THE RUSSO BLOCK

The goal of this living document is to house my thoughts, research notes, and ideas about how to create a more prosperous society. Additionally, this document will provide an emphasis on mechanism design, game theory, and sound economic principle.

Most of the notes here will begin as "stream of conciousness" sentences, bullet points, or other forms of rough drafting. These will later be revised to a higher standard of writing to increase clarity and provide proper citations.

Contents

• Glossary
• Foundations
• Purpose of Civilization
• Purpose of the Individual
• Rights of the Individual
• Duties of the Individual
• Rights of the Government
• Duties of the Government

Glossary

Power: Social, political, military, or economic influence. The ability and magnitude with which an entity is capable of creating change within a civilization.

Foundations

Civilizations are founded by and for intelligent life and must therefore be of service to its members as living beings.

Two valuable observations can be made to start our discussion. First, power naturally accumulates. I.e. the more power an entity has, the more power it is able to obtain. Second, over time the majority of intelligent life will inevitably choose to assemble into civilizations.

Purpose of Civilization

1. Protect the fundamental rights of each member
2. Overcome scarcity
3. Maintain the society

Protect Individual Rights

--- WIP ---

Overcome Scarcity

Scarcity refers to the reality that resources are limited and incur expense while needs and wants are unlimited. There is no way to permanently satiate scarcity, however, cooperation and management can help supply and demand of resources reach and maintain an equilibrium.

All civilizations are only able to exist due to surplus in the face of scarcity. Whereas most uncivilized or proto-civilized individuals or groups rely on some form of self-subsistence (in some cases at the expense of others) civilizations leverage the surpluses produced by the self-sufficient to sustain activites related to leadership and deliberation.

For the time being, disregard the endless concerns regarding leadership and civilization. These will be addressed in an appropriate order. Concerns aside, I will make the following observation: delibration is always better than no deliberation. I.e. it is better for intelligent beings to think about their decisions than to not think about their decisions.

At its simplest, deliberation is usually made by a single individual or relatively small group compared to the civilization at large. This is to be expected. Humans are not able to share thoughts and thus surplus resources, time, and energy must be consolidated into a smaller portion of individuals who will then be able to more thoroughly process a single line of thought and, if the surplus is sufficient, discuss amongst the other leaders.

(There is a good discussion to be had about which form of deliberation is best: the many forms of democracy, oligarchy, technocracy, etc. This will be saved for a later time.)

Given that deliberation is good but requires a surplus of resources a civilization must dedicate itself to overcoming scarcity and thus create the necessary surplus. It is also worth noting many joys and occupations valued by intelligent life, especially scientific advancement, require a similar surplus of resources to conduct.

Maintain the Civilization

--- WIP ---

Three Essential Surpluses

All of life and, by extension, civilization, is supported by surpluses of three essences. These three essential surpluses are:

1. Matter
2. Energy
3. Space

Matter consists of all chemical elements by which life exists. It includes water, nutrients, and materials auxiliary to lifeforms themselves, but considered necessary for survival. These auxiliary materials are such used in the construction of shelter and clothing.

Energy allows both living and inanimate things to move and function. For living things this usually takes the form of chemical energy measured in calories and for inanimate things (machines, mostly) this could be any of the various fuels, electricity, kinetic energy, etc.

Space is required for both matter and energy to occupy. In particular, land that is habitable and arable is necessary for any civilization.

Energy is usually the easiest surplus for life to depend on. Sunlight provides the single greatest surplus of energy although most is lost to entropy. Chemical energy found in food and fuels typically comes at the lowest cost and in the most usable of forms. Despite this, not all sources of energy are equally safe, sustainable, or accessible. (Source needed) It has been estimated that 90% of an ecosystem's life must be producers to provide enough surplus energy for 10% of that ecosystem's life to be anything else. Therefore, reasonable precautions must be made to safeguard plant life and biodiversity.

