Simpol: Driving our Politicians to Co-operate

Discussion in 'Campaign & Political Reform' started by Alexia, Feb 21, 2016.

  1. Alexia

    Alexia New Member

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    I introduced myself in the New Member Introductions area, and I’m intrigued to share what I’ve learnt recently and why I have a new optimism about politics. I truly believe that a good number of us truly want to do something about our world’s problems, but we are disheartened, and we give up trying and caring and hoping. I certainly gave up trying and caring and hoping long ago because very soon after reaching the voting age I grew to realise that, no matter what party is in power and no matter what they promise pre-appointment, nothing ever changes - year after year, election after election, decade after decade. And it is depressing to watch our planet continue to spiral downward.

    I understand the need for a higher global awareness in our world, one that brings about real change so that our planet and its people have a fighting chance. It’s somehow gratifying to join in the bashing and complaining about our politicians and the state of the world and blame our national leaders for the damage they cause. And it is gratifying because we feel powerless otherwise. However, sitting back and complaining is not good enough for me because I so very much want to feel I’ve got some power, I want to do something, I want to see something change in my lifetime.

    I believe the only way our world will solve its problems is to tackle issues with a brand new perspective and innovative, outside-the-box thinking. The old ways just don’t work, we’ve witnessed them time and time again, and many of us are probably starting to realise that, even if we latch onto a bit of hope when a new politician takes office, five years down the line things will not have changed in the slightest and, more likely than not, the world will look even grimmer.

    I came across a free campaign that really ticks all the boxes for me, which is why I supported without a second of hesitation. If there are any other campaigns out there like it, I would support them in a heartbeat as well! The campaign is called Simpol (the Simultaneous Policy), and its philosophy clarifies the reasons WHY nothing ever changes. It explains WHAT our nations and governments ultimately need to do in order to make real and lasting improvements. And it offers a real and tangible way as to HOW the citizens of democratic nations can drive this forward, NOW, by using our vote as leverage.

    Even if it is a small action, I support 100% because I know I'm actually doing something now. I so fervently believe in its principles, and my support alone didn’t feel like enough, so I’m offering it here in the hopes that it will hit home for others as quickly as it did for me. If anyone here knows of similar campaigns that offer immediate action we can take, please let me know because this type of campaign is exactly what we need.

    If you have questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to ask and - as it is not my campaign - I’ll do my very best to answer you. There are many more details to the Simpol philosophy, but I won't take up any more of your time and will wait until questions are asked. Many thanks for reading.

    Simpol’s Global Website
    Support the campaign for FREE
    Simpol in your country
    Simpol's Facebook page


    (Moderators, I hope to have chosen the correct board on which to post, but as I am new, please move my thread if it is more appropriate elsewhere.)
     
  2. PaulB

    PaulB Newly Registered

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    thank you for the information about Simpol, which is worth supporting. I share your feelings and have considered what the average interested citizen could do under the current system. I'd be interested if you have the time to review my suggestion and let me know what you think. You can find this short essay at 'democracy for the 99%' a group page on facebook that I just started.
    Sincerely, PaulB
     
  3. PopulistMadison

    PopulistMadison Active Member

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    I read your post and your link have have no idea what you are talking about. It just says governments should work together simultaneously. I don't see how citizens can have any effect on that. Vote together? For who?


    If you want "we the people" to have a voice, google Sortition. We need it but modified a bit.


    Randomly select a man and woman from each of several geographic areas, 60 total. By the law of averages, the views of that 60 will be similar to the population at large. They can vote anonymously on issues without being bribed, since they are the people. No campaign finance is needed. Change them out ever 3 years.

    Do the same for the upper house, except it has the highest tax paying 1/3 of men and highest 1/3 of women. The houses may draft legislation together, but they must vote anonymously and separately, with a majority of both houses needed to change the law.

    Citizens only vote on the executive, since that is all the media has time to research. Governors, mayors, and the president are elected in different years, the same time of year.
     
  4. Alexia

    Alexia New Member

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    Many thanks for your responses.

    PaulB, your essay is very powerful and makes many strong points about why we are where we are and why a tighter link between citizens and government is absolutely essential. I can tell you see the need for global solutions for our world's issues, because this is of course the only way we will get out of the conundrum we are in.

    PopulistMadison, the Sortition Foundation sounds really interesting in principle, but one crucial element that we mustn’t ignore is how our current governments are forced to keep their own nation’s economies competitive and attractive to investors in the free market. Anyone who assumes office – regardless of who they are or how they are elected – will come up against the same constraints and be forced into the same box, unless we change the way we approach global problems, and I wonder how Sortition might prevent this problem.
     
  5. left behind

    left behind New Member

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    I think the US can learn a lot from Norway, as Bernie Sanders has mentioned.

    From a longer article (the link to the original article is at the bottom, and free if you look at 6 or less articles a month from this web site):

    "Some years ago, I faced up to the futility of reporting truths about America’s disastrous wars, and so I left Afghanistan for another mountainous country far away. It was the polar opposite of Afghanistan: a peaceful, prosperous land where nearly everybody seemed to enjoy a good life, on the job and in the family.

