NationStates

The rule in question _

Theoretically any resolution can be removed with this sole argument. For this reason, repeals require unique arguments tailored to the target resolution. NatSov may be used as an additional unique argument but it cannot take over the repeal. Its variations include cultural and religious sovereignty.

The NatSov only rule is one of a few rules -- other than Committee-Only and possibly Branding -- that seems to just be "babysitting" the WA to not passing certain resolutions that are sometimes problematic and/or useless. However, there are genuinely cases where a NatSov argument would be a legitimate argument to repeal a resolution -- for example, if the World Assembly passed an otherwise-flawless resolution requiring member nations to distribute onion futures to all their citizens, it would be perfectly legitimate to argue that nations should be able to decide what policy to take towards onion futures within their nation.

Whether some argument is strong or weak as reason to repeal a resolution is a political question that should be left up to the voters, rather than an antiquated rule based on an incorrect assumption that NatSov is necessarily a poor argument. Further, the chance of everything being repealed because voters think that it isn't "international" in scope is near-zero, and there is no need for an excessively obstructive rule to stop some fantastical possibility most voters are better than. Nobody is going to argue that because onion futures are not a matter of international concern, matters such as genocide and war crimes also cannot be of international concern.

Even if one were to argue that NatSov-only is never a strong argument so it should be disallowed by the rules, it is trivial to avoid. Including some nitpick with absolutely no effect or an irrelevant "argument" not even intended to persuade people that the target is bad is sufficient to avoid the rule -- making it toothless, and redundant. That kind of writing is not something that the rules should coerce.

There is no real benefit to the rule, which relies on a poor assumption that NatSov is necessarily a weak argument, while being trivial to avoid. Leave it up to the voters to decide whether something is weak or strong as an argument to repeal a resolution.

Discuss.

The NatSov rule is essentially a sanity check. Otherwise people could make any sort of argument against a resolution, no matter how trivial based on the grounds of National Sovereignty.

Wayneactia wrote:The NatSov rule is essentially a sanity check. Otherwise people could make any sort of argument against a resolution, no matter how trivial based on the grounds of National Sovereignty.

Then vote it down if it's a poor argument. "Nations should have the sovereignty to commit war crimes and genocide" being a poor argument does not mean that NatSov is not a reasonable argument against hypothetical legislation requiring nations to distribute free toilet paper. Also, even in the former case, including almost any other argument, no matter how weak, is enough to avoid the NatSov rule.

Stance: Remove the NatSov-Only Rule

The NatSov-Only Rule is one of those old rules implemented by the mods to allow them to delete bad proposals. But as the GA has matured and with the advent of GenSec, a lot of these arbitrary rules implemented by the mods have slowly been revised or removed. Hell, we even did away with the Ideological Ban Rule which I'd support as a rule more than NatSov-only.

I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the GA is able to control the quality of proposals without needing arbitrary rules like NatSov-only. Whenever this topic has been brought up - the 2015 Consortium, for example - those in support of keeping the rule always bring up the ridiculous straw man of 'if we remove the rule, we'll be subject to a deluge of NatSov-Only repeals'. But if the queue is any indication, the rules don't prevent people from submitting proposals. And if you look at the queue, there aren't very many NatSov-Only repeals, especially compared to proposals that violate the Proposal Basics, Honest Mistake, Branding, and Contradiction rules.

Sometimes, the best argument against a resolution is NatSov, or something very similar to NatSov (MoMH, for example). To get around this, sometimes authors add in weaker (and sometimes very bad) non-NatSov arguments. Not only does this make the repeal worse, it can lead to repeals that are arguably illegal because the author has had to stretch the truth so much.

Many of the pro NatSov-Only Rule arguments I think could be resolved if the Honest Mistake Rule applied to the worst NatSov-Only repeals:

Honest Mistake: Repeals should address the contents of the resolution it's targeting, and not just state the reverse of the arguments given in the resolution. Embellishment, exaggeration, deceptive/weaselly-words do not constitute an 'honest mistake'. An 'honest mistake' is factual inaccuracies, misrepresentation, or content that doesn't address the resolution.

"<Resolution> shouldn't be handled by the WA" doesn't address the contents of the target resolution, while "<Resolution> shouldn't be handled by the WA and here are some reasons why" does address the contents. This way, good NatSov-Only repeals would be allowed but the bad ones would not.

Wayneactia wrote:The NatSov rule is essentially a sanity check. Otherwise people could make any sort of argument against a resolution, no matter how trivial based on the grounds of National Sovereignty.

"Bloody Stupid" was a sanity check, but that rule's been done away with.

"Bloody stupid" is really a better sanity check than a list of arbitrary prohibitions.

