Ask Slashdot: What Planks Would You Want In a Platform of a Political Party?

An anonymous reader writes "I am the Technology Manager of the Justice Party (sorry, no relationship to the Avengers). We are currently working on our Platform (version 2.0) and I would be interested to know what people in the science and technology field would like to see in a platform of a political party. For example, we are considering planks that relate to Open Government (data) access, science and maths promotion, space industries, promotion of open source, dealing with SOPA/ CISPA laws, improvement in user privacy and much more. Give us your comments so we can help build a more tech-savvy America."

Comments

You and yours can go your way. Me and mine my way.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is all.

WTF? Is this your party or not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take what you believe and make that your party planks.

Proportional representation.

[hendrikboom]

Proportional representation. Small factions will get represented too.

Re:Proportional representation.

[Anonymous Coward]

No software patents, nor method-of-doing-business patents.

No political contributions allowed from corporations.

Some means of punishing politicians that do a lot of legislation to benefit a corporation and then become a member of the board of directors as soon as their term is up, so they can rake in the cash from their prior legislation.

Re:Proportional representation.

[ShanghaiBill]

Proportional representation. Small factions will get represented too.

Many countries have proportional representation. There is little reason to believe that these countries are better governed, and plenty of evidence that they are not. The biggest problem with proportional representation is often small kooky factions hold the balance of power, are are able to wield disproportionate influence. Look at Israel for a good example of this.

Re:Proportional representation.

[pixelpusher220]

While i don't disagree with your description, they aren't 'coalitions' by the standard political definition. There are different factions within the party are but all still Dem or GOP. A coalition is made up of distinctly separate parties with distinctly separate goals.

Secularism

[elloGov]

Separation of Church/Religion & State, be it whatever religion

Re:Secularism

[Anonymous Coward]

Corrected that for you:

THIS. Make sure people are free to worship as they please, but keep the religion in homes and churches and out of government and public schools .

Re:Secularism

[DoofusOfDeath]

Serious question: For many persons, our sense of morality and ethics is derived from religious beliefs. And our ethical/moral beliefs then inform our ideals about civic issues such as the proper scope/role of government, and which laws should exist.

That is, it's not obvious to me that there's a common "core" set of beliefs that we can all agree upon, independently of our religious world views.

If that's correct, then how could such a separation truly exist? Even the very structure of government, by logical necessity, tramples on the beliefs of (for example0 Muslim theocrats or of athiests.

Re:Secularism

[Empiric]

Easy. Just refer to what "Separation of Church and State" actually means:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

The rendering of it as "removal of religion from the State" is simply a made-up misrepresentation as unbacked in content and justification (by -any- reference to anything that exists as an objective underpinning) as the rest of the secular arbitrariness that someone will soon post to "correct" this view, as stated by Some Lawyer Wearing A Black Robe At The Time.

Re:Secularism

[FreelanceWizard]

It can with a simple rule: a law is, prima facie, a violation of the separation of church and state when the only articulable purpose of the law is religious in nature. For a law to not run afoul of this, it has to have some purpose to society that isn't derived from religious principles. That doesn't mean that it can't have a purpose derived from such principles, only that that can't be the only purpose. For instance, most religions prohibit the killing of other people, but preventing murder has non-religious purpose as well. An example of a law that would run afoul of the rule would be a dictate that attempts to convert people from one religion to another is punishable by death. It has no articulable secular purpose, and therefore wouldn't be permitted. (A more recent and U.S.-specific example of a law with no articulable secular purpose is the banning of civil unions with the same rights and benefits as marriages.)

The reason why this rule works in the U.S., at any rate, is because a law that only has a religious purpose is either an establishment of religion (by granting extra rights to a religious group) or an impediment to its free exercise (by removing rights from those who follow a different religion or none at all, which is in itself a religion in this view).

Re:Secularism

[PRMan]

If you really study the Bible, sin is pretty much defined as "stuff that hurts yourself or others". The contrary is the Golden Rule, which is, in essence, "Love others". That seems like a pretty good moral basis.

The problem is that people love doing things that ultimately hurt themselves or others. And they don't want to be told otherwise...

Re:Secularism

[Seumas]

I find it terrifying that you think people don't have an obvious set of core beliefs they can all agree upon and that their ethics and morals come from religion.

If people can't share the common ideals of murder, rape, theft, genocide all being bad and self-determination, autonomy, freedom (of thought, speech, any other pursuits that don't directly harm other non-consenting adults), and helping our fellow man pursue those things on their own accord, then we should just drop some nukes on ourselves and hit the reset switch *now*. Actually, even religion doesn't even agree or promote all of the above things which are pretty obvious to any human being.

Mandatory gun ownership

[smooth wombat]

If you're going to require me to pay for my neighbor's health insurance despite them smoking a pack a week, then require that every person own a gun to protect their neighbor as well.

