JessiWan

A few more things I would do:
I want to create something called The Debates. It will be online and interactive. It's essentially an open arena that gives the people a chance to question and challenge anything the government says. I want to do this because there are bad people with bad intentions, and some of them are within the government, actively trying to do us harm. They will couch their bad intentions in a language that sounds good to our ears. They might say things like, "The reason we are going to war in such and such place is because we want to spread democracy", or "Vaccines save lives", or “Diversity is our strength" or "Treason to the white race is loyalty to humanity". Basically things that sound good on the surface, however when you dig a bit deeper, you find that you actually have questions. Prior the advent of the computer and the internet, there wasn't much the people could do if they had doubts or questions about the many positive-sounding things their governments spewed out in large quantities. But now, we have the technology to host live and interactive debates where politicians are expected to field people's questions and to defend their positions and statements. I think it's safe to say that there will never be a shortage of bad-intentioned people saying otherwise nice-sounding things, but now, we can probe deeper. If a politician says what he says out of true belief, then he will not fall apart when questioned in depth. But someone who is just trying to trick us will not stand up to scrutiny. In other words, with The Debates, bad people will be shown to be full of it and will be kicked out of the government or even punished. One good thing about The Debates is that it's online. People who want to challenge their government do not have to be physically present at the actual debate, unlike in eras past. Also, everybody can see it. If a politician's position is shown to be indefensible, then he will logically have to give up the position as well as change his behavior accordingly. Anything less can result in people's anger and possible punishment. Furthermore, I want to add that politicians cannot have spokesperson or press secretary or anybody else do their talking for them. I expect them to answer for their own statements and policies. I don't want to hear some lackey explain and apologize on their behalf. By the way, when I say talking, I don't mean it literally. The debates will be in written words, not spoken words. This is so that people don't need to be together at the same time to have a debate. Someone will write something, then the politician will write something back in response and all exchanges will be in text and recorded down so that people can miss parts of it and still be able to come back to see it some time later. I will give an example of how The Debates would work. Let's say, I declare that we should treat animals with kindness. Someone can challenge me and say, "But didn't you eat a hamburger the other day? We saw it on the news. Burgers are made of meat and to kill a cow goes against your principle". Or another person might say, "But we still need to experiment on animals so as to advance medical science. Being kind to animals would halt the advance of science." Yet another person might say, "You are wrong. Human morality evolved as a behavior towards other humans, animals do not fall under the protection of human morality". All of these are valid concerns and are things people might think, so I will need to take them seriously and come back with answers that will satisfy the people who are watching the exchanges and who will be silently passing judgment on my responses. In times past, people could usually only think these things to themselves, the most they could do is mention them to other people in their lives. But now, with The Debates, they can question the politician directly. Gone are the days when politicians could just say whatever they wanted and pass any laws they wanted and just expect us to do as we were told.
Too often, we have experienced lawmakers passing unpopular laws, if not downright unwanted laws. I know that sometimes this is necessary, say in times of war. But the problem is that even in peace-time, lawmakers still pass unpopular laws. They do this because they know that there are no consequences for passing laws that people don't want. We have lost the community feel of law. What does "community feel of law" mean? Basically, think back to the very first law humans made for themselves. It was done by a group of people who got together, recognized the need for an official rule, and they all agreed that they needed something like this. This rule was the precursor of law. This is how the first law came about. Note how this was a community effort of sorts. People got together. It was also voluntary. People actually wanted the law. But now, in our contemporary society, there is no longer a community feel to laws. We have taken the act of passing laws and given it to professional lawmakers. These lawmakers do not consult us the people about what laws we would like, or whether we like the laws currently on the books. So as you can see, laws have lost their community feel as well as become no longer voluntary. Lawmakers also no longer work for us. Instead they act like our overlords, ordering us to obey the non-voluntary laws they unilaterally passed, or face jail time. I want to change this. I say that lawmakers should be required to defend the laws they pass, explain to us why they are necessary, especially in the case of laws we don't want. They do this through The Debates which I described above. I also expect lawmakers to actively look for possible complaints and concerns for the laws they are about to pass, because this is a part of their job. I also expect them to have the judgment to know whether laws they passed are wanted or not. They can conduct surveys, or ask random people on the streets, I don't care what they have to do. They simply need to find out people's will. I fully expect this from lawmakers. If they are intelligent enough to be a lawmaker, then they are intelligent enough to