I’ve played around with the idea of a very ‘direct’ democracy, where effectively, all citizens have an app and are constantly and directly “engaged” in the process. I was imagining it as being a replacement for a local government. If you don’t want to be involved, you can transfer your vote to someone you trust in the system (and take it back whenever you like). The discussions would all be open and traceable, but the votes would be pseudo anonymized.

That way if its not your thing or you aren’t interested, you can just hand your vote to someone else and let them manage it for you (kind-of like current political parties or representatives), but take it back at will.

I think we suffer from a lack of civil engagement, and I get tired of people who refuse to put in the work blaming “da gubberment” for things. This system would effectively require them to engage at least some level. And if they complain about “the potholes” not getting fixed, well, there is a no excuse for not knowing why they arent getting fixed. I think we all need to take more responsibility for the world we live in.

This is not an idea I came up with, but I haven’t seen it anywhere else and I don’t remember where I heard it.

Basically the rules are:

• Every vote on every question is handled by direct democracy
• But, you can assign your vote to another person at any time. ie Give them your voting power so now they have two votes on any topic
• Furthermore, a person to whom you’ve assigned your vote can in turn assign it to someone else.
• You can always see who’s wielding your vote power, you can see who assigned it to whom
• Any time you want, you can take your vote back

So basically I can assign my vote to Bob because I trust his judgment. Bob can assign mine and his own to Alice, because Bob trust’s Alice’s judgment.

I can check what’s happening with my vote, and see that it’s been assigned to Bob, who assigned it to Alice, etc.

There is no limit to the number of reassignments that can happen.

Basically it’s direct democracy by default, but with an infinitely and dynamically scaleable structure of delegation layers in between.

A person can be as involved or uninvolved as they want. Their minimum involvement would be choosing which friend they trust to handle their vote. Maximum involvement could mean seeking to convince millions of others to trust you with their vote. Or getting thousands of intermediate delegates to delegate all their voting power to you.

When I was in college, this was literally an assignment in my political science class - come up with a country and a new form of government. Write out a constitution for the country, and then write a travel brochure for it.

What I came up with is a lottery-based council government. The system is designed with none of the “gentleman’s agreements” that the US systems seems to be based on, and assumes that if it’s possible to abuse the system, then the system WILL BE abused. So it’s designed to minimize the ability for the system to be abused.

You want to get rid of career politicians? Make it so they don’t even have the option of running for office in the first place.

Councils

The way my system worked is that all governmental tasks are performed by a council created for a specific purpose. Every council is made up of an odd number of members, with a minimum of 5. Councils can be created to manage a geographical area, such as a state, county, or city, or for a topical purpose, for example, medical oversight. Each council has the ability to create lower councils that report to it, but only within the purview of the parent council. For example, a State Council can create a Municipal Council for a city within the state.

Sitting at the top of the entire structure is the Prime Council, which always consists of exactly 11 members. Decisions of the Prime Council are final except in the case of a supermajority overrule as detailed below.

Lower councils are subject to the decisions of higher councils with one exception - a parent council’s ruling can be overturned and vacated if a supermajority* of child councils that existed at the time of the ruling vote to overturn it. For example, if a State Council outlaws gambling, but 75% of Municipal Councils vote to vacate the ruling, it is overturned. But, for example, if a Municipal Council votes to allow prostitution, the state or national council can overturn that ruling on its own. Again, however, this overturning can be overridden by a supermajority of child councils. However, the chain ends there. A parent council CANNOT vacate a supermajority vote passed by the collected child councils. Child councils must have a reason for existing can cannot be created simply to stack a supermajority vote.

A singular case can only be tackled by ONE council at a time and cannot be interfered with during the proceedings by any other council at any other level. For example, if a Municipal Traffic Council is considering a motion to raise a speed limit on a road, no other council (Municipal, State, or even the Prime Council) can interfere in that case or tell the lower council how to rule on it. However, once the case is complete and the ruling announced, THEN a higher council may take up the issue and/or vacate the lower council’s ruling.

Decisions of lower councils can be appealed, but a parent council has no obligation to take up the issue and can simply deny the appeal.

Courts

Courts, as we understand them, do not exist in this system, per se. Civil and criminal cases are handled in the same way; there is no separation between the case types. Likewise, there is no differentiation between the natures of the decisions that can be handed down. Every court case is presided over by a council created especially for the purpose of hearing this single case. All the other rules surrounding how councils work detailed the Councils section still apply.

