Re: [Ag Meinungsfindungstool] Open budget primary

[conseo <conseo AT polyc0l0r.net>]

Hi,

Michael Allan wrote:
> This is fairly complicated.  But it's interesting too, because it
> shows how different types of primary come together in the budget.
> 
> conseo said:
> > Yes, if [supply side] accounting happened in the same process, then
> > budget drafting would be embedded in the process, right? ...
> 
> We spoke since.  Here's a summary of how we figured the budget is
> decided, and how that decision is guided by the participants.  The
> summary reveals some holes, which I try to fill in below.  It looks
> like whole-budget drafting fits in one of them.
> 
> 
>          Issue  Guiding Primary            Decisive Authority
>   ============  =========================  ========================
> 
>         Forced  Legislative (tax law) [1]  Assembly
>        revenue
> 
>       Unforced  Planning (production) [2]  Executive (sub-office)
>        revenue
>                 Planning (donation)   [2]  RAC pledger [3]
>                                            + executive (sub-office)
>   ------------  -------------------------  ------------------------
>         Forced  - (supplier contracts)     None
>   expenditures
>                 Legislative           [1]  Assembly
>                 (statutory expenses)
> 
>       Unforced  Budget (expenditures) [4]  Executive (finance)
>   expenditures
> 
>   ============  =========================  ========================
>         Budget  ???                        Executive (finance)
>                                            + assembly
> 
>                                            - - - - - - - - - - - -
>                                            + judiciary (all decisions)
> 
> 
> Forced revenue comes from taxes guided by legislative primaries and
> decided by the assembly.  (These could be member fees for other types
> of organization, but I use government as my standard here.)  Unforced
> revenue may come from production (goods and services charged for),
> which is guided by planning primaries and decided by the officer who
> is charged with executing the plan.  Unforced revenue may also come
> from donations that are pledged to specific variants of the plan via
> the RAC, the pledged amounts being decided by the pledger (of course)
> while the variant is chosen by the executive; the pledge is redeemable
> only if the pledged variant is chosen.  (We discussed how wealth could
> influence the planning decision here, and we mostly agreed it's normal
> in this context, and not a problem.)
> 
> Forced expenditures come from supplier contracts that are already in
> force for materials, manpower, capital and such.  Payment for these is
> mandatory by contract law, and not decided by anyone.  Expenditures
> may also be enforced by statutory law, as with statutory programs or
> services.  Unforced expenditures - the discretionary balance among
> departments, programs and services - are guided by the budget primary
> for that purpose, but decided by the finance officer.
> 
> The sum of all these decisions is the budget (bottom left), which
> again is decided by the finance officer, typically in conjunction with
> the assembly, which has a veto.  Note that we're missing a primary
> here to guide the budget as a whole (???).  So I guess we need:
> 
>   (A) Budget primary (whole budget)
> 
> It might be implemented like a legislative primary [1], with variant
> budgets instead of bills.  It also needs special markup to read data
> from external sources that are shareable by the variant drafts, and it
> must render the data on the fly, instead of writing them directly to
> the text.  These data include things like the latest results of the
> expenditures primary, cost of supplier contracts, interest rate
> projections, and so forth.  It also needs spreadsheet-like
> capabilities to display intermediate and final calculations on the fly
> instead of writing them in.  Then it might be possible to patch
> variant budget drafts using text diffs, like we patch bills.  The
> drafting medium (so modified) is the budget composing tool we spoke of
> earlier.  The chief financial officer uses it to compose the official
> budget.  And rivals for that office in the *executive* primary (or
> budding future candidates) tend to be experienced drafters in the
> *budget* primary, where they all work more-or-less together.

Yes, this is important imo. Also you are right that it should build a common 
process instead of being separated in budget primary, plan drafting (with RAC 
and pledges for supplies) and executive primary. In the budget everything 
comes together really. The spreadsheet like features will also be very 
interesting. I hope I can dive into hacking that soon.

> 
> All decisions in the authority column (above) are subject to judicial
> review.  Courts may strike down or alter decisions.  So the judiciary
> is a decider, too.  But the deciders - the members of the assembly,
> executive and judiciary - are themselves the products of decision.
> Here's how *they* are decided:
> 
> 
>        Issue  Guiding Primary          Decisive Authority
>   ==========  =======================  ===========================
> 
>     Assembly  Single and multi-   [5]  Electorate
>               -winner electoral
> 
>    Executive  Executive electoral [6]  Electorate (presidential)
>                                        or assembly (parliamentary)
> 
>    Judiciary  ???                      Executive, electorate,
>                                        or executive + assembly
>   ==========                           - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>   Government                          + judiciary (all decisions)
> 
> 
> The sum of all the decisions on the left is a government.  But we're
> missing another primary here (???), the one that guides the choice of
> judges.  Judicial appointments are one-off, so I guess it would
> similar to a single-winner assembly primary [5].  Maybe call it:
> 
>   (B) Judicial bench primary.

Possible and reasonable. I still think the budget primary is closer to 
practice because the judiciary usually does not exist in organisations but in 
the state only. Still you have judicial branches and ethics boards often (as 
well as employee representatives for discriminatory issues), which are also 
elected usually. It is definitely necessary to form a complete government.

> 
> Just as experienced primary budget drafters are the best candidates
> for financial office, (and experienced primary bill drafters the best
> candidates for the legislature), so maybe we need a drafting primary
> for the judicial candidates.  I guess it would be one that provides
> guidance for judicial decisions: [7]
> 
>   (C) Judicial case primary.
> 
> Again there are deciders in the authority column above (electorate)
> who themselves are the products of decision:
> 
> 
>        Issue  Guiding Primary          Decisive Authority
>   ==========  =======================  ===========================
> 
>   Electorate  Legislative         [1]  Assembly (maybe others)
>               (constitutional law)
>                                        - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>                                        + judiciary (all decisions)
> 
> 
> The constitution says who the electors are.  The constitution is
> guided by a legislative primary and decided by the assembly under
> special rules, such as super-majority, consent of other authorities
> (executive, federal states), and so forth.

Which again can be changed through the constitution (feder borders for 
instance), so the process in total allows consensus based restructuring of 
the 
whole and all the small parts.

conseo

> 
> Mike
> 
> 
>   [1] Legislative primaries.
>       http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/legislative_action
> 
>   [2] Planning primaries. (not yet drafted)
>       http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/administrative_action
> 
>   [3] Resource accounting framework (RAC).
>       http://zelea.com/w/Category:Account
> 
>   [4] Budget primary (just expenditures).  The whole-budget primary
>       (not yet documented) would run in parallel with this.
>       http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/budgeting
> 
>   [5] Single and multi-winner electoral primaries.
>       http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/assembly_election
> 
>   [6] Executive electoral primary.
>       http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring
> 
>   [7] To be sure, it's important to bear in mind that: (a) primaries
>       run long in advance of decisions and keep running afterwards;
>       (b) while anyone is free to vote, anyone is also free to filter
>       and recount the votes, e.g. restricting them to legal experts;
>       (c) the appointments of higher judges tend to be secure; and (d)
>       they have the authority to temporarily shut down sources of
>       information, which includes things like case primaries.