Purple State and Marokai's BIG IDEA

[Purple State]

I don't intend for there to be any "backstory."

But why should everything we've done here be placed in the memory hole?

I think there are two reasons: First, the game has slowed to a crawl because all the big issues are stale and all the small issues are buried back in things that happened ages ago (see: your action in Bakersville, which referred to ancient legislation and so went nowhere). Second, a lot of big changes have occurred in the game (e.g. GM reform, regional legislatures) that outpaced our ability to setup proper foundations (e.g. Wiki reform). A refresh will let us start with that foundation already in place so that we can build upwards in a more controlled and sustainable way.

[Fritz]

Purple State and Marokai, I can get behind your ideas on revising the constitution to make it more concise and manageable.  However, I STRONGLY OPPOSE this "re-boot" proposal.  Sorry, but Atlasia does have history, we can't just wipe that all away and start over.  Your logic appears to be something along the lines of: we've already legislated all of the fun stuff, so let's start over so we can do it all again!  Do you not see the silliness here?  Do we plan to keep starting over every 4-5 years or so?

Atlasia must move forwards, not backwards!  Any proposal to wipe clean the slate should be taken as seriously as a RL proposal to re-write history (it can't be done).

We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.  We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace.  (Oops, sorry, got sidetracked into 12-step stuff... )

NO RE-BOOT!!!

[Marokai Backbeat]

Purple State and Marokai, I can get behind your ideas on revising the constitution to make it more concise and manageable.  However, I STRONGLY OPPOSE this "re-boot" proposal.  Sorry, but Atlasia does have history, we can't just wipe that all away and start over.  Your logic appears to be something along the lines of: we've already legislated all of the fun stuff, so let's start over so we can do it all again!  Do you not see the silliness here?

As a matter of fact I do not. This is a game, a game where we will be legislating things over and over, up down and sideways, until the end of time or the site goes down forever. I would rather work in an environment where we have to retune every law in the books and add new ones rather than one where we have a patchwork disaster of a statute something like 5 years old.

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Look, games get stale. You can't keep doing the same things over and over again and expect things to be fun. This game is a patchwork mess that is not at all fun. This happens all the time, the game sits and stagnates as time goes on and on, things are inactive and boring, nothing exciting happens except once in awhile, and each time an idea is attempted, people lose their heads.

If you want to change the game, come up with ideas. If you want things to be more interesting, come up with a passable proposal to do that. If someone wants to do absolutely nothing to change the game, I do not want their vote.

This is a game. A game. Something we play to amuse ourselves and little more. Taking Atlasia's history as seriously as real life history is silly and completely over the top.

I want you to answer a question and answer it seriously, and this goes for everyone: Are you happy with the state of Atlasia right now? Can you honestly tell me with a straight face that the Senate is still interesting, that exciting ideas have been legislated lately, that the game has seen any major change, or that anything at all is truly interesting?

When I look at Atlasia, I see a beast slowly dying. Population wise, we're fine, but unless something big is done we're going nowhere and nowhere fast.

If you don't want to reboot, what do you want to do? The constititional consolidation idea? Change the way we elect people? Abolish the Senate? Expand the Senate?

Even if you don't want to turn back the clock and do things right from the start again, you and everyone else needs to realize that this game has seen changes happen in the past, yes, without reboots. Having and later getting rid of districts to electing people via regions, having and later abolishing budgets. We've done something in the past, let's at least do something this time.

The Constitutional Consolidation could and probably can happen before you get into office so that's gone. And I'm against a reboot so if that's a major part of your platform I won't be preferencing you anymore.

Quite frankly, if doing nothing is a major part of your voting intention, I don't want you to preference us anymore. If you have any ideas of you're own I'd be happy to hear them, but judging from your past activities, such as being a stubborn "No Change" delegate in the ConCon a year ago, I doubt you'll come up with any unless it's "make everything regional."

I am a Centralist in this game no longer. I am a Socialist in this game no longer. I am a Reformist for the foreseeable future. An individual that seeks to do something, anything at all, to change the game and make things interesting.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I don't intend for there to be any "backstory."

But why should everything we've done here be placed in the memory hole?

To put it simply, if our choices are "Continue on a path where we have done anything and everything politically imaginable" or "Scrap everything and go into Atlasia: Remixed" I would choose the latter each time. I see no reason why keeping everything already passed in the last many years benefits us in any way.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I just want to state, we're open to ideas here, we just have a large set of them on our own and alot of work done now and in the future. We're by no means stubborn, we just want to do something different. At our hearts, we are a fundamentally reformist ticket, dedicated to game reform completely. We want to engage the citizenry in any way possible, and we will try to lead the way in doing something, changing something, anything at all.

