Neualtenburg Constitution

Nope Billy. Kendra's post on page 2 (post # 2 maps out a Guild structure, and frankly I think a pretty good one. There may be some compromise involved, but I would lean more towards the Guild than the traditional Union.

This is a direct URL to her post
/103/d9/22948/2.html#post270706

I apologize ahead of time for my ignorance to how guilds work. Please be patient with my stupid questions… lol.



Is the Guildmeister chosen from the other meisters or is he/she chosen based on quarterly sales?



Essentially flat?



So you have to be a meister to sells goods in the city?



Will the Artisanal branch basically be every artist in the city?

1) Did I not make that clear? Let me re-phrase
The Guildmeister is chosen FROM amongst the other meisters on the basis of level of seniority combined with tally of quarterly sales.

2) Esentially flat --meaning that while technically all the meisters have equal base votes amongst themselves - they will also have extra weight given to their votes based on sales totals and size of their "workshops" (amount of trainees).

3)Apprentices and Journeymen can create and sell "collaborative" goods only --fostering teamwork -- Apprentices can only collaborate within their "workshop". Journeymen can collaborate with any guild member they like plus a journeyman can open a retail shop to sell their goods.
Only a member of the Meister Class can sell goods that are "auteur".

4)The Artisinal Branch will be every "active" artist in the City who wishes to be a member. Apprentices and Journeymen are active as long as they are working on a workshop projekt. Meisters are only Meisters if they are genrating income for the Guild.
Their status as meisters is reviewed quarterly. Zero sales does not remove them from the guild but rather they become journeymen again.

The Guildmeister represents the voice of The Guild to the other branches but he/she is responsable for adequately expressing the voice of the collective Guild. An unpopular Guildmeister can easily be replaced if the other Guild members either pool their talents to outsell him/her or decide to engage in a work stoppage thereby forcing the Guildmeister to defer to the next senior member for the duration of the term.

Thanks for the questions, Billy as they do help me to articulate the structure of the Guild in a clearer fashion.

3 questions just to clarify:

1) Can two journeymen build something together, and open a retail shop to sell the goods?

2) Can Meister's sell products that don't contain any of their craftsmenship? Perhaps if two Journeymen build a product and used the Meister as the sales avenue.

3) What is the advantage of being an apprentice? Do you have to go through an apprenticeship to become a Meister?

TY Kendra. That was great!

One more question... for now... hehe

Are the meisters the only ones who are allowed to vote?

Oh, and I am very interested to hear your opinion about my suggestions too.

1) yes! and if they sell real well they could become meisters in no time! that's why Kendra and Ulrika are currently meisters --having opened "Bangzwang Steinzeug".


2) He could --but the two journeymen would be foolish to let him cut into their profits that way Unless of course The meister is so renowned a craftsperson that goods are just flying of his shelves. The Meister would be only too pleased to take his sales commision.

3) One enters the Guild as an apprentice. It's an indoctrination really. It's more a way for a new member to learn the ropes of being a good guildmember and also of learning the particular standards and aesthitics of the Neualtenburg artform. We are striving for a "native" look

Hello fellow Neualtenburgers!

Sadly, I had been off the forums and off SL (or rather, "limited" in SL), both to an unexpected increase in RL work, and a very time-consuming trip to the mainland at the turn of the month, so I have lost quite a little bit of what's going on in SL! Well, I'll try to get back to business as usual as fast as I can (until the next increase in RL work, that is).

Unfortunately, I'm not a "quality artisan" in any respect (can't build, do bad texturing, do primitive animations, do simple clothes, do some scripting...) and so my "contribution" to the Neualtenburg Projekt will be mostly... talking

Seems that there has been so much to read about the constitution of Neualtenburg that I feel there is not much to add/discuss. Or, rather, I think that there is enough for a "provisional constitution" to elect/designate the members of the branches. And they should pick up from there, ie. proposing revisions on the constitution, changing the way things should work, etc. I think that there is so much already done on this forum thread that the basis for "governmental work" is more than adequate to start.

Perhaps only a few comments/suggestions..

