Some updates

No, I haven't given up blogging, I've just been busy.

I had been unbusy enough to start doing blog-related work again by last week, but a comment by Dr Binswanger on HBL regarding the Weights and Measures clause got me to looking at and editing my Constitution again. He said that the government has no business dictating weights and measures where instead that private organisations should be doing that kind of work and market forces converging on the convenient standards. To a great extent he has a point: no standard should be dictated.

That being said, I do think there is room for some creation by government of standards for government use. What I had in mind - actually before Dr Binswanger even raised the topic but which I had not incorporated in a new edit yet - was that there was a legitimate role for the military to set standards for its own needs of precision. In the US, for instance, I see no reason why a specification of weights and standards cannot be a part of the United States Military Standards.

Of course, as that wikipedia entry itself indicates, a proliferation of standards causes problems in its own right. And, there is no reason why these military standards cannot themselves just be drawn from pre-existing commercial and academic standards. But all this is just administrative issues that do not negate the principle: there are legitimate grounds for government interest in formulating at least some standards for its own needs. Then, with a decent set of those in place I further see no reason why private individuals and organisations can choose simply to refer to these military standards, so long as the right to use standards at odds with those of government devising is not abridged. For that reason I have kept a weights and measures clause in my own Constitution - but I did make sure to enumerate that right expressly and to shift responsibility for formulation from Justice to Defence.

The same principle is also applicable to accounting standards, given the legitimate need for law specifying standards for the recording and reporting of government accounts. And, sure enough, accounting standards are a hot-topic, too. Still, there is a provision for that in my own Constitution, which I have had there for a while and have left in for the same reason as above. As a practical point, however, it is probably better that the law in question just adopt commercial standards with only some adjustments - but that I leave to the accountants and the actual context in which a future LFC government finds itself.

While I was at it I took the opportunity to cut the whole thing back. At 17,500 words it is still just over twice as long as the US Constitution, but I did cut out about 3,000 words of material that is best left to statute created under the Reasonable Person standard. The files of the latest version - in Word Doc, PDF for A4 paper, and PDF for US Letter paper - are available in the File Cabinet. I am also told that the numbering system for the Word Doc doesn't work properly in Open Office or some other freeware (the same reason why I gave up on Google Docs, btw), so if the sections aren't numbered continously from 1 to 129 then take the PDF of your choice.

I increased the main version number from 12 to 13 because the deletion of a number of sections caused all the later ones after the first deletion to be renumbered, plus of course because of the substantial amount I cut out. Feel free to comment, and I will bear good commentary in mind for a future edit, but I wont be touching it for a while: now it's back to working on OTI posts.

JJM

New Constitution, v12.3

I did an edit of my Constitution as a break from philosophising (yes, really). Version 12.3 is now available in the cabinet for your reading pleasure.

JJM

New Constitution, v12.1

(Edit: I did not know it was Constitution Day in the US when I made this post - the timing was pure coincidence. I, despite not being an American, will be forever grateful that a group of men risked life and limb to found a country on such admirable principles, and draw much inspiration from what they achieved on this day in 1787. Thank you.)

I've completed a review of my Constitution after finding Google Sites. In due time I will make my Site dedicated to large articles on politics and economics, but for the time being it's what Google allows as a "file cabinet." Here's the URL. I'll sort out the existing commentary soon, too, and resume making new commentary when that's done. That too, will be in a separate file, which will grow over time. That means essentially that the blogposts I do here will be the individual extracts from that file.

For the record, it is version 12 because I've been writing this over the course of 15 years. Versions 1.1 to 10.5 were previously published under the IRC name "Legendre", with the last being updated in 2003. I hadn't touched it after that until I joined ObjectivismOnline. The version previously published on this blog I called v11.1, so since I did a major structural change the new version is 12.1.

Changes from v11.1 ...

Hung Parliament and Republicanism

After our election on 21 August, we in Australia currently have ourselves a "hung parliament." A hung parliament is where no single party has a clear majority and so a Federal Executive Council (the Cabinet) - comprised of the Prime Minister and other Ministers of State - cannot be pre-determined by party operations and adopted by Parliament in a rubber-stamp fashion. Instead we get what we have now, a lot of wrangling between the major parties and each negotiating or whatnot with minor parties and independents. Until this is sorted we only have a "caretaker" government composed of the previous Council, insofar as Members retain their Seats in Parliament. Thus, despite the election, Ms Gillard is still our PM until a deal is struck somewhere that sees either Labor no longer have the upper hand or, if Labor does cobble up an alliance, she gets booted by her own party just as Rudd did.

This situation made me wonder whether I had underrated the importance of a particular reform. I have always been in favour of a republic in principle, but never got behind any of the Republican movements because their motives and priorities were, at best, skewiff. My own attitude had been that, yes, we should be a republic, but this was a low priority that paled in comparison to reform of powers of Parliament (the monstrosity that is Section 51). I still wont get behind any of the current Republican movements I am aware of and will until further notice consistently vote against them, but this situation has given me occasion to reconsider my own attitude.

(As to my own Constitution, I have since realised there were some errors in it, such as excessively making land ownership of the surface extend all the way down to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity. I'll resume posting commentary when I can get time.)

My Constitution, Section 31

Section 31 - Classification of nationality

My Constitution, Section 30

Section 30 - Powers of direction and writ

My Constitution, Section 29

Section 29 - Jurors

My Constitution, Section 28

Section 28 - Civil proceedings

My Constitution, Section 27

Section 27 - Criminal proceedings

My Constitution, Section 26

Section 26 - Court procedures

My Constitution, Section 25

Section 25 - Issue and execution of warrants

Note: I added in a new clause 1.

My Constitution, Section 24

Section 24 - Law enforcement

My Constitution, Section 23

Section 23 - Principle of precedent

My Constitution, Section 22

Section 22 - Offences in Australia

My Constitution, Section 21

Section 21 - Treaties

My Constitution, Section 20

Section 20 - Weights and measures

My Constitution, Section 19

Section 19 - Certainty of law

The general theme is that justice requires that a man know what the law is in order for him to be held accountable for his actions in light of it. The basis is man as the Reasonable Person, and a presumption of a reasoned culture.

My Constitution, Section 18

Section 18 - Equality before the law

My Constitution, Section 17

Section 17 - Offences by Officers

My Constitution, Section 16

Section 16 - Propriety and accountability