Matter is usually the easiest surplus for life to depend on. The most common elements which comprise living organisms (Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen) are all plentiful although not always in a form that is readily available to living things. Despite this there are some trace elements which living beings depend on which are not as available. Nutrient deficiencies arise as a result.

Space is the most scarce of the essential surpluses as civilizations progress. The previous two essences occupy space and require space to be reserved for their production. Farms, factories, silos, storage facilities, and more must all compete for space with members of society and must be weighed on scale with these other factors. In short, not all things compete for matter or energy, but all things compete for space.

To Be Organized

Below are some notes that need to be incorporated into the main passage of this page at some point.

Split Decisions

It is disadvantageous for the foundations of a civilization to be born out of compromise. Often times this is necessary due to the circumstances under which civilizations establish themselves, however it contributes to complexity and weakness throughout all the civilization built upon those foundations.

The United States Constitution offers three examples of such.

The first being the "Great Compromise" which created the two-house legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Obviously there was great need for this at the time but looking back on over two hundred years of American politics we can plainly see that such a system is needlessly complex, inefficient, and overall makes for a worse government and society. There is need for an accurate representation of the peoples' will and need to preserve the autonomy of each state so as to increase the locality of government. However a system determined by arbitrary state lines with an incredible propensity to gridlock itself is certainly not the well-defined and well-oiled machine a government ought to be.

Similarly, the second and third major compromises of the US Constitution (the Electoral College and Three-Fifths Compromise) need neither introduction nor further exploration into their problems. Regardless of your stance on the Electoral College there is little reason to deny it is the very embodiment of a "needlessly complex" system of government.

The focus here isn't about these specific implementations of the United States Government, but rather how the conditions of their drafting and subsequent compromises has negatively affected one of the largest civilizations on Earth for over two hundred years.

There is good reason to believe a civilization's foundations ought to be formulated by as few authors, and with as few compromises, as possible. The most basic structure of a civilization ought to be both efficient to enforce and consistent with itself. This ensures later additions will not be stifled by prior struggles.

Standards for Legislation

Good laws make for good civilizations and such laws ought to be held to a high standard. In particular, laws ought to be simple and actionable. The first of these conditions is harder to pinpoint so I will focus on the latter of the two.

Laws must be actionable. A law which cannot be enforced or leveraged in a courtroom is of no use to society and only pollutes the public consciousness. For a law to be considered "actionable" it must be:

• Well-defined.
• Within the power of its enforcer to enact.
• Consistent with both itself and other pertinent laws.

I wish to place particular emphasis on the last of these conditions. While there are no doubt many laws which fail to meet the first two conditions there is less focus on issues stemming from the failure to meet the third. Consistency with other laws and within subsections of the same law is particularly difficult to ensure since the problem is, by its very nature, less encapsulated than problems caused by poor definitions or laws outside enforcement's capabilities. A single law maybe be isolated from its broader context and observed to be ill-defined or beyond enforcement's power; however, consistency can only be observed when considering the more complex context in which the individual law is applied.

Inconsistency is therefore the most prevalent issue within modern legal systems and the issue which best evades remedy. To illustrate this point consider a scenario where a law is enacted stating "No person shall wear red clothing on a Thursday." only for legislation to be passed many years later stating "Every person shall wear red clothing on each odd numbered day.". Should a Thursday and odd numbered day coincide the two laws become unactionable. Enforcment cannot enforce both laws simultaneously. Such a predicament requires the enforcment to make a decision on which law, if any, to enforce and in effect elevates an executive power with legislative abilities.

Evidently, inconsistencies within legislation require a breach of the separation of powers to resolve, but more importantly we find these inconsistencies arise over long periods of time and between varying public sentiments only further concealing their mischeif from even well-meaning legislators.

I propose an unorthodox solution: that laws be written in a specialized "coding" language which sufficiently captures the nuance required to govern while simultaneously ensuring consistency throughout a series of laws. Should a new proposed law be found as "inconsistent" with pre-existing laws then an error is thrown and the "law" fails to compile.

Notes to Self

• Don't forget the box tally system.