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OfflineGernBlanston
unintended sideeffect
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Registered: 05/28/03
Posts: 842
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2 Presidents
    #2922423 - 07/23/04 11:13 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Now, this might be crazy talk, but I'm curious to see what some of y'all think. I know I'm not the first person to have this idea, but it's not too common and I thought I'd put it on the table.

What if...

We had 2 presidents?

Now hear me out. The first president would be entirely responsible for domestic policy; let's call him the PDP (President: Domestic Policy). He would be the guy when it came to domestic policy, economic policy, leadership of the House and Senate, appointment of SCOTUS justices et. al., FBI and CIA (Domestically) and the National Guard. He or she (while we're wishing, right?) would be mostly a lawmaker and policy setter, answerable directly to the American people in a new (and this is soooo important that while only peripherally relevant to this post, I thought I'd throw it in anyway) system that would allow Americans to direcly provide feedback to the PDP and his staff - some sort of public referendum or town hall style program.

The second president, the PFP (President: Foreign Policy) would be responsible for all foreign policy decisions: International trade agreements, diplomatic issues, military placement issues, and international human rights. Here's the kicker for this one, though... Most people in the world feel that the POTUS is the single most powerful person in the world, and it is rightly said that anything that the US does regarding international affairs affects every other country and indeed person on the planet. So I propose that every person on the planet be able to cast a vote for the PFP, at a rate of perhaps 1/5 to 1/10 of the vote of an American. (So that each vote for PFP of an American counts the same as 5 to 10 votes of a non-American)... I know this is a radical idea, so work with me here. This would not only make sure that the PFP knows that he works for not just Americans but for the people of the world, but would allow the people of the world to take an interest in and some sort of personal ownership of the politics and policies of the PFP as well as those of their own countries in relation to the US.

Of course, the two presidents would work jointly on many issues, such as trade policy, military spending, budgeting, and "homeland security".

I think the job of POTUS is too much for one man to do and do well. I think the president who excels in foreign policy would be someone who has an aptitude for macro-economics and diplomacy, with an eye for macro-environmental issues and human rights. While the president who does the same for domestic issues would have to have a great grasp of the psyches of Americans, understanding the balance between capitalism and socialism (not a dirty word, goddamnit!) necessary to get the most out of American society and the American people, and the management and motivational skills necessary to get the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial bodies to work together in such a way as to benefit the people of this country.

I also think that it's pretty much impossible to find that in one guy.

So let's make an intellectual exercise out of this. If you think the idea is stupid from the get-go, then thanks for your time, but I'm not really interested in hearing about it. But if you think it can be built on, please do. How could this be made to work? What types of specific jobs should the PDP and PFP have and which jobs should cross over? How might the House/Senate be empowered to work with each/either president?

I'm really curious about this one... let's see what y'all got under the hoods.

Gern


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There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
  --  Howard Zinn

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Invisiblesilversoul7
Chill the FuckOut!
 User Gallery

Registered: 10/10/02
Posts: 27,301
Loc: mndfreeze's puppet army
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2922430 - 07/23/04 11:17 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Let's not and say we did.


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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire

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OfflineTao
Village Genius

Registered: 09/19/03
Posts: 7,935
Loc: San Diego
Last seen: 8 years, 9 months
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2922453 - 07/23/04 11:25 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Very interesting idea, but I can't agree with people around the world getting any votes. It would compromise trade agreements and other dealings if, say, one country in particular were extremely focused in getting out the vote (like making it mandatory). It takes too much away from the sovereignty of the country. If submitting some sovereignty is desired, i feel it would be more effectively done through a supervening international organization than through something as volatile as public voting.

but i think its a very interesting idea without that addition. its like that book that came out "It's about the ECONOMY, Stupid"--well why shouldn't it be about both? Why should someone in favor of smaller government (if hypothetically GW was a real conservative) be forced to vote for someone who is simulatneously going to institute neo-con policies of nation-building?

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InvisibleEvolving
Resident Cynic

Registered: 10/01/02
Posts: 5,385
Loc: Apt #6, The Village
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2922461 - 07/23/04 11:27 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

I think splitting up dometic and foreign relation executives is a good idea, I've actually thought about this before. However, these positions should still only be filled at the discretion of U.S. citizens. I would not want the CIA operating domestically so I think this would be best left under the PFP. I also think that their terms should be staggered.

I think that seperation of powers is a very important concept for maintaining a republic. Towards, this end, I think we need to return to a balance of increased states rights and lessened Federal government power. Too much power is concentrated in our federal government and many functions should be turned over to the states.