Nat-Sov is a trivial argument against a resolution. Membership in the WA is completely voluntary, and one can expeditiously leave it without fear of reprisal if they feel that their national sovereignty is threatened by it, but otherwise can't think of a single argument against its legislation. And personally, off the record, I'm going to go ahead and say that no one can write a flawless proposal about onion futures that's so airtight that only Nat-Sov can challenge it.

Heavens Reach wrote:Nat-Sov is a trivial argument against a resolution. Membership in the WA is completely voluntary, and one can expeditiously leave it without fear of reprisal if they feel that their national sovereignty is threatened by it, but otherwise can't think of a single argument against its legislation. And personally, off the record, I'm going to go ahead and say that no one can write a flawless proposal about onion futures that's so airtight that only Nat-Sov can challenge it.

So -- if it is true that "no one can write a flawless proposal about onion futures that's so airtight that only Nat-Sov can challenge it" -- it's a pointless rule because there is always something else to point out in addition to NatSov. Further, if you believe that it's a bad argument, then go vote against it when it comes to vote. Why is NatSov such a poor argument that it -- and no other specific argument -- requires an entire rule to ban?

Heavens Reach wrote:Nat-Sov is a trivial argument against a resolution. Membership in the WA is completely voluntary, and one can expeditiously leave it without fear of reprisal if they feel that their national sovereignty is threatened by it, but otherwise can't think of a single argument against its legislation. And personally, off the record, I'm going to go ahead and say that no one can write a flawless proposal about onion futures that's so airtight that only Nat-Sov can challenge it.

The argument isn't that it's impossible to write repeals that aren't NatSov, but that in some instances it leads to lower quality repeals.

Edit: Ninja'd by Ice States

Magecastle Embassy Building A5 wrote:

Heavens Reach wrote:Nat-Sov is a trivial argument against a resolution. Membership in the WA is completely voluntary, and one can expeditiously leave it without fear of reprisal if they feel that their national sovereignty is threatened by it, but otherwise can't think of a single argument against its legislation. And personally, off the record, I'm going to go ahead and say that no one can write a flawless proposal about onion futures that's so airtight that only Nat-Sov can challenge it.

So -- if it is true that "no one can write a flawless proposal about onion futures that's so airtight that only Nat-Sov can challenge it" -- it's a pointless rule because there is always something else to point out in addition to NatSov. Further, if you believe that it's a bad argument, then go vote against it when it comes to vote. Why is NatSov such a poor argument that it -- and no other specific argument -- requires an entire rule to ban?

It's not pointless, because it prevents us from having to read through substanceless pure Nat-Sov only arguments, which are already very popular, despite being illegal. That's what I think Wayneactia was alluding to when they said it was a "sanity check." And there's simply no good way to mount a pure Nat-Sov only argument when the one who's actually getting in the way of your Nat-Sov is you -- by being in the WA. Now if there were a principled reason to repeal, and not just your feeling that you're conceding too much to the WA, well then that would be fine; make that argument instead.

Heavens Reach wrote:

Magecastle Embassy Building A5 wrote:So -- if it is true that "no one can write a flawless proposal about onion futures that's so airtight that only Nat-Sov can challenge it" -- it's a pointless rule because there is always something else to point out in addition to NatSov. Further, if you believe that it's a bad argument, then go vote against it when it comes to vote. Why is NatSov such a poor argument that it -- and no other specific argument -- requires an entire rule to ban?

It's not pointless, because it prevents us from having to read through substanceless pure Nat-Sov only arguments, which are already very popular, despite being illegal. That's what I think Wayneactia was alluding to when they said it was a "sanity check." And there's simply no good way to mount a pure Nat-Sov only argument when the one who's actually getting in the way of your Nat-Sov is you -- by being in the WA. Now if there were a principled reason to repeal, and not just your feeling that you're conceding too much to the WA, well then that would be fine; make that argument instead.

Once again, if you believe that NatSov is a weak argument, vote against it. However, if the WA required member nations to distribute free toilet paper to all their citizens, it'd be perfectly reasonable to want to repeal it on NatSov grounds, as opposed to leaving the entire WA over just one or two resolutions. I generally agree that NatSov is, in many cases, a poor argument, but whether it is or not is still a political question that the voters should decide on.

Magecastle Embassy Building A5 wrote:

Heavens Reach wrote:
It's not pointless, because it prevents us from having to read through substanceless pure Nat-Sov only arguments, which are already very popular, despite being illegal. That's what I think Wayneactia was alluding to when they said it was a "sanity check." And there's simply no good way to mount a pure Nat-Sov only argument when the one who's actually getting in the way of your Nat-Sov is you -- by being in the WA. Now if there were a principled reason to repeal, and not just your feeling that you're conceding too much to the WA, well then that would be fine; make that argument instead.