1. Living in a West European country with a single representative house (almost all European democracies have the equivalent of a Senate and a House as well), I'm always confused about the "need" of "double voting" on issues. Of course I'm biased - since around here in Portugal, the "double voting" in two different houses was abolished due to the love of bureaucracy that Portuguese have, it takes too much time for one vote to pass, it would be almost impossible to do any law passing in a 4-year mandate hehe - but perhaps I can also contribute with my "unusual view". The current proposal calls for 2 votes on any law at the Representative branch, one individual vote, and one party vote.

Why?

The point I see is, either the parties have vote discipline (this is something they will discuss internally) and all members of the party are forced to vote the same way - in that case, end results will be the same - or the parties won't have vote discipline, and in that case there arises the question what parties are for if they can't even agree on their voting!

In my country, as said, there is just one Parliament of directly elected members. In almost all issues, all parties have vote discipline (they have chosen to do so, they're not constitutionally forced to do it). In some social/moral/ethical questions, there may be a more relaxed vote discipline (ie. you may vote "aye" or "abstain", but not "nay". Since almost all parties have "independents" (ie. members who are not really party affiliates, but sympathizers with each party's cause), this provides for some interesting internal "power struggles" inside each party before there is a vote.

So my point is, the "party vote" is something generally cast by the party leader or speaker (whatever it will be named in Neualtenburg). If someone disagrees withe the party leader/speaker, he/she may still cast a contrary vote on the second round of voting. But I feel this gives rise to "weak parties", where their members cannot agree beforehand on how they should vote. I would think that there should only be one voting round, with all members voting - and that parties meet beforehand to decide how they will vote (and enforce, or not, their vote discipline). Sure, there can always be surprises - and you could just eject that member from the party! - effectively creating an "independent" on the Representative assembly - who would probably create a new party and/or join another one (no problem with that!).

So, my point is, if you join both representative bodies on a single one (which is the case in Portugal), you should not have to vote twice just to get the "feel" that you're joining these two bodies. Different voting systems make sense when the two bodies are elected/nominated in different ways (eg. by direct election of the members vs. appointment/nomination). This does not apply to Neualtenburg, so a single vote shall be enough.


2. The issue of vetos has been fairly well detailed and I can only give you another suggestion. Instead of an absolute veto, have the possibility to overrule the veto, by forcing an unanimous voting. Ie. let's say some parties of the Representative branch want to issue a law raising taxes, and get a majority vote on the new law. The Artisanal branch feels that the economy could be affected by it, and uses its veto power to overrule that decision. Now the Representative branch has to overrule the veto, but with an unanimous vote (in my country, all vetos can be overruled by a 2/3 vote, but since we're going to have a very small assembly in Neualtenburg, I propose an unanimous voting).

This means that in those cases, the Representative branch has to be really sure of what they are proposing! Artisans/Philosophers use their vetoing ability to stop silly issues to be voted and passed as law - that's their job! - but when the Representative branch really means it, they could show it by an unanimous vote, which would be hard to get, especially if you only have a single voting session! (if you want to do it extra hard, make it an unanimous voting with all members counted, and not only those who are present at the time of the voting...). This also means that the Representative branch won't be "at the mercy" of the other two branches. They will be checked, yes, and will have to be very careful on the laws they want to pass, and get full commitment of all members if they really want to change something.


3. I'm currently not very comfortable about people being on more than one branch. This may be unavoidable since we are so few, but I'd prefer, for instance, that Artisans and Philosophers had their own factions (or at least elected members of their factions) in the Representative assembly. This means that the Guildmeister or the University Dean won't be able to vote directly in the Representative assembly, but they certainly should have some elected members there to cast votes. Alas, I foresee that two very strong parties will be formed exactly around Artisans and Philosophers - to be able to enforce their current views directly in the Representative assembly. But I'd prefer that these were different people. Perhaps the exception could be the Burgermeister, who could be nominated from any branch (or not!), since it's more a "decorative figure" under this model


4. This is rather obvious, I think, but I propose that both the Artisanal & Philosophical Branches should be allowed to chose the way they are ruled themselves internally; constitution should only tell what these branches are, what their powers are, etc. The Guild, as the embodiment of the Artisanal branch as Kendra proposed it, is an excellent way to describe a possible structure for the internal working of the Artisanal branch. But I think that it should not be "constitutionalized". Let Guild members and University members quibble among themselves and let's not interfere We just need to know their representatives in the Government, and that's all!


