Browsing by Subject "space habitats"

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    Administrative Policy for Stochastic Democracy
    (AIAA, 2018-09) Schubert, Peter J.; Sommer, Joe; Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology
    Prior studies of stochastic democracy have compared it to other forms of governance, demonstrated how to scale up or scale down as population changes, and developed an algorithm for start-up on Day 1. Left unanswered is the administrative policy for regulating the statutes developed by the legislative bodies. As the aim of stochastic democracy is design of a corruption-resistance form of managing human affairs the implementation of the activities of the government must also be robust against undue influence, bribery, and abuse of power. Decision-makers in a stochastic democracy by design cannot be “career” politicians, however, the bureaucrats of the government agencies or departments or ministries are advantageously retained across the changes in the legislative bodies. This quality invites corruption, the answer to which cannot be simply to apply oversight or policing. In this paper is developed an integrated structure which supplants the Byzantine-derived corporate-style hierarchy. Seven principles are applied to the bureaucracy and their integration and practice described herein as administrative policy, the principles being: transparency of regulatory process; not-less-than time limits; disclosure of change proposers; inclusion of economic externalities; open debate and notices of intent; chairmanship and participant selection; and periodic but stochastic changes in the number of agencies at each level of governance. This latter enforces either consolidation or expansion, within high and low limits, the re-organization of which will shuffle the reporting structure of the regulatory bureaucracy and disrupt entrenched habits and possible corrupting schemes. When complementing the legislative functions this work rounds-out the formation of a corruption-resistant, scalable form of truly representative governance for space habitats and societies of arbitrary size.
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    Selection and Re-Selection in Stochastic Democracy
    (2015) Schubert, Peter J.; Department of Engineering Technology, School of Engineering and Technology
    Self-governance of space habitats using Stochastic Democracy is objective and corruption-resistant. Prior simulation studies compared Stochasticism with elitism, pure communism, and pure capitalism for long-duration ark ships, demonstrating superior outcomes for all individuals. Additional simulations explored resilience to decimation, and to rapid population growth, such as may be experienced by large space settlements. In this study, the initial population of a hierarchical governing structure is simulated, providing a procedure for start-up on Day 1. Furthermore, rules for re-selection are explored to provide a balance of fresh inputs and experienced leadership. A key tenet of Stochastic Democracy is preclusion of career politicians who can be unduly influenced by campaign contributions and unduly favored by redistricting (“gerrymandering”). However, preserving learning within a governmental hierarchy is valuable, so the re-selection process should include a means by which selected leaders either retain office or advance to greater levels of geographic and population responsibility. Staggering of terms is another important means by which some level of continuity of governance is retained. In this work, several alternatives are explored to provide a sense of the impacts of re-selection rules. It is conceivable that individual communities may vote on referenda which capture their preferences for re-selection rules and duration of terms. In this way, Stochastic Democracy becomes adaptable to the community sociology and to possible future changes in lifespan. This work completes earlier AIAA-published theoretical studies of this novel form of habitat self-governance.