Topic: Politician Impeach Switch (Read 1187 times)

Before I formulate a full reply, can you please show me where United State politicians are granted immunity, outside of the right to be present at Congress?

If they gave you the use of some expensive equipment or other resources to do the job you're contracted to do and then you used it for some other purpose which indirectly benefits you (like investing in some business that you own stock in), and this happens before the deadline, should they still wait until the deadline to see if you fulfilled your obligations?


Its much more about criminal activity that they have "immunity" to (they think they're above the law and have written into the laws that is true) than about if they do what they said or not.


You made an assumption, and I'm going to need a reason to believe that assumption. The assumption is if a majority of people want a certain political party (with various second, third, and fourth... choices) to win and choose their voting strategy toward that goal, then what the most people acted toward will be the result of the vote. We have observed in the USA election system, for example, that if x percent of people want the Libertarians to win, then much less than x percent of people will vote for Libertarians. Your assumption relies on x percent of desire translating to x fraction of votes, and that's not what happens. The system of everyone getting 1 vote for who they want to win is based on incorrect game-theory and has been proven to result in 2 parties dominating politics that more people vote against than vote for, and based on that alone it is invalid, and so is your assumption.


I want for myself and others to live in a world where everyone is accountable and doesn't get a free ticket to do whatever they want for 4 years and only pay for it at the end. Imagine if police worked that way. Officer, he killed my wife. Yes, but we have to give him 4 years to bring her back to life, in case new medical technology is invented or in case he can make up for it in some other way. We have to give him until the end of his contract. Its a relevant analogy, since these "elected" people make choices that increase or decrease the amounts of wars and people dieing by millions of lives. We need an emergency stop option.


Then lets all vote for world peace, for all governments of all countries to withdraw their armies. See how well the ability to make big changes works then. They have money to make from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex and would ignore such a vote for big change.


"the action of trying to find "the person responsible" for whatever crime was committed" is very important. Its called law enforcement.

When members of government say they are above the law (they call it "immunity") and use that to get away with crimes, it is the peoples' responsibility to create new parts of government, implemented on open source technology or any other way needed to get it done, and to make sure every member of government obeys the laws.

Nobody is above the law, period. Any law that applies to some people but not others, is no law at all. For example, "jim crow laws" required that black people  only drink from certain water fountains and sit in the back of busses when white people wanted the front seats. Are we really going to do that again for government vs civilians, having different laws for different people? If nobody is above the law, only reasonable laws will be made and unreasonable laws repealed, since they know the laws apply to them too.


So when an investigator starts a new case, he should quit because he starts with "a lack of evidence" and is forced to pick people based on "a lot of finger pointing" to ask questions to?


Blame often should be on a group of people instead of anyone individually. That's the primary way politicians stay in office, by distributing the blame across a large number of politicians. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex is supported by a majority of politicians in USA (I know this because it continues expanding), but increasing the amount of war because its profitable should be illegal. We should have a way to fire all such politicians who participated in spreading the blame across their group, even though no specific politician did it. They work for us. They don't have a right to keep their jobs, so if firing some group of politicians would, as we the people prefer, improve our country, then that is enough reason to do it.

Also, war should be illegal. Did they ever ask us to vote on if war should be legal? No, they just start wars without our democratic permission, and make lots of money on weapons sales and advancing military technology. But we have to advance our military tech faster than the other countries for defense. Wrong. That is exactly the idea that causes escalation of conflicts to World War 3.



If you think a Politician Impeach Switch is too strong, how about a Politician Investigate Switch which, by a majority vote, would cause private investigators and other people who support the Politician Investigate Switch to investigate the target person voted to be investigated? That way, they couldn't just change the subject when it comes up in a debate, for example. Millions of peoples' attention on one accusation against them is a very strong force.

That's how the Politician Impeach Switch is supposed to work, when its just getting started, since its the only practical way we have to implement it. Only later we would get integration with governments. We can do it completely through open source systems and voluntary agreement, if enough people think its a good idea and volunteer a little of their attention toward corrupt politicians, like the Wall Street Protesters and other groups recently did.

Whether or not I like the free market is not important to this debate (that's another topic). I'm not sure about your assertion that most jobs are done at-will employment. The only jobs I've done under at-will (hourly) employment were unskilled -- being a line cook, shelving books etc. On the other hand, the jobs that use my skills are almost always contracts: I promise to deliver a custom item, the client promises to pay me. There is a deadline, and after that deadline I am no longer employed.

