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planning The Perfect Colony (a philosophical RP) Signup and Plans


Tranquil Claw

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https://mlpforums.com/topic/139259-the-perfect-colony-a-philosophical-rp/#entry4129643

 

This is the story of a band of philosophers on the quest to find the perfect government to which their new test civilization inside America will follow. They have been cut off from the influence of the traditional government and have built up a few fair sized towns to start with. Discussions relating to this idea are held daily in the local town hall. Only the best and brightest will take part in it. The name of the project is Medessa. Anyone who fits the requirements are allowed into this project no matter the phase it is in. 

 

All roleplayers keep in mind the setting was changed from Equestria to the human world. In this version the human world will be completely alike to ours. All characters will retain their names and will only receive changes to looks. History of the characters are not a requirement in this RP. The only required aspect of a character is that they have a personality.

 

 

  Here you can join in on the actual role play by submitting your character. Ask any questions about it here.


My character, Star Gaze will take the role as head of the movement.

Edited by Tranquil Claw
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@Tranquil Claw

While I'm still thinking about joining, I do have to mention that you forgot to link this OOC with the RP and vice versa, just to make it easier for players to switch between the two. 

Edited by Denim&Venom
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@@Tranquil Claw,

Ok as a two bit Philosopher myself, and my lead character being one as well I'd love to join this rp. Just a warning though Rhetoric may be a bit of a stirrer of the pot. If thats ok with you. And I should mention the character I am submitting is Rhetoric Rash the link for which can be found in my signature 

Edited by The Down Trotten
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(edited)

Sir, you are more than qualified to do whatever the heck you want in this role play. I really want you to challenge my ideals to better them. This'll make for some good chemistry. The actual purpose for this RP is testing my utopian theory against as many opinions as possible. Jump in whenever you feel ready to, the current time of day at the first post is morning if you haven't already noticed.   

Edited by Tranquil Claw
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     All right it's about time I started releasing everything that's been going on behind the scenes. Keep in mind that this is not a fully worked out system and we as a group are trying to eliminate and make clearer the flaws through discussion. It may appear that some statements contradict one another, but that is intended since this system is ever changing through input of opinion.

 

Tranquil Claw:

So the core of many systems so far has been to find the best possible government there is. There is just one problem with this, the world constantly changes. The focus of my model is flexibility over practicality, since flexibility often leads to temporary practicality either way. The only way that such a model can be a utopia is by maintaining a balance of good and bad. Money in this system is secondary to a primary communist centered "resource" currency (more on that later). The social model could be described as a partially flooded house with people inside, on boats, and on the roof. The people on top represent the government, the people on the boats are the wealthy, and the people inside represent the common populace. The government acts as the voice for the people trapped inside, telling the wealthy how to help and where to find them. So the government is a branch of the common people aimed at keeping the wealthy happy but in check while encouraging them to outdo one another, causing growth almost by accident.

 

Lil Pip:

How does growth get promoted by having the wealthy try to help the poor/middle class and what is their motivation or incentive to do so?

 

The Down Trotten:

Also what does is wealth represented by. If money. What does the money represent? 

 

Tranquil Claw:

The wealthy will benefit directly from having more people on their land (which means more taxes to get) which stimulates competition to have the more attractive and better land in one's possession. Since most of the good land is taken and city states would be the norm, this will lead to improvement of the existing land through acquisition of effective and healthy methods, which are the universal way of appealing to the council (the ones both supporting and keeping governors in check) who are the ones capable of rating the local quality of life and who appeal to citizens of their like-minded "social groups" (that is another subject). Essentially the desire to be popular is used as motivation or incentive. 

 

Wealth is only measured in money if you are at the social status of a governor. It is essentially a form of trading cards in this society. Other than that you will have "universal contribution credit" which is like having a score based on how much you contribute to others and generally help out.

 

The Down Trotten:

Of course this could lead to conflict amongst the wealthy to acquire land through force and thus force local common people to have no choice but to stay on their land.

