Gender equality, education, access to medical care, etc. basically a slightly modified version of FDR’s proposed bill of rights.
The main issue I have with FDR’s second bill of rights is that it does nothing to fix late stage capitalism. Generational wealth will continue to accrue and those without it will be punished by no fault of their own. Sure it will make poverty less common and less impactful but people will only have bargaining power in employment via unions while not enshrining unions with more protections.
Just get rid of the concept of corporations, funds, foundations, etc all the ways rich people have sheltered their assets from the state. Wealth may only be held by individuals plus a 100% death tax on wealth above some level. Maybe 10million, whatever.
How do you put education into the constitution?
Since they’re talking about a bill of rights they likely mean the right to education. Probably includes not having paywalled higher education institutes?
Hey guys! It’s ya boi Walter Wiggles comin at you with a brand new constitution. Don’t forget to like comment and subscribe. We’re doin a new constitution every week, so leave a comment and tell us what freedoms YOU want to see!
I so wanted to downvote you because that legit annoyed me lol.
Shout out to my boy 📢 📢 📢 A-A-ABRACADABRA HAM 📢 📢 📢
Housing should be affordable, and never sold as an investment
Housing is a human right. Along with access to food, nutrition, healthcare and education.
And water + clothing
You’ve just killed any ability to rent with that. Renting is very important as a lot of people do not want to overhead costs of fixing everything that breaks.
Good. Housing should never been an investment. HUD or The New Communist HUD that we are writing into the Constitution will own all non-private primary housing stock and will ensure that at least 10% more capacity then is needed exists in every metro area.
That’s not what was originally written though. Also, 10% more capacity than is needed sounds very wasteful.
It’s not because we have yearly growth, and housing needs elasticity for people to move in and move out over the years. Plus it’s no where near as wasteful when you consider the AirBNBs that plague metro areas that are vacant greater then 50% of the time. Of course those will also be reclaimed by the New Communist HUD as well.
Unfortunately, some people think their way is the only way and won’t open their minds to people wanting different ways to live (own, rent, etc).
There’s nothing wrong with renting but some people demonize it for no reason.
I rent a house with the option to buy it. I’ve watched the owners spend at least 20,000 USD in 2 years on repairs. No thank you!
Every citizen has a right to food, water and adequate shelter.
Anything that makes you a captive market cannot be private or has to have a free public alternative.
Things like healthcare, transport, housing, water, energy, internet etc.
Equal rights.
Anything that makes you a captive market cannot be private or has to have a free public alternative.
If there is a private non-free alternative, it is inevitable that eventually a politician will be corrupted and opt for less public funding hoping to artificially make the private one much better, and then get their share of the profits.
Yeah it may be better to just not allow private enterprises in anything that is required.
Keep them to entertainment and the like.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
That it gets reworked every seven years.
A pretty good idea from Jefferson that was just maybe a bit of a mistake to leave out.
deleted by creator
I think it’s pretty exhaustive lol
deleted by creator
You can just edit your post, you know
deleted by creator
Oh man I would definitely vote for that. That’s an impressive list and I agree with everything! I’ll save this comment for the future
deleted by creator
Don’t worry. This is all a utopia nowadays so we don’t have many options haha
Just the seven tenets of the Satanic Temple:
I empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
II The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
III One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
IV The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.
V Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.
VI People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one’s best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
VII Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word. Crest image by Luciana Nedelea.
Crest image by Luciana Nedelea.
Truly inspired words to live by /s
the fuck even is the satanic temple, a philosophy? a religion? what does it even identify as exactly and why pick satan as their mascot
They’re basically trolls who put pressure against blue laws. They’re genuinely great and are a large reason why things haven’t devolved into theocracy. Every time fundamentalists get a huge W passing an abusive law they come in to prove just how easy it is to turn it against them.
“If you think it’s OK to merge the state with Christianity, then it is by your definition ok for us to build a satanic temple in the white house”
It’s basically an atheistic philosophy. I’m not sure why they decided to theme around a rather controversial and unpopular semi-deity from a religion.
im gonna guess it came from a ‘piss off the religious nuts’ mentality
rofl
All income over $10m per year is taxed at 100%. Foreign and domestic put together.
