In this South Pacific, I think it very much is. After all, we passed the defender resolution and spearheaded the formation of a defender bloc.

4× Cabinet minister /// 1× OWL director /// CRS member /// SPSF

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Surely we are confident enough in the cause of defending to let it speak for itself rather than artificially limiting future generations’ ability to alter it.

Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator.
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I don't think there's anything pointed to TSP not being defender as a result of a Great Council, as long as there are active and enforced protections against foreign manipulation. But it's kind of pointless talking specifics about what clauses might appear in a new constitution before this resolution is voted on.

There probably will be a constitutional provisions for defending, most people here probably aren't of the same opinion as Kris. After all, the defender resolution is itself a constitutional document! The distinction between it being in vs out of the Charter is just organizational. But it would be up to somebody to propose it and advocate for adoption in a new constitution.

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1) Yes, the forum and game side does add value because we have to halves of a community here and it makes it so the game side isn't being dictated to by and off-site forum that is barely involved with in-game activity.

The fact that the off-site forum is barely involved in in-game activity is a state of affairs that has come into existence due to the arbitrarily enforced division between the gameside and the forumside. You can't separate "off-site disengagement with the gameside" from the hostility of the gameside to the off-site and also from forum-users' lack of desire or motivation to engage the gameside. You are correct, once you have already decided there is a divide between these two platforms, one will form and the Cabinet will become institutionally disinterested and incapable of RMB governance. Correcting that may take time, but removing the arbitrary institutional choice to create a divide between the game-side and the forum-side is the first step. Instead of imagining the forum as a separate community, imagining the forum as an extension of the South Pacific, the game we govern on NationStates, is the correct option and will eventually produce programmatic changes in integration and engagement.

2) Yes, the delegate is a figurehead, not someone with actual power. For as much as had been argued that the prime minister needs something to do, the prime minister is effectively the head of government and has been since 2016.

This is an argument for why the term should not be shorter than six months, not a reason the term cannot be longer than six months. Given the low work demands of the job, there is little reason to not make the job a year long term, or even life. You can disagree with that, let's discuss it at a GC

3) The approach the current Assembly is taking to the in-game community is disgraceful. Firs threatening the LC and now wanting to abolish it is just beyond the pale. Unless you planning to find some other way for the in-game community to have a say in their own governance.

I addressed this above, but I take issue with you simply picking things you don't disagree with and labeling them as "disgraceful" and "beyond the pale". This is a turn of rhetoric which is not backed by substantive argumentation and is, at best, rooted in democratic idealism which doesn't match the reality of running the region.

The Cabinet has attempted to engage with the in-game community and LC substantially in recent terms, all to little avail, with a key example of this being the Z-Day event of my term, where the LC ghosted and ignored me for weeks as I prompted them to create plans for an event which occurs entirely on the NationStates site, and then prominent members of the gameside community pretended this was a failure of the Cabinet for not having simply done the job for the LC. How is the Assembly's conduct "disgraceful"? The lines of thought in the Assembly that are becoming prevalent with regards to the gameside's autonomy are entirely in response to (a) the gameside's persistent demonizing rhetoric about the Assembly and the Cabinet and (b) the LC's persistent failure to actually govern the gameside.

Not to mention, a route will remain for all members of the Coalition to become involved in their own self-governance. That route is to take part in the government of the region, hosted on the forum as an extension of the gameside community, rather than the idea these are two communities.

5) Why have laws at all? Let's just let the prime minister decide everything! 

This is a blatant strawperson of the idea I have suggested. The Prime Minister can make essential decisions regarding executive government with an oversight or approval process from the Assembly. That is not "deciding everything" as the Assembly would retain an oversight prerogative and retain the responsibility for, ya know, passing legislation.

Listen — here's the thing that seems obvious to me: there's a lack of activity and rather than try to find active participants, the powers that be are trying to consolidate power in the hands of a few.

How is blowing open the entire system of government an effort at power consolidation? If people wanted to consolidate power, they'd allow the status quo to continue, where they already have power and there are unlikely to be threats to their power.

There are literally thousands of nations this Cabinet could apply to and try to get involved in off-site activities, but instead of engaging with the on-site community, they are attempting to dictate from the offsite how everything should be run.

I addressed this above. The system we have now provides the Cabinet, either individually or institutionally, no incentive to engage the on-site to such a deep level. Not to mention, you are being incredibly generous to the potential membership the on-site can provide us given the enormous number of card farming puppets and once-a-month log-in nations on the gameside.

Something like the Chair's Briefing is a fantastic move imo to try and develop crossover between the communities.

The last several Cabinet's have been persistently making their announcements to the region via the RMB and at times via regional TG. If that is your vision of "outreach", that happens already, and it doesn't not happen simply because you do not notice it.

