[quote="Rudy Ruml":vi0smnll]I have gone through the various versions of Ashcroft's Judiciary Bill, the vigorous questions raised about it, and Ashcroft' responses.
This Bill has gravitas by virtue of Ashcroft's mass of carefully articulated, reasoned, and comprehensive provisions; his careful and incisive responses to questions and assertions; by his own scholarship; and that he put tremendous, unpaid, public service labor into this effort. Yes, he is a lawyer, but on reading his Bill and his responses (and discussing other matters with him), it is clear to me that he goes well beyond being a mechanic of the law. He is a thinking, knowledgeable scholar of the law.
And there is much I like in his Bill, such as the emphasis on common law and precedent.[/quote:vi0smnll]
You say kind things.
[quote:vi0smnll]But (and so as not to disappoint your expectation that all such openings lead to a "but"), I have problems with some of its provisions, such as appointing rather then electing justices, especially the Chief Judge of Common Jurisdiction, and his dismissal of formal ADR.[/quote:vi0smnll]
I have dealt at length elsewhere about why popular election of judges is very dangerous; also, I do not "dismiss formal ADR": I merely state that there is no good reason why it requires a constitutional provision, requiring that the Scientific Council provide an essentially nationalised ADR service, whether it has the resources or expertise to do so or not. My approach has always been that, if ADR is needed, it should have the chance to develop as a private enterprise to fulfill whatever need does arise.
[quote:vi0smnll]Ashcroft and I could have a spirited discussion of all this, but it is moot. For I disagree with the whole idea of the Bill. Given what I said above about the Bill's gravitas and Ashcroft's scholarship in law, this seems churlish of me, at best. How can I, with a wipe of my hand, throw the whole thing out?
Well, if I'm going to do this for Ashcroft's Bill, I might as well be complete, raise more questions about my mental stability, and throw out the Constitution as well.
You see, the Bill just adds more complexity to what is already an over complex, over institutionalized, political system suitable for governing a city or large town, but not a group of 30-40 people. Yes, as Ashcroft assumes, our city may grow and expand into a democratic federation of regions. Yes, but it is not that now.
The city is like small apartment house, or a golf, tennis, or soccer club. I'm sorry, and I don't intend to demean the hard and thoughtful work that people have put into this democracy. Democracy is a great aim, and I applaud the effort to set up the institutions of one and to develop an overarching democratic constitution to govern it. With Ashcroft, I believe that the essence of democracy is the rule of law. But, coming from the outside only about five or six weeks ago, I have nothing invested in these institutions (the unkind will say, "No experience with them either."), and therefore I may have a fresh, objective perspective on them.[/quote:vi0smnll]
I must disagree. My concern with your approach is the same as my concern with Aliasi's that I discussed in a previous thread: you state that the system is more complex than it needs to be for a small group, and then assume that what is unnecessary is thereby undesirable. There are three essential flaws to this approach.
Firstly, the claim that the constitution is "too complex" is not supported by any reasoning as to why the particular level of complexity that it has is detrimental to anything. Something can only be "too" anything if it is excess in the sense that there is so much of it that the quantity itself has adverse consequences. "More X than necessary" does not entail "too much X". Something that is not necessary may nevertheless be desirable. You may only need a Mini to drive to the shops and back, but if somebody else is paying for you to have a Rolls Royce, you cannot really complain that it is bad because it is "not necessary". It is possible for something to be [i:vi0smnll]better[/i:vi0smnll] than strictly necessary to acheive a set of minimal functions, and that is what a properly formalised constitution such as ours is, and will be especially if there is a properly functional judicial system.
Secondly, once it is accepted that what we seek to be (and what our [i:vi0smnll]raison d'etre[/i:vi0smnll] is) is a virtual nation, and not a virutal social club set against the background of a few pretty medieval houses, then it follows from that that we should have the all the structure and formality of a real nation, notwithstanding that it is possible to organise a group of [i:vi0smnll]some[/i:vi0smnll] sort of our size (or, indeed, larger than our size) with far less formality. The mistake that, I think, you make is to assume that the necessary formality of the institutions of a group scales only with the [i:vi0smnll]number of people[/i:vi0smnll] in the group, rather than the nature of the functions of that group. If we were a virtual social club (or a virutal golf club, or a virtual tea soceity), we could do perfectly well with very few formal rules at all, and just a little committee that meets every month with two hundred word constitution and no real politics at all, even if we had several hundred members. It is because what we seek to do (regulate a geographic subset of an entire virtual world, complete with a fully-functioning and highly active economy) that means that the required degree of formaility is higher than that of a social club, not because we have, at present, a very large number of people. The functions that we perform, regulating economic activity, shaping the environment in which our residents spend their virtual lives, deciding who may join, and who shall be excluded from our community, and many other such things are things that are far more [i:vi0smnll]intrusive[/i:vi0smnll] into people's (second) lives than the activities of a mere social club.