I get where you are going but it would make more sense to be based on a percentage above a living wage or something like that. In 100 years 10 million will be worth a lot less than today.
Maybe start it at 10m and index link it to the average wage thereafter. Make it in their own interests to boost everyone’s wages.
I like that idea!
Make sure it’s the median wage rather than the mean wage, otherwise they can just hugely increase wages for a few outliers.
That would get rid of inflation really fast as billionaires try to figure out how to deflate the currency.
I don’t think the billionaires survived the initial premise of this thought experiment.
I don’t have a problem with that
They will just move their companies in other countries, as they do now.
🤔🤔🤔
Okay, so I have put a LOT of thought into this question, and after reading everyone else’s opinions on the matter, I thought I’d share mine. You guys have a lot of good ideas, some of which I didn’t think about before. I hope my ideas can inspire similar contemplation.
Okay, here goes:
IN THE NAME OF liberty, truth, justice, cupcakes, porn, and all that is good in this life, We The People of The Motherfucking Galactic Republic hereby establish and ordain this new Constitution, with blackjack and hookers.
Based on the millennia of suffering of ourselves and our ancestors, We The People hereby establish and remind the reader that ALL PEOPLE HAVE BASIC NATURAL RIGHTS that either the government or any organization of people cannot violate, or must enable and adhere to, respectively. We lay out this Constitution to provide a Framework from which the government, organizations and the people can sort out what and how that should be done, and what ways most benefit the people.
We also hereby establish in the name of harmony, justice, truth and goodness that along with RESPECTING AND ENABLING NATURAL RIGHTS, government, organizations and the people must also adhere to certain responsibilities to ensure the best and most positive outcome for the people and to protect the natural rights of everyone involved.
NATURAL RIGHTS
We the People hereby establish this list of Natural Rights we recognize from the start.
We first stress that this list is not exhaustive, and that Natural Rights are not limited to only the contents of the list. As the future plays out, the people will experience situations new to humanity and therefore the Natural Rights of which the people expect the government and organizations to enforce and protect will, by its nature, expand. New amendments to this list shall be done in accordance with the instructions of this here Constitution.
RIGHT #1: THE RIGHT TO HAVE ONE’S PHYSICAL NEEDS MET
The most basic of all Natural Rights is the right to have one’s physical needs met by the government and organizations. These rights include, but not limited to:
-
The right to steady and fair access to nutritious and delicious food, and clean, safe, drinkable water.
-
The right to a safe, clean, pestilence-free, and sturdy domicile that will comfortably meet a person’s need for shelter, food, water, electricity and homeostasis.
-
The right to access to electricity, including but not limited to power generation for their shelter.
-
The right to access and use all publicly available or published information that has ever been created up to this point and in the future.
-
The right to access and use communications platforms, including but not limited to mail and any electronic communications systems developed before or since, especially Internet and interplanetary/interstellar communications systems.
-
The right to clean, suitably fitting clothing that will meet the wearer’s need for protection from the external world and homeostasis.
-
The right to clean, safe, fast and efficient transportation, on all scopes as described later in this Constitution.
No organization and no government can receive or require payment for the fulfillment of any of these aspects of the right to have one’s needs met.
RIGHT #2: THE RIGHT TO SAFETY
We The People assert that we live in an objective reality with a natural world filled not only with wonders, but with many dangers, and therefore the government and organizations are mandated to protect, enforce and safeguard the very real need the people have to maintain and protect themselves, each other, their communities, nation and species.
These rights include, but not limited to:
-
The inalienable right to use lethal or non-lethal force in self-defense and defense of other people in life-threatening situations, whether those situations be immediate, or long-term such as domestic abuse, stalking or harassment.
-
The right of all individuals to own weapons.
-
The right to access and receive combat training, including in the use of weapons.
-
The collective right to own ordnance for all communities.
-
The collective right to form militias and militaries, and to give combat training access to all individuals in a community.
-
The right to secure one’s domicile against all forms of attack, whether foreign or domestic
Weapons are defined as:
- any instrument or device for use in attack or defense in combat, fighting, or war, as a sword, rifle, drone or cannon, that can be held and operated by a single individual. Explosive devices equal to or less in power than a stick of TNT are also included.