5. I fully agree on a "City Council" with members of all branches and with the Burgermeister presiding - an informal body which can only pass "recommendations" to all other branches, but it will usually have consensus to propose "peaceful" laws for the Representative assembly to pass. If the Neualtenburg model grows beyond Anzere, the "City Council" could be renamed as "State Council" (or "Union Council"... hmm... whatever is more apropriate )


6. I also agree that things like defining what taxes are for should be done by the government and not stated in the constitution. Again, the constitution should only stipulate basic things like "taxes are a way to redistribute wealth and should be implemented by the government", etc. Note: 0% tax IS a tax, so, in the future, the government could "abolish taxes" without needing to change the constitution


7. One thing I loved about the proposal is that there is no executive branch (ie. no "proper government" per se with ministers/secretaries of State, etc), but that the executive tasks are evenly distributed by the three branches! However, we should address a few of the issues not covered by the proposed model. I'm quite sure that we don't need to address Health issues and even a Defense Ministry is probably not necessary as well (policing will be done by the Philosophical branch, a standing army is not really needed ), but I feel that we should have Foreign Affairs. Since this is something that both Artisans/Philosophers are probably keen to have under their wing, I would "give" it to neither, but have an independent Ministry for Foreign Affairs which would answer, say, to the City Council, and nominated by them. His/Her responsabilities would be mostly PR and marketing of the Neualtenburg Porjekt outside our borders. Alternative: have the Burgermeister do that job! (give him/her something to do besides lovely speeches )


8. Last but not least, Ulrika briefly mentioned that I would host some events soon (I have to post on another thread on that), but I would like to clarify one question: who will represent the "pure event hosters"? I'm naturally assuming that these should also be represented under the Guild (Artisanal Branch)? So there will be Eventmeisters, Eventjourneymen (or -women and Eventapprentices?

(BTW, the correct German spelling shoud be "Der Gildemeister" ... or just leave it as "Guildmaster" instead of the mixed spelling "Guildmeister"

Whew. I guess that's it!

I agree

I like what you've outlined but I'm not sure about the 2 vote situation...I think with parties already in place the vote should be straight forward 1 vote per seat....The minority can be a deciding factor in some instances and in others peopl may cross party lines for certain votes.

We also need to agree on how the parties are voted into the senate. I think for sake of arguement initially project parties might be limited to 3 or four so we don't have 25 one person parties confusing the issue.

As for the voting process normally each person would represent a district and there would be races held for each district but we are one district. I f we have 15 people running individually for x amount of seats then then how should we declair the majority party and minority party...especially if they are heading 15 differnt parties.


I think there should be 11 seats in the senate represented by a maximum of 2 parties.

I think for basic starting purposes the city should only recognize a maximum of 3 parties. each party would be required to have a minimum of 10 members to qualify( subject to everyones agreement)

Each of the 3 parties would run 5 people for senate seats. and they would run together on a party platform. The party with the highest votes gets elected to 5 seats....the party with the second highest gets elected to 5 seats the third party gets elected to one seat. Party lines can and probably will be crossed while making law and if they should tie the Minorty becomes the tie breaker.

I think this could be a fair representation of the people of the city. I understand that 3 parties can be seen as limiting but we are a small community and having more than three parties will lead to problems in the long run.

Both majority parties will be able to introduce laws but the minority can only vote.

This is just off the top of my head and I've only had 2 hours sleep but I think this could work well.

When you say senate, do you mean Representative branch? You think the Representative branch should be represented by a maximum of 2 parties?

I strongly disagree. Baking the 2 party system into Neualtenburg is absolutely the wrong thing to do. It won't represent the people properly and will lead to massive power struggles and general unhapiness. If the system naturally evolves into a 2 party system, that's ok, but to say the the Representative branch should be represented by a maximum of 2 parties is detrimental to the city.



I'm ok with having some minimum number of members to qualify for a party, but again I don't think we should max out 3 parties to start. We may not have many citizens yet, but by forcing a 3 party limit, there are people's who's beliefs would be automatically excluded, because 3 other groups had beliefs first.