The Lottery

Council members are selected by lottery from all eligible citizens. Each lottery is specific to the seat being filled. To be considered eligible for a given lottery, a citizen:

• Must be a member of the geographical area that the seat’s council represents. For example, if the seat is on a Municipal Planning Council, the citizen must live within the city.

• Must meet the qualifications defined by the higher council when this council was created. In this case, perhaps, qualification requires that the citizen hold a bachelor of science degree in any subject.

• Must NOT have previously served on this same council.

• Must NOT have been declared unfit for service by a medical professional.

All citizens of legal age are automatically in the lottery pool by default, and the lottery operates on on opt-out basis.

If a citizen is chosen for a council, they have the option of declining the position. In which case, another eligible citizen is selected.

Additionally, a citizen can elect to be removed from the lottery pool for any or no reason for one year at a time. This election can be renewed indefinitely, but it must be renewed UNLESS a medical professional declares that they are unfit for service. An unfit-for-service declaration can be made for a specific amount of time or on a permanent basis.

Antagonistic Resignation

Any council member can resign their position on a council at any time before their term is over. In addition, a council member may enact the right of “Antagonistic Resignation” whereby they remove both themself and ONE other member of the council. There is no veto or override process allowed. To clarify, any council member can remove any other member from the same council by also removing themself at the same time. The replacement council member(s) will be chosen via the lottery.

Antagonistic Recusement

A council member MAY NOT vote on or interfere with the vote on any issue the results of which they may directly benefit from. That is to say that if a council member could personally benefit from a decision on a matter, they are REQUIRED to recuse themself from the case and may not interfere with the case in any way, including but not limited to public discussion or press releases related to the matter.

A council member with a conflicting interest in a single case must either resign from the council or recuse themself from the case. As with Antagonistic Resignation, the recusing council member chooses ONE other council member that must also recuse themself from the case to preserve the odd number of council seats. Again, there is no veto or override process allowed. However, unlike Antagonistic Resignation, the recusing council member MUST choose one other member for recusement - they do not get the option to decline. If the number of active seats on the council would drop below five for this single issue, interim seats will be created and filled by lottery for this specific case only, after which the additional seats will be removed from the council and the interim council members’ terms will be considered complete.

Protection and Compensation

Serving on a council is a full-time job and may require taking a sabbatical from work. While an individual citizen has the ability to decline a council seat, NO other entity, individual, or organization may punish or otherwise act against a citizen for choosing to accept the responsibility of service. Therefore, it is considered unconstitutional for any entity to retaliate against a citizen for accepting a council seat, punishable by a fine of not less than 50% of that entity’s yearly income. It is understood that this is a harsh penalty, and the severity and calamitous nature of it is intentional and intended to avoid even the outward appearance of impropriety or retaliation. If a citizen CHOOSES of their own accord to decline a council seat out of a sense of duty to an organization, that’s allowed, but it is absolutely not acceptable for an organization to demand, tell, ask, or even imply that a seat should be declined.

It is required by law that an employee (and this shall be construed loosely, to include any person who is in any way a member of an organization) of an organization be reinstated at the end of their council service to their same position, pay, benefits, and tenure as though no sabbatical had been taken at all. This is inclusive of any required “re-onboarding” time.

Council members shall be paid the greater of 125% of their reported yearly income or 200% of the average salary of the relevant lottery eligibility pool. This shall be to incentivize citizens to fulfill their duty and serve on a council.

Councilar No-Confidence

At any time, the citizens may petition a geographical council (Prime, State, County, Municipal, etc) for a status of Councilar No-Confidence. This petition shall require the signatures of 55% of the individual citizens of the geographical area represented. Upon submission of a completed petition, the council will be dissolved, and a new council will be chosen by lottery according to all the requirements for the council being replaced. This action is automatic and cannot be vetoed or overruled.

Branch No-Confidence (The Nuclear Option)

If instead, the No-Confidence petition contains the signatures of 75% of the individual citizens of the geographical area represented, the council and ALL LOWER COUNCILS created by it, directly or indirectly, are dissolved and replaced as above. This is akin to pruning a branch from a tree - every branch and leaf connected to the branch is also removed. Note that this applies to EVERY level of the system, so a No-Confidence petition signed by 75% of the citizens of the entire country and submitted to the Prime Council results in the entire system being wiped away and reset.

It went a lot deeper than that, but I’ve already typed a LOT and think this mostly gets the gist of it.#

Part of one - inflationary tax. Eliminate most all forms of tax. Instead only way to fund anything is to print money.

Money earned through criminal enterprise, once found is taken and “destroyed” (excluding damages to victims).

Negatives that go punished reduce inflation and benefit everyone.

