A Second Speech to the Ziu from a Citizen

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I hate to say it but I'd have to agree that the Monarchy in particular is not one of our most pressing problems right now. Except, as mentioned, that the constitutional impasse has sucked a lot of "giving a damn about Talossa" out of the Free Democrats. But conversely, stopping reform hasn't made the monarchist-conservatives more interested? Almost as if their interest in Talossa, as we kept saying, was entirely negative?

I think we should listen to the Túischac'h - who is as close to properly agnostic on the constitutional question as anyone - when he says he's just been ground down by the ability of a passive supermajority to stop anything fun happening. The only reason that we managed to complete the project of unifying the spelling of the Talossan language is that the "passive supermajority" just collapsed the institutions themselves and we started new institutions. Can't do that with the Organic Law, or at least we shouldn't.

[Ian Plätschisch]

I think we should listen to the Túischac'h - who is as close to properly agnostic on the constitutional question as anyone - when he says he's just been ground down by the ability of a passive supermajority to stop anything fun happening. The only reason that we managed to complete the project of unifying the spelling of the Talossan language is that the "passive supermajority" just collapsed the institutions themselves and we started new institutions. Can't do that with the Organic Law, or at least we shouldn't.

Not to keep tooting my own horn here, but this article I wrote for La S'chinteia in 2019 might offer some ideas on this front.

Talossa needs to take a long, hard look at the rules governing many of our institutions.

There has been much complaining recently about the ability of some people to effectively "veto" new initiatives simply by not engaging with them. Of course, such lack of engagement need not be intentional (there are plenty of reasons why a Talossan may need to take a leave of absence), but the fact remains that there are several areas of Talossan life that are subject to the oversight of a person or body that either is no longer interested or capable of providing that oversight or never served anything but an overly bureaucratic role in the first place.

From this description, it may appear that anarchy is the best way to operate our civil institutions. After all, if any citizen could act unilaterally, no one would ever need someone else's approval and we would all be free to use the avenues of Talossan culture how we saw fit. However, besides turning Talossa into a "bathtubbia" subject to radical reformulations on a weekly basis, this policy would have another subtle but no less important drawback. Any time a group of citizens might seek consensus to ensure a proposed change became widely accepted, there would be no indication of when, or if, that consensus was obtained. This would cause either progressively worse fracturing of our organizations, and a loss of unity and consistency in our nation, as change-makers went ahead without a way to make their new policies official, or a permanent stasis if no one was willing to move forward on anything without the express consent of all imaginable stakeholders, some of whom may not even be contactable. Unfortunately, examples of this kind of governance are not rare in Talossa.

Therefore, both too many and too few organizational procedures can be quite detrimental. To illustrate these concepts, I present a few case studies.

Provincial Governments
For almost two years between 2017 – 2019, Florencia floundered in a catch-22 that prevented it from seating either a Governor or the Nimlet (provincial assembly). In early 2017, the existing Governor failed to apportion the seats in the upcoming Nimlet, which, according to the Florencian Constitution, necessitated the appointment of a new Governor. However, no new Governor could be appointed since the Governor is Constitutionally required to be a member of the Nimlet, which could not assemble because only the new Governor could apportion the seats. It took months of complaining and multiple legal consultations for the province to finally decide that the situation was dumb and that following the strict letter of the law was not tenable.

Too few regulations can also spell doom for a provincial government. When the Maricopan Cabana assembled for the 51st Cosa, it made no progress on the election of the Premier between January 6th and April 4th, 2018, as there was no designated time frame for the election nor was it clear who had the authority to conduct it. On April 4th, one of the candidates, who had not heard anything from the other candidate during this time, declared himself the winner, at which point the other candidate suddenly reappeared and objected that no one had yet proposed a deadline for submitting nominations to the post. The two agreed to hold an election; alas, they were the only two voters and at the end of the agreed-upon voting period there was a 1-1 tie. The result was the same after an extension, and the sitting Premier (who was one of the candidates) then declared he intended to stay in office indefinitely, and only agreed to further deadline extensions after a citizen from a different province criticized his decision. The deadlock continued for the rest of the term.

The Arvitieir Prima of Benito, supposed to function as a provincial Secretary of State, serves in practice only to officially open and close votes on bills before the Assembly. The delay between a request by an Assemblyperson for the Arvitieir Prima to put a bill up for a vote and the Arvitieir Prima acting on that request is typically fairly short but has recently been up to a month. Assuming the proper regulations were put in place outlining how a bill may be put up for a vote, there is nothing the Arvitieir Prima does that could not be done by an individual Assemblyperson. Therefore, there is no reason for this extra link in the chain that does not add any value and can only introduce delays.   