Re:Mandatory gun ownership

[smooth wombat]

Obamacare, which is nothing more than a requirement for you to buy your own insurance,

Key word, requirement. I am required to do so whether I want to or not. I don't need medical insurance. I can pay for my once-a-decade visit out of my own pocket without having to shell out the thousands of dollars in the interim.

Thus, if I am required to pay for something which I don't use, I am paying for my neighbor who has chosen to do something which is a known health threat.

Re:Mandatory gun ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, universal healthcare reduces the overall costs to society while universal gun ownership is almost certainly going to be costly in both monetary terms and in the numbers of lives lost to accidents, but don't let such quibbles interfere with your selfishness.

Re:Mandatory gun ownership

[CanHasDIY]

you're a worse freeloader than any smoker.

Smokers pay a higher premium, so calling us 'freeloaders' is complete bullshit.

On the contrary, fat motherfuckers are the largest (no pun intended, but noted and appreciated) burden on the healthcare system, and they are not required to pay a higher premium because they made the decision to be grotesquely obese slobs. You wanna talk freeloaders? Start with the worst offenders.

Re:Mandatory gun ownership

[Mashdar]

Representational democracy was partially meant to solve the problems surrounding the tyranny of the majority (coined by John Adams) by electing rational minds to temper swings in public sentiment.
It seems to me that popular votes are inconsistent and disruptive to the proper functioning of government. Just look at state ballot initiatives. Florida's state constitution, for instance, was recently modified to cover treatment of farm animals and slot machines. Imagine a US Amendment declaring killing kittens illegal. Such votes threaten to remove the tiered system of laws which is so useful for determining which laws are invalid.
Of course, representational democracy depends upon people electing reasonable people. Perhaps much larger houses are needed to push elections to a more local level. Part of the problem is that people don't know how much of an ass their representatives are.

Re:Mandatory gun ownership

[foreverdisillusioned]

Not only do you pay higher premiums but over your shortened lifetimes you end up needing LESS healthcare, not more. But don't expect the rabid anti-smoking lobby to stop spreading lies.

P.S. If you are a smoker, try vaping instead. Get yourself a good ego-c, not the crap they sell at walmart, some high strength liquid and be sure to exhale through your nose (you don't absorb it as much in your lungs.) If you still have cravings consider adding an antidepressant, since one of the reasons why tobacco is so addictive (whereas straight nicotine is only mildly addictive) are the MAOIs and other neurotrasmitter-affecting chemicals present.

Re:Mandatory gun ownership

[supervillainsf]

I think there's something to this, but I think it should be an annual hunting trip. The kids will actually have to kill something, clean it and eat it. Might even have the side benefit of helping people understand that meat doesn't originate in the grocery store.

Re:Mandatory gun ownership

[Dr_Barnowl]

On one side, you have single payer.

On the other side, you have health insurance.

A public health care system operates on the incentive that they will try and do the most good for their budget. This means that they will attempt to pay for as much health care as possible, within their fixed budget.

The insurance system operates on the incentive that they want to make a profit. Therefore they will try and avoid paying for as much healthcare as possible. In addition, the vast bureaucracy they create to prop up their efforts to avoid payment has a vast cost.

Why the FUCK would you want to enter into a system that by design, will try it's level best to leave you sick, maimed or dead?

Off the top of my head

[Anonymous Coward]

1) strict term limits for congress
2) corporate money is not free speech...no place for it in politics
3) Single payer health care
4) increased minimum wage that is subsequently tied to inflation
5) Large scale infrastructure projects...LARGE. High speed trains, universal fiber broadband
6) a commitment to overhaul the national power grid or begin the the process of implementing a decentralized solution to replacing the grid
7) outlaw lobbyists

Re:Off the top of my head

[Anonymous Coward]

7) outlaw lobbyists

And how do you propose to do that without either 1) running afoul of the 1st amendment's "freedom to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances" bit, or 2) passing an amendment to repeal parts of the 1st?

Re:Off the top of my head

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this idea is that you would have a significant portion of the population who chooses to get the free "wage" and do absolutely nothing, while the increased tax rate on those who do make the effort to work will be a disincentive to enter the workforce.

Re:Off the top of my head

[dgatwood]

It's easy, and I've been saying it for almost a decade now: Outlaw Congress, or at least the physical manifestation of it. If you send all of the politicians home to their districts, the cost for a corporation to lobby goes up by at least a factor of hundreds because they have to send lobbyists all around the country, and the cost for an average citizen to lobby goes down by a factor of hundreds because they need only drive a few miles to talk to their elected representatives. The corporations cease to have an advantage over ordinary citizens at that point, and the question of making the act of lobbying itself illegal becomes moot.

