Comments on: Legislation

By: Shay

Shay — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:39:51 +0000

The only problem with technocracies is that they are invariably non-democratic, leading eventually to even further corruption. You know the old saying about power and corruption…
This must be what Plato meant when he said (well, not exactly) that democracy was the best of a bad lot.

By: Eran Sandler

Eran Sandler — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 08:24:56 +0000

I was thinking myself about going back to a tribal way of things and adopt from it the Council of the Elders.

Instead of outsourcing legislation matters into contractors (god knows we have enough lawyers in Israel), we will organize a group of Elders with extensive knowledge in the various fields like economy, sociology, political sciences, military, etc that will actually lead the country. They will be chosen upon enough past experience not by the central bodies and various parties or just by the whinings of the people close to them that elected them.

Regarding the sub contracting of law makings and such, the problem will probably be with the bidding process and it will become all corrupted and such…

Perhaps we can utilize the Elders technique here as well, taking only judges and long time lawyers into this council of legislators.

By: Shay

Shay — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:04:28 +0000

I’m glad I’m not the only person who thinks this has totally gone off-track.
While I can see the democratic principle underlying the idea that even an imbecile and an ignorant can and should be allowed to run for parliament, I find it rather disturbing how frequently this seems to be employed.

I also object to the prevailing trend of appointing MKs as ministers. One job has almost nothing to do with the other, and it begs the question of conflicting interests and separation of powers.

Perhaps (like everything else in this country) legislation could be sent out to primary and secondary contractors. People who’ll be paid to actually do the legislative work, with the MK just giving his seal of approval or something. Maybe we got a startup?

By: Eran Sandler

Eran Sandler — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:47:14 +0000

Sometimes I just think that we need to get the Turkish rule back to Israel. An Eye for an Eye, a hand for a theft and d**k for a rape.

I’ve seen an interview with some MK that said he just don’t have time (and probably brain power) to read every legislative offer that comes up for voting.

They just read the executive summary of the major proposals and that’s it.

Now how fucked up is that?

Now I’m not talking about ministers who have some other job function to perform (which they hardly do anyway), but the rest of members of the Knesset (which is 120-X where X can be anything from 15 to 30 depending on the government at hand). Can’t they just fucking do their job (and proposing stupid rules without adequate research is not their job) by reading MOST (not just the major) law proposals and proposing, when necessary and adequate, new laws that will actually make sense and will be backed by hard undisputed facts?

I really don’t want to prove right to all those who say that giving us a country was the best way of us getting rid of ourselves.

Perhaps we do need to federate some of these processes, reducing the “HARD” work of reading law proposals and checking their facts from the all knowing members of the Knesset and replace it with various committees that will be publicly elected that will actually do this job.

I’m running out of ideas for this one and in the mean time some MKs are running the country off its tracks.