General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So you blow up the world order you hate so much. [View all]Romulus Quirinus
(524 posts)there is no way to stand against the current order on the battlefield. No number of people with rifles can stand down a modern military formation outfitted and trained using modern Western methods and have anything left to celebrate afterwards.
2. I think this is a good starting point:
http://books.google.com/books?id=kz_k9FIcBGcC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false
See the chapters on The Constitution of Mars (incomplete in preview mode) and the chapter of commentary (complete). I highly recommend the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson for anyone who enjoys hard scifi and wants to see an interesting vision of how to build a better world.
The Constitution in KSR's novels is a modified version of the Swiss Constitution which aims to extend current ideas regarding the prevention of concentration of power. The executive branch is made up of an executive council rather than a singular, unitary executive. Like our system, it also contains a bicameral parliament. One house of parliament is elected and is analogous to our Senate, and the other is chosen via sortition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition) from the general public. This ensures that at least one house of parliament reflects the diversity of the people and makes it harder to buy politicians and keep them bought.
There are two bodies that do the job of our Supreme Court. One handles purely legal disputes, while the other is explicitly an environmental court (important due to the high fragility of the artificially constructed biosphere). Further, it guarantees the right to food and shelter, provides for no standing army, limits weapon ownership (lots of cities still under domes, after all), and contains measures to limit the growth of corporations by enforcing rules that permit them to exist only as Mondragon-style co-ops, in addition to the civil rights we commonly attribute to the Bill of RIghts.
Certainly not perfect, but it is a great improvement on what we've got, IMHO.