Ordnance is defined as:
- any vehicle designed for military or combat use, including but not limited to tanks, ships, airplanes, or spaceships; large weapons that require more than one individual to operate; explosive devices more powerful than one stick of TNT; bioweapons; nuclear, relativistic (such as asteroids or missiles deliberately launched toward another) or antimatter weapons. Note that individuals are explicitly ALLOWED to have vehicles NOT designed for combat use as defined here. No government or organization can declare a clearly not combat-designed vehicle as one.
FOR THE safety, protection, provision, and betterment of the people of The Motherfucking Galactic Republic, the government is mandated to have and operate A SPACE PROGRAM, to be given no less than 10% of the federal government’s gross earnings (whether they be taxes, direct revenue, however the hypothetical government makes money).
This space program must do, bare minimum:
-
Fund the exploration and colonization of the Solar System
-
Construct O’Neill cylinders of minimum size 5 miles in diameter and 20 miles long
-
Begin and operate mass production of antimatter
-
Fund and operate scientific and research projects, including but not limited to construction and maintenance of space telescopes, to study the universe
-
Begin and operate mining and resource extraction of all minor planets, asteroids, and comets in the Solar System. All heavenly bodies in the Solar System collectively belong to the people of The Motherfucking Galactic Republic and their contents must be fairly and evenly distributed to the people in accordance with this here Constitution Of Justice And Cookies.
And that’s as far as I’ve got. The Motherfucking Galactic Republic is obviously just a filler name; I don’t know if any of these ideas would ever be implemented but they could be used for any new nation, so…
-
Convert the date format to yyyymmdd on all official government documents.
Why not go with the international on dd.mm.yyyy why make everything special?
Because that date format is inferior. yyyymmdd is the standard date format in IT for a reason, there’s nothing special about it?
Youre right, it is sorted automaticaly.
Okay, I’ll start with a basic one. Equal rights for everyone, regardless of beliefs, physical traits, emotional traits, sexuality or financial situation - will probably need amendments since it’s hard to come up with every possible circumstance.
regardless of beliefs,
What about Nazis?
I mean I don’t cherish the idea of giving a Nazi anything, but I still think they deserve equal rights, but it probably also depend on what you mean by rights. My interpretation would be that this include every service provided by the government. Handling groups like Nazis I think would fall under hate speech if they use their opinions to antagonize or incite violence towards other people.
People actinglike that was exactly how the Nazis gained power
They exist in countries with coalition governments (e.g. Germany) and yes the Nazi parties are popular, but they do not hold a majority and likely never will, so their power is reined in (just as with other parties).
If the party didn’t exist, then those fascists would just join other mainstream parties and sow division within them (see: UK and US politics). Fascist pigs should have a voice, and be represented, like anyone else. Their voice just shouldn’t drown out anyone else, and that is the case in a government that has proportional representation as one of its founding tenets.
Equal rights yes but please remove the “lift crazy religious beliefs/rules to a right” thing some people interpret into “freedom of religion”, especially as it affects children of those people or the ability of those people to discriminate in direct contradiction to the equal rights clause itself.
“Don’t be a dick.”
That would already be violated during the writing of said constitution.
All laws must be beneficial to all the children of the next 9 generations.
All laws that aren’t part of the constitution, or charter have a 20 year sunset date.
I agree in principle, but this is practically unenforceable. How do we determine as a society what will be beneficial in 9 generations, and agree?
You build a timemachine. You set a date for the future. If the machine says that it cannot generate a portal at that date, you edit the policy until it does.
How would that be determined?
Fuck, yeah!
What will benefit the children born in 200 years?
Long term space colonization
Stopping climate collapse
Complete restructuring of our social and legal systems
A few little things here and there, really
I tend to agree with pinkdrunkenelephants
Law sunset time is interesting.
Jefferson proposed the idea, didn’t get the Continental Congress to agree
-
Environmental protection, LGBT and womens’ rights including bodily autonomy would be explicitly written into the constitution
-
The 2nd amendment would be rewritten to protect the right to self defense not the right to own enough guns to start a war.
-
Our first past the post voting system would be replaced with alternatives that do not degenerate into a 2 party system.
-
The electoral college and senate would not exist. House representatives would be allocated based on population.
