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Just try to imagine that you have got an absolute power in some way.. It doesn't matter how, maybe through a coup, from royal ancestry or as the result of mutual destruction of existing opposition. Which kind of political system would you prefer to create?

Some examples:

Absolute monarchy with direct rule - none survived, there were many city states in the past with such form of rule;
Absolute monarchy with legislatures and other governmental bodies - Saudi Arabia, North Korea (de facto)
Theocratic monarchy w/wo legislatures and other governmental bodies - none survived I suppose;
Elective variation of absolute or theocratic monarchy - Vatican is elective theocratic monarchy with legislature and other governmental bodies;
Constitutional monarchy - there are many of them, GB or Spain for example;
Liberal republic - United States, Taiwan and many other states;
Roman-style republic - Syria (de facto);
Socialist republic - People's Republic of China, Socialist Republic of Vietnam;
Theocratic republic - Islamic Republic of Iran.

Why the fuck haven't you put Direct Democracy or City States in the poll?

If I had absolute power, I would create and release a self-replicating nanovirus that eradicates the brain wiring for sociopathy, so that there could no longer be any negative political system.

It doesn't make a sense because "democracy" or "city state" aren't the political systems. Direct or representative democracy is nothing more than a tool, which could be used in any political system, even in absolute monarchy... Municipal bodies of the Saudi Arabia are democratically elected, for example.

I haven't voted yet. I guess I should choose "Liberal republic" but this would need more clarification, as the range of possibles within the definition of a liberal republic is just too great.

What political system does North Korea have?  Is that an example of Absolute monarchy with direct rule? I think absolute monarchy with direct rule is great if you are the one who rule, but shit if you are being ruled. It is a dream of most leaders but it is very hard to achieve since have to imprison or kill a lot of opposition.

Welcome to thread :)

Liberal republic is a republic which has proclaimed ideas of liberalism as the core foundation and reason of its existance. This could be defined by constitution, declaration of independence or another charter document. It seems strange nowadays but some liberal republics had no constitution.

Speaking about liberal republics, there is an interesting reading:

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/fischer.pdf

P.S. I agree that these voting options are not so simple. This was made intentionally in order to get more precise figures of political preference.

DPRK was declared as socialist republic, but they have abandoned the principles of democratic centralism right from the beginning and implemented feudal-style absolute monarchy instead... So it's a socialist republic according to constitution but de facto it's an absolute monarchy. There are elected regional and high legislatures along with other government bodies which have restricted set of powers, so this system could be classified as "Absolute monarchy with legislatures and other governmental bodies".

Actually I don't think that it's possible to implement a pure form of absolute monarchy with direct rule for something more complex than city state. Monarch simply won't be able to handle decision-making processes and it will lead to inevitable collapse. But it was quite popular political system in the past, when states were very small.

This poll is pointless. It's almost impossible to list every possible system, it's just too complex. But you should definitely add 'Anarchy' option to it  :)


How come you say 'democracy' isn't a political system but 'monarchy' is? Both of them only define who holds the ultimate power. In (ideal) democracy - it's the people, in monarchy - it's the monarch.
Yes, the monarch could be democratically elected by the people, but if he's elected for a set period of time, than the people hold the power (making him just a representative), if he's elected indefinitely, then you no longer have democracy.

The direct democracy can be perceived as a flexible political system, without any philosophy/ideology/economical model set in stone, when people can make any kind of changes to suit their current needs.

Please don't confuse "democracy" as the source of decision-making power with definition of "democracy" by some ideologies. Their "democracy" could mean liberal, socialist, roman-like or even theocratic republic. In this terms all republics would be "democracy", because even the greek word Δημoκρατία itself is translated as "republic".

Monarch is able to use democratic methods to optimize decision making processes, he can delegate some power to democratically elected institutions. See Saudi Arabia or Roman Empire for example... We have an absolute monarchy in these cases but municipal bodies and consultative legislatures are elected by the people. It's still an absolute monarchy because monarch always has the power to dissolve any governmental body and able to interfere in its actions if he wishes.

I would agree with that, but we don't need all 200+ possible political systems because the most of them are dead for a long time. Anarchy is an interesting addition :)

Monarchy but not an absolute one, strong but replaceable rule
The balance is virtually impossible to get right, which is why so few sustain over time

Agree, but it works both ways, you can have monarch with the ultimate power (able to dissolve any gov body) and on the other hand you can have people with ultimate (voting) power to get rid of the monarch (ie every 4 years). Monarch can delegate his powers to democratically elected institutions, but people/dem. elected institutions can opt to delegate some of the power (temporarily) to one leader (ie in the event of war, when fast decision making is necessary). Therefore both, democracy and monarchy, should either be or not be in the poll.