Talossan Language
The CUG is the traditional governing body of the Talossan language. However, almost none of its members are involved anymore, and if there ever were regulations regarding a quorum, they certainly have not been met in a long time. Unfortunately for the language, there are many questions of orthography that must be dealt with, and every time a group of speakers try to hammer things out, they ultimately can never get anywhere because they have no authority to make decisions. Of course, they could just decide to adopt their proposals themselves, but they have been understandably reluctant to do so given the schism it would cause.

Faced with the dormancy of the CUG, some citizens created a new language organization called SIGN with the encouragement of the Minister of Culture. However, a member of the CUG warned that its creation might divide the language community. The two groups held talks on how to integrate or cooperate, but with no mechanism to decide how to ultimately proceed, SIGN withered and the CUG returned to the hibernation from which it had arisen.

Uppermost Cort
El Lexhatx puts the Clerk of Corts in charge of administering the Cort. This might work well if the Clerk were consistently active, but Clerks have generally not been active for most of the position's history. If the law were followed, this would make it very difficult to conduct any legal business. However, for the past several years, parties to cases and Justices alike have essentially agreed to pretend the position of Clerk does not exist and handle all administration themselves. This has allowed the Cort to function, although it does so in a make-it-up-as-we-go manner that no one quite understands and is ripe for future controversy.

College of Arms
Both the Squirrel Viceroy of Arms and the Dean of the College of Arms must approve a prospective armiger before a fellow of the College can start designing the arms. The process has gotten significantly faster now that the Viceroy, Dean, and most active fellow are all the same person, but there is still little reason for all these hoops when the King already has the authority to halt a request for arms any time he desires.
***
We have to learn from these observations how to build lasting organizational structures that both describe exactly how business may be conducted and that do not rely too much on a single person or group. Additionally, we must eliminate as many purely bureaucratic roles as possible and devolve the corresponding responsibilities and privileges to everyone involved.
Luckily, these strategies have been implemented in some places, and they can serve as guides for future reform:
•   In the Assembly of Maritiimi-Maxhestic, any member can call and end a vote on a matter so long as they do so in accordance with the relevant law detailing the appropriate voting period and venue.
•   Current efforts to streamline the Judiciary by introducing Justices of the Peace to handle small disputes will eliminate much of the judicial bureaucracy and codify what remains.
•   Until its repeal earlier this term, the section of el Lexhatx describing Naval regulations was one of the least-used and most unnecessary portions of Talossan law. It elicited a mild chuckle out of its readers, but in effect gave the Ziu control over every minute detail of the Navy. Therefore, the citizens who were interested in the Navy felt as though they could not take initiatives without the approval of the Ziu, but most the of the Ziu could not have cared less about the Navy. By repealing almost all of that section and replacing it with a code of regulations promulgated by those most involved with the Navy, we devolved power to those who are most capable and most motivated to use it to advance Talossan interests and culture.

Implementing these suggestions may not seem like a very important step in combatting the Kingdom's activity problem, given that there is nothing so common in Talossa as restructuring proposals that do nothing to increase participation in whatever is being restructured. Still, we depend on the robust operation of our institutions to engage in everything else that attracts people to Talossa. A failure here will, and has already started to, decrease confidence and enthusiasm in the rest of our society, so it's time to give the gears the attention they deserve.

[Ian Plätschisch]

Of course, I guess all those things are things the "passive supermajority" might block, but have they even been tried? All of them are more logistical in nature and have little to do with ideology, meaning no "systemic change" would be needed.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I wonder if you would be interested in suggesting amendments to the "Cutting Red and Green Tape" section of the FreeDems programme in line with the musing above.

[Ian Plätschisch]

I wonder if you would be interested in suggesting amendments to the "Cutting Red and Green Tape" section of the FreeDems programme in line with the musing above.

I think it's good as-is. Adding specific proposals would probably just bloat it.

Unfortunately I am not as passionate a Lex-editor as I was in my prime. If I can get around to it I certainly will propose some bills along the lines above.

Honestly, perhaps the tape can be cut without actually repealing anything. If everyone active just agrees to ignore it...

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

Honestly, perhaps the tape can be cut without actually repealing anything. If everyone active just agrees to ignore it...

Ahh, the wonders of adhocracy!