Why fear the popular vote? If 3 parties ran 5 people for 11 seats, I say the top 11 vote getters, hold seats, regardless of party. Yes this allows one party to sweep the election, but that would be the will of the people.



I'd like to hear your arguement for that. I think limited it to 3 parties will lead to problems in the long run. In a 3 party system some people's views won't be represented, and they will leave the city. We should be an attractive city to people with all beliefs because of the tolerance build into our Constitution. We need citizens to survive and want to offer a democratic alternative to TeleMall moguls.



I think any Representative should be able to introduce laws. Frivolous or dumb laws will be voted down quickly. Because one is the minority, does that mean they don't have good ideas?

I don't think members of the Philosophic branch should hold seats in the other 2 branches. Not in the Representative to prevent corruption, and not in the Artisanal to prevent a rash ruling stictly serving the needs of the Artisans. But I could be persuaded on this one.

First of all I'm speaking from a provisional government standpoint. We don't need 23 parties muddying up the waters and totaly confusing everyone..

Personally I think there should only be 2 parties in the senate I'm conceding the point that a true minority is needed.

Being that a finite amount of people...less than 50 at my last count are part of this project I don't see the need for everyone to have a party I believe 3 parties would be more than well rounded and reach every political philosophy.

Lastly being as January is looming the people need to get the information from the parties ...become affiliated if they so choose with a party and pick representitives...not a lot of time for quite a lot of work.

Theres nothing saying that more parties cant be introduced in the future or that the senate wouldn't change to offer more seats. Speaking from a provisional standpoint this all needs to be clarified very soon in order for January elections

I think this is a key point. We need to get moving on this, and we can certainly hope that the group will grow, but in a lot of ways we need to work with what we have now and move forward. With provisions of course (some how) that we could at a future date possibly introduce more parties to the system. That is my thought on this.

At first I had agreed with Ulrika on her statement regarding this, but you make a good point here Satchmo. I suppose it will be easier to decide on how many parties and which parties each person can belong to once we have settled on how much "power" each party will have when it comes down to deciding on issues.

If we have a minimum number of 10 members to make a party, and if we had 50 residents, then in a very unlikely event there would be a max of 5 parties. If the minimum number of members were 15, then we would max out at 3 parties.

I don't think 3 parties could round out every political philosophy. We are a world community and there will no doubt be socialists, social democrats, republicans, anarchists, people who care only about the Artisans, people who care only about the land, people who want fiscal responsibility, other who want frivolous gov't spending, etc... there is no way to know all of the different views of the citizens of our city, unless we let them participate in groups that represent thier views.

This isn't the U.S. We haven't yet had the mass media exploit our thoughts in SL, and as a result not everyone will fall on 3 sides of an argument.

Ok. I'm still confused about the factions. How they come to be, what they do, etc. Perhaps someone could start another thread with some examples (or if there already is one, point me to the link)? I'm sorry. I'm sure it is something very simple that my mind is just rejecting right now for some reason.

To clarify on this. I don't have a problem with a certain political party holding a position in multiple branches. I just don't think it's a good idea to have individuals serve multiple roles. The philisophic branch should include respect citizens who would be expected to look at all issues in a non-partisan way.

I agree from a provisional standpoint, we'll have to move forward quickly. Perhaps each major issues that arises here, should get it's own thread. Since the issues are getting mixed up with some of the other fundemental ideas of the constitution.

You shouldnt assume that every member of the project will join a political party some are interested in other aspects of the project. And whos to say those 50 people wont come up with 50 different parties. Right now we are in a provisional government phase...some of these questions may have to be left for the elected senate to agree on and decide and set forth in law.




So offer an alternative ....there cant be 500 parties there must be a decision made and it needs to be made soon. We will know the views of the citizens on voting day...we must get to that point first...as I said there is room to grow but we must start first.



again where is the line drawn...there can't and wont be 50 parties....

I second this! I think that having each major issue in its own thread will also help when we come together to discuss the constitution in world. Yes that means a lot of threads, but it can also mean better focus on each issue at hand, thus better communication and productivity. We can bring summaries from each of the issue threads to the constitution convention/discussion/whatever in world and use them for finishing touches on the constitution. What do others think of this?

