Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

[GURPS Fox]

Alright, here's a doozy:

• The bureaucracy is a completely technocratic entity and has a say in the nation's politics.
• The head of state is called the 'Director-General' and isn't elected by the people but elected through a bargaining process between the Legislature, the bureaucracy, and the lower executive.
• The head of government is the head of the lower executive, which consists of the leaders of the various bureaucratic departments of the state and the head of this council (one can't be a head of a department and head of this council at the same time). This leader is called the 'Head Counselor'.
• The elected portions -either directly or indirectly- of the legislative branch (aka the Senate (appointed by district governments for a 10-year term) and the House of Representatives (directly elected for their federal district for 4-year terms) have (comparatively) little power. The third subbranch of the legislative body is where retired bureaucracy officers are appointed for 10-year terms.
• In the 'negotiation' process, the bureaucracy has -effectively- two votes.
• The majority of the law-making and budgetary powers are in the bureaucracy, not the legislature.
• The judicial branch is a semi-autonomous branch with a wide range of powers including initiating an impeachment investigation.
• To get voting power, you must spend [x] years in the Federal Service, to get more than that, you'll need to stay within the federal services for longer than [x] years. The lowest office requires you to spend [y] years in the Federal Service.
• Privacy is no longer a thing via omnipresent electronic panopticon.
• News and information are strictly restricted to prevent the 'Cyber Balkans Effect' on the voting populous and help make countering memetic weapons easier. Social media is strictly controlled with moderators requiring federal certifications to become moderators.
• Most people outside the military and the government live off the 'Basic Life Guarantee' welfare system, essentially a UBI but with various healthcare and entertainment additions. This includes one free extra body.
• The judicial system is reform-minded but isn't unwilling to make examples. I.e. it can -after the appropriate mental and medical procedures are followed- simply execute people if they are deemed to be a threat to society or -more often- civilization itself. Those executed tend to be either a) someone trying to create a horrific synth-plague out of their basement; b) creating an unneutralized memetic weapon; or c) designing, producing, programming, and use of a 'mind jack' (basically a handheld mind control device).

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by GURPS Fox

Alright, here's a doozy:

• The bureaucracy is a completely technocratic entity and has a say in the nation's politics.
• The head of state is called the 'Director-General' and isn't elected by the people but elected through a bargaining process between the Legislature, the bureaucracy, and the lower executive.
• The head of government is the head of the lower executive, which consists of the leaders of the various bureaucratic departments of the state and the head of this council (one can't be a head of a department and head of this council at the same time). This leader is called the 'Head Counselor'.
• The elected portions -either directly or indirectly- of the legislative branch (aka the Senate (appointed by district governments for a 10-year term) and the House of Representatives (directly elected for their federal district for 4-year terms) have (comparatively) little power. The third subbranch of the legislative body is where retired bureaucracy officers are appointed for 10-year terms.
• In the 'negotiation' process, the bureaucracy has -effectively- two votes.
• The majority of the law-making and budgetary powers are in the bureaucracy, not the legislature.
• The judicial branch is a semi-autonomous branch with a wide range of powers including initiating an impeachment investigation.
• To get voting power, you must spend [x] years in the Federal Service, to get more than that, you'll need to stay within the federal services for longer than [x] years. The lowest office requires you to spend [y] years in the Federal Service.
• Privacy is no longer a thing via omnipresent electronic panopticon.
• News and information are strictly restricted to prevent the 'Cyber Balkans Effect' on the voting populous and help make countering memetic weapons easier. Social media is strictly controlled with moderators requiring federal certifications to become moderators.
• Most people outside the military and the government live off the 'Basic Life Guarantee' welfare system, essentially a UBI but with various healthcare and entertainment additions. This includes one free extra body.
• The judicial system is reform-minded but isn't unwilling to make examples. I.e. it can -after the appropriate mental and medical procedures are followed- simply execute people if they are deemed to be a threat to society or -more often- civilization itself. Those executed tend to be either a) someone trying to create a horrific synth-plague out of their basement; b) creating an unneutralized memetic weapon; or c) designing, producing, programming, and use of a 'mind jack' (basically a handheld mind control device).

Sounds like you're REALLY going for creepy. I assume that fits the plot?

[GURPS Fox]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Sounds like you're REALLY going for creepy. I assume that fits the plot?

Basically, the setting leans heavily into the 'Hobbes is right' (with the caveat that its 'Hobbes is close to the money' so to speak as certain elements of his political writings are off due to his technological context) category and democracy overall is... not effective, especially when you've got things like Gen3 and Gen4 memetic weapons (which have a significant chance of removing one's free will) or the feared Gen5 memetic weapons (which tell free will to die in a corner) running around.

The other factions in the setting have similar restrictions, either using federal service requirements, tax bracket requirements, or a mixture of both for the megastates while megacorps use a minimum stock amount requirement.

Effectively, too much democracy caused the mess, so things have been scaled back, and sadly this is better.