In other words, I do see why you haven't listed democracy, but don't get why you've listed monarchy.
Why would anyone vote for "Absolute monarchy..." ("AM") if it can mean anything. You can have AM with free market economy or centrally controlled economy. You can have AM being a total tyranny with no free speech, ruled by 'iron fist', or you can have AM with most of the power delegated directly to the people (or local governments). You can have a wise monarch or mentally handicapped one (who inherited his powers). And so on...
The concept is just too general, two people voting for the same option can have two totally different things in minds.
 

I'd say that most of the possible political systems have never existed.

Direct Democracy...

Direct democracy has been added.

In my opinion, is a kind of opposite for absolute monarchy with direct rule. It has the same scalability issues and very difficult to implement for the big states. But could be sustainable for city state and was used in the past... In the Republic of Novgorod, for example.

That's the whole point of Direct Democracy and other systems like it, they're designed for small government, not massive sprawling empires, you also had the Greek city states which elected their own kings rather than having themselves as one country. It also isn't anything to do with directly ruling anything, what it means is that citizens have the right to vote against actual laws passed by politicians, so while the politicians can operate in the same manner as the democracies we experience do where there are just election cycles at any time if they collect a certain amount of signatures to stop the law.

The Swiss are the main ones I can think of that use Direct Democracy today, so in theory, if all our countries had Direct Democracy, we could have stopped the Iraq invasion from ever happening with a referendum.

http://direct-democracy.geschichte-schweiz.ch/

Anarchy isn't I wouldn't care about anything.

Anarchy is NO RULERS.

+1 Anarchic - Capitalist  

No gods, No Masters ;)

Also, I know what kind of Anarchist I am now, Anarcho-Individualist over here :P Anarchists have nothing against organisation and communities working together, it's when it comes in the form of governments and individuals trying to take over everything by force that it becomes a problem.

pawel7777, well, it seems that all republics should be considered as optimized versions of the direct democracy... Just like variations of monarchical systems are optimized versions of absolute monarchy with direct rule. By "optimized" I mean optimized in terms of scalability.

Please add Federal tribal system.

Redo the title to 'Pick your rapist'

x

So in case of theocratic republic or theocratic monarchy you're choosing Jesus Christ or Allah as your rapist? What a blessing. :D

Technocracy.

That would be the priest class raping me, given I can not be raped by an imaginary friend of a sociopath.

Thanks for your welcome. I understand that a liberal republic is a place where the government doesn't interfere in anyone's daily life, and the US shall be regarded as such, but the problem is how to fix a limit on what the government of a liberal republic can do. It's dramatic that to start most kinds of business nowadays, one needs a licence and that on any income this business will generate, one must fill forms about it and share part of it (in some liberal republics a large part) with the liberal republic's managers, who may sometimes redistribute some of that.

I should be a partisan of liberal republics, but as a business owner (well, very small business), I often dream of anarchy.

I think USA as originally envisioned was pretty good except for its allowing slavery.  It was set up to avoid the classic democratic problem of the majority abusing the minority (again, except for the obvious slavery issue) and the vote ourselves rich problem.

The US could only be a liberal republic by your definition if it did not interfere in ones daily life. Are you saying the US doesn't interfere in ones daily life?

Except that the USA originally envisioned evolved into USA today so the USA originally envisioned failed in what was originally envisioned and is itself then a failure.

Anyone can only like Absolutism or Totalitarianism if he intends to be the king or the dictator.  ;D

Principle of separation of powers to independent legislative, executive and legislative branches is purposed to do that. However, according to some scholars (mostly communists and socialists), it doesn't work as proposed due to corruption. Personal and financial freedoms, given by liberal republic to all its citizens, are resulting with absence of control for relationships between government officials and rich members of society.

I think that the only way to stabilize liberal republic is revoking some freedoms for government officials, otherwise it eventually results with fascism under democratic guise.

This.  Isnt a resource based economy the best type of political system in theory? can anyone point out why not? (remember this is a working RBE)

You'd have no economic concerns with RBE and could just spend your time exactly as you wanted to no? Efficiency of an RBE means you'd likely have far more choices then any billionaires around right now.

Can an RBE be implemented tomorrow? - no, but this is theory topic no?

