NEW IDEA: Crowd Funded, Kickstarter Style Governments

This is my exclusive idea for crowd funded governments of the world ... instead of paying taxes, a mandatory amount of your income would be spent in any of the areas you like ... that way only the projects the people really want to go ahead will be funded ... we maybe need to add a 5% mandatory allocation for things people don't want really to spend their funds on but we have to.

This is only our basic attempt at giving you our idea, we will be adding to it slowly to make it more feasible

Yeah I admit there is a lot of tweaking to do ... I think 100% transparency for project donations as well so you can see if say Exxon or big corporations are trying to push certain areas over others.


This will make everyone accountable, and paying off politicians to get things done for you wont work anymore as you will have to have the support of the people to do anything.

Id love to hear some advice or criticisms for this to help me figure it out to a point where its ready to roll out.


PS: the category's are not set in stone this is just my basic idea

a reply to: King Loki

I love this idea, I really do. But I do think there will be a lot of things people don't want but need to get done.

But isn't that another thing... Please dont let people vote for "Welfare" because they'll vote themselves more government handouts...

Imagine living in a state where "Culture, Media and Sport" got the most votes and people were being left homeless... Oh wait.. I guess thats a bit like newspapers... Mostly reading about sport topics instead of "homeless people topics".

A very interesting concept. So let me give you the first S&F.

However, although I'm not one adhering to the group, I can see you are missing religion in your choice of categories. I could see the majority of people throwing their money that way, sadly.

It's still a nice philosophical concept, or a mental thought exercise. I will sleep on it.

Yeah there will have to be a mandatory amount that goes to like sewage and things like that

The category aren't set this is just the start of my idea ... it needs work for sure

Sounds like government by lobbyist. Human nature says that people who put money into an area will want a certain return. "I paid, where is my new street". Many will choose to not pay. Payers will say "Non payers get nothing".

Unless you mean each person has to pay a certain tax amount and can choose where to place it. But that still may create the same issues.

Right now there is money, it's taken directly from most people's income before they get their money. People try to avoid taxes like the plague.

Or have I just missed the whole big picture?

Well studies have shown if you make people more responsible for their community they act in a more communally beneficial way ... if you give people a choice what to fund instead of just taking their money and doing what you like with it (which pisses people off), with this system You get to choose what you want to fund for the most part.


If people don't want something they wont put funds towards it ... if they want it it will get funded big time ... the same as kick starter


So instead of the government saying oh we are going to spend 500 billion on defence this year they may only get 400 million or so in funding ... which means the people dont want to spend money on war .. they may decide to put it into education or roads/infrastructure ... so the will of the poeople will really shrine through ... and like I said all donations will be noted and displayed for the amount and who from ... so it will be very obvious if corporations/lobbyists want to only fund certain things ... this will drive them to be more people orientated ... as all company's will have a light shining on them as to what they fund so it will make them act a lot more socially conscious .

An easier way to implement this idea would be to have everyone vote on the budget each year instead of letting politicians decide it. That way the end result is essentially the same (money flows into projects that people actually support) but you don't have to worry about or keep track of what each individual wants.

I think another good idea is to replace the President with a small group of experts in different fields (engineering, economics, law, etc) which work together to run the nation, so that important decisions aren't left to just one person. Each individual in the group would need to have a high level of training and be widely recognized in their field.

It seems to me that politicians are often not experts at anything except debating, a lot of the time they don't have the level of knowledge required to actually solve the complex global issues they are trying to solve. Replacing redundant politicians with people who actually know something useful will allow society to advance much quicker.

Another critical issue which I don't think enough people acknowledge is that the majority of people often make bad choices. A pure democracy will never work because the masses will generally vote for the wrong thing, screwing the minority over in the process and eventually leading to the downfall of society (eg the endless war on drugs).

It may sound controversial, but I also think only certain types of people should be allowed to vote. I'm not exactly sure what the criteria would be but an obvious thing would be level of education, level of income, level of debt, etc. Voting would no longer be a right, but a privilege which must be earnt by contributing to society.

All of these ideas, and other similar ideas, can be combined together to create a truly open and transparent government which works for the people instead of against the people. I just wish it was simple to create a new nation with a new government so we could test out some of these concepts and see what works the best.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder
You have some good ideas, but on the "people are to dumb to vote" comment ( I agree with this somewhat) however ...

People aren't educated because the public education system has failed, because it is funded by the government not the people ... it's is not in the best interest of the current governments to have a citizenry full of intellectuals as it make it hard for them to get away with their shenanigans

If people are funding education, we would have more of a say in how the education system would work ... you could even crowd fund an advanced school which would teach kids in year 1,2 and 3 ect. advanced science, math ect. ect. and other advanced disciplines ... I truly think that if people are more responsible for what they do/fund there will be more of a push towards being educated instead of what we have now where academic people get slightly marginalized.

At the moment I could teach my kids more in a 2 hour Internet "knowledge session" then they would learn in months at school ... studies have also shown schooling makes you dumber in the case of divergent thinking ... it produces worker drones not intellectuals ... we need to change that.

this reminds me of a similar concept called the abundance paradigm by amaterasu solar. here's her take on it (excerpted from her book)
www.thelivingmoon.com...

read it and tell me how your idea differs from hers

originally posted by: King Loki
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

People aren't educated because the public education system has failed, because it is funded by the government not the people ... it's is not in the best interest of the current governments to have a citizenry full of intellectuals as it make it hard for them to get away with their shenanigans

If people are funding education, we would have more of a say in how the education system would work ... you could even crowd fund an advanced school which would teach kids in year 1,2 and 3 ect. advanced science, math ect. ect. and other advanced disciplines ... I truly think that if people are more responsible for what they do/fund there will be more of a push towards being educated instead of what we have now where academic people get slightly marginalized.