This is a regressive tax so it would require a very assertive socialist support system with liberal spending on jobs and education for poor folks.

No tax breaks for big companies because no taxes. There is no such thing as a balanced budget since there is no revenue, only things we decide are worth paying for.

Would require regular currency adjustments. Still haven’t figured that part out yet. Maybe every 10 years decide how many zeros to take off everyone’s money and have a process for upgrading paper currency while most will be handled through banks.

Everyone must serve. No elections. Every position has a term limit. The current administration is responsible to select their replacements via a double blind selection process that only provides information relevant to experience and knowledge, capabilities.

The wierdest one I made for ttrpg was a nation built by orphans in an extrwmly poverty striken nation. Life is short and fast, you do what you can to help each other out and when someone dies they get they’re name, date, and one sentence voted on by people that knew written in the book.

Their is no ownership, but if you take something you better have good reason or people won’t help you out. If you want something done, do it or covince the people that can to do it.

You’re expected to use contraceptives unless you know the orphanage can handle more kids. If you want to do something good with what little you’ve got helping to take care of poor kids like yourself at the orphanage is one most sure fire ways to do that. Holden up to raise just a kid or two out by yourself is no way to make a mark and who’s gonna write your sentence some snot nosed kid isolated from the rest of the world by you? Why?

The moment that defined them as nation instead of just a community was when a nearby kingdom was preparing for a war path. They set out to create the equivalent of nuclear bomb, with many lives being lost trying to save themselves and each other. They finally made it, with many sentences being written of the kids that built a sun, and founded a nation. Their neighbors gave them a different sentence, because when they demonstrated it others had to turn they’re heads from the blindly blaze, but the kids “did not look away” instead smoke glasses adored admired what their felllow orphans did with them.

Basically an anarchist society built on communal child rearing, and shared mythology of legacy of brief meaningful lives.

My view (sorry for the British context and no cool name for it):

Have a King as head of state mainly in a similar role to now in the UK to be someone who can fire any ministers if needed.

No political parties. Simply have the public vote for a choice of 5 candidates for each cabinet minister post on 5 year terms.

These candidates must have at least 20 years experience of the field they wish to be minister of. For example, the choices for Health Minister would be between 5 people, who all have extensive experience in the field. So would hopefully understand what can and needs to be done. Rather than our current system of having a PPE graduate who has only ever worked in politics in charge of things they do not understand.

I also feel that removing political parties from the process would reduce some of the group-think that currently happens, as the public would be voting on the best policies for health, then for education etc. I think that would be an improvement over currently only having one vote and having to choose a party that ticks some but not all of your policy preferences.

So strange to come across this as I’ve been pondering this very thing for a few weeks. Still pretty half baked, and I’m goimg to skip some detail for brevity, but here goes. Behold…

“AdHocracy”

A fluid, decentralized form of government somewhat inspired by the FEMA Incident Command System. It would be designed to facilitate temporary, task-specific governmental structures that are stood up and torn down as community needs arise. National baseline laws would be established to prevent confusion when traversing the country, and a legal framework established to ensure laws are consistent across the nation and no regional law conflicts with, or supercedes the law of, the larger region. Healthy food, clean water, housing, education and some form of internet connection would be considered rights. This system would rely heavily on digital participation, so open source technological development (particularly in cybersecurity) would be heavily subsidized. Establishing a secure digital identity would be needed for each citizen to participate in the governmental process, so likely using some form of blockchain tech.

The land mass of the country would be segmented into a heirarchical grid with a certain minimum resolution (I donno, 100m?) but when mapping a “decision region”, preference would be given to inclusion. For example, if a neighborhood wants a new road, you’d “paint over” the people and areas affected by the road, and expand the edges to cleanly fill a square (not sure I’m explaining this right, but oh well).

I imagine an annual “Call for Change Day” across all regions, allowing people to bring forward proposals for new laws or adjustments to existing laws. Those proposals would be submitted online, and could be easily browsed and voted on, (if pertaining to your region). Transparency is emphasized.

Thats about all I can think of right now.

Not sure if ita necessarily true, but it seems that organizations have a tendency to become more susceptible to corruption and bureaucracy the longer they stick around, no matter their purpose (governments, unions, HOAs, etc). This idea aims to prevent this by eliminating the need for career politicians (as all decisions are made jointly by those diectly impacted), and through systematic deconstruction of governmwntal structures before theyve had time to bloat and fester.

Imterested to hear everyones thoughts! On mobile, so please excuse formatting/grammatical errors.

I had to go through the book shelf to find this one because I’ve talked about it before and wanted to share.