BitCoinNutJob, are you talking about Taylorism? ::)

Soviet-type planned economy (STP) was the first full-scale attempt to implement the resource-based economy, which was based on ideas of Social Taylorism. Though, there were some critical or even fatal efficiency issues due to centralized management. Hungarians have solved this problem in the 1960s (within a conception of so-called "kadarism"). Others were considered that abandoning the centralized management is not an option... Despite the fact that even Lenin thought the same about inefficiency of centralized management and made significant steps to abandon it in 1920s. ::)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=686828.msg8501546#msg8501546

 ;D

Absolute monarchy with me being the King.

Think this is everyone dream here as there are only two things we desire, money and power.

Well is this topic philosophical/ideological or whats practically realistic?

If we are talking whats the best practical solution for society at this point in our evolution i would pick anarcho capitalism as my personal choice.   Anyone with a decent level of power in society already likely wont agree.

If we are talking what would be the very best possible society for humans the RBE put forward by the zeitgeist movement sounds amazing way to live to me.   - Assuming a human being is something like the current configuration so we haven't evolved into some kind of spirit/gas in which case we might not even need "physical resources" to survive.... who knows.

Great debate concerning the 'RBE' put forward in the Zeitgeist vs Free Market Anarcho-Capatalism

Debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUtv5E6CkLE&index=6&list=PLMNj_r5bccUyhGtICwGaW8gFdMyB5nwAE

Analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5jh_lN9TWw&index=7&list=PLMNj_r5bccUyhGtICwGaW8gFdMyB5nwAE

Oh, it's the Zeitgeist Guy/Owner/Whatever (technoLenin) vs. Stefan Molyneux

Couldn't recommend it more!

If you feel the need to 'truncate' your viewing, just watch the Analysis.

Haha yeah watched this when it came out.  If it was possible an RBE sounds ideal way to live to me i find it very interesting.   Seem like right now all they have is a philosophy? - Kinda like if we all said money should be like bitcoin  but we didnt have the bitcoin design.

I do think RBE is just Communism 2.0 but at some point we will find a way to achieve "communism" i believe or we will evolve to the point where the debate is no longer relevant.  Star Trek technology etc or actual human physical evolution.

Fuck my life, ADHD kicks in and I read something that wasn't there! sorry.

We will achieve equality and prosperity, but never communism!

Fundamentally we can create star trek stuff.

We can, right now, make gold from lead.

Problem is........... we can't make something from nothing, even in star trek world we still require energy to be converted to mass of relevant particle  types and bonded etc which requires fuck tons of energy. and the most efficient way to provided that energy atm is through the kinetic energy of firing little particles at big ones.

That why we don't make gold, too expensive in terms of energy.

Where do we get the energy? Not fossels, not wind or solar PTV. Has to be neucleur fission, ie, miniature suns.

Would be awsome though, because if we have mini suns for aa batterys, you fucking know we've got lightsabers!



 

I guess it gets to the point of debating semantics, RBE doesnt necessarily have to be described as communism i dont think.  Communism as a word has a lot of bad stigma attached to it, in simplest form just means sharing resources right?  I guess its unfair to label RBE as just communism.  :)

I wish TZM would use their donations to start actually designing a decentralized resource allocating system.  What you reckon?

Please add "Social-Democratic" country here

lmao @ lightsabers, hold on now i need to watch a video on nuclear fission -  this is the only way?

So if you find a way to make gold for cheap you dont tell anyone, its kinda like if you've hacked bitcoin. ;D

I think so.

Einstein's energy - mass equivalence, e=mc^2

so (simplified) to create mass we need energy, e/(c^2)

it then boils down to (assuming we have the tech to do this and just needed energy) energy efficiency or, restated, how much useful energy can you extract from a fuel source?

Because our present energy systems are of low absolute efficiency (for example, cars have about 35% from wikipedia, so only 35% of the energy is able to be used for work) the amount of energy to create mass is unphysical (the fuel resources are not cheap and there not getting cheaper)

So (again, assuming the tech is there, which is really, really isn't) a CHEAP energy source would be required, such as the energy released by nuclear reactions (fission, released energy by splitting atoms or fussion, releasing energy by fusing them together)

But even with all this energy in order to induce these reactions like this particle colliders are required (because presently, the most efficient way to provide this energy to induce a reaction to turn lead into gold or star trek it is by accelerating tiny particles to near the speed of light iin multi-billion dollar miles long particle colliders).

star trek tech requires on demand mini neuclear reactors and mini particle colliders that are the size of small countries.

