Health care is a costly affair and the best method to reduce a nation’s medical expenses, is to prevent its citizens from getting sick in the first place. Therefore space settlements should focus on preventive medicine in their health policies. Continue reading Health policy
Category Archives: politics
Republicanism and FOSS
Self-governance is one of the core principles of classical republicanism. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is closely related to the idea of self-governance and hence classical republicans should promote its use. The opposite of FOSS is proprietary software. Continue reading Republicanism and FOSS
On republicanism and federation
For the ancient Greeks it was clear. The ideal polis, a self-governing community, had a maximum of citizens. They disagreed on the actual number, but anything beyond a few ten thousand was considered to be incompatible with self-governance. Continue reading On republicanism and federation
Citizens panels
Attempts to improve representative democracy usually involve the use of referendums or popular initiative. However, both are quite blunt tools as complex issues are reduced to a simple “yes or no” and often result in ambiguous results as is demonstrated by recent referendums in the Netherlands and the UK. Continue reading Citizens panels
Principles for Public Policy
In this document we outline the principles of public policy. These principles are:
- Non-intervention
- self-sufficiency
- equitable society
- permanent education
- localism
Thought of the day
Government
should be as big as necessary
and as small as possible
Self-employment and basic income
Universal self-employment and the abolition of wage labor should be the ultimate goal of the international labor movement. It is therefore unfortunate that in our time most trade unions and labor parties are ignoring self-employment and instead pursue policies that perpetuate wage labor. Continue reading Self-employment and basic income
Lobbyism versus republicanism
It cannot be said too often that the word republic is derived from res publica, which is Latin for general welfare, the public good or the common wealth. Consequently the principal aim of a republican government is to pursue public rather than private interests. Continue reading Lobbyism versus republicanism
Automation: the republican perspective
This is the second part of our series on automation. In part 1 we discussed the social and economic consequences of automation. This post will discuss automation from a political perspective and will present a moral case for automation.
Food for thought
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is an interesting political philosopher. In this post we would like to share two quotes from The Human Condition. Continue reading Food for thought
