(Practicable) Instant World-Wide Justice
Ranked Ballot will put an end to war & all other forms of violence, “past” & present. Because it always elects the candidate most exactly in the middle of all voting, “RB” is top-dead-center counter extremist, & thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments combined. Because it gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combinations of programs, & thus provides real-time alternatives to all proposals, from wherever: market coop or social, tribal theological or universal, RB is the only thing that’s truly just. By the power of its example alone, RB will give us practicable instant world-wide true democracy. Virtually no democracy has ever been attacked by another. In a world of only democracies, there would no longer be need of the counter-productive wastefulness of armies, war or the preparation for war. Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will bring us this & all else: a real solution to terror, a perfect marriage of Freedom & Justice, Tradition & Modernity, Palestinian & Jew, Free Market & Communitarianism, all the fairness, payback & make-up one could wish for, ecologically sustainable politics, what’s best for all workers, instant global women’s liberation, world-wide luxury, a rationalization of the drug wars, human unity, even integrity, what have you. RB is to the horse & buggy two-party system as shopping in the Mall of America is to shopping in Soviet Russia. (The “additive” form of RB is to count the first choices & if noone has 50%, to add in the next choices, & so on until someone finally does.)
RB lessens the power of the extremes, whether authoritarian, economic or sectarian, except through what they can gain by persuasion, which is only what’s just. While it would be equally useful for all else, RB’s real power is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of potential civil war in Iraq. Unless its Parliament comes to select the Prime Minister by means of RB, it may not hold & the country, region & world will be in danger of going to war over some ancient grudge, oil well, multi-ethnic city, or sabotaged pipeline. While the new constitution does call for the selection of the President by a 2/3 vote (even if only among the parliament & not by the people) in the first round (who then decides who will be asked to form the new government) & then by a run-off between the top two vote getters in the second round, if that fails to move all three tribes to nominate centrists, then the resulting handful of old men in a back room will fall far short of RB’s ultimate retail politics. RB would be equally useful for all electoral systems (parliamentary or presidential, the parliaments by RB from among the members) coops, collective leaderships, tribal groupings, religious confessions, political parties, associations or even cabals. Whoever gets there first wins. (“Jump right ahead in my web”.) For leaders to best represent their whole country (or district) whether chosen at large or by a representative body, they must be the perfect compromise, most exactly in the middle, as is given by RB. Because it gives minorities a real say in which member of the plurality/majority gets chosen, RB is the only thing that will lead Iraqis, or anyone else, to support any plan more than inadequate confederation. It will result in “phantasmagoric subtlefaction”, answering many questions more at a time than the two party system’s “who is least bad”. Both more Liberty & Justice can be found in RB than in any ideology. With brakes & reverse comes no more need to suppress popular movements around the world! RB will give us subtlety, responsivity, lightfootedness, long-sightedness, objectivity, economy, unity, accountability, even integrity & possibly the only way to victory over extremism. Palestinians & Jews could give up fighting over a sliver of desert & become members of global cooperatives, all the various forms of hegemonism would be given up, whether up front, subterranean or unconscious, in exchange for leading the world to the light, & America could finally realize the need for an adequate safety net as the price & foundation of a free market.
Help put this idea, in time, to as many as possible, before “Clockwork Orange” (overpopulation), “1984” (high-tech dictatorship), cosmic collision, tectonic, economic or environmental collapse, or literalist contretemps. The cost of a full page national ad (sufficient to put RB to all the world) would be repaid in no time, once all that money gets put to actual productive use, at pre-9/11 US annual defense spending of $10,000 per family. We imagine running on the single issue of RB, promising a citizens’ advisory board based on Organized Communications (“OC”, small randomly assigned discussion groups electing reps to higher & higher random group levels, by means of RB, until one small group, exactly in the middle of all voting, remains at the top) to guide us in the rest. You do the same, wherever you are from the most local on up. Ten to the power of ten (ten levels of groups of ten) would be sufficient to organize & unite all mankind. RB is the sole unchangeable plank & bylaw of the Preferential Ballot Party, the only practicable third party.