Which sucks because I physicked because I wanted a lightsaber :/

If you've done that you've reduced the cost of energy down to basicly 0 and made it an (for all purposes) unlimited resource. As money is a store of economic energy, which is a function of biological / physical energy, you've ended the need for storing economic energy by creating unlimited, free energy and so unlimited free resources.....

If economics is the problem of limited resources and unlimited wants, you've killed economics.

would be a creepy social structure if that happened, my money is on raise of dictators (with lightsabers?)

A variant of this, sometimes played with by Mensans, is that after one person describes their ideal system a second person gets to choose a role for the first person within that system. Things then become very messy as the implications dawn.

Corny example:

A: I would pick a monarchy. I've always wanted to be king/queen.
B: OK, monarchy it is. You are a peasant within the monarchy and one of the arrogant nobles has just noticed your daughter. Is it still your system of choice?
A: No, no, of course not. Umm - I pick a completely flat egalitarian system then. Nobody has any special ranks, privileges, entitlements and so forth.
B: OK, egalitarian it is. You are a megalomaniac within that flat system. You are sure that you know best. You crave power and you need to be the boss. Is it still your system of choice?
A: No, I guess not. Umm - I know - the golden rule - do unto others - will be the only rule in my system.
B: OK, golden rule it is. You are a masochist within that system, begging others to beat you. Every time you come upon a sadist they refuse to do it. Is it still your system of choice?

Crazy-making stuff.      ;)

Cant really respond to the previous science post i dont understand science on the same level as you but i will preorder a lightsaber :)

As regards this one, if gold were made for cheap im thinking as regards money & stores of value we'd just shift the goal posts elsewhere.  If we truly did find ways to produce something out of virtually nothing star trek style then perhaps.... to quote the NLP founder "Information is the currency of the future" & maybe that should be extended to things like creativity etc.  In star trek they seem to have a social order haha

Elective monarchy, maybe? It can be a solution for such dilemma... Nobody will run around your daughter if new monarch is elected by people's assembly or appointed by council of lords. :)

No, it's not what I meant. If we go back to the early days of liberalism, which Benjamin Constant explained truly well, the government has only two purposes. To protect the citizens from foreign invaders, and to police the streets. Nowadays, millions of people see it as normal that government organizes healthcare, regulates the work place and so on. That's the issue: how to prevent liberal republic from becoming socialist nightmares.

On the meaning of Star Trek, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRf8DVkc-8

Non initiation of force, loop closed.

What do you mean? ::)


There were many elective monarchy states in the history. Kingdom of Rome, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Serbia, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and dozens of others. Some of these states were stable enough to exist during many ages.

Famous modern example is the Vatican city, it employs an elective theocratic monarchy with legislatures. This system have survived more than 1000 years  :o

Does anarchy equate to not caring about anything?  To me, anarchy equates to freedom.  Volunteerism.  Living for your own will.

Yep, because you shouldn't try to use your absolute power for anything. Otherwise it won't be an anarchy, am I right? :)

I see what you're saying, but you can still care about things, you can care for other humans, you can still have ambition and purpose in life.

Good and Evil aren't black and white, the very same thing can be caring for someone and hazard to another. Anarchy is sort of the last state of individualism, because the Good/Evil duality locks you around yourself. Most people needs some sort of guidance, something they can believe in to set this black and white inexistent world and even if some could actually live totally free and act somewhat accordingly to your utopia, they are a tiny percent, most won't and conflicts would raise everywhere.
And how would you set conflicts under Anarchy? In a situation where both believe to be right, why would John's view should prevail over Joe's or vice-versa?

Let those who want to fight fight.  Let those who want peace live in peace.  That's all we can do.  Karma and natural selection takes over from there.  The positives will attract positives, the negatives attract negatives and earth purges itself.

Karma is all the guidance we truly need.  Way more effective than any man made law.

There is no any perfect political system for every person,No matter how perfect of a political system you would make,there will always be people whom you harm.Some citizens aren't made for any political system whom we call non law abiding citizens,Good for nothing

I prefer to compare farm animals to wild animals, some animals are dangerous to farm.....

Indoctrination from an early age pacifies a naturally dangerous animal? who could of guessed?

*cough* state run school system *cough*

Anarchocapitalism. Because I'm against violence. All exchanges should be voluntary.

Also support Anarchocapitalism as the way forward.

Who is harmed by anarchocapitalism? Parasites that have to start doing something productive to live?