Once again, if you believe that NatSov is a weak argument, vote against it. However, if the WA required member nations to distribute free toilet paper to all their citizens, it'd be perfectly reasonable to want to repeal it on NatSov grounds, as opposed to leaving the entire WA over just one or two resolutions. I generally agree that NatSov is, in many cases, a poor argument, but whether it is or not is still a political question that the voters should decide on.

It's pretty clear that the WA requiring member nations to distribute free toilet paper to all of their citizens is unprincipled on completely different ground than Nat-Sov.

My turn. Once again, if national sovereignty is your literal only concern with the legislation, just leave the WA. If you cannot think of literally one single other thing to motivate your argument against a resolution, then clearly it's a pretty air tight resolution. Personally, I don't want to have to remind people that Nat-Sov only repeals are silly every five minutes. So I completely stand by the rule.

Heavens Reach wrote:

Magecastle Embassy Building A5 wrote:Once again, if you believe that NatSov is a weak argument, vote against it. However, if the WA required member nations to distribute free toilet paper to all their citizens, it'd be perfectly reasonable to want to repeal it on NatSov grounds, as opposed to leaving the entire WA over just one or two resolutions. I generally agree that NatSov is, in many cases, a poor argument, but whether it is or not is still a political question that the voters should decide on.

It's pretty clear that the WA requiring member nations to distribute free toilet paper to all of their citizens is unprincipled on completely different ground than Nat-Sov.

My turn. Once again, if national sovereignty is your literal only concern with the legislation, just leave the WA. If you cannot think of literally one single other thing to motivate your argument against a resolution, then clearly it's a pretty air tight resolution. Personally, I don't want to have to remind people that Nat-Sov only repeals are silly every five minutes. So I completely stand by the rule.

Cool. So it's no longer a problem and should be legal if the repeal, in addition to NatSov, complains that the target fails to require orange julius to be made at public meetings? Further, can you demonstrate just one example where a repeal -- because it is NatSov only -- requires Ooc intervention to prevent it from even being considered, rather than simply being bad policy and thus deserving being shot down Ic?

The arguments presented by Heavens Reich address why they think NatSov-only repeals make for poor arguments. However, just because an argument is bad does not mean it should be banned. If that were the case then many, many more proposals could be removed from the queue.

Comfed wrote:The arguments presented by Heavens Reich address why they think NatSov-only repeals make for poor arguments. However, just because an argument is bad does not mean it should be banned. If that were the case then many, many more proposals could be removed from the queue.

Concurred. The goal of GenSec should -- per its very first ruling -- be to "manage community standards in complex legality questions", rather than decide for the voters which repeal arguments are strong enough. I'd like to see a singular hypothetical or real example of a repeal that, because it is NatSov-only, requires Ooc intervention to prevent it from even being considered, rather than merely the opinion that it is a poor argument.

Magecastle Embassy Building A5 wrote:

Heavens Reach wrote:
It's pretty clear that the WA requiring member nations to distribute free toilet paper to all of their citizens is unprincipled on completely different ground than Nat-Sov.

My turn. Once again, if national sovereignty is your literal only concern with the legislation, just leave the WA. If you cannot think of literally one single other thing to motivate your argument against a resolution, then clearly it's a pretty air tight resolution. Personally, I don't want to have to remind people that Nat-Sov only repeals are silly every five minutes. So I completely stand by the rule.

Cool. So it's no longer a problem and should be legal if the repeal, in addition to NatSov, complains that the target fails to require orange julius to be made at public meetings? Further, can you demonstrate just one example where a repeal -- because it is NatSov only -- requires Ooc intervention to prevent it from even being considered, rather than simply being bad policy and thus deserving being shot down Ic?

You keep coming up with completely ridiculous examples that are ridiculous for completely non-Nat-Sov only reasons. Any resolution -- any resolution at all -- can be opposed on Nat-Sov grounds. It's a meritless, pointless, argument precisely because it boils down to "I don't like for my nation to have all these rules" when being in the WA consists of, well rules. It's not just that it's a bad argument, it's that it's a bad faith argument. Just like your attempts to make ridiculous-sounding proposals seem representative of just the sort of thing that Nat-Sov only arguments are needed to prevent when they can all clearly be opposed on half a dozen other grounds even when I haven't even seen their full proposals yet.

Comfed wrote:The arguments presented by Heavens Reich address why they think NatSov-only repeals make for poor arguments. However, just because an argument is bad does not mean it should be banned. If that were the case then many, many more proposals could be removed from the queue.

Please see my reply distinguishing between a bad argument and a bad faith argument

I agree with Heavens Reich, if my opinion is worth anything

Heavens Reach wrote:

Magecastle Embassy Building A5 wrote:Cool. So it's no longer a problem and should be legal if the repeal, in addition to NatSov, complains that the target fails to require orange julius to be made at public meetings? Further, can you demonstrate just one example where a repeal -- because it is NatSov only -- requires Ooc intervention to prevent it from even being considered, rather than simply being bad policy and thus deserving being shot down Ic?