It is no criticism of you to state this, because you have come to SecondLife for a very noble purpose, and are doing a good job in despatching that purpose, but different people have very different ways of thinking about SecondLife, and I strongly suspect that your way of thinking about it (derived from the reason that you are here at all) is rather more distant than that of many others. On your 'blog, for instance I know that you disclaim all interest in SecondLife commerce and making money, and state that your main purpose is to educate people about the Deocratic Peace (which is a good thing: your seminars are most interesting, and certainly generating a lot of interest in Neufreistadt). Gwyneth has said that the users of SecondLife fall into two broad categories: the immersionists, who see SecondLife as a whole other world, as real to them when they are in it as the world of reality, and almost as important to them as it, and the extensionists, who view SecondLife as a tool, like e-mail or the World Wide Web, to perform particular functions (such as talking to people, or, as in your case, educating people) , and are no more attached to its contents than people are attached to an e-mail client or a web page. (I rather think that I fall somewhere between the two camps: I do not pretend that the physical environment is real, but there is a sense in which the [i:vi0smnll]social[/i:vi0smnll] and [i:vi0smnll]economic[/i:vi0smnll] environment of SecondLife is just as real as the "real" world beyond it). I strongly suspect that you fall into the latter category. As I said, that is no criticism of you, but I think that it is quite likely that it has informed your opinion on this matter.
The reason that I think that is this: if all anyone in SecondLife was doing was treating the programme as a way to interact with people in a pretty 3d environment, and maybe learn a few things, and have fun conversation along the way, people would take the whole thing far less seriously than many people do. Two things cause (many: not all) people to take SecondLife more seriously than something that is just a tool to acheive real-life functions over the internet: (1) many people like to feel some sense of escape, and like to feel that that they are part of a real soceity in which they can be very different (and, I rather suspect the key thing, far more [i:vi0smnll]successful[/i:vi0smnll], either in general, or in some specific sense) than they are in real life; and (2) there is a potentially substantial amount of real-life money to be made in SecondLife. The result of those two things is that decisions by a governing body of a community in SecondLife affecting a person's (virtual-)physical environment, economic environment, social environment, or whether that person can continue to be a member of that group at all, can have profound real-life consequences for the people in question, either financially or personally. A person may be extremely distressed, for example, either at being made to leave the group in question (and abandon any goods on her or his "land"), or at the actions of another person in the group, who may also be very distressed at having to leave it. If SecondLife was nothing but a 3d chatroom, that would not be the case, and a highly formalised government with a written constitution, a parliament, an executive and a court system would be absurd. But, for many people at least (and probably a majority of users), SecondLife is far more than a 3d chatroom: it is a whole world, and the consequences of adverse decisions for people involved in it are just as real as if they were decisions taken in a world. You may know, for example, that some people earn a full-time real-life living from SecondLife. The little 3d models that are land and objects have a non-trivial real-world economic value (precisely because of their personal value to the people who use them), and it is a very real loss to somebody if those things are taken away. Indeed, if SecondLife were regarded by most as no more than a 3d communications tool, it would be extremely surprising indeed if so many people unquestioningly accept, as many do, what we are and what we are seeking to do, rather than finding the whole thing laughable. The very fact that people are not laughing at us (or at the JAG Navy, or at Caledon, or at Port Neualtenburg) for the mere fact of having formal governance structures says a great deal about how people view SecondLife.
In our community, therefore, just as in real-life countries, a proper formalised governmental and legal system is necessary to regulate what would otherwise be a considerable degree of power held by a few individuals to alter the (second) lives of others. An informal committee is better than a despot, but it does not have the safeguards that a full constitution with separate branches and a delicate balance of the powers has, and is therefore inferior to it.
Also, there is a sense in which we are an [i:vi0smnll]experiment[/i:vi0smnll], and that that is a very important part of the reason that many of us are here in itself. There are lots of groups out there, many with far more people than ours, that get by perfectly well with very simple management structures, and do perfectly well out of it, but many of us are here to see whether a formalised, democratic government structure can work in a virtual world, and to see how well that it works. So far, we are succeeding. Succeeding means that a substanial proportion of the people who are here are not here principally because they want to take part in the experiment, but because they see us as a good place to do whatever other thing that they want to do (sell things, or, as in your case, educate people): after all, if we were composed [i:vi0smnll]only[/i:vi0smnll] of those few people interested in the workings of government itself, we would have a very hollow community: government for the sake of government does not do anybody any good. That there are people who [i:vi0smnll]want[/i:vi0smnll] to live under our formalised, democratic government for some other reason than that they want to be [i:vi0smnll]involved[/i:vi0smnll] with running that formalised, democratic government (and there are many of those now, and ever increasing) is a powerful indicator of our success. What our experiment is doing is showing that a properly constituted, formal, real-world like government can not only [i:vi0smnll]work[/i:vi0smnll] in SecondLife (we have already proved that), but also, in the long term, do [i:vi0smnll]better than[/i:vi0smnll] more informal structures, such as a mere despot (or a constitutional monarchy, such as Caledon), or a democratic but informal structure such as you suggest. We do not abandon an experiment part-way through because, although it is working, the things that the experiment is showing can be done in the method being tested by the experiment can also be done in another way. Although not everyone is here to take part in an experiment of government in a virtual world, many are, and your minimal structure would remove that raison d'etre. Even assuming for a moment that you were right that it is not strictly [i:vi0smnll]necessary[/i:vi0smnll] to have a fully formalised legal system in our community as things stand now, is it not an exciting thought that we are the pioneers of something that nobody has ever tried to do before - a real legal system in a virtual world? As I explain above and below, it very mich is necessary for our community, but, even if it were not, that would be a sufficient reason to have it on its own.