 

Tranquil Claw:

Very good point, do you see a way to give the wealthy something to accumulate without harming the people beneath them? Actually I just remembered something, the wealthy are supposed to cause problems as long as they do not affect the system as a whole. That actually helps progression and stimulates solution oriented thinking from the people as a whole.

 

Lil Pip:

Well truth be told I don't know what goes in in different governments. So we could simply look to the essentials of governments which are successful and in what way. Sweden heavily taxes the rich, and everyone has a higher quality of life and is happier and more educated. Whats makes them not Utopian? With higher education comes less violent crime. More fraud, but if there's a proper government system in place no one should end up homeless from fraud, so the cheater feels like he won, and doesn't need to cheat exponentially more. And the inconvenienced person is only temporarily inconvenienced, its like 1st world problems.

 

Tranquil Claw:

By the way I was looking for flaws in the Swedish government and found that they are mostly having a hard time remaining unified. Basically they are splitting up into smaller and smaller political groups which have a harder time remaining coordinated.

 

The Down Trotten:

But you do still have the problem of wealth. In order for some one to have more of something, someone has to have less. The person with less is normally unhappy, complains and leads to revolt. The common idea is to heavily tax the wealthy to make it "fair" however too many taxes leads to the wealthy being unhappy. It's not the loss of wealth that causes this unhappiness but it is the idea of being penalized for often times there hard earned success. Whats the point of working hard and doing well if someone is just going to take it away? 

 

Tranquil Claw:

I have an idea for taxes. So I mentioned this "universal contribution credit", this is where it comes into play. Universal Contribution Credit or "UCC" for short, is a communism inspired idea for personal monetary gain. It works like this; You make a monthly/weekly contribution directly to the community goals/resources which is your tax. If this is done then you are free to pursue your interests and make UCC off of documentation of success in your interests. This, then allows you to withdraw resources from stockpiles that you helped fill during your tax payments based on how actively your pursuit of interests was. This supports the rise of automation commonly found in 1st world countries. 

 

The Down Trotten:

What about people who can't contribute? The elderly? The infirm? And so on? How do they acquire the needs to live and how do they contribute to earn their UCC?

 

Tranquil Claw:

Part of the weekly/monthly contributions to the community is supporting those who have no ability to contribute. The current day economy seems to struggle only slightly with these burdens. I don't see many significant problems stemming from it. The simple answer to this is a minimum and maximum work age that is agreed upon by the local council of representatives and the governor.

 

The Down Trotten:

So who controls the goods and wealth that are given to people after they fulfill there UCC? If its the government whats stopping that from become corrupt? If the government controls the output of these things whats stopping them from overworking people and holding food over there heads? 

 

Tranquil Claw:

The government does not stockpile things for itself, that is no longer it's job. The local council and governor are the ones in charge of resource safekeeping and usage. Only after personal needs are met can the government withdraw resources for their own personal use, however that is another more complicated subject.

 

The Down Trotten:

The point I suppose I'm getting at is that power corrupts. So the question is who has the power? And more over what is the moral foundation of this government if there is indeed one.

 

Lil Pip:

I suppose it makes sense the greedy ought to stockpile stuff but the thing is they won't hand it up so easily then they would hide it to avoid warrants or move out of country.

 

Tranquil Claw:

The power is supposed to fluctuate between the people and the governors. The basic moral of this government is to accept and incorporate change whenever possible. Innovation from agreement among the people and order derived from competition among the ruling class. It may seem very impossible at first, but look at the effect someone holding power over others has in America alone. Many people are actually very suppressed by this structure. So if we introduced the same method on a smaller and more spread out scale a sense of power through community emerges as it requires much fewer to decide and work together on improvements and fixes to otherwise overwhelming problems. I decided on city states because of their relative internal stability from correct sizing. One problem with city states are the external pressures applied to them. This can easily overload their traditions and cause systematic malfunctions. This is where media comes into play.

 

Media will be the main external stabilizer for city states in that it controls how one views another. As long as media is in the hands of responsibly chosen people, there should be relatively few collapses from external reasons. How to filter out these kinds of people from others is the job of a system of natural selection modified for this purpose. That is for another time though and is currently very loosely defined. 