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

Also while we're on the general topic of trying and failing to do fun things, my last attempt at a cultural project was an audio(visual) news format in Talossan, and nothing ever came of it because no one contacted me on the job board at TalossaNET during the three months that the posting was open by default. (Speaking of TalossaNET, I *think* its been overrun by spam and/or bot accounts lately, someone should take care of that...)

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

The problem with talossa.net is that the Ministry of STUFF has ground to a complete halt because Eðo has other things to do. The Seneschál has signalled a total cabinet reshuffle for... sometime soon, I suppose.

[Viteu]

Uppermost Cort
El Lexhatx puts the Clerk of Corts in charge of administering the Cort. This might work well if the Clerk were consistently active, but Clerks have generally not been active for most of the position's history. If the law were followed, this would make it very difficult to conduct any legal business. However, for the past several years, parties to cases and Justices alike have essentially agreed to pretend the position of Clerk does not exist and handle all administration themselves. This has allowed the Cort to function, although it does so in a make-it-up-as-we-go manner that no one quite understands and is ripe for future controversy.

There's been some positive movement since 2019, of course, but it's inhibited by two necessary components--a lack of active judges and a lack of an active clerk.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Here are some of my ideas, some of which I've mentioned before.

Stats
We don't keep track of immigration statistics.  How many people immigrated last month?  The month before that?  Over the course of this term?  Last year?  No one knows unless they go back and compile the numbers.  That is absolutely crazy.  It is literally indefensible.  Immigration rate is the most important number in the country right now and we're not even bothering to keep track.  No money, new laws or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Zuavs
The Zuavs is a program designed to address our specific activity problem, since it rewards and promotes activity with pomp and ceremony.  The whole program is already set up, with ranks and images already defined, and a list of members from my first few months running it still exists.  But literally nothing has been done with it since the minute I left office.  We should revive it and encourage people to join it.  And people did it for fun!  No money, new laws, or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Centralize
Government business and party business should be relocated to Witt, as much as possible.  Right now, nearly all of that is invisible, which just feeds the impression that nothing is happening in Talossa (even when a lot is purportedly happening behind the scenes).  This can't be mandated for obvious reasons (like freedom of speech and associated), but it looks like literally everyone needed to make this happen is in this thread and people could just agree to do it.  No money, new laws, or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Tweet
Log onto the Kingdom Twitter on Tweetdeck and schedule a bunch of posts based on upcoming holidays (using the wiki page on them) and just general silliness.  A bunch can be quickly written and scheduled, and hashtagged with "#conlang #micronation #talossa".  It will require not much more than an hour of work every couple of months.  It will be much easier than actually consistently using our nearly-dead social media, but still gin up a good presence as a start to begin building back up opportunities for future real engagement.  For bonus points, use IFTT to automate cross-posting to Facebook and Instagram.  No money, new laws, or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Meet
Where do Talossans live near each other?  Let's figure it out and arrange for more meet-ups.  One or two happen each year, but they used to be (in times past) opportunities for silly big propaganda.  Lean back into that -- let's normalize it again.  Ian P. meets up with Viteu in New York?  Take some pictures and let's trumpet it loudly as the Mega-Apple Summit for Talossan Advancement.  No money, new laws, or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Knights
We're in dire times, and vigorous support for these initiatives or others should be rewarded as an act of patriotism in service to Talossa.  If someone knocks off a few things on this list, they probably should be in line for a knighthood.  We don't want pay-to-play, and the dignity of titles has to be preserved if it's going to actually mean anything to anyone, but we should reward people who rise to the occasion of their country's emergency.  No money, new laws, or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Ads
We have a decent amount of money.  Abandon the plans to spend it on stuff like a registered agent, and instead start an advertising campaign.  The Government can run a contest for the copy and images, and then appropriate funds with a PD or bill.  Target some key words like "micronation" or "conlang."  This would require significant expenditure and laws, but not much beyond that (no opposition is likely to appear).

[Sir Txec dal Nordselvă, UrB]

Uppermost Cort
El Lexhatx puts the Clerk of Corts in charge of administering the Cort. This might work well if the Clerk were consistently active, but Clerks have generally not been active for most of the position's history. If the law were followed, this would make it very difficult to conduct any legal business. However, for the past several years, parties to cases and Justices alike have essentially agreed to pretend the position of Clerk does not exist and handle all administration themselves. This has allowed the Cort to function, although it does so in a make-it-up-as-we-go manner that no one quite understands and is ripe for future controversy.