The third point is about expansion. I have posted a number of times now that I intend to write at some length about just how powerful our franchulates proposal could be, and why we might just end up expanding a great deal more than we had imagined if we adopt it, if we make some small revisions to it. I intend to post that explanation very soon, possibly this evening or later this afternoon if I get a chance. The important point, though, is this: a system that is designed to be able to work for a large community does not fail to work for a small community, provided that there are enough people to perform all the functions, which, in our system, there are. However, a system that is designed for a small community most certainly does not work for a large community: as I have posted elsewhere, as the number of people grows, the number of relationships, and therefore the number of potential conflicts, grows exponentially. A government and legal system are there to deal with that conflict. If it is not dealt with adequately, serious problems occur: in real life, civil war; in SecondLife, fragmentation of our group.
If, therefore, we adopt now a system primarily suitable for a small community, it will become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning that we will always be small, because as we expand, the system will not be able to cope with conflicts, and the group will fragment into multiple, smaller groups. The benefit of formality is its ability to deal with otherwise intractable conflicts (whether prospectively or retrospectively) between people or groups who may or may not have any personal connexion to each other. The liklihood of such conflicts grows exponentially as we grow. If we plan to get bigger (and we do), we must have a system that is now [i:vi0smnll]ready[/i:vi0smnll] for us to expand, rather than having to change things again when we do get bigger. Your suggestion is like saying, "I only have ten books now, so I'll buy a bookshelf that will fit exactly ten books". The problem is that, by the time that you get more books, you might no longer be able to accommodate any more bookshelves without causing great upheval to your interior decor. Similarly, unless our systems, as they stand now, are scaleable, we may not be sufficiently flexible in the future to change into a system that will work for a larger number of people.
If we are, as I will suggest with my post about franchulates, and as many of us in any event (albeit perhaps at this stage more vaguely) hope, to expand eventually a great deal, and, in particular, to attract a great many [i:vi0smnll]commercial[/i:vi0smnll] interests (money, after all, is one of the greatest motivators, and without it, we could not exist), we need to have a system that works at any scale without further tinkering (or further wholesale reform). Making our system [i:vi0smnll]smaller[/i:vi0smnll] when we are planning to expand is quite the wrong way to go. Commerce needs formality because it is important for commercial actors to be able to predict what is going to happen, and to be able to trust institutions (such as our government) with their assets (such as their land). Informal arrangements are neither predictable nor the sort of thing that one would sensibly trust to oversee a highly valuable asset.
I disagree with Rudy's proposal, therefore, not because the system that he has designed is a bad system in itself, but because he has misjudged the functions which the political system of our community is there to serve, perhaps because his involvement in SecondLife is somewhat different (albeit certainly not inferior) in character to that of many others. It may be a very good system for [i:vi0smnll]somebody[/i:vi0smnll], but it is not the right system for [i:vi0smnll]us[/i:vi0smnll].
It, of course, follows from all that that, if a proper formal government is required, so too is a proper formal judiciary, and I think that Rudy agrees, at least for the most part, that what I propose is a proper, formal judiciary suitable for that task.
As to Aliasi's comments, although it may very well be that the practical decisions are often made in a rather more informal way than is minimally required by the institutions, as can be seen with the debate around the Judiciary Bill itself, the formal processes are nonetheless required to address the times when we do not agree, and provide a proper, fair, predictable, efficient means of resolving that disagreement. The point is that our current system is [i:vi0smnll]scaleable[/i:vi0smnll], whereas a more informal system, such as that which Rudy proposes, is not.
Incidentally, the reason that a town council is not a good anology for what we are doing, despite our size, is that a town is inevitably a subset of a nation, and the more serious and important matters are dealt with formally on a national level, leaving the town council, under power delegated from a national governmental institution, to deal with more minor matters. Since LindenLabs does not provide any form of government (SecondLife as a whole, in any event, is more like a world than a nation), that anology does not apply to us: we have to deal with not just the minor affairs of town planning, but the major affairs of economic regulation and the resolution of the most serious possible disputes that could arise between citizen and citizen or citizen and state.
For all those reasons, therefore, well-meaning though Rudy's plan no doubt is, there should not be any revolutionary constituitonal reform designed into making us less of a virtual nation and more of a virtual social club with faachwerks. We should be proud of our status as a virtual nation, and seek to augment that position, not to diminish it. Our current governmental structure, combined with the judiciary that I propose, is precisely what we need to go forward and show that virtual nationhood is more than just do-able, but is highly desirable and potentially greatly successful.