That said, if we indeed want to start a GC, I would advocate getting rid of the current version of GC and replace it with something more flexible in the new Charter altogether.

I'm fine with amending the current all-or-nothing GC formula and replacing it with a new one.

There's two things I want to address here.

First, you can accuse me of strawman-ing all you want, but two of the most recent discussions here have been to (1) allow the Prime Minister to appoint the Cabinet and (2) a threat to disband the LC. And, then we suddenly have the idea of a "Great Council." so color me wrong, but it certainly seems like after earlier ideas were questioned, we're trying to find another way to force the wanted changes.

Second, regarding the LC and RMB representation, I'll acknowledge that I'm incredibly sensitive to this. It took significant effort and fighting to get the current levels of representation — however imperfect they currently are — and, so recent proposals and questioning of the RMB-involvement in these processes are especially triggering to me. If you want to find better ways for input and representation from the RMB side, I'm all about it. (I, too, don't especially like the divide between the offsite and in-game communities.) But, history has generally shown that the RMB side generally gets forgotten about until it's time for another delegate switch, so at least the LC provides some measure of governance.

I'm going to reiterate my stance that all GCs are legislatively unnecessary and broadly dumb. Although, I do broadly agree with Glen that too much stability is a bad thing and given the amount of "old" players near inactivity, it would make sense to shake things up. I just have and will continue to strongly advocate for the RMB to be understood as vital part of the region and having appropriate representation to go with that.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

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I support calling a Great Council. Most of the debate here is about quibbles with the specific wording of the proposed resolution, but really the resolution is a formality. For disclosure, I reviewed the resolution and added in some parts.

I understand the attachment to the status quo. It's worked for a lot of people, myself included, but that isn't a good reason to stick with it. I think we get to a point where it's healthy for the long-term survival of the community to redo things. A type of creative destruction. We've had the Charter for 5 years, and more or less it's the same as it was when I wrote it (with help and input from others!) all that time ago. Things have changed around the edges, but the institutional structure of the region hasn't changed all that much. That stability was good. The Charter was written after a coup, so stability was the whole purpose.

Too much stability is a bad thing. What's happened over the years is that the status quo helped a handful of TSPers stay in top roles, shuffling around different institutions. I'm still doing this! We don't have a deep bench of people to take over roles when we leave. There really aren't many old TSPers around anymore. They might be in Discord or pop in here and there, but they aren't active in a meaningful sense. So we see this repeating pattern of new people getting into Cabinet ministries, failing by the standards set by long-term officeholders.

The new era of TSP is beholden to the standards and hangups of the old era. I mean, how much of our governing system was created specifically to prevent the 2016 coup perpetrators from gaining power? Quite a lot of it. Belschaft, a bit player in the coup, is the only one of those players still around, and he's barely active as it is. Why does the new era need to be constrained by laws designed for a context that no longer exists?

I don't know what people will come up with in a 2022 Great Council. And that's the entire point for me. If this was just about "fixing" the Local Council or reimagining the Cabinet, we'd just pass an omnibus amendment. That's not what I'm looking for when I say I support a GC. I want to see what people do with a blank slate. There are some guardrails in here to make holding a GC more secure (and more comfortable for me to support). But overall, it's a calling for the new era of TSP to take ownership of the region, craft it in their image, and be accountable for upholding and defending a new constitution that they personally wrote. There's a lot of power in that, I can speak from experience.

If this is truly what people want and not just stopping at reforming the executive branch and gameside government then I will support a GC.

Chief Supervising Armchair

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I still don't see any need for a Great Council.

The "Oh this will be fun, let's just see what happens" doesn't appeal to me at all.

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Legislator | Local Councilor | Aspiring TSP Curmudgeon
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I support calling a Great Council. Most of the debate here is about quibbles with the specific wording of the proposed resolution, but really the resolution is a formality. For disclosure, I reviewed the resolution and added in some parts.

I understand the attachment to the status quo. It's worked for a lot of people, myself included, but that isn't a good reason to stick with it. I think we get to a point where it's healthy for the long-term survival of the community to redo things. A type of creative destruction. We've had the Charter for 5 years, and more or less it's the same as it was when I wrote it (with help and input from others!) all that time ago. Things have changed around the edges, but the institutional structure of the region hasn't changed all that much. That stability was good. The Charter was written after a coup, so stability was the whole purpose.

Too much stability is a bad thing. What's happened over the years is that the status quo helped a handful of TSPers stay in top roles, shuffling around different institutions. I'm still doing this! We don't have a deep bench of people to take over roles when we leave. There really aren't many old TSPers around anymore. They might be in Discord or pop in here and there, but they aren't active in a meaningful sense. So we see this repeating pattern of new people getting into Cabinet ministries, failing by the standards set by long-term officeholders.