-
Supreme court justices would no longer be lifetime appointments.
-
If there is a minimum age to serve in government, there will be a maximum age as well.
-
The US will be obligated to abide by promises and treaties made with Native Americans.
-
The president is no longer required to have been born in the US. The requirement that the president be a natural born citizen was meant to prevent foreign powers from gaining control during a tumultuous time in US history that is no longer relevant.
-
Slavery would no longer be allowed for any purpose. (Currently it is legal in many states as a punishment)
-
A wall of separation between church and state as well as the right to privacy would be explicitly written into the constitution. (The right to privacy is implied but not explicitly stated)
-
Qualified immunity for police and other monopolies of violence would be abolished.
Is 8 really not relevant? Considering our 45th president?
So I agree with all of these, but someone has to ask so it’ll be me:
Why abolish the senate? It was established to be opposite the house as a system where every state is represented equally. The concept of the senate guarantees a form of equality between Rhode Island and California, where in the house a vote that massively benefits California will inevitably drag lesser states with it by sheer population difference.
The reality is that the states are mostly independent entities with their own constitutions and governments. What’s good for California may not be good for Rhode Island, and it’s not very fair that you’d have to get the whole east coast on board to vote down an initiative championed by California alone.
I understand that the metaphor between California and Rhode Island isn’t a perfect one, its sole purpose is to illustrate the point.
Although not as important as population representation, locational representation still makes a ton of sense for a country as geographically big as the united states.
A purely population based government without locational representation on a federal level would likely tip the power of law to the 5% of US land mass occupied by cities, and end up having the other 95% eventually forced to follow laws that don’t make sense from a rural or suburban perspective.
So the senate does serve a purpose in that regard.
Now, on the other hand, I do think certain US territories should have seats in the house and senate.
I dont think that all the states should be equal precisely because they have vastly different populations. People talk about how unfair it is for California or Texas to drag other states kicking and screaming wherever they feel like but the opposite side of that coin isnt really any more fair.
I do agree that large and small states may need to be governed differently but thats something that needs to be addressed in a more direct way not by tipping the scales in favor of states with more grain silos and cows than people. i.e ground rules need to be set about how and why laws are constructed. i.e the real issue that the senate doesnt actually solve, is that laws aren’t being rationally designed in a way that makes sense for the states that are subject to them. As long as that underlying issue isnt being directly addressed, the senate wont really fix things. And I would strongly argue that history proves that the senate is being used more as a political baseball bat than it is a tool of low population states to defend themselves.
I do agree that large and small states may need to be governed differently but thats something that needs to be addressed in a more direct way not by tipping the scales in favor of states with more grain silos and cows than people
Yeah, sure, but the solution to that isn’t tipping the scales the other direction. Having the senate exist in the government as a check against the house is a measure to keep the scales from tipping in the first place. They already must work together to get anything done, and that means that the senate is just as beholden to the house as the house is to the senate. The proverbial scales will inevitably tip the other way if the legislative branch is reduced to just the house. If your goal is preventing the scales from tipping, that’s not how you do it.
I think what you’re really proposing is a restructuring of the legislative branch altogether, with maybe more law making power shifted to the states. Because just eliminating the senate and leaving the system how it is now would result in a heavily unbalanced legislature.
Anyway, nice discussing this with you. This isn’t an easy topic, for what it’s worth. It took a hundred men several months to hash out the details of what we’re casually sitting here discussing.
Should we care about the states or the people in the states? There are less people in Rhode Island than California. Are those people so much more important that they get more representation, proportionally speaking?
People have locational representation in their local governments. Let them rule over themselves if you want, but don’t give them disproportionate authority over the rest of us.
I chose to pose this hypothetical as a separate comment to better illustrate my point:
Why is it that proposing abolishing the senate only invokes the idea of stopping the minority from having authority over the majority and not the other way around? It needs to be said that the senate is just as much a check on the house as the house is the senate.
Let’s say the house is the only voting body of the legislature. What is to stop them from imposing a 50% tax on all states under a certain population limit, paid directly to the other states? Obviously this benefits large swaths of the population, so their representatives vote unanimously yes. Now it doesn’t matter how many representatives lower populated areas have because they will always be outnumbered.
