Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on April 12, 2024, 10:03:36 PMThe good Baron has been saying that he thinks the "simple vacancy declaration" is a trap, because the cunning Free Dems will then make sure the throne stays vacant forever, and the Senator from Cézembre agrees with him.

Just to clarify: I don't think it's a trap in a malicious sense, but just that things would tend to naturally flow in that direction, and that your incentives are clear.  I just think it's helpful to be explicit about these things, since the subtext and future flow of events might not be obvious to some folks.  As far as I can tell, you have been 100% operating in good faith throughout this whole discussion.  I think you play political hardball and you're not inclined to show your hand -- if you'll forgive the mixed metaphor -- but that's different than any kind of skullduggery.

I agree that probably the numbers are there to shove through some kind of change over the objections of a lot of monarchists.  I've been inactive and I'm not in the Ziu at all, so that's one obstacle gone right there.  I just think it will be disastrous, badly hurt the country, and possibly lead to the death of Talossa as any kind of real living community.  I don't think we'll dissolve, but you can limp along for years in a kind of twilight, and that's a very possible future if we discard the legitimacy of the throne in the eyes of the public and future.

If you step back, we're a gaggle of weirdos on the internet pretending to run a country in a way that mostly involves fiddling with pretend procedures, clumsily aping real-life structures like political parties and peerages and courts, and clinging to beliefs that we mostly know are imaginary.

Of course, from our perspective, we're a group of people united around a shared vision that is equal parts silly and serious, having fun through enacting our own versions of nation-sized institutions and engaging with a whimsical culture that dates back nearly fifty years and that has just as much reality through lived experience as some other national cultures.

Making people see Talossa the way we see it involves several unique things, such as the antiquity of our country's institutions.  We are uniquely vulnerable in this regard.  A macronation that frequently changes regimes and rulers will still be taken seriously in some regard, since people live there and must care.  But no one thinks that the North Korean legislature really matters, and no one cares what they do or say.  Even North Koreans sometimes have a hard time caring about it.  But no one "lives" in Talossa in that sense.  We can be utterly ignored.  Worse: it requires proactive effort to participate in Talossa.  We're uniquely vulnerable to perceptions of illegitimacy.

We are a constitutional monarchy governed by a legitimate sovereign, with a hypothetical connection to the Berbers, a less hypothetical connection to the GTA, and our own language and minor traditions.  But very few of us have even visited the GTA, almost no one knows the language, and no one at all really cares about the Berber thing much.  We change our constitution every year, often quite dramatically.  Even our national identity has been flimsy at times... there was a long stretch with two competing groups claiming to be Talossa, and even a time with three Talossas.

What makes Talossa stand apart at all from any group I might create next week with a dozen friends?  To an outsider, not a lot.  We need desperately to conserve those resources that give our country some historical heft.  Even if it doesn't particularly matter a lot right now to you, or if other things seem important, they're not something we can easily restore.  We should be very careful with our few precious institutions that have stood the test of time.

I'm a progressive liberal in macronational politics, so it's funny that this is my role in Talossa.  But you guys are proposing changes that could permanently cripple or even destroy the country.

We should fix the succession so that it will continue working for the future in a permanent way that has consensus support.  Once the institution is assured to continue existing in a legitimate manner, we can address other problems.  Doing it backwards is risky and bizarre.

This seems properly formatted, and it looks to have the effect it proposes.  Seems fine to me.

This is crazy -- if we know this is a problem we have to solve and we all want to solve it, why are we engineering deliberately terrible alternate outcomes?  Let's just do it now!

To draw a parallel: in the United States, there has been concern about the budget deficit.  It was arguably just used as a partisan club (austerity was a very stupid policy during a recession), but some people held the debt limit hostage as a result, regardless of their motivation.  If the deficit wasn't reduced, they said, they wouldn't authorize the issuance of more public debt.  Eventually, a bargain was struck for an automatic sequester: if the deficit weren't reduced over the next two years, then huge cuts would be automatically imposed.

See, making the actual decision about budget cuts was too hard.  Instead, they planned to make the alternative so horrible that they'd feel like they had to do it.  Not now... later.  Always later.

It didn't work, of course.  The hard choices remained hard, and people tried to just use the threat of sequestration on their opponents to get their way.  Automatic cuts were triggered, and they were stupid and wasteful.  The deficit remains huge.

I see this with students, too, sometimes.  They want to make themselves do something, but it's still too hard to actually address the problem.  So they try to just make the looming threat even worse so that their future selves will feel like they have to do something.

Let's just fix the problem, instead.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on April 12, 2024, 12:16:12 AM

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on April 11, 2024, 11:27:48 PMWell, I am not going to support letting the current, admittedly otiose incumbent choose his own successor, let's put it that way. But I'm open to other suggestions.

I should specify that I and the Free Democrats are perfectly fine with the status quo of succession, i.e. by regular process of Organic Law amendment - in essence an "elective monarchy" as was ancient Germanic tradition, the way of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and today the Papacy lol.

If people are perfectly fine with the status quo you need to offer them something better to shift, which is a sword which has cut both ways over the years with the monarchy. For several years we have been in a position without enough people to "legislatively decapitate" or to impose a new consensus on succession. But if we're now in a position where the need for LegDecap is clear to almost all, then to tie that to a need to find a concession for change on the latter issue will mean, again, years of inaction.

