Your most "out there" ideas, politically (Representatives, salaries, enemies)

[pbmaise]

Originally Posted by Nepenthe

I don't really disagree, at all (being someone who takes his fitness seriously)... but I worry about the future of this -- with the federal government being the single payer, new unbelievable technologies coming online, and the taxpayers in general starting to feel like they're tired of paying for others' choices. How does that not lead to colossal surveillance, control through government benefits used as the carrot to conform, and eventually outright control?

I envision using existing testing centers to do basics

drug screening (nicotine is a drug to check)
weight height
cardio fitness (this allows a heavy muscle person to get discount too)

If we insist cars go for emissions tests why not people?

If you don't want to go to a testing center it is your right to stay away but no discounts for you.

Alcohol and sugar would be a sin tax item with funds by law going to reduce health care costs.

Meat.. Yup sin tax. Higher the fat content of the meat the greater the tax. Same with cooking oil and saturated fats.

Things like fruit and vegetables no tax. Subsidies to farmers that grow these and no subsidies to sugar and corn and soy.

[NLVgal]

Take private money out of politics. Campaigns would be publicly funded after reaching viability via grassroots efforts and all media would be required to donate a certain amount of airtime to each candidate. Reelection funds would be non-existent.

[NLVgal]

Originally Posted by pbmaise

I envision using existing testing centers to do basics

drug screening (nicotine is a drug to check)
weight height
cardio fitness (this allows a heavy muscle person to get discount too)

If we insist cars go for emissions tests why not people?

If you don't want to go to a testing center it is your right to stay away but no discounts for you.

Alcohol and sugar would be a sin tax item with funds by law going to reduce health care costs.

Meat.. Yup sin tax. Higher the fat content of the meat the greater the tax. Same with cooking oil and saturated fats.

Things like fruit and vegetables no tax. Subsidies to farmers that grow these and no subsidies to sugar and corn and soy.

Latest medical research shows that low fat diets are not particularly good for you and that butter and animal fats are far superior to oils like Canola.

[Bobdreamz]

Originally Posted by peequi

Some really cool ideas, but keep dreaming guys. I don't know if this government is just too big or not enough people care, but I don't think any of these pro freedom ideas will ever catch on.

Abolish state and local funding of ALL education directly. Privatize it all. Taxes collected for education rerouted to some type of payment method where a family can draw upon to make payments towards a private school.

America is already dumb enough and are striving on Minimum wage to be successful !

Let's all join Trump University !

[First24]

Individuals running for POTUS must have governing experience (on statewide or national levels) and/or qualifying military service years.

This, so the potential is minimized for a slick brainwashing deadbeat carpetbagger (like Trump) won't come in and influence America's desperate & feeble-minded voters (like the Trumpettes).

[ditchoc]

Term limits
No riders on bills
Secure 'tele-voting'
Congress writes legislation/bills, voters vote on them using secure 'tele-voting'

[skepticratic]

Originally Posted by Wambatown81

A return to imperialism. It would be selective though where we stay friends with good allies but conquer and completely take over the regions that we have problems with. The middle east could end up looking like suburban Phoenix, for example. To simply exist as a people is not enough, true greatness requires expansion.

In the late 19th century, there was a lot of debate about this very thing. Western superiority was all the rage back then, and that transcended not just ideals (which I think could be reasonably argued as superior), but to the people; their ethnic origin. Needless to say, things like Eugenics were all the rage back them. Darwin's theory of evolution was new and people reasoned that if the West has superior ideals, then that must be becasue the people were genetically superior.

In America, the debate was particularly intense. Europe, largely, already had colonized much of the world so there was less debate around this. America was different; we were founded on anti-imperialism... well, self determination, to be exact. The idea that a people be subject to the rule or a man or men who's palace is separated from them by an ocean or a continent is absurd, according to older American ideals. So when there was a pretty strong favoritism towards making America more like those great European empires and getting in on the colony businesses, some saw this as betraying traditional American values. Others saw it as fulfilling them, by bringing the great ideals of America to new places, where those people's lives would be improved.

This debate eventually led to the Spanish-American war, a war that was easily fought in Cuba but was a bloody nightmare in the Philippines.