The new era of TSP is beholden to the standards and hangups of the old era. I mean, how much of our governing system was created specifically to prevent the 2016 coup perpetrators from gaining power? Quite a lot of it. Belschaft, a bit player in the coup, is the only one of those players still around, and he's barely active as it is. Why does the new era need to be constrained by laws designed for a context that no longer exists?

I don't know what people will come up with in a 2022 Great Council. And that's the entire point for me. If this was just about "fixing" the Local Council or reimagining the Cabinet, we'd just pass an omnibus amendment. That's not what I'm looking for when I say I support a GC. I want to see what people do with a blank slate. There are some guardrails in here to make holding a GC more secure (and more comfortable for me to support). But overall, it's a calling for the new era of TSP to take ownership of the region, craft it in their image, and be accountable for upholding and defending a new constitution that they personally wrote. There's a lot of power in that, I can speak from experience.

I believe that this exact reply is what made the call legal. If I recall, (paraphrase) ''The Great Council may only be called when (...) need for a massive, substantial reform (...) and not for issues which can be fixed by provided regular procedures.''
 

Just as long as we stay defender. Might go as far as to codify that in the preamble of our new constitutional document, whatever that's gonna be.

I've argued against this on Discord. I know I won't be participating in the GC (failing the criteria of 27th April in OP). However,

• ''Defender'' definition of TSP is already codified in constitutional laws.
  
• Even if the defending identity is considered, by consensus, to be an integral part of TSP; it's not a unique enough identity to warrant it being in the preamble.
  
• I also believe the amount of SPSF activity, close to that of NPA despite fewer regional members, speak for itself.
  

The Orange Records | Viliakmon (Pacifica) | NationStates Account Main | Discord: genericsequencealias#0990

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The biggest issue plaguing TSP right now is the cycle of ministers, where a minister gets elected, doesn't do anything, and resigns after a month because of school or exams. Stuff does happen, but if you know you have an exam in the middle of your term and that you won't be able to do anything for like a month, then... don't run. If this does pass, I would like something that prevents ministers from resigning within the first month of their term or prevents ministers from just doing nothing the whole term.

In this South Pacific, I think it very much is. After all, we passed the defender resolution and spearheaded the formation of a defender bloc.

The GP stance of the South Pacific right now is not an indication of where TSP and GP in general is going in 2023. Lately I've been seeing a lot more week-long sieges and defender leaders scraping the barrel for more troops just to counter the large raider armies, where during beginning to mid-2021 a couple of normal-sized defender armies could stomp the average occupation easily.

But, maybe I'm wrong. Sure, I think a year ago this would have been a widely accepted change to the Charter. But now? I'm not sure.

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Also, if we're just doing this for activity, can't we just do a mock trial or something?

"After he realizes this newfound power of his to override the hopes and dreams of republicans, he puts all of the united provinces under his control."
one time minister of culture

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But, maybe I'm wrong. Sure, I think a year ago this would have been a widely accepted change to the Charter. But now? I'm not sure.

If the insinuation is that we'd turn our backs on a faction we're a leader of because the said faction isn't doing too hot militarily at the moment after an unprecedented year of dominance...then I really think that we should reevaulate our choices. That feels like plain wrong to me, even if I don't care whether our ideological stance is codified into the Charter or not.

Also, if we're just doing this for activity, can't we just do a mock trial or something?

This is simply not for activity though. Like I've said in my previous posts, I believe that the system we have in place isn't working and we should look into what's wrong with it and what solutions we can come up with to fix it. A Great Council is, to me at the very least, the best way to do that.

Also apologies in advance to Kris, but I'm not really sure people are going to care enough about a mock trial right now for them to engage with it.

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While I don't want to distract from the actual purpose of this thread, I do feel a need to respond to comments on the state of our military activity.

Lately I've been seeing a lot more week-long sieges and defender leaders scraping the barrel for more troops just to counter the large raider armies, where during beginning to mid-2021 a couple of normal-sized defender armies could stomp the average occupation easily.

This is a strange way of saying that more players are getting involved in military gameplay. If we want to complain that we need larger and larger defender armies — where are the complaints from raiders that they need larger and larger piles? 'Needing larger defender armies' and 'setting turnout records' are two sides of the same coin.

'Scraping the barrel' is also hardly how I'd describe our methods. I remember past Ministers of Defense and Generals reaching out me about helping out as a civilian since at least 2020, and possibly before then as well when I wasn't regularly active.

Most of all, at least on my part, I like to believe that South Pacificans form their opinions on issues such as our military alignment based on their principles and on our regional principles, not on whichever faction we feel is currently "winning" harder.

Esfalsa | NationStates | Wiki | Roleplay | Discord

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