The future of the Government

[Erik Mortis]

Right. New plan. Houses failed due to angst. Now what?
Do we return to Duchies?
Do we rebuild the Charter?
Do we disband the Landsraad and Kaisership?
Do we end feudalism?

Ideas?

[CJ Miller]

>do we return to duchies

Somewhat. Call them Provinces and give each a Governor-General appointed by the Folkedag.

>do we rebuild the charter

Yes.

>do we disband the landsraad and kaisership

No. However, we rename the Landsraad the Folkedag, give every citizen a vote therein, and make the Kaiser an elected monarch.

>do we end feudalism

Not sure.

[Jonas]

Right. New plan. Houses failed due to angst. Now what?
Do we return to Duchies?
Do we rebuild the Charter?
Do we disband the Landsraad and Kaisership?
Do we end feudalism?

Ideas?

I want to propose the return to a simple system that doesn't require too much people around. That way we avoid that the nation will suffer during the next few weeks / months (I don't expect everyone returning immediately and it wouldn't surprise me that some will take a long LOA).
So, let us just return to the system of the past: Duchies with a Duke that represent the people. It will be the duty of the Duke to represent his people.

We could rebuild the Charter, but I don't know what we should change. I'm not from the opinion that we should disband the Kaiserhip, nor the Landsraad. But that's just me.

If people want a symbolic break with the past, we could rename the Empire to... errr... Feudal Federation of Shireroth... Confederacy of Shireroth... Zollverein of Shireroth... errr...

>do we return to duchies

Somewhat. Call them Provinces and give each a Governor-General appointed by the Folkedag.

>do we rebuild the charter

Yes.

>do we disband the landsraad and kaisership

No. However, we rename the Landsraad the Folkedag, give every citizen a vote therein, and make the Kaiser an elected monarch.

>do we end feudalism

Not sure.

If we are going to elect the Kaiser (I see no reason why, to be honest), then we should call him a president. Because that's where you're aiming for.
And having our subdivisions called provinces doesn't do anything. Except making us less original.

So... the Folkedag would appoint governors? Why? I don't remember that we have had problems with appointments of the local leaders. In the contrary, I would be more worried if I knew that our Duke wouldn't appoint his successor himself. Till now the Kaiser only interfered when there wasn't a replacement appointed. I don't consider that the problem.

[Falkner van der Sluijs]

>do we return to duchies

Somewhat. Call them Provinces and give each a Governor-General appointed by the Folkedag.

>do we rebuild the charter

Yes.

>do we disband the landsraad and kaisership

No. However, we rename the Landsraad the Folkedag, give every citizen a vote therein, and make the Kaiser an elected monarch.

>do we end feudalism

Not sure.

No, bad, this is not turning us into a democracy

[CJ Miller]

Since when is giving every citizen legislative power not a democracy?

[CJ Miller]

If we are going to elect the Kaiser (I see no reason why, to be honest), then we should call him a president. Because that's where you're aiming for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President

[Jonas]

If we are going to elect the Kaiser (I see no reason why, to be honest), then we should call him a president. Because that's where you're aiming for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President

I know of the existence of an elective monarchy, CJ. But what you're trying to do is creating a democracy with an elected president (you can call it whatever you want, but I'm not going to call it Kaiser).
Yeah, there was the Holy Roman Empire, the (early) Kingdom of France,... that were elective monarchies. But then you had to be a (pretty high) noble. And I'm pretty sure that's not what you're aiming for (the more because the 'dukes', the high nobles, would been have been elected by a Folkedag, which would mean that we would elect a simple councillor).
Result: we would be a republic with just some different names.

[CJ Miller]

I never said "elected by the Folkedag". I was actually thinking that the Kaiser would be elected from amongst either the Governors-General or the IAC.

[Jonas]

I never said "elected by the Folkedag". I was actually thinking that the Kaiser would be elected from amongst either the Governors-General or the IAC.

So: the governors were elected by the Folkedag and they elect a Kaiser. So, indirectly elected by the Folkedag. And as the IAC is an advisory council, I wouldn't give them the privilege to elect a Kaiser.
Besides: that wouldn't make it more of an elected monarchy: you need nobles for that. And a governor isn't a noble but (in this case) an elected representative (once more: it worries me that the governors would be elected by the country's council).

Errrm, good. Enough of this. We can better use our energy of rebuilding Shireroth instead of bickering about this (and with 'this' I mean the argument about whether it's a president or Kaiser).

Simply put. I'm opposed to your idea for simple reasons:
1. It's a (direct) democracy, while I want to keep the feudal system.
2. the Dukes would be elected.
3. Even worse: the Dukes would be elected by a national council, which means any stranger can get a job as governor in one of the provinces.
4. There were never arguments about how to appoint a Duke, so why should we change something that works?
5. The Kaiser shouldn't be elected to avoid that people bring some puppets to Shireroth to win the elections.
6. Why renaming everything? The Landsraad sounds good and 'provinces' is used by most nations. I'm not going to look for new, original names because what we have is all right.