know what people want and don't want. And if they aren't, then it means they have failed as a lawmaker and will need to be punished. When a surgeon made a mistake and cut out a patient's healthy organ, he gets hit with a negligence suit. I want something similar. Let there be a mechanism in place, where people can get together and if their number exceeds a certain threshold, they can abolish a law. When this happens, it is taken as official determination that the lawmaker that penned the law has messed up, and he will face punishment for failing in his job just like the surgeon who blundered. Think of it as malpractice as a lawmaker. Just like a doctor who mal-practiced pays damages to his patient, so should a lawmaker pay damages to the public he has harmed. The damages will take the form of a lengthy prison term as well as being stripped of a percentage of his total assets. Ideally he also gets flogged in public, with his pants around his ankles. This is to deter other lawmakers from making similar mistakes. I want the punishment to have the effect of prevention. It takes a lot of effort to organize the masses and then to abolish a law like that. It's not realistic to expect people to do this very often because of the amount of efforts that are required. So I hope to prevent it from the get-go. Make it so that lawmakers know that if they screw up, there will be an extremely harsh punishment.
Another change I would make is to make sure that money, and all that power that comes with it, is not concentrated in too few hands. I move that we put a cap of 50 million USD as the maximum amount of wealth any individual can have, and 500 million for a business. I know this makes me sound really bad right now, like I am a communist. But please hear me out. I want to do this for two reasons: 1. When someone has an extreme amount of money, he will wield too much power. He can use his extreme wealth to buy up newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV stations, things like that. And he then staffs them with whoever he pleases, meaning people who will advance his political agendas obediently and unquestioningly, since he literally controls their livelihood. He will use these media outlets to influence how the public thinks. He can also use them like a weapon to defame those that he doesn't like. He can use his wealth to contribute to political campaigns generously, thus deciding the outcomes of elections unfairly. He pours money into the campaigns of candidates who will advocate policies that benefit him, policies that will make him even more money. He can also benefit in other ways, for example, if he has a chemical manufacturing plant, his candidate can pass laws that will make it ok for him to pollute the environment, to the detriment of the public, thus preserving his business interests. There are many, many more such things that the extremely wealthy can do, to give themselves a tremendous amount of advantage, at the expense of the rest of us. This is why I want to put a hard cap on the amount of money people can have. I set the cap at 50 million, which I think is very reasonable, because 50 millions is still a lot of money. Think about it. People can still enjoy the many wonderful things that come with being rich, for example, they can eat at fancy restaurants, they can fly first-class, they can hire maids to keep their homes clean, thus freeing them from any household chores, they can hire a chauffer to drive them around shopping, they can put a couple of Mercedes in their garage...etc. However, they won't be so rich that they can buy up newspapers or influence the outcome of elections. Another reason I want to place a hard limit on how much money people can have is that, resources are finite. When some people have too much, it means that they are taking from others. One example I can think of is Trump's son-in-law's family, the Kushners, who own 9000 properties. To this day, I still can't wrap my mind around how many houses that is. I mean, how many houses does one family need? Like I can imagine if a family is very smart and hardworking and they make excellent financial decisions, and they own a couple of properties. They rent these out for rental income, and now they live very comfortably. But 9000 properties is simply too much. The Kushner family literally is taking resources that could have gone to others. Imagine all these properties, they could house thousands of people. And before you say the Kushner family "earned" these properties, I will point out that they haven't done anything to contribute to the community in any meaningful way. They don't generate jobs, they don't create services, they don't work, they just get rich through rent money, which buys them more properties, which in turn generate even more money, which allows them to buy up even more properties. And the cycle continues. I understand that a lot of us believe in capitalism, and resent any kind of government intervention in the financial sphere, we call this by various slurs. But I need to ask you, at what point, is having a huge amount of wealth too much. I am not saying we should go full-blown communist and have the government take away people's money and then dole it out to the masses. I am just saying that we should put a limit on it so that the extremely wealthy will not get even wealthier, and that the rest of the society gets a chance to make some money for themselves. Keep in mind that for a large segment of the population, they are no less smart and no less hardworking than the super-wealthy. The super-wealthy simply have the benefit of having money to begin with, which gives them an edge and helps generate more and more money and at a much quicker pace. And once they are off like that, the rest of us will never be able to catch up. And the distance between us and them will only grow bigger. If we make sure the mega-billionaires can't get any richer, then the excess money will go towards those who are smart and willing to work, meaning the middle class. This way, we make sure money is not concentrated in too few hands, and we build the middle class. It's a win-win situation.