 

For your question Lil I will give the following answer. In that case I would provide a legal way for them to do just that. People with greedy personalities have a tendency to like gambling, so why not tell them that having positive effects on the community will earn them promised UCC proportionate to those contributions while creating problems reduces it in the same way. In retirement from office these accumulated UCC will then pretty much be cashed in. By the way I don't think anyone would be running off with raw resources when committing such an act wouldn't really benefit them greatly. They would still have to have the support required to turn these materials into usable things.

 

The goal is to make it so that the people who are in possession of these materials are unable to use them for themselves, but can shift them around and allocate them to where they are needed or not needed.

 

Lil Pip:

'Responsibly chosen people'

You cannot trust they will be responsibly chosen to be technical. If its voting in people can be bribed, or if its a massive poll they can be tampered with. Or they could be bribed after getting in. We need to see where the plan is weakest to test how strong it is.

 

Tranquil Claw:

'System of natural selection' is neither of the things you mentioned. Think of it like a test to eliminate until only the strongest are left. Yes it appears you have identified the "weak link" in my system. That is who manages the media. The sad fact is we need to somehow balance the power of the media with everything else, an extremely difficult task. I feel the first step to doing this is bringing out what "everything else" is into the light.

 

The Down Trotten:

If I may throw my two cents in here. The major problem with any system is the people themselves, there is always the Stalions, the Hitlers, the Rockefellers. No system can prepare for the unpredictability of humans and humans be they base or righteous will always mess up the system. No amount of checks and balances or government regulations can fix the human nature. So I suppose I should ask what is the goal of your utopia? What does it seek to accomplish for its people or itself?

 

Tranquil Claw:

I want this utopia to focus on providing a stable route for people of the "negative" type that satisfies their needs without toppling the system. One way to accomplish this is to increase what I call the "grey zone" between black and white. It doesn't focus on maintaining perfect balance but instead must make sure that any imbalance will bound back from whichever area it flows into. If you were to exclude the badly oriented from society, you end up with an ever more flawed future simply because of a lack of flaws. I could describe this as a create, destroy, mend method. It is in this formula that Hitler tested the claim to "the war to end all wars" by creating one just as bad to make sure that humanity learned it's lesson and for a long time. No significant wars have stemmed from greed for land since. It is exactly the people you describe who change the way we think in order to improve ourselves in a different way. 

 

In other words the end goal is to create a stable template that will replace nature's own. The goal of this test system in particular is to appeal to human nature and amplify it's ability. Why I think something like this will work is because human nature by default is more progressive than regressive. Human nature is particularly progressive in the sense that it uses both the process of elimination and the process of creation simultaneously to create a cycle of improvement. What this system will accomplish I cannot predict yet. Both nature and previous governments have shown that limiting one part of humanity only plugs the hole. Eventually pressure builds up and the cork, no matter how strong, pops out.

 

Lil Pip:

Like the media, what if each region wanted their own instead of accepting bribes? Then they would all just copycat the current strongest method.  If we give the competers more interconnectivity it would prevent them from trying to take the others down through media to give themselves an advantage. Also because they are competitive they actually have more incentive to look for advantage than a system that is neutral in that regard.

 

But what if the cork that pops out had a pressure release valve to let off built up steam. Hm.

 

I see why communism tries to make everyone seemingly equal, and fears other media use so they need to have that government controlled. 

 

But I don't think taxing the rich is too bad an idea. Like in America our richest 1% own 90%, thats probably more extreme than other countries, and what if we just allowed that but got more taxes to patch all the holes with the system? I suppose the richest guys could try to move out of the usa, but the usa is a consumer nation. Oh right, our country isn't isolated either we need to see what its world 'job' is. Like usa is to consume and stabilize other countries and be the peacekeeper in a way. Like which countries are we trying to fix, all of them or just the problem countries? The plan would need to be enacted different based on country, but its possible to add country jobs. Like exporting goods. It really depends on alot of world knowledge I feel, not just national knowledges.

 

(btw this message is 11090 characters long)

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