Hello, Magisters. It’s me.
I intend for this thread to serve as an index for a series of proposals, as well as a general discussion area that is more formal and documented than Discord. I don’t like what feels like the frantic nature of a lot of legal discussions we’ve had recently on Discord, and it’s easy for things to get lost there.
It’s time for a long and serious look at many of our laws and processes, particularly in the context of security. I’d like to be able to drop the Judge Dredd act and be more social here, or focus on things other than weird and broken laws / SOs and my fear of infiltrators repeatedly trying to capture TEP as a Gameplay asset (it’s not paranoia if it’s true; I’ve spent enough time around the Gameplay community to know). However, this will require me to actually address those things, rather than pretending they’re not a huge problem looming in the background. Someday, someone will show up here with a new name and a clean IP address and we will be entirely powerless to prevent them and their coordinated team of infiltrators from stealing our region, locking down our government, doing away with our forum and disenfranchising our forum RP community, and probably cracking down on the RMB and scattering our RMBers to the wind (a free RMB creates tribes, and autocrats don’t like tribes). Say what you will about the current government, the current “OOC” administration, and the current roster of fifteen elected Viziers, but our collective attempts to maintain, build, and moderate this community in good faith while keeping it as open and democratic as possible are what’s best, and a usurper would reshape every aspect of the region as it suits their fancy and serves their agenda without any regard for the things we all value. Maybe two or three people would prefer it. At least, until the usurpers turn around and burn them, too. There is a way to retain our democracy while making it less susceptible to overthrow, or at least making the process of capturing it slower, more arduous, and overall unfeasible and unattractive.
For 15 years I have warned members of the government: if we continue with our system as it is designed currently (and previously … which is roughly the same) this eventual overthrow is inevitable. We’re very lucky: we’re lucky that Empire failed before I arrived, we’re lucky that UDL and other meddling competitors were driven out ~15-13 years ago (and that I didn’t come here to redesign the government as an autocracy, which I absolutely could have done when the Magis was only ~2 to 3 people and the citizenry was maybe ~10 semi-active members), we’re EXTREMELY lucky that Rahl / LWU circa 2017 to 2019 were such a mess and were crippled by infighting, we’re lucky that the 2022 Concrisis didn’t cause some kind of total institutional collapse, and we’re lucky today in that we have had loyalist Delegates, a good number of which “grew up” in TEP RP environments, to deter attempts to insert agents in a sequence of two to three Delegates that would reshape the place for foreign interests. We’re lucky that the intermittent victorious “cosmo” candidates were all here in good faith (thank Lib for laying the groundwork for that). The current system may be fine for a time, as long as we have a consistent crop of these loyalist candidates to maintain the independence of the Executive and legitimacy of the republic; however, someday we will not be lucky. I can think of reasonably easy ways for people who know what they’re doing to organize and successfully execute a design against this government within the next two to five years. We get tired and we let our guard down, and no one wants to have to alternate between periods of prosperity and activity and periods of paranoia and tension. While we can maintain the current system safely for a time, we need to consider future alternatives.
Additionally, our laws are rife with loopholes and weaknesses ripe for exploitation. External citizenship is vulnerable to stacking: stacking both Delegate elections and the Magisterium. EPSA, when relatively unsupervised, is vulnerable to shuffling WAs into and out of circulation and attempts at (legal by onsite game rules) citizenship multiing by individuals (thank you, Dead & Drem, for being on top of this). Electioneering law allows for putting almost anyone on trial, especially election officials presented with a bizarre Catch-22, as it legally does not allow for even mentioning elections outside of the Discord channel despite the law also requiring the Viceroy to send telegrams (the original intention was to prevent soliciting). A single arbiter presides over criminal trials, which is strange, in my opinion; this recent talk of reforming appeals might be better directed at codifying a better process for trials that involves the entire Conclave, and maybe doesn’t have such rigid recusal requirements (simply talking about something beforehand should not constitute COI; COI is membership in organizations or some kind of vested, tangible interest in an outcome). Omitting to prevent treason is only applicable to treason; hence, to acts by citizens. Ridiculous. Citizens can apparently lose citizenship, commit crimes, then regain citizenship to avoid punishment. The WAD has TOO MUCH POWER. The position is coveted by our adversaries, and for good reason, and it is too accessible. Its capture almost certainly dooms us. It holds virtually all the mechanical power onsite, can appoint / demote ROs, determines our approach to FA, is the first thing most newcomers ever notice, and it can appoint the court, among other things. Terrifying. I surely haven’t even covered every problem in this one paragraph.
Among subsequent action items for individual threads are:
- A local WA-only citizenship requirement to prevent stacking / shuffling with specific exemptions for the Executive, as requested, and a potential residency requirement prior to voting (2 weeks as WA? Starting from WA acquisition, not starting from citizenship admission) - this could maybe be worked into this amendment. Aiv has a draft that he’d like to post subsequently. I’ll link it in this index. I’m not sure if it includes the Exe participation exemption, so that’s likely something we can discuss. I’ll pull in Lib for ideas on how to write that.
- Reworking “electioneering” so that practically everyone, including the Viceroy (for doing their job), cannot be put on trial - I see this as urgent, as well. Maybe more urgent. Bach has been working on this, I believe.
- Establishing some codified expectations for trials and not leaving proceedings entirely up to the potential anarchy of the SOC / a unilateral decision by one Arbiter that would need to be painfully appealed - forcing this group to address trials as a group, with certain majority requirements for delivering a verdict.
- Amending the Treason Act so that we can convict people who are withholding information on adversaries attempting the equivalent of treason without technically being able to commit it, due to a lack of citizenship.
- A long and serious discussion about WAD and “HOG” (“head of government” - “Chief Minister”, “Prime Minister”, etc.) separation, as successfully employed by regions like TSP, where the WAD will be an elected member of the security council who is separate from the Executive and where the WAD serves at the pleasure of both the Praesidium and the citizenry, who will both have the power to replace them with another Vizier if they’re failing in their duties. A mechanism for this must be considered, and we need to consider one that does not make the HOG a completely undesirable role which damages activity in TEP or, ironically, makes it undesirable and, hence, a target, and it is subsequently used to populate the court with hostiles.
- A consideration of how our Conclave is populated. This will be a more difficult discussion and I actually do not have my own suggestion currently, but the idea of having the Praesidium approve candidates has been mentioned therein. Additional concepts should be considered.
- Opening the Magisterium up to all citizens after local WA-only citizenship is established.
- Reworking Praesidium nominations to also require the approval (majority?) of the Viziers. I don’t see this one as a high priority but it was suggested.
I don’t expect all of these to be popular or to pass, but they’re ideas that have been discussed in various corners that need to be opened up to the legislature and citizenry in general and discussed in public for some time.
Personally, I have a vision of the future where there are even more Viziers (think 20+), and we can’t even attempt to be painted as some kind of monolithic entity capable of minority rule (a plainly false, ludicrous, and malignant narrative that only a few people are spreading, but let it be known that I resent it deeply and think it is being propagated selfishly and in bad faith against a democratically-elected body that has been explicitly charged by this government to consider security, first and foremost). Debate and disagreement (but not infighting) are alive and well in the Praesidium, even if people on the outside besides the Delegate aren’t privy to it. Just because a decision is released from the Viziers doesn’t mean we didn’t argue over it for months.
I heartily invite all members of the government to participate in this discussion and in the series of threads that will follow this one, as everyone’s input is critical for devising solutions that will satisfy the needs of all branches of government and the needs of most citizens. I ask for all hands on deck and everyone’s critical thinking, and thank you in advance.