You keep coming up with completely ridiculous examples that are ridiculous for completely non-Nat-Sov only reasons. Any resolution -- any resolution at all -- can be opposed on Nat-Sov grounds. It's a meritless, pointless, argument precisely because it boils down to "I don't like for my nation to have all these rules" when being in the WA consists of, well rules. It's not just that it's a bad argument, it's that it's a bad faith argument. Just like your attempts to make ridiculous-sounding proposals seem representative of just the sort of thing that Nat-Sov only arguments are needed to prevent when they can all clearly be opposed on half a dozen other grounds even when I haven't even seen their full proposals yet.

If it's really that easy to avoid the rule -- as there can always be another argument besides NatSov to include -- then it's useless and too ought to be chucked out.

As to any resolution being possible to oppose because of NatSov, while that is true, that seems to draw a false equivalence between the different cases of NatSov arguments. For example, nobody is going to argue that because onion futures are not a matter of international concern, genocide and war crimes also should not be prohibited by the World Assembly due to NatSov.

Heidgaudr wrote:Many of the pro NatSov-Only Rule arguments I think could be resolved if the Honest Mistake Rule applied to the worst NatSov-Only repeals:

Honest Mistake: Repeals should address the contents of the resolution it's targeting, and not just state the reverse of the arguments given in the resolution. Embellishment, exaggeration, deceptive/weaselly-words do not constitute an 'honest mistake'. An 'honest mistake' is factual inaccuracies, misrepresentation, or content that doesn't address the resolution.

Indeed. And that's how the rule was originally constructed: as a matter of factual accuracy pertaining to the NSUN [WA] can't do X when it patently can.

I agree with Comfed. As I said at the time of the "consortium" (lol), just because it's a bad argument, doesn't mean it should be illegal. Let the players decide.

I support the idea on principle, but what would doing this change? What's the goal here, especially when you say 'NatSov arguemnts' are going to be voted down anyway?

West Barack and East Obama wrote:I support the idea on principle, but what would doing this change? What's the goal here, especially when you say 'NatSov arguemnts' are going to be voted down anyway?

Getting rid of arbitrary rules that give an unelected junta of mini-mods power over the WA.

Then we should get rid of delegate votes. :)

The Ice States wrote:

Heavens Reach wrote:
You keep coming up with completely ridiculous examples that are ridiculous for completely non-Nat-Sov only reasons. Any resolution -- any resolution at all -- can be opposed on Nat-Sov grounds. It's a meritless, pointless, argument precisely because it boils down to "I don't like for my nation to have all these rules" when being in the WA consists of, well rules. It's not just that it's a bad argument, it's that it's a bad faith argument. Just like your attempts to make ridiculous-sounding proposals seem representative of just the sort of thing that Nat-Sov only arguments are needed to prevent when they can all clearly be opposed on half a dozen other grounds even when I haven't even seen their full proposals yet.

If it's really that easy to avoid the rule -- as there can always be another argument besides NatSov to include -- then it's useless and too ought to be chucked out.

As to any resolution being possible to oppose because of NatSov, while that is true, that seems to draw a false equivalence between the different cases of NatSov arguments. For example, nobody is going to argue that because onion futures are not a matter of international concern, genocide and war crimes also should not be prohibited by the World Assembly due to NatSov.

You are completely ignoring my principal argument, which is that it is good for procedure that people are required to come up with real reasons -- not a single, bad-faith, one-size-fits-all one -- for repeals. You keep repeating the same argument, but not considering outside perspectives on this -- several of them, in fact. If that's how you want to conduct your business, that's your prerogative, but good luck getting this longstanding rule struck out when you won't even listen to or consider opposing arguments. I refuse to repeat myself; I already addressed why your examples don't make sense, and what my primary argument is. Good luck.

Heavens Reach wrote:

Magecastle Embassy Building A5 wrote:Cool. So it's no longer a problem and should be legal if the repeal, in addition to NatSov, complains that the target fails to require orange julius to be made at public meetings?

You keep coming up with completely ridiculous examples that are ridiculous for completely non-Nat-Sov only reasons.

But that's a real example, however. GA#368.

It is not, however, as Magecastle seems to be suggesting, a NatSov repeal. The target was genuinely flawed and the flaws were pointed out.

Excidium Planetis wrote:

Heavens Reach wrote:You keep coming up with completely ridiculous examples that are ridiculous for completely non-Nat-Sov only reasons.

But that's a real example, however. GA#368.

It is not, however, as Magecastle seems to be suggesting, a NatSov repeal. The target was genuinely flawed and the flaws were pointed out.

Even better