Well, the status quo means that the monarchy would end with King John's retirement.  Your choices in order of preference, as far as I can see:
1. Presidency.
2. Depose His Majesty, then block further amendments that might fill the throne (unless they move further towards a presidency).  This is a slower version of #1.
3. Fix the succession to some form of election, then depose His Majesty.
4. Fix the succession to direct nomination, reform the office to grant it more power and activity, then depose His Majesty.

Repeated efforts at 1 have failed, so now you're moved to #2.  And that's fine, except that monarchists have the opposite incentive structure.  I guess some might even add a desire to return to hereditary monarchy, although that wouldn't be my preference.

My point is that I'm asking you to accept #3, instead, since that would allow us to actually fix the problem in a way that's not ruinously divisive.  Asking monarchists to accept the likely permanent end of the monarchy in order to solve the temporary preoccupation of a sovereign isn't okay.

Since it is relatively easy to block amendments with a Ziu minority, this would almost certainly be the end of the monarchy.  Supporters of the proposed presidency could simply block all attempts to amend the OrgLaw with a new sovereign.

I do not know how long it usually takes mail to travel from the continental United States to Germany. I always use the cheapest postage, though, so I would imagine it would take a couple of weeks maybe?

They're all updated. For what it's worth, it's unlikely anyone noticed their absence.  Those pages all have very low pageviews.  Still, we should have been putting them up regularly, and it's my fault that I said I would and did not.  I apologize.

Notice that we did not sort out the succession later, and instead that very omission has become a significant obstacle to solving the current dilemma (to put it delicately).  It is glaringly apparent that if we tear down the current building -- and it needs serious repairs at this point! -- without laying the foundation for the next, the monarchy will just become a vacant blight.  Repair can't become an opportunity for permanent destruction.

We need to restore the succession so that we're no longer in this no-win situation.  I would prefer we also restore some royal power to rehabilitate the office into something a sane person might want to do, but in the interests of finding a consensus path forward, we should just set that aside for now.  And after we fix the succession and resolve the current situation, the question of the future of the monarchy can be rejoined.  Does that sound reasonable?

As I have mentioned recently, I am no longer opposed to the need to do something.  I have done everything I can for many years, but there comes a time when we have to accept the world as it is, not as we wish it would be.  So these days, even I agree that we need to make a change.

But I am not sure if we need wholesale institutional reform on this scale, and I am very sure we don't need the presidency proposed in this bill -- even if we still call it a king -- but we do need to make a change.  This bill is just not very good, riven deep with conflicts of interest that don't make any sense.

I reject the idea that the entire institution of monarchy is flawed.  This is a tiny country, and the first monarch was incredibly active and the central engine of invention for 90% of our culture.  Our current monarch has personally saved the country and was also a huge force for good for a decade, helping in large part to define the country as we know it today.  The institution has worked, and can work again.

Most probably, we just need a change of personnel.  But before that, we need to settle on a future shape for the office, including succession.  The whole thing needs to be kept away from politics as much as possible -- one of the abiding principles of Talossan honour has long been that it must never be sought, only accepted.  And some power must be restored to the office -- it needs the heft of something meaningful to do.  And then I suspect that once everything is set, it will have become apparent what the future shall be... cometh the hour, cometh the sovereign.

Quick update: out of fourteen applicants, seven have been verified as actual citizens passing the test with at least the minimum 70%.  Others either failed to ever take the test, failed to pass the test, or failed at being citizens (the worst failure of all).

I have also checked all the verified applications at this time, and even though some of these things are "signatures" in only the most technical sense, most people had everything in order.  Those people who were missing things have been individually contacted.  I will wait a maximum of three days before proceeding, unless those involved wish to pay my bribe.  (And I'm a member of the landed nobility, so that's a steep price.)

Probably we'll go to the printer's by the week's end, since I feel guilty for not attending to this earlier.

EDIT: If you want to know if your application is all set, shoot me a PM.  It's illegal to even disclose that you applied (since it's personal information held by the government) but I can confirm to you.

I understand. 😉

Yes, you're good. I probably should have added you to the official list, but I have a note in my file to remind me about you from when we last talked.

The only problem application right now is Txec's, since I'm sure there's some law about me issuing multiple IDs so quickly, especially when his explicit purpose is "to commit crimes and stuff." Also these pictures he sent in are wildly inappropriate.

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP on April 09, 2024, 03:34:08 PMI had already passed the Civics Test once, but I can't find the link for applying for a card. What should I do?

I will send you the link via PM.

Side note:

If you want an ID card in the next batch, you are almost out of time to apply.

The Civics Test I set up is here.  If you take the Civics Test, you will receive a link at the end directing you to the ID Card form.

Right now, I see six applications since the last time I issued cards.  When I get a chance, I will get started on the process.  I completely understand that people are eager, and it's great!  But please be patient.  I will keep everyone updated on the timeframe, but here's my current plan:

• Validate all tests.  I have to check to make sure everyone got the required score and that they're all current citizens.  This will take very little time, and I will do that tonight.
• Validate info.  I have to make sure that I have all required information.  Technically I could just reject applications that were not following directions, but I usually reach out in private to fix the application, instead.  Last time, a third of all applications needed fixing.
• Process the cards.  Most of this is automated, but the profile and signature images need to be done manually.  This usually only takes me five to ten minutes apiece.
• Printing.  This takes up to two weeks, although it might be less time since it's already been set once.
• Mailing.  Fairly variable, but I'm in the continental United States, so you can do your own reckoning

I'll be getting started tonight -- my apologies to anyone who had to wait.