If I was paid hourly for, say, making chainmaille -- I would likely be fired after the first 10 or so hours of payment. Because it looks like I have nothing to show at that point, since I've been coiling wire and cutting rings, which doesn't look the the armor I've promised to deliver. That is, in my opinion, the benefit of contracts -- I am paying someone for something that I don't know how/don't have the time to do, and don't really care how it gets done as long as it gets done on time.

I'm not saying that politicians should be guaranteed office for their entire term --but perhaps the system should include performance evaluations based on their campaign promises. (Since that would be their end of the contract.)


Then don't elect them -- if they have a history of corruption, don't vote for them. If they don't have a history of corruption, and it becomes apparent during their term, don't re-elect them. The longest term, in the US, is only six years. Judges are a different point -- they are appointed, not elected, and should have quite a bit of protection against removal for the same reason as professors.


No -- we have government by the people. I'm saying that if they chose the wrong thing, they should have to at least stick it out for the remainder of the "contract."



I more or less agree -- I just disagree with "early termination." Treat others how you want to be treated.


We already have the ability to make big and small changes...it's called elections. If the majority (and by majority I mean a clear majority) wanted radical change, we'd have it. Truth is, the majority is ok with how we're doing things.


The phrase Witch-Hunt was just that, a phrase. It was not a specific reference to a particular Witch-Hunt, but was an expression, used to mean the action of trying to find "the person responsible" for whatever crime was committed. Often it involves a lot of finger pointing, a lack of evidence, and someone taking the fall, when in fact "the person responsible" may have been a group of people, or a series of social/economic events.


No, I didn't feel your were.
---
Disclaimer: This is a debate. The above statements do not reflect the personal beliefs of the author.

If contracts for a certain term of employment (as a politician or any other job) are a good idea, then why are most jobs done the other way, at-will-employment where you can be fired at any time? Are you against running the government like a free market on politician's jobs, and if so what do you have against free markets?


What if their first priority is to get themself rich and their second priority is to fix it? It doesn't get fixed. Politics is run by money, so this is the rule, not the exception. Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex

If a politician puts tax money into funding a business that they have large investments in, that is usually stealing, and the only time when its not stealing is when lots of other people are saying to do the same thing and were not paid off by that politician or those he paid to influence that. Should we give them time to fix that problem too? Or should we fire them? We can't yet put them in jail because they think they're above the law (they call it "immunity"), but we should at least fire them.


So you're saying that since people would choose the wrong thing, we should avoid government by the people?


Whatever would work (allowing for trying new strategies) best in politics is what we should do. Fairness to the politicians is lower priority, as long as we don't take anything they have a right to. They don't have the right to continuing their jobs. They work for us. We the people are their employers and if we choose a different business strategy we owe the fired employees no other justification for firing them. We the people prefer it this or that way. That's what it comes down to.

Example: If firing every politician in the USA government, including the good politicians, and replacing them all with people who are trained in science and psychology and game-theory and other useful skills, would benefit USA overall, then we should do that. If some good politicians are fired too, too bad for them, since our business strategy overall would say replacing all of them and not taking the time to figure out who did what is still a good strategy overall. Is it a good strategy? That is the question we should answer instead of thinking about what the politicians want. We could make big or small changes through the Politician Impeach Switch.


Not a good analogy. Witch hunts were about about violence. I'm talking about firing our employees, something we the people have the right to do if it would benefit our country. You wouldn't let an employee choose if he's fired or not, would you?

I'd also say the same things for all other countries or globally if agreement eventually comes at that level.

I'm not recommending that any specific politicians be fired or not fired. I work in a much more abstract way. I just want to restore democracy by giving people the choice.

The only issue I see with this is, in order to work, it would require an overhaul of the US system -- as it is, it takes years to fix problems: diagnosis, planning, implementing plans...and if your term can be cut short as soon as a problem arises, you won't have any time to fix it. People will blame whoever's in charge, and they'll get kicked out, even if they didn't set the chain of events in motion. Not to mention I think it would cause a huge increase in Washington Witch-Hunts, and those are just a waste of resources.

My .02

The Politician Impeach Switch supports voting for the impeachment of politicians, not voting about cake or tax to provide the cake. The politicians will successfully balance taxes and cake to satisfy the most number of people or they will be higher priority impeachment targets.


