NationStates

Glen-Rhodes wrote:Mandating citizen-assemblies for tax laws doesn't prevent dictatorships from being dictatorships. It merely prevents them from being dictatorships when it comes to tax law. The ideological ban rule only applies if an entire ideology is prevented from existing, and only if it is prevented from existing through a single resolution. Slowly democratizing World Assembly nations is completely legal and is what we have been doing for years -- Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Marriage Act, and Fairness in Criminal Trials are all excellent examples.

When it comes to whether or not mandating how citizenship works violates the ideological ban rule, I would have to come down on the side of 'not'. Yeah, it pretty much dissolves whatever national sovereignty a nation had left, but national sovereignty isn't something the World Assembly is obligated to respect, and dictating how citizenship works doesn't prevent their form of government from existing. In my opinion, at least.

I have taken some time to consider how best to word this. You see, I am not Velnayanis or any other character I portray. I do not so easily leap into rude language on how to express something and must be angry to do it without thinking. As such, it typically requires a lot of thought for me to do it while quite calm.

Unfortunately, there is no polite way to properly express this that does not come off as even more rude. To say it simply: Your opinion is wrong, and so is everything you stated in the above. In fact, I do not believe you are even debating the actual issue of which we are speaking. I am sorry for stating it like this, but more polite attempts failed me in my goal of softening the blows of what I have to say.

I should note that, while you are correct in stating that it prevents them from being dictatorships in relation to tax law, you are incorrect in the underlying assumption that such makes it legal. Aside from this entire proposal being a violation of WA General Fund, specifically item #8, there is also the fact it does not, as you claim, actually mandate how citizenship works. Nothing within the proposal prevents my nation from declaring that anyone except a tribal leader or the monarchy is not a citizen. In fact, at current it is actually impossible for humans, and possibly a few other species, to get citizenship within the nation because they cannot pass a standardized sentience test that every single citizen is required to take at the age of physical maturity.

What it does do is mandate how a government may operate in relation to collecting taxes, specifically in what a government has to do in order to collect those taxes. As such, it is not affecting how citizenship operates, but is affecting how the government operates. As such, we must examine this from the idea of how it affects governmental ideologies. Within democratic dictatorships, this should have no affect. Within absolute dictatorships, this actually affects how the government runs and forces them to move away from being able to properly function within their ideology due to requiring them to actually give a voice to the people within the government itself instead of ignoring the people as much as they feel like. As such, it effectively bans that ideology in that it forces them to operate as democratic dictatorships instead of as pure dictatorships, since there are actual elections instead of the guy at the top simply controlling everything without the people ever having a chance to even havea voice.

Also, I will note that this does not promote democracy. For one thing, democracy is the movement towards the people being able to all combine their voices together to form a cohesive statement about how society should be run. For another, this effectively bans a pure democracy that collects a form of taxes (through volunteers and voter-approved taxation laws) in that it forces them to go from a pure democracy to a republic through the introduction of an elected assembly that they must create and must bow down to the whims of. As such, this still creates the problem that it does not actually further democracy in that it has the side-effect of limiting democracy.

Now, I must agree with you that dictating how citizenship works does not violate how a nation's government operates. If only this actually did that.

Note: Accidentally slipped IC for a short bit. Removed that bit.