The ultimate societal system

[Noticer]

In a world where no society can suit everybody, the fairest way to play things is to tailor society to each individual.

How? You conduct a nationwide quiz, a bit like the census, wherein people give their opinion on various things (i.e. Yes or No, or to what degree), such as:

Death penalty
NHS
Benefits
Conscription/NS (keeping it topical)
Responses to certain events, like Ukraine
Immigration
Etc. etc.

Your answers (which can be revised whenever you like, unless you've already been affected by them) are tied to your identity. The law is then applied to you, and other people's actions upon you, based on your answers. Basically boiling down to 'if you're for it, then you're subjected to it'.

So, you don't agree to the NHS for anything past emergency care? You must pay for anything that isn't emergency care; however, you do pay proportionally less tax as a result.

You think the UK should give aid to, or militarily intervene in Ukraine or Gaza etc.? The aid pot is made up of expropriations from the people in favour, and they're first in if war is declared, regardless of their age.

And so on. As an experiment I think it would be fascinating to see how things change when people become personally liable for the things they believe.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
YANBU if you agree, YABU if you don't; though please do tell me why, if not.

That’s a really interesting g thought!

Rather than be a keyboard warrior there would have to be a lot of thought going into each decision!

There would be a cross over somewhere though where people don’t aline

What about drugs?

To be honest there would be a lot of sad faces when you vote for the death penalty and then your child is affected - for example.

The obvious flaw in this is that a fairly large percentage of people act out of self-interest - a poorer person doing so would opt for universal provision of healthcare and education, but a better-off person wouldn't. The numbers would not add up.

Similar story for the non-financial things: violent criminals aren't going to opt in to the death penalty, and so on.

Too many externalities - where your decision impacts other people.

I don't think it would be fair to apply a person's answers to their child. I was more thinking that if you're in favour, say for murder, then you'd be subject to it if you murdered someone.

The goal is personal accountability as much as possible.

lets Say your disabled, senior citizen relative believes in the war in the Ukraine. Are we going to place a gun into her lap and place her wheelchair on the front lines?

what if your neighbor decides not to contribute to state schools but also fails to home educate their children and you end up with a couple of completely unskilled, illiterate teens next door. What do they do for employment? When they can’t find jobs, how do you feel about the fallout that has on your neighborhood?

I don't see what you mean.
If you're pro-NHS then you get the NHS, just like you do now. The only difference here is that if you're against it, yes you save on tax but you MUST pay for it if you receive it.

It's easy for people to say "just be healthy, I shouldn't have to pay for other people's treatments" when they know that they get as many free ambulances as they need.

No. I work in social housing and we see people who have fallen on hard times. If they were previously rabid Tories who believed all homeless people are feckless scroungers, would I want to leave them homeless? Would I bollocks.

After many years of culture shift and training and education we could love more to a Swiss direct democracy but Brexit proved we aren't really for it now.

I think that's fairer than someone voting to send other people to war, while knowing that they'll never have to go themselves. Don't you?
The over 50s were polled as very in favour of Rishi's national service idea the other week. If it were to be applied retroactively, then I wonder if those numbers would change.

I don't think the concept would work for schooling, since the direct effect is not on the individual.

Because if you earn £2,000,000/year, your tax contribution to the NHS is massive - if you could opt out and instead paying private health insurance you'd save a fortune.

Whereas if you earn £20,000/year, your tax contribution to the NHS is far smaller - if you opted out and instead paid private health insurance you'd be paying more.

So the people who'd opt out would overwhelmingly be those who pay a lot of tax - the lost revenue from those people would be more than the reduced cost to the NHS, so as I say the numbers wouldn't add up.

(And the same story for education, etc)

Yep say this existed before Covid & people thought “I don’t need the NHS/don’t believe in benefits as I’m healthy” and opt out. What do you do when they wind up unable to work with long covid. Can they change their minds at that point? If not you’ll have issues as I guarantee lots of people will not consider it could happen to them until it does. If so it’s kind of doomed to fail due to lack of funding

This kinda relies on people being able to make logical, rational, informed decisions. On people having sufficient data points, and being able to analyse them properly.

I used to work with the general public. Spoiler: I do not think most of them have the education or intelligence to do these things.

This concept is to go on top of the main democratic system, not replace it. It also doesn't have to apply to everything - it couldn't.

I hadn't really considered homeless stuff as being in scope for this tbh. Too many layered accountabilities.

I don't know what you mean regarding Brexit.

I think this falls down with the death penalty…

Law abiding citizen- Yes I want the death penalty - Subject to the death penalty
Criminal- No thanks I’ll opt out of that thank you- Not subject to the death penalty

I absolutely agree with the national service point. I think it should be everyone who is physically or mentally fit enough would have to volunteer to do something every month if they vote for it. Lots of retired people where I live have endless energy for their massive gardens, they could definitely do some national service instead of moaning about the youth of today.

I wouldn't apply this to education because it's not specific to the person.

I did a back of envelope calculation a few years ago that put the NHS funding burden at about £10k per taxpayer per year. I don't think you'd lose that many people to make much difference to overall funding.

What if you did something illegal, but you didnt feel it was wrong. Would the law then not apply to you?

This doesn't mean that laws don't apply to people.

Someone anti-capital punishment would still be treated the same as they would be today.

Lol no, that would be too easy. Plus, it would go against the principle.

You're not wrong.

However - genuine question - if people can't be trusted to make decisions where they will be personally affected by the outcome, then why should they have the right to vote for things that affect themselves AND others?

What would be the motivation for anyone to opt in to the death penalty applying to them?

I can see no upside and an obvious downside!

The main issue we have though is with people not contributing to the pot.
your solutions won’t help.
I think the main thing we need to concentrate on is low level crime.

However - genuine question - if people can't be trusted to make decisions where they will be personally affected by the outcome, then why should they have the right to vote for things that affect themselves AND others?

Prisoners make decisions to live outside the law end up in prison and lose the right to vote.

Oh I completely agree! I think the population is not politically educated enough for democracy to be successful.

Right but the only people would be put to death n your scenario would be the law abiding citizen (if he were to find himself convicted of a capital crime). The criminal who opted out who would be more likely to vote no to the death penalty would get life in prison.

So the model doesn’t work in that scenario.

National Service.. someone votes ‘yes I’m all for it’ but is the sole guardian for 3 young kids. How is that practical for them to go serve on a front line or drop out of work for a period of time?

I get the point you’re making and have often pondered a scenario where you pay the same rate/amount of taxes as you do under the current system but you get to choose where your money goes 🙂

I bet that would make things interesting. Like if you were an outspoken proponent of libraries… bam 100% to libraries. Worried about national defense …here you go 100%. Don’t care about random art installations… sorry you’re not getting my money! Schools here take 90% and 5% to bin collection and 5% to something else. Those poor souls in whatever country here’s 10%

Exactly my point… the people who want the death penalty are typically law abiding citizens who would be more likely to a victim of a crime. There’s no point for them to opt in when it won’t apply to the criminals who have opted out!