Arthur C. Clarke - The Songs of Distant Earth (audiobook)

The wiki unfortunately doesn’t go into details enough. Basically the plot takes place on a distant planet after the Earth has been destroyed by a supernova and the society was created by a seed ship. The officials are elected by a lottery and there’s a form of direct democracy if my memory serves me right in a passage. I wish I could expand on it more but the book is just amazing and I don’t want to spoil it to much for those who are interested. If you have the time I linked the audio book and it’s based off a former short story of his with the same title.

Everyone listens to me and gives me things. I eventually get shot in the face which causes societal collapse. Or something.

I had a super cynical dystopian idea. Never got around to fleshing it out, so its stability is doubtful at best, but here goes:

So a problem with democracy is that advertising is a powerful force and the candidate with more money to throw into their campaign tends to win, not to mention various forms of bribery coming into play after the elections. A ton of money is being wasted on shady behind-the-scenes deals. Lets get rid of all that and bring it into the light!

• Get rid of elections AND politicians, since they are just middlemen. Instead create a kind of stock market for various spheres and levels of lawmaking and have megacorporations and other interested parties bid on those.

• Money that would have been secretly funneled into politician pockets instead goes openly into the government budget.

• Save more money on elections and government official salaries since there are none.

• Corps that make laws that benefit consumers get to use that in their advertising. Buy from ProcLive! The company that brought you halfway decent healthcare!

• Voting with you wallet ends up being mandatory. You don’t like that Disney took away weekends? Give your hard-earned cash to Sony next time. They promised to reduce mamdatory weekly working hours to 65!

• Maybe sometimes a local citizen initiative manages to raise enough money to get governmental powers in a small town or something. I mean, probably not, but you gotta give people some hope, right?

A 3 tiered system: person → community → supercommunity

• Small Towns: communities no larger than 5000 people, every local vote matters
• Democratic: communities can embody any belief, and all members are free to leave
• Representative: an overarching supercommunity of rotating representatives of all communities governs the country/world in a flat hierarchy, influenced by votes from each person.
• Socialized Resources / Federated Usage: the supercommunity exes out total resources based on community sizes, the local communities can use their share however they want

Ig the worldbuilding for my custom 5e setting counts? It’s sort of a continuation of the forgotten realms, with a heavy dose of Warhammer 40K and Doom thrown in. The world of Toril was shattered, and the fragments frozen in place by a divine sacrifice, leaving each landmass cluster within reach of one another (within Voidships).

The government in question was the Dwarf Assembly. It’s a loose confederation of citadels within these clusters. Each one dedicated itself to one trade (for example, mining clusters, smithing clusters, etc.), with each trade being led by the oldest dwarf. Assembly-wide decisions are made with the agreement of all clusters.

Tensions rise within each cluster whenever a problem cannot be solved by tradition, with older dwarves being quite proud and reticent to veer away from it. Tensions rise within the Assembly whenever a younger elder is introduced, being seen as inexperienced.

It’s not meant to be perfect, I wanted it to be a source of dramatic tension whenever the party ever stepped foot on dwarven soil. I also really like the mental image of dwarves with ushankas.

My ideal form of government is one where everyone cooperates to build up society, and there may be leaders, but no one is owed obedience.

Personally I favour a council socialism where all are equal, regardless of any circumstance; none has lasting power, no central government is apparent, no permanent imprisonment exists, and direct representatives can be called and revoked at any moment for specific issues. Everyone has free studying, healthcare, housing, and food.

Where one can enjoy the fruits of another’s property, that should be fairly shared, instead of the “owner” being able to set prices. This would be done by nullifying any possibility to set prices or gains from this property.

There would be only multiple random ballots if votes occur. All options proposed shall be on the ballots, regardless of circumstance.

The challenge is making not only a central government not exist, but making it impossible for such a central government to gain foothold, and also to make it unattractive for communes to grow too big lest they become authoritarian.

This can be achieved by two methods:

1. Revolution, preferably peaceful.

2. Or by reform. One possibility is living together in a commune. To make money effectively meaningless, first all must benefit equally from the influx of money, without sensing a need of money. All people’s income towards a collectively owned bank account, for example, that buys basic needs like food, housing for everyone, and gives personal property. Nobody has money themselves.

Ideally, this would start from one suburb, as then a core of a moneyless world can be built, but can be done internationally too.

A commune is delineated by: being the smallest amount of people that can sustain itself on its own labour and own populace, and being the largest amount of people where everyone could know one another.

This would in practice mean a commune of about 100-500 people, maybe 300.