RB is very freeing. Because it always chooses the candidate in the middle, all those who support it are perfectly top-dead-center, with no more need to fear others. Politics will become like a family discussion around the kitchen table, with no more jumping back & forth between extremes, nor absence of the economists’ requirement of predictability for growth. All that’s needed is to let go of the nut, to free yourself, as in the story of “The Monkey & His Nut”, & to rest in the knowledge that RB will give us perfect Freedom & perfect Justice, at one & the same time, even if not necessarily in the form imagined, as if anyone would then care. Good enough for New Zealand, Australia, Kerala India, Iraq, London, Ireland, Cambridge Mass, Burlington & 95% of the townships of Vermont, Pierce County Washington, Minneapolis Minnesota, whichever party is the majority in the House of Representatives for the selection of the majority leader, & hence the speaker (if only by runoff & not instantaneously), the Utah Republican Party for the selection of statewide candidates, & the platforms of both the Green & Libertarian Parties, with more places coming every year, but not good enough for the rest of us? It must be in somebody’s interest! How can we wish it of others if we do not have it ourselves? Having spent every spare moment from the invasion, to the vote on the constitution emailing every Iraqi I could find about RB, I would like to claim some little credit for the reforms they did adopt. No woman ever got pregnant just to have an abortion. The only imaginable definition of Freedom (&morality!) is “Do as you wish, but harm no other”. The maker & sustainer of this world & cosmos could have no need of one bit of it. The fiercer the history of the planet, the sooner it would have been blissed out behind ethnic homogeneity, & thus democracy. Tax consumption, not investment, & spread the productivity around. All powers to their lowest appropriate level. All human evil is due to the out of phase fluctuations of population & food supply. Noone alive is responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, except regarding what they do now. Justice is the redress of past violence, Freedom the state of nonviolence in the present & nonviolence the only basis of all other principles.
“Zoe” Z, Founder, Preferential Ballot Party, realzoe@hotmail.com, preferentialballotparty.org, POB 355, Albany, NY 12201-0355, USA
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(Practicable) Instant World-Wide Justice
1Ranked Ballot will put an end to war & all other forms of violence, “past” & present. Because it always elects the candidate most exactly in the middle of all voting, “RB” is top-dead-center counter extremist, & thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments combined. Because it gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combinations of programs, & thus provides real-time alternatives to all proposals, from wherever: market coop or social, tribal theological or universal, RB is the only thing that’s truly just. By the power of its example alone, RB will give us practicable instant world-wide true democracy. Virtually no democracy has ever been attacked by another. In a world of only democracies, there would no longer be need of the counter-productive wastefulness of armies, war or the preparation for war. Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will bring us this & all else: a real solution to terror, a perfect marriage of Freedom & Justice, Tradition & Modernity, Palestinian & Jew, Free Market & Communitarianism, all the fairness, payback & make-up one could wish for, ecologically sustainable politics, what’s best for all workers, instant global women’s liberation, world-wide luxury, a rationalization of the drug wars, human unity, even integrity, what have you. RB is to the horse & buggy two-party system as shopping in the Mall of America is to shopping in Soviet Russia. (The “additive” form of RB is to count the first choices & if noone has 50%, to add in the next choices, & so on until someone finally does.)
