The People's Party: June Convention

[Sec. of State Superique]

I may join in The Party's legion as soon as possible. (I don't want to invalidate my vote in the PU's dissolution)

I believe that our first step should be to review our platform! =)

[Sec. of State Superique]

In a few hours, The People achieved Two Senate Seats, a SoIA, One Vice-President and a very likely to become a Governor.

[Sec. of State Superique]

Why Laborites are trying to hijack  this thread. Whenever a centrist party is created Laborites attack, when another right-wing party is created (the DR) the Federalists don't even bother criticizing them. There should be more civility in Atlasia. We should use the opportunity of the death of the Progressive Union to stop this kind of silly partisanship that we are watching here.

[Sec. of State Superique]

I nominate Cincinnatus for Chairman and Oakvale for Vice-Chairman.

[Sec. of State Superique]

Finally, you must understand The Party is about camaraderie. It is only as strong as its weakest member.

Contrastingly, Labor is as strong as steel and as sharp as a tack.

Labor trolling is as boring as Bob Dole trying to teach us about the benefits of eating an apple once a day...

[Sec. of State Superique]

I'll definitely post my opinions here. But I'm currently over flooded with the 2012 Game. Luckily, You'll have my opinion here on thursday or friday!

[Sec. of State Superique]

A beautiful speech is coming tomorrow!

[Sec. of State Superique]

At-will employment is already illegal at the federal level.

You have already told us that, we are reforming our platform anyway, Dave Bless, my commie friend!

[Sec. of State Superique]

At-will employment is already illegal at the federal level.

You have already told us that, we are reforming our platform anyway, Dave Bless, my commie friend!

Was just going to reiterate, as it's still in your platform. A friendly service reminder is all!

Your reiteration is very welcomed! =)

[Sec. of State Superique]

Sorry for my delayed speech. It is coming!

[Sec. of State Superique]

The People's Speech - Part I

Secretary of External Affairs Superique arrives at the Convention to show why he stands up for centrist parties and to show what he expects for the future of The People's Party.

Members of The People's Party, I now join you on this beautiful event while listening the IV Movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony and I hope that I can bring a valuable contribution to this Convention.

I will tell why I have always been a member of centrist or center-leftist parties in Atlasia; I have always been a member of radical centrism and pragmatism because I have this important understanding that both the stringent laisser-faire economics and the excessive intrusion of state, usually related with socialism, can be harmful for our society. While the first usually leads to unsustainable and terrible social inequalities and sets up an extremely divided society where empathy is non-existent, the other is usually followed by authoritarianism, by strong concentration of power on the hand of a few bureaucrats and by a series of imperfections that harms the capacity of the economy to generate wealth and to improve the standards of living of all citizens. After analyzing both Extreme Forms of Capitalism and Socialism, I noticed that this sort of radicalism on both sides of the aisle is not productive for our Society and for The People.  

As a young politician, I also liked the idea of a middle ground between the two ideologies, why shouldn’t we keep a capitalist structure while having socialist values of democracy, social fairness and absolute freedom in mind? To me, certainly, the Third Way of Tony Blair, Pre-Atlasia President Bill Clinton and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso were good developments when it comes to ideas. Even so, they were not able to move further than simple triangulation and they were never effective on putting policies that could be cited as strong examples of what the Third Way really was and that was in many ways frustrating.  They failed to add something to the debate, I prefer Blair rather than Thatcher or Michael Foot and I strongly prefer FHC rather than Lula or Collor, but still, I had this feeling that we needed to move beyond simple middle ground.

I wanted and I still want something more than this simple mix of policies or this silly Red vs. Blue discussions, I want to see a Party that moves beyond those borders of traditional political spectrum. I want a Party that can work on an alternative to both Socialism and Capitalism, a post-Capitalistic approach. That’s what we need for this game and that’s what a future People’s Party can stand for! Atlasia needs a Progressive-minded, pragmatic and futuristic centrist party that understands that we are living in a whole new world and that the 21st Century needs adequate answers this whole new area. We need a People-centered Policy, we need a whole new way of thinking society, the economy, state, trade and diplomacy and we need to be a center of ideological innovation in this country!  

But you guys must be wondering? What the hell is Superique talking about? Well, I don’t have all the answers for our society’s problems but I still believe that a good set of values and perspectives can guide this Party and this nation to unprecedented progress.  

I believe in a post-Capitalistic Society with Humanitarian Values and Principles as its north.  This post-capitalistic society will have many varied forms of property; we will have cooperatives, private properties and state property.  Globalization, Technological Renovation, Free Trade will not be used as means of control of The People, we are going to control it and use it for the advantage of every single person on this world.  The concept of a market economy will be kept as markets are the best form of understanding The People’s demands as well as they are the best way of generating wealth.  However, this new society will have mechanisms of income redistribution since we ought to give every single citizen of Atlasia (and why not the Earth?) good standards of living and, more importantly, equal opportunity.

[Sec. of State Superique]

The People's Speech - Part II

With The People getting sleepy, Superique procedes his speech showing his willingness to promote human dignity and better standards of living for all.