There's been some positive movement since 2019, of course, but it's inhibited by two necessary components--a lack of active judges and a lack of an active clerk.

Who is the current Clerk? Perhaps its time to remove and reappoint someone active?

[Sir Txec dal Nordselvă, UrB]

Here are some of my ideas, some of which I've mentioned before.

Centralize
Government business and party business should be relocated to Witt, as much as possible.  Right now, nearly all of that is invisible, which just feeds the impression that nothing is happening in Talossa (even when a lot is purportedly happening behind the scenes).  This can't be mandated for obvious reasons (like freedom of speech and associated), but it looks like literally everyone needed to make this happen is in this thread and people could just agree to do it.  No money, new laws, or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Tweet
Log onto the Kingdom Twitter on Tweetdeck and schedule a bunch of posts based on upcoming holidays (using the wiki page on them) and just general silliness.  A bunch can be quickly written and scheduled, and hashtagged with "#conlang #micronation #talossa".  It will require not much more than an hour of work every couple of months.  It will be much easier than actually consistently using our nearly-dead social media, but still gin up a good presence as a start to begin building back up opportunities for future real engagement.  For bonus points, use IFTT to automate cross-posting to Facebook and Instagram.  No money, new laws, or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Knights
We're in dire times, and vigorous support for these initiatives or others should be rewarded as an act of patriotism in service to Talossa.  If someone knocks off a few things on this list, they probably should be in line for a knighthood.  We don't want pay-to-play, and the dignity of titles has to be preserved if it's going to actually mean anything to anyone, but we should reward people who rise to the occasion of their country's emergency.  No money, new laws, or supermajority support would be required to do this.

Ads
We have a decent amount of money.  Abandon the plans to spend it on stuff like a registered agent, and instead start an advertising campaign.  The Government can run a contest for the copy and images, and then appropriate funds with a PD or bill.  Target some key words like "micronation" or "conlang."  This would require significant expenditure and laws, but not much beyond that (no opposition is likely to appear).

Centralizing is a good thought. I don't see why at least some of the business of the FreeDems can't occur in a dedicated forum. We already do post information on our party conventions, which are open to anyone. I'd also like to see the Cabinet using the forum in the private forum we've set up for that purpose.

As for the tweets, do we know who has the login information for our Twitter account? I spend a lot of time tweeting for my author business so I'm well versed in scheduling and the logistics. I'd be happy to take that on if we can figure out who has current control.

The knight business is a bit of a sore spot owing to the fact that so few have been honored and we have a nice list of people who I believe would be eligible, even without the list you put together AD.

Ads are a good idea. Sponsored ads on Twitter might be a good place to do this.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

In case there was any misunderstanding, the Government is taking all these ideas - as we do any other raised by citizens - under advisement. The biggest problem is that fully half the Government is non-functional at the moment and the handful of functioning ministers are having to "triage" what we can do right now. The question of rejuvenating the Cabinet lineup is in the hands of the Seneschál.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

As for the tweets, do we know who has the login information for our Twitter account? I spend a lot of time tweeting for my author business so I'm well versed in scheduling and the logistics. I'd be happy to take that on if we can figure out who has current control.

Presumably it was whoever was last MinCult? Or their predecessor? Or if all else fails, recover the password, I guess.

The knight business is a bit of a sore spot owing to the fact that so few have been honored and we have a nice list of people who I believe would be eligible, even without the list you put together AD.

Part of the reason why titles are objects of interest is that they are relatively rare. Simple longevity is not enough, and neither is serving in office, typically. But the Government has given itself the power to nominate people for knighthoods, so no further powers, laws, or money are required for recognizing extraordinary acts of service to the country.

[Viteu]

Uppermost Cort
El Lexhatx puts the Clerk of Corts in charge of administering the Cort. This might work well if the Clerk were consistently active, but Clerks have generally not been active for most of the position's history. If the law were followed, this would make it very difficult to conduct any legal business. However, for the past several years, parties to cases and Justices alike have essentially agreed to pretend the position of Clerk does not exist and handle all administration themselves. This has allowed the Cort to function, although it does so in a make-it-up-as-we-go manner that no one quite understands and is ripe for future controversy.

There's been some positive movement since 2019, of course, but it's inhibited by two necessary components--a lack of active judges and a lack of an active clerk.

Who is the current Clerk? Perhaps its time to remove and reappoint someone active?

There is no Clerk. I understand that the Government are working on this.