RB lessens the power of the extremes, whether authoritarian, economic or sectarian, except through what they can gain by persuasion, which is only what’s just. While it would be equally useful for all else, RB’s real power is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of potential civil war in Iraq. Unless its Parliament comes to select the Prime Minister by means of RB, it may not hold & the country, region & world will be in danger of going to war over some ancient grudge, oil well, multi-ethnic city, or sabotaged pipeline. While the new constitution does call for the selection of the President by a 2/3 vote (even if only among the parliament & not by the people) in the first round (who then decides who will be asked to form the new government) & then by a run-off between the top two vote getters in the second round, if that fails to move all three tribes to nominate centrists, then the resulting handful of old men in a back room will fall far short of RB’s ultimate retail politics. RB would be equally useful for all electoral systems (parliamentary or presidential, the parliaments by RB from among the members) coops, collective leaderships, tribal groupings, religious confessions, political parties, associations or even cabals. Whoever gets there first wins. (“Jump right ahead in my web”.) For leaders to best represent their whole country (or district) whether chosen at large or by a representative body, they must be the perfect compromise, most exactly in the middle, as is given by RB. Because it gives minorities a real say in which member of the plurality/majority gets chosen, RB is the only thing that will lead Iraqis, or anyone else, to support any plan more than inadequate confederation. It will result in “phantasmagoric subtlefaction”, answering many questions more at a time than the two party system’s “who is least bad”. Both more Liberty & Justice can be found in RB than in any ideology. With brakes & reverse comes no more need to suppress popular movements around the world! RB will give us subtlety, responsivity, lightfootedness, long-sightedness, objectivity, economy, unity, accountability, even integrity & possibly the only way to victory over extremism. Palestinians & Jews could give up fighting over a sliver of desert & become members of global cooperatives, all the various forms of hegemonism would be given up, whether up front, subterranean or unconscious, in exchange for leading the world to the light, & America could finally realize the need for an adequate safety net as the price & foundation of a free market.
Help put this idea, in time, to as many as possible, before “Clockwork Orange” (overpopulation), “1984” (high-tech dictatorship), cosmic collision, tectonic, economic or environmental collapse, or literalist contretemps. The cost of a full page national ad (sufficient to put RB to all the world) would be repaid in no time, once all that money gets put to actual productive use, at pre-9/11 US annual defense spending of $10,000 per family. We imagine running on the single issue of RB, promising a citizens’ advisory board based on Organized Communications (“OC”, small randomly assigned discussion groups electing reps to higher & higher random group levels, by means of RB, until one small group, exactly in the middle of all voting, remains at the top) to guide us in the rest. You do the same, wherever you are from the most local on up. Ten to the power of ten (ten levels of groups of ten) would be sufficient to organize & unite all mankind. RB is the sole unchangeable plank & bylaw of the Preferential Ballot Party, the only practicable third party.
RB is very freeing. Because it always chooses the candidate in the middle, all those who support it are perfectly top-dead-center, with no more need to fear others. Politics will become like a family discussion around the kitchen table, with no more jumping back & forth between extremes, nor absence of the economists’ requirement of predictability for growth. All that’s needed is to let go of the nut, to free yourself, as in the story of “The Monkey & His Nut”, & to rest in the knowledge that RB will give us perfect Freedom & perfect Justice, at one & the same time, even if not necessarily in the form imagined, as if anyone would then care. Good enough for New Zealand, Australia, Kerala India, Iraq, London, Ireland, Cambridge Mass, Burlington & 95% of the townships of Vermont, Pierce County Washington, Minneapolis Minnesota, whichever party is the majority in the House of Representatives for the selection of the majority leader, & hence the speaker (if only by runoff & not instantaneously), the Utah Republican Party for the selection of statewide candidates, & the platforms of both the Green & Libertarian Parties, with more places coming every year, but not good enough for the rest of us? It must be in somebody’s interest! How can we wish it of others if we do not have it ourselves? Having spent every spare moment from the invasion, to the vote on the constitution emailing every Iraqi I could find about RB, I would like to claim some little credit for the reforms they did adopt. No woman ever got pregnant just to have an abortion. The only imaginable definition of Freedom (&morality!) is “Do as you wish, but harm no other”. The maker & sustainer of this world & cosmos could have no need of one bit of it. The fiercer the history of the planet, the sooner it would have been blissed out behind ethnic homogeneity, & thus democracy. Tax consumption, not investment, & spread the productivity around. All powers to their lowest appropriate level. All human evil is due to the out of phase fluctuations of population & food supply. Noone alive is responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, except regarding what they do now. Justice is the redress of past violence, Freedom the state of nonviolence in the present & nonviolence the only basis of all other principles.
“Zoe” Z, Founder, Preferential Ballot Party, realzoe@hotmail.com, preferentialballotparty.org, POB 355, Albany, NY 12201-0355, USA