and philosophical differences... 

@RickySickles

"The Skieswanne Constitution still has the word royal in it ,If this Government is to be a DTG then royal has no place in the constitution also the word Supreme should be dropped"

Good point, thanks for pointing this out, I have updated the Constitution with this change. 

"The word states should be replaced whit the word Nations or nation"

Agreed. I too would prefer the word "nation". I shall include this in tomorrow's updates. 

Thanks!