Also, a funny similarity... I noticed another thread was deleted

The Politician Impeach Switch is a weaker form of that which only assassinates the job of the politician, gets them fired, and is completely legal since governments work for us as a democracy.

Problem is that you will end up with a California type system where "we the people" demands cake and "we the people" refuse to raise the tax revenue needed to provide cake.  You do need the revenue raising body to have some independence. 

Every government works for the majority agreement (also known as democracy) of its people. We do not need government's permission or voting systems to agree on things. Whatever we-the-people agree is government's job to do, government must get the job done or we will find someone who can, as any employer has the responsibility to do when their employee doesn't get the job done. Governments work for their people if they admit it or not. Any employee who ignores the commands of his employer will usually be fired. Employees do not regulate the communication of their employers, like the "Internet Censorship Bill" in USA or any kind of censoring we did not ask for, for example. An employee does not make demands of how much money the employers will pay him, like unreasonable taxes, unless he is willing to find another job if the demand is not approved. An employee does not drive the organization to bankruptcy, like over a billion starving people or other global problems, against the commands of the employers. Employees regulate what their employer gives them permission to regulate. We give governments permission to regulate us only in the ways that improve the world, not to fill their own pockets at our expense. Know your place or find another job.

We know how to build systems to measure our agreement, like Wikipedia, and free open-source systems based on digital-signatures and merkle-trees to count things with military-strength software security, like Bitcoin at one point was a 100 million dollar economy as numbers on our screens that we could send and receive, really just a kind of Internet-based calculator but through well planned strategies people accepted it as money and traded it for dollars as the Bitcoin economy grew. Using the many kinds of unbiased free open-source secure technology and software we've learned to create, we can build systems that most people can trust which we will use to figure out what we agree on.

As many people start using these voluntary systems, the governments, who work for us, will have the responsibility to do what we agree on, or we'll impeach them, 1 politician at a time, and find someone who can get the job done. After many people figure out what they agree on, governments won't be able to resist us by their normal strategies of keeping us fighting eachother. Through our unbiased free open-source mostly unified democratic voice, governments will obey democracy or find another job.

While I disagree with the purpose of the Internet Kill Switch, it is a very efficient strategy of getting global communications and websites and the businesses who own that infrastructure to do what governments tell them to do. If there is even 1 thing government objects to on a website, like something copyrighted or something that exposes crimes of governments or opinions against their laws or ways of organizing things, then government can demand it be taken down, and if the website owner refuses, block everyone's access to the whole website. Because of this extreme ability to block small or big parts of the Internet, those who control the Internet infrastructure will be very motivated to obey government commands to the letter. That's efficiency.

But who watches the watchers? Average people. Until recently, we haven't had the ability to organize on a level where we could practically do that, but new free open-source unbiased secure technology is changing that.

Like the Internet Kill Switch can shut down individual websites, I propose a voluntary (use it if you want, not forced by laws or integrated with governments) system that anyone on Earth who has Internet access can use to help organize the world.

It will be called the Politician Impeach Switch.

If there is majority agreement in your city to impeach any politician or other employee of your city, then those who choose to use this system will voluntarily organize themselves toward getting that politician impeached, fired, out of a job, or whatever you want to call it.

We're not going to use violence or do anything illegal. We have more than enough power just by organizing our actions together, little things like publicly broadcasting (writing on the internet, the news, or wherever) the secrets we learn about a politician, exposing their crimes, agreeing not to vote for them or anyone who supports them, or other legal actions.

The Politician Impeach Switch, which is a new kind of democracy done through any unbiased free open-source secure technology, will become what politicians fear most, so they will choose to do their jobs as we-the-people assign to them or we'll find someone who can get the job done.

After the Politician Impeach Switch is up and running, any politician who acted against it or against those who support or try to create it, will be likely targets for impeachment. Do your job, and don't act against we-the-people, or be impeached. Impeach normally means a specific legal process that only applies in certain cases, but the Politician Impeach Switch's only condition is democracy.

This is a message to all governments and their people. Most governments are on thin-ice, but if they cooperate with democracy and start trying to make this a better world for everyone as a higher priority than getting themselves rich, then I recommend we give them another chance, under the unbiased free open-source decentralized secure Politician Impeach Switch.