Who are you?

[TaoPhoenix]

I know I am a little too far down, but here goes.

1. Identity Fail.
"An anonymous reader writes "I am the Technology Manager of the Justice Party..."
Really?! For me you sunk your chances right there. Politics is about promoting yourself and hoping no bad $hit from your past sticks too badly. (Because there IS some, it's only a question of relativity!)

So "Anonymous Reader", for a party I've never heard of? Nope. Go away. I won't even begin to (oh wait, I am) open the can of worms on authenticity security for ... wait for it ... the *Technology Manager*... of a party?! Sales guys, I get. Tech Manager? Oh dear gawd.

2. Too F#$%$% Sick of "Hidden One Way Flow" data-slurps in politics. You want all our notes, but you won't stand to even log a Slashdot Username to respond to replies? And this for a *political party*? Screw that. I'll dignify you by saying you're not a complete fabrication by site Mgt. Let's assume you are real. Why So Sneaky?

Bye Bye.

Re:reduce nonsense

[Sarten-X]

Exactly. Take your platform, and burn it to the ground.

I want politicians who, when faced with legislation they support or not, will release a statement saying why it's a good or bad idea. Not a buzzword-filled piece about patriotism and inherent rights, but how the particular legislation helps or hinders your particular goals.
I want politicians who will vote however they feel is right, rather than how their party tells them to.
I want politicians who will act in support of not just their own constituents, but for all the neighboring regions as well, especially in regard to business incentives.
I want politicians who honestly care more about making the world better than about the day-to-day drama of American politics.

I also want a pony.

Re:Planks?

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Politics is very meaningful. These are the people who rule over us and decide the future of our respective countries. Herp derp politics are boring/corrupt is the call of an idiot child; get involved, vote, make the issues that matter to you political.

Use LOGIC

[Muad'Dave]

All laws must consist of the following:

1) A clear purpose
2) What means are to be employed to achieve that purpose
3) A list of criteria can be independently evaluated to see if it was a success
4) A timeline for evaluating those criteria and repealing the law if it was not successful

I realize this won't work in all cases, but it should help in most.

Huh?

[WillgasM]

Is this really how political parties get started? Shouldn't the platform come before the party? If you don't already know what needs to be done differently, then why are creating a new party? This makes it sound like you found a large, under-served demographic and decided to cash in on their passion. At best, this sounds really backwards; at worst, it sounds downright dubious. How about you tell us what your party stands for, and we'll tell you if we agree and where you could stand to change. At the very least, you should lurk more. I'm all for a viable third party, especially one that embraces the tech community, but surely you understand why this looks deceitful. It's like asking a girl in a chat room how old she is and she asks how old you want her to be.

Re:Third parties, generally, are not good

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose the following anti-gerrymandering (state constitutional) amendment:

All members of the state senate and house of representatives will be given the option to submit no more than two proposals for the new districts after a redistricting is deemed necessary (after a national census yields results). The redistricting will not be put to a vote, but the winner decided by the following criteria:
1) No district will have less than 98% of the population of the most populous district.
2) All districts must be contiguous.
3) Of all proposals that meet the first two criteria, the new district will be chosen as the proposal that minimizes total district perimeter, with existing district boundaries weighted at 50% that of new boundaries.

This means that a single 3rd party member of either house could decide the future of the districts by submitting a simple district chart, thus preventing ridiculous gerrymandering.

Re:My Little Politicians.

[femtobyte]

The key problem with the Equestria model: the leadership required to "enforce Harmony" is a racial elite (winged unicorns, with a tall white leader) who swoop in with superior power (magical artifacts that defeat dark-colored scary evil with blasts of rainbow energy). Basically, the "Equestria model" is what we already have, at least in the minds of the power elite "defenders of liberty" who employ powers of superior force to structure the world according to their high-minded ideals. You think you can find a *real* honest, kind, loyal, generous, humorous ruling elite to responsibly wield magical artifacts of power: that's about as likely as getting real alicorn ponies for our elected officials.

MLP(FIM) brushes aside the anarchist critiques of power that time and again prove to be right: "trust us, this time we're really the harmony-loving good guys" isn't a good platform for ceding ultimate political power to an elite few "princesses." We do not need political parties that promise a sparklier rainbow face to the future of power politics; we need radical reform that challenges and deconstructs the entire hierarchy of power.

Re:Mandatory gun ownership for idiots, too

[CanHasDIY]

Well, theoretically if you start teaching it in the schools at an early age, within a generation the majority of the populace will have went through the course, so you should have a lot fewer incidents like those you mention.

Another potential upside would be that, if the training were mandatory, perhaps future police officers would develop a higher accuracy rate than bad guys in action films.