So please, if you oppose our ideas, at least explain why, and what you think will be better. It tells apart the "let's do something else" folks from the "let's never do anything at all" folks.

[Fritz]

I did not say don't do anything, I said don't do this.  And I think I explained why.  Our history and all that has transpired over the past six years are fundamentally part of the game, and cannot be idly discarded.

The Senate in this game is, was, and always will be driven by current events in the real world.  We passed health care reform at a time when the US Congress was doing the same.  Currently there is a clean energy bill being debated, and by some coincidence, there is one in the US Senate.

I do not oppose changes- I merely oppose bad changes.  No change is preferable to a bad change.  Your constitution re-write is a good idea that I support.

[Free Palestine]

Maybe consolidate all the regions into a single state, with one legislature?

That's a terrible idea. If they want to polarize themselves, they'll do it, but I don't expect anyone to be in favor of that.

Barely anybody is running for the Northeast Assembly anymore, and I'm not sure if the same is true for other regions.  Having a single legislature would not only make it larger, in relation to the total pool of voters, but it would also increase the number of people running for the legislature, thus increasing competition.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Maybe consolidate all the regions into a single state, with one legislature?

That's a terrible idea. If they want to polarize themselves, they'll do it, but I don't expect anyone to be in favor of that.

Barely anybody is running for the Northeast Assembly anymore, and I'm not sure if the same is true for other regions.  Having a single legislature would not only make it larger, in relation to the total pool of voters, but it would also increase the number of people running for the legislature, thus increasing competition.

     That's sort of what people used to say in advocacy of eliminating regional Senate seats, IIRC. Not to say that that automatically disqualifies the notion or anything, but I never thought I'd hear you advocating radical centralism.

[Fritz]

Fritz's BIG IDEA

Marokai and PS, since you are open to suggestion, here is mine.  Rather than a legislative "re-boot", what we need is a consolidation/re-organization of federal statute, similar to your constitution re-write.  The original must be kept as a matter of record, however.

Perhaps this could be done as an index on the wiki, with links to statutes by subject matter (no links to repealed laws).

Just some thoughts.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To put it simply, if our choices are "Continue on a path where we have done anything and everything politically imaginable" or "Scrap everything and go into Atlasia: Remixed" I would choose the latter each time. I see no reason why keeping everything already passed in the last many years benefits us in any way.

I disagree that there are only two choices. As I wrote earlier, it makes more sense to buy a new slate than to wipe clean the current one. Declare a Second Republic and - essentially - archive all that has been done over the past six years, but don't pretend that it didn't happen. Besides, a total re-boot is impossible; unless we want to spend forever and a day passing all the boring, minor legislation on issues that no one but Ernest cares about in order to establish the sort of legislative and regulatory framework a modern state needs.

[Free Palestine]

Maybe consolidate all the regions into a single state, with one legislature?

That's a terrible idea. If they want to polarize themselves, they'll do it, but I don't expect anyone to be in favor of that.

Barely anybody is running for the Northeast Assembly anymore, and I'm not sure if the same is true for other regions.  Having a single legislature would not only make it larger, in relation to the total pool of voters, but it would also increase the number of people running for the legislature, thus increasing competition.

     That's sort of what people used to say in advocacy of eliminating regional Senate seats, IIRC. Not to say that that automatically disqualifies the notion or anything, but I never thought I'd hear you advocating radical centralism.

In a nation of millions, no.  In a nation of hundreds, yes.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Fritz's BIG IDEA

Marokai and PS, since you are open to suggestion, here is mine.  Rather than a legislative "re-boot", what we need is a consolidation/re-organization of federal statute, similar to your constitution re-write.  The original must be kept as a matter of record, however.

Perhaps this could be done as an index on the wiki, with links to statutes by subject matter (no links to repealed laws).

Just some thoughts.

Consolidation and reorganization of the statute would be a hefty task, but a good intentioned one. There seems to be PLENTY of room for agreement between us.

To put it simply, if our choices are "Continue on a path where we have done anything and everything politically imaginable" or "Scrap everything and go into Atlasia: Remixed" I would choose the latter each time. I see no reason why keeping everything already passed in the last many years benefits us in any way.

