What is RIC?

RIC is the first step toward democracy for a modern western state. If you want food security, civil rights, clean energy, anything within the government’s exclusive power, then your first priority is RIC. Governments and parliaments will not spontaneously legislate against the interests of big business. What’s needed is a way to exclude the government from the law-making process, and pass the legislation directly.

The big problem

But there is a problem. Imagine trying to legislate on abortion. A pro-abortion RIC would probably fail. So would an anti-abortion RIC. And probably so would a compromise RIC. It’s because people are much more cautious than politicians. If they are unsure, they will vote against it.

This is a good example because it’s one that’s important, but parliaments are often unable to legistlate for it. It tends to become deadlocked for decades or more, with no law passed and no certainty about its legality.

But RIC would be just as ineffective as parliament is at resolving issues like abortion.

It’s a good example of why so many people favour dictatorships like the French system - if one man/office has absolute power, a decision can always be made quickly. There are never parliamentary deadlocks in France because they are a feature of shared power.

A big reason parliaments fail to legislate for things - there are always a few tiny details which can never be agreed on. The more complex a law is, the easier it is to find things to disagree with. New laws are intended to be permanent, so any flaw will cause big problems for decades into the future. This leads to paralysis.

These fears would cause important legislation to fail under RIC, unless it is implemented carefully. RIC could in fact be worse (more ineffective at legislating) than what it replaces.

The solution

An RIC system with STV solves both of these problems - the permanence of law and the devil in the details.

Once a petition is accepted for referendum. There shall be a period (several months) where people can make counter-proposals on the same issue. Each counter-proposal must also pass the quota of signatures. At the end of the period, all proposals go on the same ballot. The null “don’t change anything” proposal is also on the ballot. One law will be chosen using STV.

Since several variants of the law will be available on the ballot, only the proposal with broadest popularity will get passed into law. But the law that is finally passed could be very different from what was originally proposed.

This way, the initial proposal can be simple. If there is a flaw, a counter-proposal can be made to improve on it, iteratively. The same person can sign many of the petitions. If the final law is not perfect, the following year another RIC can be made to improve it further.

All laws are flawed - they are made by flawed people. For legislation to work effectively, there needs to be an iterative process, where laws can be made quickly, then improved later. It takes many revisions to design any thing of quality, including law. RIC with STV gives us a way to do it.