[jason taylor]

I came upon this idea in All the Tropes, "Companion Cube". An artifact is legally the impersonation of a Constitutional monarchy with a defunct monarch. I read more about it in Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_C...n_modern_times

[Kale]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I came upon this idea in All the Tropes, "Companion Cube". An artifact is legally the impersonation of a Constitutional monarchy with a defunct monarch.

It's almost like Arthurian legend where he who can pull the sword out of the stone is King. In this case whoever wears the crown is king. From the wikipedia article: "they were not looking for a crown to inaugurate a king, but rather, they were looking for a king for the crown"
This could be an interesting setup for a magical item that selects the King from a pool of applicants. Things fall apart when none of the applicants put forward by the noble families are accepted by the crown...

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Kale

It's almost like Arthurian legend where he who can pull the sword out of the stone is King. In this case whoever wears the crown is king. From the wikipedia article: "they were not looking for a crown to inaugurate a king, but rather, they were looking for a king for the crown"
This could be an interesting setup for a magical item that selects the King from a pool of applicants. Things fall apart when none of the applicants put forward by the noble families are accepted by the crown...

As usual, SF has an example: the James Blish novelization of the Star Trek TAS episode 'Bem' has a crown (actually itself a living creature) that works something like that.

[Johnny1A.2]

This one really doesn't quite fit human nature, and probably couldn't function without some external force of coercion. Of course that external force might exist in setting...likewise, this might work for a near-human humanoid race with slightly different psychology.

Historically, in the early agricultural age, and well into relatively modern times, settled agricultural civilizations tended to get periodically overrun by nomad peoples. The most recent big example of this (very possibly the last, for technological reasons) was the Mongolians, but it's happened many, many times back into the mists of prehistory. The Indo-Europeans appear to have done this number more than once, among others.

Now imagine a settled agricultural civilization, comfortably ensconced in lush river valleys and other pleasant places. Barren highlands and hardscrabble lands surround it, breeding tribes of hardy nomads. So far, much like real history. The nomads form a confederacy to attack and overrun the lowlands, again, that's how it usually happened.

But the nomads break the pattern. Instead of settling down in the cities and being more-or-less absorbed after a few generations (possibly leaving behind an aristocratic class), they remain nomads. Tribe A rules the valleys for a period, say ten years, then moves out and Tribe B comes in. Tribe B vacates after a while and Tribe C takes control. The tribes take turns ruling the comfy lowlands and refrain from interbreeding with their subjects (mostly, anyway, people being people). When they aren't ruling the lowlands the nomads live like nomads, and retain their harsh lifestyles and combat orientation. The nomad confederacy takes turns looting and ruling, and exercises enough restraint to keep shearing the sheep.

Like I said, this really doesn't work for human beings absent some outside compulsion, but it would make for an interesting variation on history.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Pope Uncommon the Dainty

#1
The homesteaders who inhabit the planet Hatfield fear demagoguery and populism. They distrust promises, because there really is no way to hold someone to what they have said; trust is stupid, because trustworthiness is only proven when it is proven wrong. As individualistic they may be in the insistence that each Hatfieldling has their own vast expanse of planetary surface to do with as they will, they long to see themselves in others and feel connected to a community. They have a representative democracy, but they choose those representatives by means of a year-long tournament of a game show remarkably like Family Feud. The repeated need to guess and predict how the majority of the populace would respond to questions both banal and profound, both inane and political, selects only the representatives who have internalized everyone's desires and thoughtways. Much easier to predict those will actually, y'know, represent the people.

That...borders on genius. And it might be just crazy enough to work a little, too. You could strip away the game show element, and have a straightforward mass polling of hundreds of questions, and let would-be rulers try to match the biggest answers.

A variation: the legislature has, say, 100 seats. Eighty of the seats go to the candidates who matched the public answers most closely. The remaining twenty go to the lower matches, on the grounds that there should be some minority thinking in play to check the majority.

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

That...borders on genius. And it might be just crazy enough to work a little, too. You could strip away the game show element, and have a straightforward mass polling of hundreds of questions, and let would-be rulers try to match the biggest answers.

A variation: the legislature has, say, 100 seats. Eighty of the seats go to the candidates who matched the public answers most closely. The remaining twenty go to the lower matches, on the grounds that there should be some minority thinking in play to check the majority.

I think the gameshow would have to have instant-response answers. Otherwise, you'll get Trivial Pursuit geniuses, who can know all the answers without internalizing them.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

I think the gameshow would have to have instant-response answers. Otherwise, you'll get Trivial Pursuit geniuses, who can know all the answers without internalizing them.

Yeah, but the 'right' answer in this scenario is the one that the majority of other people pick, not the one that is objectively right. Say the question is:
"One thousand people surveyed, four best answers on the board, 'What star does the Earth orbit?'

Well, the technically correct answer is 'Sol' or 'the Sun'. But if 753 people said S Doradus, 210 said the Earth is the center of the universe, 20 said the Earth is flat, and 17 said 'the Sun', then the correct answer is the wrongest, and the best answer is S Doradus. You win this game by matching the majority, not by boning up on technical information. You'd do better to hang out in bars and restaurants listening to people talk than hitting the library.