I disagree that there are only two choices. As I wrote earlier, it makes more sense to buy a new slate than to wipe clean the current one. Declare a Second Republic and - essentially - archive all that has been done over the past six years, but don't pretend that it didn't happen. Besides, a total re-boot is impossible; unless we want to spend forever and a day passing all the boring, minor legislation on issues that no one but Ernest cares about in order to establish the sort of legislative and regulatory framework a modern state needs.

Archiving the legislation seems like a good idea, if we passed a new consolidated/tinkered constitution, we could make a new statute page but the other statute would still be binding. We could also, instead of a reboot, reorganize the statute by consolidating things like election rules (or Purple's aforementioned DoFA reform) and repealing a host of things that are just ancient.

We'll see I suppose, but with these discussions we're heading in the right direction I think.

[Purple State]

The point of this proposal was to generate discussion and ideas. Game reform cannot simply be proposed and passed without input, debate and changes. Any follow-up on this proposal would have to go through a Constitutional Convention (albeit more narrowly focused than the previous one) and delegates could strike or add provisions as they see fit. But this topic and others need to be considered extensively by all Atlasians and I firmly believe that a Purple State/Marokai Blue administration will be unafraid to provoke these debates.

Whether you agree or disagree with our proposals, know that Marokai and I will bring up the hard issues early and often and we will seriously consider all of your ideas.

To put it simply, if our choices are "Continue on a path where we have done anything and everything politically imaginable" or "Scrap everything and go into Atlasia: Remixed" I would choose the latter each time. I see no reason why keeping everything already passed in the last many years benefits us in any way.

I disagree that there are only two choices. As I wrote earlier, it makes more sense to buy a new slate than to wipe clean the current one. Declare a Second Republic and - essentially - archive all that has been done over the past six years, but don't pretend that it didn't happen. Besides, a total re-boot is impossible; unless we want to spend forever and a day passing all the boring, minor legislation on issues that no one but Ernest cares about in order to establish the sort of legislative and regulatory framework a modern state needs.

To address your point about frameworks to allow for a functioning game, I do take that into account by allowing for certain pieces of legislation to be carried over by the Senate. I agree that having election laws and criminal justice statutes in place from the get go are important.

[Fritz]

I just had to dig this up:

Fritz's BIG IDEA

Marokai and PS, since you are open to suggestion, here is mine.  Rather than a legislative "re-boot", what we need is a consolidation/re-organization of federal statute, similar to your constitution re-write.  The original must be kept as a matter of record, however.

Perhaps this could be done as an index on the wiki, with links to statutes by subject matter (no links to repealed laws).

Just some thoughts.

What I am proposing here would be  monumental task, and I am not volunteering for it.  But I do think we have sombody, somewhere who would be willing to take this on.  I urge the incoming administration to direct its energy in this direction, rather than a re-boot.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I'm perfectly fine with scaling back to a consolidation/reorganization of the statute in addition to a new consolidated Constitution, of course. It will take some effort to rake through old statute of course.

[Purple State]

I just had to dig this up:

Fritz's BIG IDEA

Marokai and PS, since you are open to suggestion, here is mine.  Rather than a legislative "re-boot", what we need is a consolidation/re-organization of federal statute, similar to your constitution re-write.  The original must be kept as a matter of record, however.

Perhaps this could be done as an index on the wiki, with links to statutes by subject matter (no links to repealed laws).

Just some thoughts.

What I am proposing here would be  monumental task, and I am not volunteering for it.  But I do think we have sombody, somewhere who would be willing to take this on.  I urge the incoming administration to direct its energy in this direction, rather than a re-boot.

I think that is a fine idea if that is what the delegates decides. Ultimately, I will have very limited power to determine what product comes out of the Convention and a legislative reboot would have to be a part of the new Constitution.

I do already plan to form a series of committees to handle the consolidation and streamlining of many major parts of the law, such as DoFA-related laws and the CCJA (which Peter has already started). We could also potentially work to revamp the statute Wiki page to clean it up, which will hopefully be addressed by a working group under the AG and/or myself.

[Ameriplan]

You have a supporter in the Northeast Assembly, I hope we can work across the aisle for the good of Atlasia, this idea sounds great except for the part about rebooting, remember what Santayana said: Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.

[Citizen (The) Doctor]

I am in favour of a reboot and rewritten Constitution.  However, I do think that a competing nation is an idea that we should explore further.  If we are to keep these boards interesting, we have to present new challenges.  Foreign affairs with a competing nation (hostile or allied) would be an interesting dynamic.

I think some people suggested a UK or Canadian Atlasia based on a Parliamentary system of government correct?  That would probably work out, if we could generate the interest in a new state.