On a more serious note, one of my Chartertopia fantasies is that all budgets are independent and must be voter-approved, and all "excess funds" must be given to voters. No inter-budget transfers to prop up unpopular programs from well-funded ones. The feds cannot bribe states, states cannot bribe cities and counties. If a budget runs out of money early, they have to shut down. If there's money left over, it belongs to the voters, but the distribution method is left unsaid.
The primary side benefit is that the only way to enforce these provisions is for complete budget transparency. End-of-year splurges are right out; that's theft from voters. Maintaining rainy day reserves is fine, as is a reserve to smooth out seasonal differences in revenue and spending, such as sales taxes rising before the holidays and income tax audit spending rising after April 15th.
Of course it will never happen. But it ties in with Gwartney and Wagner proposal 4.
I also think every bill should need 2/3 to pass, to force consensus, and eliminate voice votes. I asked Grok once how much of FDR's New Deal legislation would have passed if it needed 2/3 vote, and it showed a nice detailed list of all major bills, then apologized for leaving so many blank because they had passed on a voice vote.
Voter-approved budgets don't seem feasible. I assume it would be through a ballot initiative but it would be very time consuming with the various iterations of the budgets that may be needed before one is finally approved by voters. Interested if you have something else in mind.
Assuming voters are content with the spending side, what about the tax side? Will they also vote on what types of taxes they will pay, or the structure of those taxes? If so, you could easily imagine the majority placing the tax burden on the minority.
I like your idea of preventing inter-budget transfers. It would get messy with how you allow each appropriating committee to raise revenue since taxing decision are left to the Ways and Means Committee, but you are right it would nicely connect the costs and benefits.
My Chartertopia is radically different in most aspects, and if you're really curious and ambitious, follow the link and read the Nutshell, but bear in mind it is my fantasy, I know it's a fantasy, and it's also my way of trying to understand what a minimal baseline government could be.
The voter approval is actually for taxes, not budgets, but they have to approve every budget's taxes. The initiative process is much simplified and not as onerous; elections are run privately, with what I believe to be near-foolproof fraud prevention; for instance, all voters can verify that their votes are counted, and everyone can tally vote totals. The government does not control elections nor even define districts. Voters submit bills to election companies who schedule elections between 30 and 90 days later, but they don't really control elections either; voters do. Again, it's not something I expect to ever be implemented.
Taxes can be anything voters approve, and I've never considered whether majorities might tax minorities. I think there are other protections against that, but I'll have to think about it. In the end, all judicial enforcement comes down to what the public will tolerate and literally enforce; for instance, if you lose a judicial case, whether a contract dispute or theft or assault, and don't pay your verdict debt, the public can steal from you all they want, as long as each theft is less than your verdict debt. (I call them outlaws.) A high enough accumulated outlaw debt, from a serial mugger or killer, prevents even complaining about being kidnapped and locked up, which gets the worst offenders off the streets.
One assumption is that my government is extremely limited, and people who want more government are free to create and join and leave contractual "associations", which are almost unlimited in what their rules are, ranging from insurance cooperatives to dictatorial kingdoms, prevented only from violating their membership contracts and members being able to quit at any time; members are not slaves.
This means there would be a lot fewer budgets to consider. Meat inspectors are one of my favorite examples (https://reason.com/2012/06/30/the-sickening-nature-of-many-food-safety/) of something better handled by private businesses. But if the charter were revised to allow government meat inspectors, they would have to submit their tax source to the voters. There could even be one huge slush fund budget, but the voters would control it, and I think popular programs, such as parks or meat inspectors, would want to keep their budgets as far away as possible from the yucky ones, like student loans, sociological research into Peruvian hookers and cocaine, and even Mars rovers.
ETA: Taxation only applies to voters. It's one way to preserve anonymity and eliminating the need for any kind of government rosters or IDs. So if a majority did try to tax minorities, the minorities could just sit out the next election and collapse the revenue. It's not perfect, but it would probably prevent most such bigotry.
Not to be *too* snarky, but I can think of a much simpler way of preventing future shutdowns: actually shut down, the whole kit and kaboodle -- border enforcement, military, ATC, *everything* shuts off at midnight.
