Intelligent Systems And Their Societies

Walter Fritz

Basic principles

The basis of this proposal for a better government is the individual, the intelligent system, with its objectives and its need to act in such a way as to reach its own objectives.
Below we enumerate a number of basic principles for a government, to be designed in such a way, that it would help each individual to reach its objectives easier.

• Liberty to do whatever you wish
  Why can't I do whatever I wish?
  Every person (every intelligent system) should have the liberty to do whatever she/he wishes (namely reaching her/his objectives) as long as this does not hinder all other persons to also reach their own objectives.
  This should also be the basic law; All other laws should only explain what this means in specific circumstances.
  

• Do it yourself, whenever possible
  Why should I need another person, or organisation, to do what I can do well by myself?
  That what the individual or private enterprise can do, should not be done by the municipality. That which the municipality can do, should not be done by higher levels of government.

• Get help for reaching objectives
  Why can't I obtain the help of others to obtain objectives that I cannot reach on my own?
  We should design a government in such a way that it helps the individual to reach its own objectives with greater ease, and also those objectives it has in common with all other individuals of the society. The government should also arbitrate between persons that have contradictory objectives. For reasons of division of labor, each level of government needs a group of persons (the governing subsociety) that manages it. The society and its government are of great help for the individual, that is why one of the most important objectives of an individual should be to protect and support the society (The municipality, province, state and nation).
  One of the common objectives, which the government should support, is the need for protection of its members against other persons and against disasters.

• The individual owns the government
  Does the government own me?
  The government should exist to serve the individuals and be owned by them. Not as in medieval times, when the government owned the individuals, and not as today where the government decides what an individual has to pay it and regulates what an individual has to do to such an extent that it seems to have at least part ownership.

• Elect only somebody you know personally
  Why should I elect somebody about whom I have practically no information, or at most, election handouts?
  To elect a person based on insufficient or slanted information is disastrous. We should elect only those persons that we know personally.

• Division of political power
  Why should I give all the power to one person, if he then only does whatever is good for him and not what is good for everybody?
  Too much power in one hand corrupts. There have to be "checks and balances"; therefore executive, legislative and judiciary power should be in separate hands at all levels of government. That means separate and independent elections, removal, income and spending. For the same reason, the military forces should be divided; there should even be municipal troops (But with command centralized at the highest level of government).

• A not too uneven level of income of the population
  Why should I live surrounded by the poor, who will attack and rob me whenever they can?
  In societies where there is too great a disparity of income, crime is high and there is much social unrest. Progress is slow since a large part of the society does not participate actively in it.
  Furthermore all members of a society have a common heritage of the achievements made by previous generations. It seems that to some extent they should also participate evenly of the fruits of these previous achievements.

• Avoid wars whenever possible
  Nowadays, why is it impossible to have a war between neighboring cities and quite possible to have a war between neighboring nations?
  An important function of government is to have good relations with its neighbors, confederate itself with them, support actively all international organizations and to avoid wars, whenever possible.

These principles, it looks to me, would be a good guide for designing the structure of a government. Do you agree?

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