These fundemntal points are to become part of the constitution. We havent had a problem hammering out the Philisophical or Artisinal branches here so I think the questions of the representitve branch should be discussed here as well.
Other threads will be needed to hammer out parties and affiliations. Setting up platforms and getting the word out to the people though.

I suggest that we make all parties interested in participating in the January election, declare themselves by December 1. This declaration should state it's view on what it feels is important, like the Social Democrats do (http://www.ulrikasheim.org/sdf/). It should require a nomination, and someone to second the nomination.

Lets see how many parties are interested in running in the January elections and then make decisions from there (something like, 3 parties with most members an run). If we chose to do it any other way, we are kind of arbitrarily picking 3 parties.

Yes. I agree branch issues are main to this thread. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of like my question on the factions and such. They are part of the constitution in that you need to belong to one to be in certain parties. But they are sort of an issue unto themselves as well. Such as the item you mention "parties and affliations". That is where I was coming from.

Good point, Talen! We should address how people get elected!



Hmm, I would say that this extreme case will not exist. If I'm correctly quoting Ulrika, the idea was that parties would have to create SL groups specifically for applying for the senate (BTW, I still call it the "Representative Assembly"... we should also decide on the "definitive" name). Since you need three people to form a group, and assuming as a rule of thumb that citizens can't belong to two parties at the same time, and taking into account that there are 35 Neualtenburgers, this means a maximum of 11 parties!



The notion of "districts" makes more sense for indirect democracies, and I'm assuming that the Representative Assembly (RA) will be elected directly. So, at the extreme case, we would have 11 parties running for X seats. Citizens vote for parties, not for people.

For allocating the seats according to party votes, I propose the Hondt method (again, I'm biased, since I'm used to live in a country using it since 1974 ). This method allows for minority parties to get a seat, but also slightly favours larger parties. It's a relatively fair system. Very small parties may be able to form coalitions in order to make sure they get at least one seat. But after a certain threshold, you probably won't be able to be represented at all.



Oh, I simply hate bipolar systems! They look too much like the US system, which is one of the most uninteresting systems in the whole world Nah, let the voters decide, let people make and break coalitions in order to struggle for power. It is so much more challenging!

Just imagine the following scenario. You have 11 parties, named from P1 to P11, each one struggling for, say, 9 seats, and just being able to have 3 members on each list. Now P1 has done an excellent campaign, and actually people from the other lists have voted on them... suddenly they have 4 seats to fill, but just 3 people for them! Argh. It's coalition time, so they approach P2, get an agreement with them, and have 1 member of P2 to sit at the RA. This seriously pissed the guys from P3 off, who had just two seats, and they agree on a new coalition with P4 and P5, for a total of 5 seats! A-ha! Now the P3.4.5 coalition has a majority on the RA, even though P1 won the elections and have a P1.2 coalition with 4 seats!

Awww I just love it! And remember, you can have pre-election coalitions and post-election coalitions as well (those are currently very popular in my country right now ). And, surely enough, coalitions may break and reform just when the heat is on at the debates in the RA!

As to the number of seats, my intuition tells me that you should start with 7 +/- 2 seats. There is a psychological reason for this, it's a very well studied case, and a reason why phone numbers and ID numbers usually have 7 +/- 2 characters/numbers, or why company boards usually also have 7 +/- 2 members. We humans seem to be "optimized" to work with 7 +/- 2 (take a look at any Apple application, all elements on the user interface have 7 +/- 2 items as well - not a coincidence), and the highest productivity on a group is reached when you have 7 +/- 2 members. If you have less, you will not be enough "representative". If you have more, some guys will be completely unproductive and sleep through the whole proceedings.

Using the same argument, I would expect that, after a while, we would only have 7 +/- 2 parties running for the RA as well (this is also a trend you can see in most European countries, which start with perhaps 20+ parties, but after a few decades have around that number of parties "surviving" and still running for seats at their parliaments. The major exception is the UK, but they're the oldest representative democracy in Europe and quite unlike others in several respects ).

However, as soon as Neualtenburg grows, you should add more seats. Using the Hondt method you can easily calculate who should get the next seats, based on the number of votes on the previous election. There is no need to run a new election if you want to add more seats.