Too see this new People-oriented system sprung up, we will have to reform a series of structures of the current Capitalist system that we have in Atlasia. We need to bring change for the base (the relations of production and the means of production) and for the superstructure (everything of our society that is not related with production) to see a new way of living and of organizing ourselves come up. There are some main issues that we have to rethink and revaluate to see change happening and those are the ones:

At first, I believe that we must rethink the traditional concept of growth. In a world limited by its own physical and environmental limits, we ought to understand that capitalism is becoming saturated in a great part of the developed world, which means that maybe a focus on traditional growth is not the right path to the global community. While most nations of the world still need to develop and create wealth in order to deal with a series of social problems, Atlasians and Europeans enjoy good levels of income and there are not many places to see capitalism expanded.  The financial lunacy of the 2000s have shown us that there is no easy path anymore for unprecedented growth and that’s why I believe that maybe we should reconsider how do we measure economical prosperity. Now it shall be the time to Governments in the Developed World be more worried about our living standards, our happiness, our emotional sanity and our environmental problems rather than being heavily concerned only with traditional metrics of development such as the GDP and other data. 

GDP and GDP per Capita are not enough! Are you healthy? Are you feeling well? We need to rethink growth!

There are many ways that traditional “stagnation” wouldn’t necessarily mean an economical problem! In a not so distant future, we may very well see some sectors of our economy become increasely less powerful, such as our automobile sector and our heavy industries, while others, such as the world of technology and services, becoming increasingly stronger.  And after all, this could lead to a net 0% growth but it would still not be a significant problem for our nation and for our People, if we can provide with our government the tools necessary to The People and workers to adapt to new economical realities.

Secondly, I believe that we must rethink that very necessity of being full-time employed. In a world of automation and in a world where many sectors of the economy may reduce their significance, it’s more than time to understand that we are going to face higher unemployment levels but that we can deal with it in a much more sustained and realistic way. Rather than talking about full-employment or saying that unemployment is not an issue of a Government’s concern, why don’t we agree that we are going through a whole new Era where less people will work full time?

The automation shall be a mean of protection of The People's dignity, not the opposite!

A People’s oriented policy shall design a society where work is not the sole priority of the Human Being. For the first time after the first industrial revolution, we may see a big opportunity where technological developments will not demand higher working hours, au contraire, it will demand less time in work.  Our main aim should be the respect of human dignity and we can do this by ensuring that every single Atlasian does not have to work on a stressful and physically oppressive sort of job.  Life should follow the Buddhist Principle of the Middle Way, which means that we shall not focus excessively on work nor shall we stop being productive. There should be time for work, there should be time for leisure and there shall be time for rest. If we understand this, we will see a world with stronger families, happier children and definitely more productive workers.  The People’s Party shall understand the importance of the Middle Way and use programs like the Basic Income Guarantee to achieve such objectives.

Thirdly and finally, we’ve got to understand that we live in a beautiful and naturally designed Gaian world, which means that we are part of a huge community of life forms and physical landscapes that made possible the sustainability of living conditions. The mountains, our seas, the Algae, the Fungi, the Microorganisms and Animals have mutually evolved and have gradually ensured for all of them, including us, close to optimal climate conditions to sustain life. We must be grateful for those sophisticated regulatory tools that Gaia has ensured for us during all those millions of years and we must understand the importance of protecting our environment if we still want to live in a hospitable planet.

The crazy rithm of development has it costs...

It’s for this reason that we must courageously move forward by advancing on the combat of global warming and, more importantly, on the protection of our Gaian regulatory system. The People’s Party must be committed to ensure this and we need to realize that there mainly two forms of power creation that can reduce our CO2 emissions while also preserving our natural landscapes and those are Solar and Nuclear Energy! That doesn’t mean that we must abandon other forms of power generation and all other sorts of fuels, the only thing that this means is that we need to focus on those two sources. Solar is one the cleanest forms of energy production while Nuclear, if sufficient investment is made, can provide cheap and trustable power while having minor impacts on our environment. We can also improve our water treatment system and ensure a clean air for every Atlasian.

Furthermore, we shall use taxation as a mechanism of incentive to light-saving measures, energy-efficiency improvements and the respect of our environment. I’m not saying that we should only focus on tax credits, because if we really want change to be made, then we’ve got to target with taxation some specific and irresponsible actions taken by our citizens and especially by our companies.  We must aim the negative externalities and make sure that companies pay for them; we need to make sure that The People recognize that production and growth does have a cost and it has to be paid. By doing this, we will ensure that measures of efficiency are made since there will be finally a cost for taking from our environment, for hurting Gaian Regulatory systems. A Stronger Carbon Tax will be the proper incentive to see environmental measures being taken by companies themselves and this will not necessarily mean that the taxation burden must raise. What we ought to do is reduce the environmental hazard made by industries so we can increase the Carbon Tax while decreasing taxes that effect the Common Man and Women of this nation.

The respect of the human being, the respect of our environment and the respect of our liberties should be the guidelines of our party. The People’s Party shall be the leader of innovation in this country, the leader of new ideas and the leader on building up a new and bright future for our nation. I have this feeling that we can change Atlasia and that we can change the whole world but in order to do this we’ve got to be open to renewal, to rethought and to a serious revaluation if it’s not time to move forward from the traditional political spectrum. Let’s move forward from traditional capitalism and communism! I’m standing up for change and for a renewal; will you stand up for it too?

[Sec. of State Superique]

Abstain (I like both candidates but I think that Yankee is crucial for the Senate)