That is a legitimate point and I agree with you to some extent, but I don't think that would be a total solution to the problem. People are always going to have different beliefs and different opinions about things. When you give them more than 2 options you will rarely get more than 50% of voters to agree on the same thing.

I think the best approach to this problem is to decentralize power among the states and allow each state to decide their own laws. That way nearly everyone is happy because different states will appeal to different groups of people. The US government actually has a good level of decentralization among the states compared to many other countries.

But the federal government is always trying to overrule the state authority (eg overriding state drug laws) and I think that is a real problem. The hardest part seems to be deciding where the authority of the federal government should end and where the authority of the state should begin and how a good balance of power can be maintained over time.

OOOOR

We make them use the taxes in the acctual sense
they WERE supposed to be used.
ONLY in key areas...

NOT forraign country warfare
NOT subs for banks or other companies
And so on and so on...

If taxes were used as supposed i BET
they could actually LOWER them ALOT....

But who decides what programs are on the list? Would the mandatory donation be proportional to one's income or would it be a set rate for all?

If they were answered already please forgive me it's been a long day for me

a reply to: King Loki

Absolutely the most ridiculous idea ever.

Have you ever seen a PAC at a local school? Whoever gets elected in asks everyone what the money they raise should be spent on? It chaos and noone can ever make a decent decision!!

Everyone has a different idea and no one can agree ever!!!

Would not work!!

I note there seems to be no box for MURDERING OTHER HUMANS.

What if I want to spend my moneyz on a military war machine that murders people who are not the same colour of skin as me, talk a funny language but yet have all the stuff I need.

And I mean pure 100% unadulterated murder, mostly of innocent people, no money wasted on actors, no money for celebrity endorsements, no P.R. Just 24/7 murder. I want all my money to go to murdering innocent people who are not me, thanks.

I think another good idea is to replace the President with a small group of experts in different fields (engineering, economics, law, etc) which work together to run the nation, so that important decisions aren't left to just one person. Each individual in the group would need to have a high level of training and be widely recognized in their field.

A good idea that goes against the current structure of power and wealth. That's 100s of years down the road, if ever.

All the stars & flags for you King Loki, what a FABULOUS thinking outside of the box idea!! I agree that accountability with 100% transparency is the way to go. What's that saying that's always tossed around? If you have nothing to hide you won't have a problem with this...take that, corporations! Personally I would like to see an option for non-GMO food, and humanely raised food (which in effect would be taking farms back to their grass roots (pun intended) and back from the corporations who think nothing of adding hormones and chemicals to food, and mistreating animals.) This would do well to create more jobs too, as it used to be...at least until we have enough robots to run the more mundane affairs of life.

If the categories stuck to things that applied across the board to ALL humans (food-shelter-sewage-water-education and the like) I can see this being a truly great thing. Unfortunately that does leave religion out of the mix, but as that should be a personal choice anyway, things like that could be funded from donations as people personally see fit.

I really would love to see just how few people would be willing to fund further wars, however.

originally posted by: undo
this reminds me of a similar concept called the abundance paradigm by amaterasu solar. here's her take on it (excerpted from her book)
www.thelivingmoon.com...

Thank you for bringing her ideas up, undo!! It was actually posts from Amaterasu, that first drew me to ATS. I could not recommend this more highly as a really good read, and something to dream of, for the future of mankind.

Here is the link to the full book in pdf from an old ATS thread, for those whom are interested:

The Abundance Paradigm by Amaterasu

You will look at the world in a whole new way!

I had an idea like this before but never got round to putting it out there, with everyone having access the internet/smartphones there could be an app ect that you go on once a week or two weeks and everyone gets a fair vote on what the our tax money gets spent on. Your idea sounds great, it would certanly stop corruption, i hope and thats always a good thing. This world needs a good kick up the backside.

Ossum idea! Some extensions:

1) who said that having 1 organisation to do education, transport etc. Is a sensible idea? Would you get a single company to do both your plumbing and your accounting. NO! Firstly because competence like specialisation secondly because it could lead to cross subsidation and corruption. Hmmmmmm.

2) Competition and experimentation have been key redeeming factors of "capitalism". You can keep the spirit of these with other value criteria than making a personal fortune. Let people create 'not for profit' task teams that have different, transparent ways of operating and each teams track record on projects is public and data-accessible. Then part of the project becomes choosing a task team that fits the problem. Allow different communities to select the task tea they prefer to solve the same problems locally, publish results and let people experiment and learn from each other.

3) demand open standards at least, preferably open source everything.

Lots more ideas than time to write, let's run with these for now.

originally posted by: King Loki
This is my exclusive idea for crowd funded governments of the world ... instead of paying taxes, a mandatory amount of your income would be spent in any of the areas you like ... that way only the projects the people really want to go ahead will be funded ... we maybe need to add a 5% mandatory allocation for things people don't want really to spend their funds on but we have to.

I like the idea but completely disagree with anything being mandatory. If I don't want to pay a single penny to police departments - that should be my right. If I don't want to pay a single penny into obamacare, that should be my right.

You realize that with government, if you give an inch, they take a mile? Make even one thing mandatory and they will just keep adding more things that will be mandatory until we have the same pork-filled legislation that we do right now. Your idea will have accomplished nothing.

Being able to pick and choose which parts of my government I pay taxes to... I like it. I think it would eliminate a whole lot of the corruption.

I like the idea of creating a new government but this sounds too much like a charity.

It would be nice if people could come together and and create something new because this current system is clearly not working.