[Falkner van der Sluijs]

Since when is giving every citizen legislative power not a democracy?

I meant you're not allowed to turn us into a democracy.

[Andreas the Wise]

Malarbor has made his views on democracy fairly clear, I think.

I'd recommend a system designed with the assumption that we don't have enough citizens to sustain three dukes with three sub-citizens each. And probably suspending the Landsraad at the moment in favour of a council of war of the nobles.

[Jonas]

Malarbor has made his views on democracy fairly clear, I think.

I'd recommend a system designed with the assumption that we don't have enough citizens to sustain three dukes with three sub-citizens each. And probably suspending the Landsraad at the moment in favour of a council of war of the nobles.

Yeah! Like the Council of Mils that we had in Kildare.

The Imperial War Cabinet!

[Jacobus Loki]

A Three-Duchy system worked for a while as an interim solution.

It needs to be kept as simple as possible, and the Kaiser needs to be ready to Decree at the drop of a hat.

[Jonas]

A Three-Duchy system worked for a while as an interim solution.

It needs to be kept as simple as possible, and the Kaiser needs to be ready to Decree at the drop of a hat.

1 Duke, 1 vote.

[Jacobus Loki]

1 Duke, 1 vote

Amen.

[Harvey Steffke]

I'm having a very difficult time believing we're not just going in circles at this point...

[Jonas]

I'm having a very difficult time believing we're not just going in circles at this point...

So the reason we shouldn't do it is because otherwise we would use a system that we used for quite a long time?

I, honestly, found it the most simple and best system that we had. But that's just my opinion.

[Jacobus Loki]

There is an organic sense to Kaiser - Duke - Baron - Count. Almost anyone can grasp the basics in 5 minutes.

The Landsraad can be active, and challenge/co-operate with a Kaiser. If it goes to sleep, the Kaiser must be able to Decree. If the Kaiser gets weird, the Landsraad must be able to challenge him.

It is a built in balance of power.

If people are into complicated systems, they can do that in a Barony or Duchy to their hearts content.

[Harvey Steffke]

Regardless, we were there, and we moved on for some reason or another. Whatever motivated us to do so appears to be forgotten and ignored.

And I maintain that the current issues cannot be solved by mere legislative reshuffling alone.

[Jacobus Loki]

We changed, because influential people thought that things needed stirring up. It didn't work, or rather, it "worked" to stir things up, but in the wrong way.

Shirithians love Shireroth, but many of them also love their "home" region. The house system tore a lot of that apart, as evidenced by many actions.

I think the most important thing is to go back to a system where people could do what they want with "their" bit of Shireroth, but still participate in the larger community.

[Jonas]

We changed, because influential people thought that things needed stirring up. It didn't work, or rather, it "worked" to stir things up, but in the wrong way.

Indeed. I remember that I supported it in the beginning because I liked to see something new (or at least give the experiment a chance). I think most of us had the same thought.
But I'm sure that I hadn't any real problems with the system itself.

[Jacobus Loki]

I saw a lot of this coming.

I toyed with the idea of doing with Yardistan what is being done with Elwynn. I loathed seeing peoples homes being stripped from them, as what happened with me in Absentia, my little bit that I brought into Shireroth.

Rather, Kildare gave me shelter and a chance to stay in Shireroth with pride.

I heartily disliked the choking vine of laws that sooner or later would be ignored anyway.

But enough of what was wrong. A new, brighter future lies before us. CIROS sounds pretty cool.

[Jonas]

But enough of what was wrong. A new, brighter future lies before us. CIROS sounds pretty cool.

And avoids that we mess with a certain tradition.

[Jacobus Loki]

[Erik Mortis]

Harvey is right though. We do need more then a reshuffle of laws.

[Jacobus Loki]

CIROS. Duchies. Maybe an addendum to the Charter.

[Erik Mortis]

Well, as it stands the Kaiser could just come in and mess with the Duchies. Two ways to fix that.. 1. Charter revision. 2. The Great Convention! (a binding agreement between the Kaiser and the Nobles, violation of which would bring heavy consequences).

[Jacobus Loki]

Great Convention sounds very cool.

[Jonas]

Well, as it stands the Kaiser could just come in and mess with the Duchies. Two ways to fix that.. 1. Charter revision. 2. The Great Convention! (a binding agreement between the Kaiser and the Nobles, violation of which would bring heavy consequences).

Great Convention! Yay! Finally I will have the opportunity to use this picture!



But perhaps better that you first do the convention and afterwards a charter revision.

[Andreas the Wise]

Harvey, I hear what you're saying about how just going back to the old system can't solve all our problems because we moved away from it (therefore there must be something wrong with it). See my long rambly post here for more on that.