So are you proposing that it’s fair for extortion to take place in that manner? Because without an equal vote to be able to defend themselves on a more level playing field, you’re inviting that kind of power imbalance.
Frankly, that’s a ridiculous scenario. States are an artificial construct. There’s no reason California couldn’t be split into five states so they can get more senators, and there’s no reason tiny east coast states couldn’t be merged together. It’s just a matter of political will. States rights do nothing to benefit the individuals living in those states. Often when we talk about states rights, states are imposing some kind of oppression or restriction on their citizens, abortion being the most recent example. The Supreme Court threw it back to the states, many of which banned it immediately.
The states don’t matter! They’re overgrown, glorified municipalities. If we are going to redesign the system, we need to reduce their power all together. States are a relic of a colonial system founded by the British, where each colony was individually granted a charter, and a of a constitution written at the same time the Holy Roman Empire was alive.
What stops ridiculous, punitive laws from being passed? What stops them from being passed now? The courts, for one, and the federal government. Often it’s the states that are trigger happy in committing some kind of mayhem.
We’ve lived with states for so long that we’ve been gaslit into thinking that their existence is in our best interest. While states might be useful in some form, like in organizing regional infrastructure projects, their power should be diminished, and they are not deserving of house on par with the house of the people.
Of course, Congress is in need of other dire reforms as well. It should be bigger, for one, and first past the post should be replaced with some kind of alternate system (perhaps California-style jungle primaries?).
I believe the prompt was to reform the constitution, not the system. In case you forgot, or don’t know, the states ratify the constitution. Not the other way around.
In a perfect world, sure. States need not be framed as rigid individual governments. In a scenario where the fed is overthrown and the states are intact, there’s nothing stopping the states from just saying “nah, we’ll form our own country”.
Which if that’s you’re goal, I guess sure. The reason Texas hasn’t done that already in the current system is that the federal government is there to stop them and they don’t have the numbers.
I think your assumption in this thread is that the states already don’t have power, which isn’t even close to true. In the meantime ranting about how states are insignificant kind of comes off as missing the forest for the trees.
Frankly, that’s a ridiculous scenario
I will say that the irony of you calling a hypothetical that I made ridiculous, and then immediately presenting a more ridiculous scenario isn’t lost on me. So thanks for that.
The prompt just says the revolution was successful and that now it’s time for a new constitution. It’s not even US-specific, so there’s no reason to assume that state governments even exist in the context of the prompt, much less need to approve this new constitution. There’s no need for such niceties if we’re in a world where a revolution has destroyed the old regime in its entirety.
deleted by creator
I understand that line of thinking, and you’d have a point if the senate could act alone. But the senate and the house have to agree on everything they pass, with very few exceptions. That means that the fact that Rhode Island gets an equal vote in the senate doesn’t actually matter if the majority of the population doesn’t want something anyway. In the same way that the majority population doesn’t matter if the individual governments can’t agree.
The people in Rhode Island don’t matter as much as the people in California for sheer numbers, and that is already reflected in the house. Seeking to abolish the senate isn’t an exercise in majority rule, it’s just disenfranchising the minorities that exist.
Edit to directly answer your question:
Should we care about the states or the people in the states?
We should care about both, given that we are a nation comprised of 51 smaller governments. It’s asinine to assert that those governments don’t matter on the federal scale. We have a system established already that cares about both. Axing the part of that system that keeps the most populous areas from getting everything they want is not the solution you think it is.
Smaller states should have less of a say. I’m not sure how that seems unreasonable. The people should decide. It doesn’t matter what state they live in. It might have made sense 200 years ago but now I can’t believe people seriously support it.
Smaller states do have less of a say. The house and senate have to work together. If the majority of people don’t want something, it still doesn’t happen. The purpose of the senate is to prevent the smaller states from getting no say.
It’s not that hard to understand.
It makes it too easy to game the system and create gridlock because you only need influence over a bunch of very small percent of the population.
No political system is immune from gaming. You’re trying to fix a problem every government has on some level by disenfranchising smaller groups in general. That problem would and does still exist in the house alone. I mean, the house is gridlocked right now, and it has nothing to do with the senate.
-
No human has any rights that they would deny to others.