Fiscal Policy

[gd2shoe]

Unfortunately, no political party position is complete without addressing money. You need to decide whether to tax your way out of this hole, or cut your way out. (or both, but aggressively, not half heartedly)

First plank? Cut the deficit all the way to negative. ASAP. That means now, not planning on it several decades out. Real reform hurts, but it will hurt more if we don't address the problem. Can you imagine the US declaring bankruptcy? That's where we're headed. (or the equvalent, anyway) And that's not just the federal government. Many of the states are insolvent right now too. Even some of the big ones (California).

Real deficit cuts are not decreasing the planned growth of deficits! Grab both the Rs and Ds and slap them with this during campaigning.

Second, start spending the money we've got wisely. We're like a leaky sieve. For instance, there's a constant drumbeat of "we've got to support the schools and teachers!" In reality? Almost all the money get's lost between tax payers and the classrooms. Setting more money aside for schools almost never results in increased learning. But cuts? Those go straight to the gullet.

Third, stop the hidden tax. Inflation. The FED and other financial entities have been focused on a constant, steady inflation to "protect" the economy from the boogeyman of deflationary-spirals. The reality is: deflation is a symptom of the spirals, but isn't the primary cause. Healthy economies absorb deflation nicely. The real reason for constant inflation is to cause the stock market to be the safest place for people to store their cash. It's a money grab for the rich, and a way for the Federal government to shrink the value of the national debt.

Not asking other people to decide your policies

[PhamNguyen]

I would like you to base your policies around some coherent principles so that I can know if you are worth investigating further. When you make a post like you have just made, it sounds like you are just trying to taylor your policies to getting votes from a particular constituency. Your post does not deserve to be on Slashdot. If you had stated some core principals and how they apply to the use of technology in society, that would have been something worth reading, although it would still not be your place to advertise it here.

If you are serious about politics I would suggest you act with more decency, and stop polluting news sites with articles that are not news, but rather promoting your own agenda.

Financial, science, immigration, military

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Financial reform. If what the banks did in 2008 wasn't illegal, it should have been. Glass-Steagal needs to come back. The tax burden on corporations (and people) needs to increase the larger they become. Money is unelected political power. It subverts democracy and encourages oligarchy. Offshore money parking needs to be illegal as well. If you want your money in the Isle of Mann, feel free to move there.

The USA's military is 7 times larger than the next largest military. We spend 18 percent of the budget on military expenditures. I'm all for reducing "entitlements" starting with the Army, Navy and Marines.

More money should go to research in AI and energy generation. The first problem is unrecognized by the mainstream press (What a shock), but the first country that develops useful, scalable, human-like AI rules the world. Seriously. The next big problem is energy. Like it or not, significant postive net energy from oil is going away. We need a replacement.

Controversial as this is, I'd give anyone with a medical, engineering or other technical degree earned in the USA a green card and two tax free years. We need the world's smart people here, not in India.

End rant.

Re:FTFY:

[AlphaWolf_HK]

This is basically a slashvertisement for their political party, and they want to get more people involved, and "rally for the cause".

We're deeply entrenched into the two party system, and you're only kidding yourself if you think it will change any time soon. I think AC is simply pointing that out.

Thinking exactly that as I curiously clicked to go to their site, I noticed a sentence in there that is pushing for a direction I already don't care for, and what AC said came to mind. Without reading more into it, I am fairly certain at this point that this "party" they are forming is all about social justice. Social justice is based upon the idea that any time you succeed in favor of somebody else, that is a wrong that must be righted. What follows is a rant on social justice, and you might like my anecdote which favors the little guy:

Succeeding in favor of somebody else can range from being hired for a high paying job so the other guy needs to find somewhere else to work, or winning a race where you got the cash prize and the second place guy got nothing.

I like the idea that we are all equal by default and we should all have a fair chance, but the reality is that we aren't all equal. Last week I was on a team in a competition where we had to wire colored cables to a patch panel and some switches in a short amount of time, and the team that came in first won $1,000, whereas the other teams came out with nothing. I have keratoconus so it takes me a second to properly identify small numbers (though I can do it, eventually) and one of my other teammates is colorblind. All three of us wear glasses. These problems set us back, but we were offered no handicap favors.

We won, making us one out of 15 or so teams who competed. Statistically, we were probably the only team with debilitating eyesight issues, but we probably won because we did something smarter (I don't really know as I never met any of the competition.) Social justice says that what we did was inherently unfair because we became rich(er) at the expense of somebody else. Because we did something better, we have committed an injustice.

Social justice is bullshit. There, I said it. Like AC said, I'll go my way on this one. Though like you said, I also hope they go away. To me a society where everybody is exactly the same would be a dystopia. Maybe I'm biased because I have talents that people are willing to pay for (outside of that contest, too) but I still don't like the idea of it.