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To call humans 'rational beings' does injustice to the term, 'rational.'  Humans are capable of rational thought, but it is not their essence.  Humans are animals, beasts with complex brains.  Humans, more often than not, utilize their cerebrum to rationalize what their primal instincts, their preconceived notions, and their emotional desires have presented as goals - humans are rationalizing beings.

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OfflineGernBlanston
unintended sideeffect
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Registered: 05/28/03
Posts: 842
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Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: Evolving]
    #2922531 - 07/24/04 12:03 AM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

TaoTeChing said:
Very interesting idea, but I can't agree with people around the world getting any votes. It would compromise trade agreements and other dealings if, say, one country in particular were extremely focused in getting out the vote (like making it mandatory). It takes too much away from the sovereignty of the country.



That's a fine point, but I belive that it is precicely because of trade agreements that the people of the world should have some say in the PFP.  The US's trade agreements affect every person in every country with whom we have such agreements.  There are some countries where, under US trade agreements, people can (can) make a living wage (Jamaica, Mexico), where people can but usually don't make a living wage (Guatemala, India), and where people never ever ever make anything approaching living wages (Indonesia, Myanmar).  Having some say in who is implementing US trade policy would go a loooooong way towards increasing human rights across the board, globally, and would provide the impetus for the PFP to increase the quality of life of all of the people of the world through responsible consumer policy.

Quote:

Evolving said:
I would not want the CIA operating domestically so I think this would be best left under the PFP.



Totally agree.

Quote:

Evolving said:
I also think that their terms should be staggered.



Outstanding idea... this would solve a number of theoretical problems (which will, for now, remain in my head.  I'm tired :smile:  )

Quote:

Evolving said:
I think that seperation of powers is a very important concept for maintaining a republic. Towards, this end, I think we need to return to a balance of increased states rights and lessened Federal government power. Too much power is concentrated in our federal government and many functions should be turned over to the states.




I also agree with this for the most part.  How would we, in either this theoretical exercise or in our current real-world antiquated single president system ( :lol: ), go about increasing the rights of the states and at the same time take some of that power from the federal govt?  I'm not particularly well versed in federal vs. state power and the separation thereof...


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There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
  --  Howard Zinn

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OfflineJesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: Evolving]
    #2924059 - 07/24/04 04:47 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

Evolving said:
I think that seperation of powers is a very important concept for maintaining a republic. Towards, this end, I think we need to return to a balance of increased states rights and lessened Federal government power. Too much power is concentrated in our federal government and many functions should be turned over to the states.




I am not for two Presidents, but I am all for that. WOO HOO!


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Tastes just like chicken

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OfflineJesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2924087 - 07/24/04 04:56 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

GernBlanston said:
Here's the kicker for this one, though...I propose that every person on the planet be able to cast a vote for the PFP, at a rate of perhaps 1/5 to 1/10 of the vote of an American. (So that each vote for PFP of an American counts the same as 5 to 10 votes of a non-American)...
Gern




I don't know where to start. You want to give up our soverignty? The rest of the world would have more votes than we do, and you think that this is a good idea?

How would Iraq have voted before the War? They are on record as all voting for Sadaam in his last election. I suspect the Chinese might vote in a solid block as well! The Chinese vote alone could determine the winner no matter what we did. What a great system.

I guess we would have to conduct a formal census over every single person on mother earth, and then make sure that everyone has the right to an unmolested vote. I am sure that is quite feasible.

I think that our best and most realistic chance is to continue or current mission of spreading democracy throughout the world.


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Tastes just like chicken

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OfflineJesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2924095 - 07/24/04 04:59 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

GernBlanston said:
Quote:

TaoTeChing said:
Very interesting idea, but I can't agree with people around the world getting any votes. It would compromise trade agreements and other dealings if, say, one country in particular were extremely focused in getting out the vote (like making it mandatory). It takes too much away from the sovereignty of the country.



That's a fine point, but I belive that it is precicely because of trade agreements that the people of the world should have some say in the PFP. The US's trade agreements affect every person in every country with whom we have such agreements. There are some countries where, under US trade agreements, people can (can) make a living wage (Jamaica, Mexico), where people can but usually don't make a living wage (Guatemala, India), and where people never ever ever make anything approaching living wages (Indonesia, Myanmar). Having some say in who is implementing US trade policy would go a loooooong way towards increasing human rights across the board, globally, and would provide the impetus for the PFP to increase the quality of life of all of the people of the world through responsible consumer policy.