Taking into account around 250+ countries with more than three parties that don't have "problems in the long run", I certainly disagree On the other hand, if you sum up the number of countries with less than 3 parties that had "problems in the long run", I think that you would find out that the only one that survived thus far is the US! So the "problems in the long run" argument is not really defensable, is it?

Under your system, the number of seats is completely irrelevant, and the minority party is actually the one wielding all the power, since their single vote will always win any election, at least on sessions where everybody is present. I don't like that system at all. But beyond the "power struggle", it's also quite unfair in terms of respecting the voters wishes. Imagine that you have 7 parties with the following distribution, and 9 seats to distribute:

P1 - 20 votes (57.1%)
P2 - 5 votes (14.2%)
P3 - 4 votes (11.4%)
P4 - 3 votes (8.5%)
P5 - 3 votes (8.5%)

This means that P1 would get 4 seats, P2 4 seats, and P3 1 seat. P4 and P5 would be off. See how unfair this is, since P1 has 57% of the votes and 44% of the seats, but P2 has 14% of the votes and 44% of the seats as well!

The Hondt system gives something much more interesting:

Seat 1 - P1
Seat 2 - P1
Seat 3 - P1
Seat 4 - P1
Seat 5 - P1
Seat 6 - P2
Seat 7 - P3
Seat 8 - P4
Seat 9 - P5

... if my manual calculations don't fail me (I need an algorithm for this!)

So the distribution, using Hondt's method, will give:

P1 - 5 seats - 55.5%
P2, P3, P4, P5 - 1 seat each - 11.1%

So this means that P1 will hold a number of seats very close to their real votes, and the other parties will get at least one seat (some variants will give zero seats to P4 and P5, and have P2 and P3 with 2 seats each). This is much closer to what the citizens have voted, ie. votes are not "discarded" but every vote counts.

The only point I agree with is limiting parties to have at least 5 members. This will limit the first election to at most 7 parties. As you can see, we are on 7 +/- 2 territory again, and I agree to that!




Again, this is quite unfair. On a party-based system, all parties are able to introduce laws, and all can vote. This is called "giving voice to the minorities". Even a small party with just one seat will be able to introduce the ideas of their party and the citizens who elected them, and argue the other parties to side with them, or at least abstain. This allows for the small parties to be the best speakers at the RA - they will have a lot of persuading to do, while the big parties will only need to cast their "discipline vote" and yawn

Under your system, and assuming vote discipline, the only party making the decisions would be the minority party, but they wouldn't be allowed to introduce laws; on the other hand, the majority parties would introduce all laws, but their votes would be useless, since none of them have majorities.

I completely disagree with this method of discriminating parties at the RA.



Well, I have tested out several different methods in RL (mostly at associations and other non-governmental entities, but who traditionally use proportional voting) and never tried any system similar to yours, so I don't know if it would work out well. I can only give my feelings on it, which is that it looks too unfair to me. But I have been proved wrong several times

we dont have the time to imagine we need to start setting the foundation...its all up to us...Also we are not doing the voters work...when the senate is elected they will be doing the peoples wishes...we are merley giving the senate a structure for them to build on. We need figure out exactly how many parties and how many seats.

P1 - 20 votes (57.1%)
P2 - 5 votes (14.2%)
P3 - 4 votes (11.4%)
P4 - 3 votes (8.5%)
P5 - 3 votes (8.5%)

This means that P1 would get 4 seats, P2 4 seats, and P3 1 seat. P4 and P5 would be off. See how unfair this is, since P1 has 57% of the votes and 44% of the seats, but P2 has 14% of the votes and 44% of the seats as well!


This isnt an experiment using an outside existing structure..we are here to make our own.

Where are you getting 7 partiesand the whole numerology thing misplaced in this situation.





I agree that all parties should be able to introduce a bill ...





very untrue ....the other parties can work together and will have to in many cases being forced to or knowing that a bill will die if they don't. again I concede that all parties should be able to introduce a bill.

I completely disagree with this method of discriminating parties at the RA.





Its almost a guarunteed fact that no matter what we come up with it will not be loved by all....It is NOT the be all and end all merely a framework to assist the incoming senate . They will need to build on this with the peoples wishes...and many things should be left for them to hammer out.