I'd say that anarchocapitalism is an oxymoron.

thats because you don't understand that anarchy and capatalism are not contradictory terms, they are synomyms.

anarchy is the non iniation of force and volentry free interactions and even you enjoy these benifits every singe day in many of the choices you make.

when you watch a tv show, who makes that choice? you? did anyone force you? anarchy baby!

here is an another example. Women choose who they want to sleep with and rape is illeagle. Is this a bad thing? are you pro rape?

The free choice is an expression of anarchy and the ilegality and moral evil of rape stems from the right of sovernity over ones property (when you consider that a man or woman must have soverenty over their body and be free from the iniation of force! rape in this case is defined as the forceful posession of ones body, which is ones property)

It then follows that as capatalism is the action of volentry trade between two partys, If the trade is volentry then it is free and if it is free it is again anarchic. It is also fair as when making this free choice both partys of the trade must beleive themselves to be betteroff for making the trade, or no trade would occur.

So in reality, anarchy and capatalism are the same thing. Free market capatalism can not exist without absolute property rights, the non iniation of force against a person or property and volentry interactions.

Such a state of affairs would lead to all trades being trades where both partys benifit, and that would be a great produces of wealth and happyness.

Anarchy and Capatalism are the same thing, they are redudent terms, not oxymornic.

Thats because I perfectly understand that they're contradictory. :) Money or any other kind of wealth is a source of power by definition. If you have the source of power, then the only thing you need is somebody who will decide to use it for own profit.

Any corporation is very similar to state:

constitution - company's charter;
legislature - assembly of share holders;
government - council of directors;
head of state - chief executive officer;
interior ministry - security service;

and so on. In fact, any corporation it's like a seed of the state.

In case of free market capitalism we have a soil for this seed, and we'll get a competition between many "states" in one society. Due to planning issues some of these corporations will become bankrupt or will merge with others. As the result, eventually we'll see inevitable centralization of wealth which is leading us to corporative dictatorship. Corporative dictatorship means a situation when few monopolies proclaims itself as a new government and this will be the end of so-called anarcho-capitalism.

Type of the resulting regime will depend on internal structure of "the power prize winner" corporation, it could vary from absolute monarchy to direct democracy.

1. The corperation is a fiction created by the state and enforced by state laws, AC has no such laws and so there may be no such corperation.

2. A corperation is in no way like a seed of the state. A state has a legal monolopy on the iniation of force against people, there is no coperation on earth that has such a monolopy.

3. There has never been a monolopy such as you have decribed occur in a free market and nor could there due to increasing marginal cost of buying each buisnesses, the cost of which must be passed on to the consumer and wil make you buisness less competative. Any psudo monolopy that exists currently only does so with state protection and laws and is such not a natural monolopy and is in fact a a fascist, mercantilistic, state sponsored enterprise.

4. So corperations such as you decribe may only exist with the sponsorship of the state.

5. No such centralisation of wealth occurs in free markets, as the only way to acrue wealth is to please customers who volentarly trade with you. No please customers, no trade, no wealth. Free markets create greater wealth distribution, not centralisation.

6. Free markets promote compition and drive down profits, no buisness will acrue sufficient wealth as any sector returning super normal profits will attract compition.

You a communist?

Also it is not a source of power it is a store of energy, power is energy per unit time, wages are an expression of power, wealth is a form of energy stored.

%) State laws were written using the same logic as corporate charters, that's why states and corporations have similar structure. Corporation is a typical entity of business activity in any well developed society. Not because of state but because it's a natural order of things. It's not even a sign of capitalism because they exist even under anticapitalist regimes.

In case if you didn't notice, corporations doesn't care about law too much. Even more, they're writing their own. :)

Please elaborate why do you think so.

State has this monopoly only because it holds on suitable amount of wealth. Wealth is a source of any real power. If you have wealth then you can do virtually anything, otherwise you're nothing because you even won't be able to buy weapons or feed your army.

There are many different types of monopoly. Some of them are state-created (e.g. radio frequencies regulation), but many others are naturally occurred (e.g. transport infrastructure or water supply).

People are greedy and mercantilistic creatures. That's the reason why state is greedy and mercantilistic, because state is formed by people. That's why the communism doesn't work at the current development level of our civilization.

Or cause some assasinations of unwanted competitors. We're not living in the ideal world, remember? :)

Tell this to bitfury or eric_chen@elen-tech.com, please.

I'm a realist who have analyzed many real-life examples.