If you want a trade policy that doesn't discriminate, you should support a policy of unilateral free trade that is complete and free for all. Give every nation in the world unlimited access to our markets, and let them duke it out for market share.


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Tastes just like chicken

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Offlinezappaisgod
horrid asshole

Registered: 02/11/04
Posts: 81,741
Loc: Fractallife's gym
Last seen: 7 years, 9 months
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: JesusChrist]
    #2924252 - 07/24/04 06:18 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Give us free access to theirs then


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OfflineGernBlanston
unintended sideeffect
Male

Registered: 05/28/03
Posts: 842
Loc: OR
Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
Re: 2 Presidents [Re: zappaisgod]
    #2924862 - 07/24/04 11:05 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

JesusChrist said:

If you want a trade policy that doesn't discriminate, you should support a policy of unilateral free trade that is complete and free for all. Give every nation in the world unlimited access to our markets, and let them duke it out for market share.




I can't see how this really fits with anything, and if it does, it doesn't really make any sort of concise point.

Try reading No Logo by Naomi Klein and Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz to really learn what the "free-market global economy" is doing to the planet.

ALL free market systems work if we don't take human rights issues into account.


--------------------
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
  --  Howard Zinn

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OfflineJesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
Unilateral Free Trade is in our best interest [Re: zappaisgod]
    #2925837 - 07/25/04 12:04 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

zappaisgod said:
Give us free access to theirs then




Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Freidman seems to believe we would still benefit from such a policy even if other countries did not give us free access to their markets:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/958564/posts

Quote:


A fourth argument, one that was made by Alexander Hamilton and continues to be repeated down to the present, is that free trade would be fine if all other countries practiced free trade but that, so long as they do not, the United States cannot afford to. This argument has no validity whatsoever, either in principle or in practice. Other countries that impose restrictions on international trade do hurt us. But they also hurt themselves. Aside from the three cases just considered, if we impose restrictions in turn, we simply add to the harm to ourselves and also harm them as well. Competition in masochism and sadism is hardly a prescription for sensible international economic policy! Far from leading to a reduction in restrictions by other countries, this kind of retaliatory action simply leads to further restrictions.

We are a great nation, the leader of the world. It ill behooves us to require Hong Kong and Taiwan to impose export quotas on textiles to "protect" our textile industry at the expense of U.S. consumers and of Chinese workers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. We speak glowingly of the virtues of free trade, while we use our political and economic power to induce Japan to restrict exports of steel and TV sets. We should move unilaterally to free trade, not instantaneously but over a period of, say, five years, at a pace announced in advance.

Few measures that we could take would do more to promote the cause of freedom at home and abroad than complete free trade. Instead of making grants to foreign governments in the name of economic aid--thereby promoting socialism--while at the same time imposing restrictions on the products they produce--thereby hindering free enterprise--we could assume a consistent and principled stance. We could say to the rest of the world: We believe in freedom and intend to practice it. We cannot force you to be free. But we can offer full cooperation on equal terms to all. Our market is open to you without tariffs or other restrictions. Sell here what you can and wish to. Buy whatever you can and wish to. In that way cooperation among individuals can be worldwide and free.




FREE AT LAST!  YEE HAW!  :smile:


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Tastes just like chicken

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OfflineAncalagon
AgnosticLibertarian

Registered: 07/30/02
Posts: 1,364
Last seen: 15 years, 1 month
Re: Unilateral Free Trade is in our best interest [Re: JesusChrist]
    #2925841 - 07/25/04 12:06 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

:thumbup: Nice refutation to a common economic fallacy.


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?When Alexander the Great visted the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.?
-Henry Hazlitt in 'Economics in One Lesson'

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OfflineJesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
Playing God With The Great Unwashed [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2926132 - 07/25/04 02:02 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

GernBlanston said:
ALL free market systems work if we don't take human rights issues into account.




Who is against the notion of human rights? Does anyone ever say that human rights are a bad thing? With any policy, you look at the particulars. We all may want high amounts of justice or human rights, and that is a good thing. But what are the costs of such a policy? And can it even be done?

I don't think that anyone can come up with an objective standard of human rights that we can empirically measure on a global scale. Think of all the different nations, and all the different cultures within those nations. Think of the different racial, religious, sexual, and age demographics of people within those nations. You would have literally thousands of demographics or different groupings.

Highlanders in Scotland have always lagged behind the lowlanders and city dwellers in aspects of income and education. Are their human rights being violated? Who knows, and for our interests, who cares? We certainly shouldn't cut off our nose despite our face and stop enjoying Scottish goods. And we should deprive Scottish people the ability to produce those goods and bring them to our market?