I'd argue America doesn't need to return to imperialism. They already gave in. It's just that the game changed. After the first world war, empires started crumbling. Something about people being asked to sit in a trench and shoot machine guns at people 100 yards away for months at a time, pretty much for no real reason, made people less likely to be in favor of their emperor. But after WWII, in an attempt to prevent communism from spreading, the West (particularly the US) started influencing the world in new ways, ways that didn't necessarily involve controlling a region by force.

It's probably not necessary for me to even say it, but I fundamentally disagree with you.

[Patricius Maximus]

Among the many out-there ideas I entertain are some I like - annual elections (or sortitions, see below) with a one term limit, a general principle of full personal and very strict liability of politicians for the effects of their policies, free market health care reform, convicts being able to choose corporal punishment rather than imprisonment; arguably it's hardly any less humane. Charter cities are another one, as is full freedom of travel and migration worldwide across borders with no documents required (this was largely the case as recently as 1900 though), and abolition of the voting age (i.e. people start voting as soon as they choose). Some other ones I keep coming back to are abolition of income tax (it's astonishing and kinda sad how many investment decisions are dictated by tax consequences), as well as complete separation of education and job training - this means educational institutions offer only pure liberal education, no technical education, career training, or technical training of any kind, which is taken care of at a training institution, ideally directly connected to businesses. Nuclear technology being opened up and adopted to the hilt is another favorite.

One of my favorites is adopting the democratic system along the lines of classical Athens, as detailed by Roderick T. Long here and here. Contrary to popular belief it had robust checks and balances, and the law held fundamental liberties to be inviolable; indeed its methods of ensuring the whole people controlled the government's decisions and protecting their freedoms if anything were superior to our "democracies". Accountability mechanisms were obviously superior; for example, introducing unconstitutional bills and making false political promises were both actually illegal, and that law was enforced against politicians - surely very few of our legislators and politicians would survive that level of scrutiny.

A major advantage was that every possible post was filled by sortition (selection by lot) rather than election, which guarantees representative government; the whole electorate collectively formed the legislature. Indeed the democrats of the era thought sortititon to be the cornerstone of democracy, and viewed elections as an oligarchic and anti-democratic method, since those who were rich and/or powerful in government would inevitably dominate. Considering that that's what's happened to us perhaps their views should be looked into more, especially considering that sortition is virtually immune to capture by the rich.

This is compatible with Thomas Jefferson's concept of ward republics or hundreds, where most government functions would be devolved to jurisdictions of a few hundred people each, so that they could all personally participate in government. Even the Athenian system couldn't function with a population more than a few tens of thousands, so either all sovereign states should be that size or smaller or the ward system should be adopted with personnel in central levels of government being selected by lot to the greatest extent possible. Ideally some mixture of both would be employed. The remaining elected positions are to be nonpartisan in my idea for a modernized classical democracy.

There are several current examples of microstates, and the Landsgemeinde in parts of Switzerland is classically democratic, so if you just mated them together you'd be most of the way there.

Originally Posted by Steve McDonald

Eliminate the presidency and replace it with a five-member commission. [...]

That's one of my favorite ideas and that's actually called the directorial system, which is the political structure currently used by Switzerland (their Federal Council). You don't even have to look that far, interestingly enough - the Swiss imported the idea from the French Directory, who in turn got the idea from Pennsylvania, where it originated in the Constitution of 1776, interestingly considered the most radical and democratic of the original state constitutions. Since Switzerland is often held up as being far superior to America in governance one has to wonder whether America swindled itself out of its own great idea.

[FirebirdCamaro1220]

Mandated free television time for political campaigns and outlaw any donation over $500, as well as reverse Citizens United. And send D'nesh D'Souza to Guantanamo Bay

[redguitar77111]

People under 18 should have more rights. They pay taxes without representation, their parents can use the police to kidnap them, etc.

Originally Posted by First24

Individuals running for POTUS must have governing experience (on statewide or national levels) and/or qualifying military service years.

This, so the potential is minimized for a slick brainwashing deadbeat carpetbagger (like Trump) won't come in and influence America's desperate & feeble-minded voters (like the Trumpettes).

I'm sure that the founding fathers would have put exactly this in the constitution if they saw Trump coming. The founding fathers were afraid of populism to the point that when the constitution first went into effect, the only part of the federal government that people voted on was the House of Representatives, and even then only those who owned property could vote.