On a more serious note, one of my Chartertopia fantasies is that all budgets are independent and must be voter-approved, and all "excess funds" must be given to voters. No inter-budget transfers to prop up unpopular programs from well-funded ones. The feds cannot bribe states, states cannot bribe cities and counties. If a budget runs out of money early, they have to shut down. If there's money left over, it belongs to the voters, but the distribution method is left unsaid.
The primary side benefit is that the only way to enforce these provisions is for complete budget transparency. End-of-year splurges are right out; that's theft from voters. Maintaining rainy day reserves is fine, as is a reserve to smooth out seasonal differences in revenue and spending, such as sales taxes rising before the holidays and income tax audit spending rising after April 15th.
Of course it will never happen. But it ties in with Gwartney and Wagner proposal 4.
I also think every bill should need 2/3 to pass, to force consensus, and eliminate voice votes. I asked Grok once how much of FDR's New Deal legislation would have passed if it needed 2/3 vote, and it showed a nice detailed list of all major bills, then apologized for leaving so many blank because they had passed on a voice vote.
Voter-approved budgets don't seem feasible. I assume it would be through a ballot initiative but it would be very time consuming with the various iterations of the budgets that may be needed before one is finally approved by voters. Interested if you have something else in mind.
Assuming voters are content with the spending side, what about the tax side? Will they also vote on what types of taxes they will pay, or the structure of those taxes? If so, you could easily imagine the majority placing the tax burden on the minority.
I like your idea of preventing inter-budget transfers. It would get messy with how you allow each appropriating committee to raise revenue since taxing decision are left to the Ways and Means Committee, but you are right it would nicely connect the costs and benefits.
My Chartertopia is radically different in most aspects, and if you're really curious and ambitious, follow the link and read the Nutshell, but bear in mind it is my fantasy, I know it's a fantasy, and it's also my way of trying to understand what a minimal baseline government could be.
The voter approval is actually for taxes, not budgets, but they have to approve every budget's taxes. The initiative process is much simplified and not as onerous; elections are run privately, with what I believe to be near-foolproof fraud prevention; for instance, all voters can verify that their votes are counted, and everyone can tally vote totals. The government does not control elections nor even define districts. Voters submit bills to election companies who schedule elections between 30 and 90 days later, but they don't really control elections either; voters do. Again, it's not something I expect to ever be implemented.
Taxes can be anything voters approve, and I've never considered whether majorities might tax minorities. I think there are other protections against that, but I'll have to think about it. In the end, all judicial enforcement comes down to what the public will tolerate and literally enforce; for instance, if you lose a judicial case, whether a contract dispute or theft or assault, and don't pay your verdict debt, the public can steal from you all they want, as long as each theft is less than your verdict debt. (I call them outlaws.) A high enough accumulated outlaw debt, from a serial mugger or killer, prevents even complaining about being kidnapped and locked up, which gets the worst offenders off the streets.
One assumption is that my government is extremely limited, and people who want more government are free to create and join and leave contractual "associations", which are almost unlimited in what their rules are, ranging from insurance cooperatives to dictatorial kingdoms, prevented only from violating their membership contracts and members being able to quit at any time; members are not slaves.
This means there would be a lot fewer budgets to consider. Meat inspectors are one of my favorite examples (https://reason.com/2012/06/30/the-sickening-nature-of-many-food-safety/) of something better handled by private businesses. But if the charter were revised to allow government meat inspectors, they would have to submit their tax source to the voters. There could even be one huge slush fund budget, but the voters would control it, and I think popular programs, such as parks or meat inspectors, would want to keep their budgets as far away as possible from the yucky ones, like student loans, sociological research into Peruvian hookers and cocaine, and even Mars rovers.
ETA: Taxation only applies to voters. It's one way to preserve anonymity and eliminating the need for any kind of government rosters or IDs. So if a majority did try to tax minorities, the minorities could just sit out the next election and collapse the revenue. It's not perfect, but it would probably prevent most such bigotry.
Not to be *too* snarky, but I can think of a much simpler way of preventing future shutdowns: actually shut down, the whole kit and kaboodle -- border enforcement, military, ATC, *everything* shuts off at midnight.