In this country "white" people are a demographic that is often grouped together. In reality, you could look at southern whites, northern whites, midwestern whites and coastal whites as different demographics. You would come up with different statistics on attainment of wealth and educational achievement for all of those groups. Similarly, the term "white" itself includes Nordics, Anglo Saxons, Celtics, Teutonic and Germanic peoples, Slavic, French, Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Fundamentalists etc. And you could probably add a thousand other distinctions. Differences exists between these groups. They can be cultural, political, and you can have measurable inequities in the achievement of wealth and education.

How do you think the Irish-American descendants of the coal mining generation in Appalachia differ in wealth attainment and education compared to white Anglo Saxon Protestants on the east coast? You could quantify a statistical inequity just by measuring income and education. Is that sufficient to being a human rights violation? If so, how could you correct their lives with a stroke of a pen? And if you did, would you have to repeat such actions next year when inequities were still found to be present?

Now transfer this to a global scale. We could never have all the knowledge that it would require to make these judgements. Compare the South American country of your choice to Sri Lanka. Can you adequately compare them? Even within Sri Lanka you have different competing cultures that have been divided in religion and civil war.

The access to raw materials between Sri Lanka and the country of your choice will be inherently different, and you can't correct that with a pen. The basket of goods that a Tamil person in Sri Lanka demands is different than the basket of goods that someone in South America wishes to purchase. And even if they were identical goods, they certainly would not be the same cost in such diverse locations. Ideal wages and ideal living conditions would vary between the different cultures. Even if we furnished them both with unlimited resources, they would still adopt different styles and standards of living. To put it simply, you would never be able to adequately compare them. The mechanism does not exist, and it never will.

When you play politics with trade policy, and use it in an effort to promote one or another political agenda you create enemies. When you get rid of trade restrictions you encourage freedom.

As Milton said, our current policies is twofold:

1) First off, we give ?aid? a centralized government. In effect we make their governments more powerful.

2) Then we restrict free enterprise by denying access to our markets. We cut off the entrepreneurial spirit, and we make people dependant upon the central government to which we have given the ?aid?.

It looks to me that we are defining a communist/socialist model when it comes to our foreign policy of ?aid?. We are pushing socialism around the world, while publicly espousing the theory of free trade. Maybe one reason that people hate us is that we are not honest, either to them or to our own stated values.

And lets take an honest look at American ?Aid?. Our ?aid? usually consists of food, which in effect is a agricultural subsidy to the American farming industry (and increasingly a select few corporations). Our government buys the food at higher than market prices and then dumps it on the world market in third world countries.

So our policies of trade restriction discourage private enterprise in third world countries, while our aid does much to crush the only private industry many third world countries have: mainly the farmers. In a hungry nation, a successful farmer can make a nice profit selling food. When we dump our food in those places, the incomes of farmers plummet and we crush the only private industry that they have. It helps to concentrate even more power to their central governments.

These polices don?t do anyone any good, unless you are a dictator of a third world nation or a US agricultural company enjoying a fat subsidy. These policies do not help the cause of freedom. These policies are socialist welfare. It is corporate welfare to the large scale farming agribusiness, and it induces welfare states that become dependant on the United States for food.

Here is a great related article on trade and agricultural subsidies by the Cairo Times in Egypt. We started dumping agricultural products in Egypt in the name of ?aid? right after the Camp David Accords in the Carter administration. It is how we bought them off for peace. Probably didn?t do them much good, because if we stopped all aid right now they would have civil unrest and mass starvation. The farmers of the Nile once made up one of the world?s most critical bread baskets. Today, they can barely compete at all, as their government is not rich enough to subsidize them to the extent of the American and pampered European farmers who are paid to dump their products onto world markets.

Read the article. Maybe everybody doesn?t hate us because of our ideology. Maybe they hate us because we profess an ideology of freedom and free markets and then we turn our backs and punish them. We lie, and I am sure that people don?t appreciate it.

http://www.cairotimes.com/content/archiv06/cotton.html


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Tastes just like chicken

Edited by JesusChrist (07/25/04 02:09 PM)

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Anonymous

Re: 2 Presidents [Re: GernBlanston]
    #2926259 - 07/25/04 03:01 PM (19 years, 8 months ago)

ALL free market systems work if we don't take human rights issues into account.

what rights would those be?

for it to be a free market system, it cannot violate human rights.

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