A quick note: Once you get to a certain point of wealth, any more wealth will not make you happier, but it will serve to take wealth from others, and this results in a reduction in happiness.
I want to talk about campaign slogans like, Trump's "Make America great again", Kamala Harris' "Together, we can win this", and from my country, Trudeau's "In Canada, better is always possible". These slogans fall under the umbrella of rousing speech. What is a rousing speech? Basically, it's anything inspirational that someone says to people to stir their blood and galvanize them into action. Rousing speeches have their use in times of great distress. For example, in the olden days when there was an invading army at the gate. Maybe the enemy forces had been burning down buildings, pillaging, killing people, raping women, that sort of things, and the country's leader wanted to rally his people to fight off the invaders. However, in our modern context, I feel that rousing speeches should be avoided, because I believe that an election should be a sober event. Slogans that stir people's blood are bad precisely because they stir people's blood. People can't think straight when they are in such a mental state. We've all seen it at campaigns and rallies, crowds wave mini-flags, they get whipped up, some even cry on TV, saying, "I still believe!!". These things will no doubt help someone get elected, however, they do nothing to make sure the person elected will be a good leader. This is why I will make it so that any campaign of my party will not adopt slogans or otherwise try to whip up the crowd. At first, this will put my party at a disadvantage against candidates who are willing to use slogans. However, I hope that with time, people will come to see that my idea is good. I want people to vote for my party because they have carefully researched my platform and they have decided that my policies are the best. I want people to vote for me for this reason. I don't want people to vote for me because I am able to send their spirits soaring through the use of inspiring but ultimately meaningless speeches.
If my party ever comes into power, I will do this: Every year, set aside a portion of the taxes the government has collected, and use it to buy up farmlands. Then put government workers to plant crops and grow food on them. Do this every year to the point where we can afford to give everybody enough food to eat. I want to do this because I believe anyone who works full time should not go hungry. However, people who cannot work full time, or people who cannot work at all, should not have to starve, either. So the end result is that everybody should not be left by the government to starve. Which means I should hand out food to everybody regardless of anything. I believe that as we advance as a nation, more and more things should be recognized as basic human rights. I believe recognizing essential foods as a basic human right is very reasonable. At first people might think this is ridiculous, but that's also what people thought when the idea was first put forth that people have the right to life, so that their lives could not simply be taken by, say, an angry monarch. Same thing with the right to clean drinking water. People used to think that if you wanted clean, potable water, you had to work for it. But now we have it freely flowing out of our faucets. My point is, we should continuously expand our list of rights that humans should enjoy. This is how we make progress as a species. And I don't think giving people essential foods will take away the incentives to work. People would only have basic food covered, if they want nice things, things that are extra, they have to pay for them themselves so they will still have to work. So I don't fear that the economy will come to a standstill just because people now don't have to worry about food. Besides, if you think about it, telling people that either they work, or they starve, is very uncivilized. It's almost like threatening people. I believe we have reached a point where stuff like that should belong in the dustbin of history. The prospect of starvation should not be a fact of life anymore. People simply shouldn't have to worry about starving when they live in a first-world country. As for how it will actually work, I realize that people who work and pay taxes will in effect be supporting people who either can't work, or won't work, as the case might be. And that's just how it is.