    It’s true that they didn’t work much–not by American standards, anyway. In the United States, full-time salaried workers supposedly laboring 40 hours a week actually average 49, with almost 20 percent clocking more than 60. These people, on the other hand, worked only about 37 hours a week, when they weren’t away on long paid vacations. At the end of the workday, about four in the afternoon (perhaps three during the summer), they had time to enjoy a hike in the forest, a swim with the kids, or a beer with friends—which helps explain why, unlike so many Americans, they are pleased with their jobs.

    Four years on, thinking I should settle down, I returned to the United States. It felt quite a lot like stepping back into that other violent, impoverished world, where anxiety runs high and people are quarrelsome. I had, in fact, come back to the flip side of Afghanistan and Iraq: to what America’s wars have done to America.

    Where I live now, in the homeland, there are not enough shelters for the homeless. Most people are either overworked or hurting for jobs; the housing is overpriced, the hospitals crowded and understaffed, the schools largely segregated and not so good. Opioid or heroin overdose is a popular form of death, and men in the street threaten women wearing hijabs. Did the American soldiers I covered in Afghanistan know they were fighting for this?

    Hillary Clinton praised capitalism and “all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in our country for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families.” She didn’t seem to know that Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians do that too, and with much higher rates of success.
    The truth is that almost a quarter of American start-ups are not founded on brilliant new ideas, but on the desperation of men or women who can’t get a decent job. The majority of all American enterprises are solo ventures having zero payrolls, employing no one but the entrepreneur, and often quickly wasting away. Sanders said that he was all for small business too, but that meant nothing “if all of the new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent.” (As George Carlin said, “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”)

    The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual report on international well-being, for example, measures 11 factors, ranging from material conditions such as affordable housing and employment to quality-of-life matters like education, health, life expectancy, voter participation, and overall citizen satisfaction. Year after year, all the Nordic countries cluster at the top, while the United States lags far behind. In addition, Norway has ranked first on the UN Development Program’s Human Development Index for 12 of the last 15 years, and it consistently tops international comparisons in such areas as democracy, civil and political rights, and freedom of expression and the press.

    What is it, though, that makes the Scandinavians so different? Since the Democrats can’t tell you and the Republicans wouldn’t want you to know, let me offer you a quick introduction. What Scandinavians call the Nordic model is a smart and simple system that starts with a deep commitment to equality and democracy.
    Right there, they part company with capitalist America, now the most unequal of all the developed nations, and consequently a democracy no more. Political scientists say it has become an oligarchy, run at the expense of its citizenry by and for the superrich. Perhaps you’ve noticed that.

    In Norway, capitalism serves the people. The government, elected by the people, sees to that. All eight of the parties that won parliamentary seats in the last national election—including the conservative Høyre party now leading the government—are committed to maintaining the welfare state. In the United States, however, neoliberal politics puts the foxes in charge of the henhouse, and capitalists have used the wealth generated by their enterprises (as well as financial and political manipulations) to capture the state and pluck the chickens.

    They’ve done a masterful job of chewing up organized labor. Today, only 11 percent of American workers belong to a union. In Norway, that number is 52 percent; in Denmark, 67 percent; in Sweden, 70 percent. Thus, in the United States, oligarchs maximize their wealth and keep it, using the “democratically elected” government to shape policies and laws favorable to the interests of their foxy class. They bamboozle the people by insisting, as Hillary Clinton did at that debate, that all of us have the “freedom” to create a business in the “free” marketplace, which implies that being hard up is our own fault.

    Caring for children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled became the basic responsibilities of the universal welfare state, freeing women in the workforce to enjoy both their jobs and their families.
    Paradoxically, setting women free made family life more genuine. Many in Norway say it has made both men and women more themselves and more alike: more understanding and happier. It also helped kids slip from the shadow of helicopter parents.

    In Norway, both mother and father in turn take paid parental leave from work during the child’s first year or longer. At age 1, however, children start attending a neighborhood barnehage (kindergarten) for schooling spent largely outdoors. By the time kids enter free primary school at age 6, they are remarkably self-sufficient, confident, and good-natured. They know their way around town, and if caught in a snowstorm in the forest, how to build a fire and find the makings of a meal. (One kindergarten teacher explained, “We teach them early to use an ax so they understand it’s a tool, not a weapon.”)

    To Americans, the notion of a school “taking away” your child to make her an ax wielder is monstrous. Yet though it’s hard to measure, it’s likely that Scandinavian children actually spend more quality time with their non-work-obsessed parents than does a typical middle-class American child being driven by a stressed-out mother from music lessons to karate. For all these reasons and more, the international organization Save the Children cites Norway as the best country on earth in which to raise kids, while the United States finishes far down the list, in 33rd place.

    From:
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    https://www.thenation.com/article/after-i-lived-in-norway-america-felt-backward-heres-why/
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