Order in the Chaos: Blacklist Laws
Spir Tus
A couple of months ago I was writing a few concept versions of articles, but I didn't publish them, because it was very hard to understand everything I needed to know. At this moment the article below is actual again and I've changed it a little. The perspective of this article is of a younger me, when I was 2 weeks old.
Almost everyday there will be new reactions in debates about things nobody seems to really understand. There are a lot of opinions and people who are reffering to old debates. There seems to be an ethos of common knowledge and habits. Information is not needed, because everyone understands the common, usual things. This is called experience, and I do not have it. For someone new, or someone who does not follow all the debates, it is hard to understand a debate and to participate. The aim of this column is to creat order in the chaos. It will mainly be an article for myself, to create an overview for myself. Maybe this writing about a debate will help others eventually to get to know what the debate is all about.
By the way, this article (and all other articles which I will ever write) won't have any pictures, funny things or other useless stuff. The aim of this newspaper is to provide articles with qualitative content in the future. The articles will be long, so if you don't like to read, you don't like my newspaper.
In this first article of this series, I will talk about the blacklist debate. Since the beginning of eRepublik and eNL, there are people who do things other people don't like. The result of this problem, is the blacklist. First blacklisting whole countries and their citizens, now it is just about blacklisting congressmembers. The actual debate is a debate about what to do with people who flee to another country when they have done something wrong. I will try to summarize the debate and all actual alternatives. Also I will show the current laws about the blacklist, to show the actual situation. At the end I will give my own perspective on this debate.
The whole blacklist debates are very complicated, because it is connected to a Persona non Grata list, which people want to set up. The most recent debate of this connection is about an additional Blacklist Clause, posted on 3 May 2014. A connection was suggested between the Blacklist and the SCI (Security Council of Immigration), so a Persona Non Grata list (PNG) wasn't needed. Simply said, people with a foreign status, who are also blacklisted, would be banned from the country. This PNG list is a seperate part of the blacklist debate, so I will focus on another part, which are the blacklist laws itself.
Recently we had a new proposal to put someone on the blacklist. In this case Zeeuwsmeisje was banned from Congress because she fought for our enemies in the war against Norway. There was a lot of debate about this specific blacklisting. She's blacklisted indefinite until revoked by congress. But to understand how this works, we need to take a closer look to the blacklist laws themselves.
To create order in the chaos, it is necessary to know what the Blacklist laws are. For experienced people this is obvious and not interesting, for new people like me, it is not clear, and very interesting. In Chapter 2 of the Lawbook, Congress, article 13, the blacklist laws are describe
😛
Article 13 – Blacklist
1. The Blacklist is a list of Citizens of the eNetherlands who are excluded from the offices and rights of Member of Congress, Chairman of Congress, Deputy Chairman of Congress, Keykeeper, or any office in or for the Government of the eNetherlands, nor are they to request or be given supplies from the Dutch armed forces.
2. Citizens of the eNetherlands can be put on the Blacklist by means of a motion of Congress as laid down in Article 7, but only after a debate and a voting procedure as laid down in Articles 8 and 9, and with a two third majority of votes in favour.
3. Citizens of the eNetherlands can be removed from the Blacklist by means of a motion of Congress as laid down in Article 7, but only after a debate and a voting procedure as laid down in Articles 8 and 9, and with a two third majority of votes in favour.
4. Citizens of the eNetherlands who are on the Blacklist will receive a negative voting advice, with their names published in an article by the Chairman of Congress or the Deputy Chairman of Congress, if they run in the Congress elections.
5. The Blacklist and the articles with negative voting advices will be managed by the Chairman of Congress and the Deputy Chairman of Congress.
Nothing wrong with the law, it seems. The procedures and consequences of being put on the Blacklist are clear. The only strange thing I noticed is the fact there is no description about why people are put on the Blacklist. The Blacklist laws are meaningless (in a way they have no content), and have only a procedural meaning. This means there is an open interpretation about why someone should be blacklisted. According to the law, every Congress Member has the possibility to put someone on the blacklist for every reason they can think of. The only obstacle for this Congress Member to put someone on the list he doesn't like, are the other Congress Mebers, or more specific, 2/3 of the votes of the Congress Members, with a minimum amount of votes of 40% of the total. This means it is very easy to put someone on the blacklist, because there is no reason needed. I think this is the reason why there were a lot of blacklisting proposals in the past. I'm very curious about the reason why there are no reasons for blacklisting in the Law book.
We have got some great immigration protocol which will prevend PTO from the outside. But it is, as you can see, the only thing that will stop the PTO threat. When 'bad' people are in, they can do whatever they want, legally. It seems there is no big difference. If someone takes over the country, it doesn't matter if he's breaking the rules or not. But I think it is much more likely to take over a country where you can legally take it over. If there is a proposal to blacklist an important person of our nation, and they have enough votes, they can ban us all. We can do nothing about it, legally. You need to ask youself the question, is this desirable? I think it isn't.
These blacklist laws are a product of the elite, for the elite. The content of these laws are vague, because the 'bastion' will fill in the content different in every case. There is no protection for the citizens and the Congress Members against randomness of the government and the congress. In other words, we don't have a judicial power which will protect our citizens against the power of the elite. It is very obvious why we haven't one, because it is very hard to find neutral persons, who act like judges. That isn't the aim of this point. We can still protect citizens against randomness, to make general laws which will be applied on individual cases. In the case of the blacklist laws, this will be the reasons when people get blacklisted. One reason why people get blacklisted is when they don't pay Congress tax. This isn't in the blacklist laws, but somewhere else in the laws. This is an example of a good general reason to get people blacklisted. This will prevent the case when you don't blacklist someone because he is your best friend.
Writing this article has helped me to understand more about the blacklisting process and the creation of laws in general. Eventually this article is probably more chaotic then I wanted, but I hope this will be better in next articles.
SpirTus
A Bastion of Truth
Comments
tl;dr
I remember a time long long ago when I thoroughly enjoyed debating all kinds of things on the forum.
More on topic, the blacklist article is utterly retarded and should be abolished. I've always been against all blacklist proposals except from the one I recently started purely because that person (actually, those persons) was such a great fan of starting blacklist proposals purely to hinder political opponents.
Gestem
The Silmarillion is easier to read 😛
and blacklisting people because of not paying cm tax is in the law.
Edited.
I read the Silmarillion, and I think you're wrong. 😉
This is a lot easier to read. Mainly because you don't need to switch pages the whole time to look up stuff. You can't read the Silmarillion tldr.
Basicly when a majority of Congress agrees, you can get blacklisted for any reason.
And as odan state😛
3. Congress members who have not paid their taxes after the deadline ends, will be entered on the blacklist in the Debating section, and will be subject to the applicable sanctions, as laid down in Article 13.
4. People on the blacklist cannot have Congress member rights, as laid down in Article 1.6.
5. If people on the blacklist candidate themselves for Congress elections, they will get a negative voting advice in an article published before the Congress elections.
6. People stay on the blacklist until they have paid their debts to the state.
7. The blacklist, including negative voting advices, is managed by the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Congress.
Thank you for this addition. It is very hard to find if you don't know about this. I always read the Law in Dutch, so I understand it better and this isn't in the Dutch version.
The Dutch version seems incomplete but there is: 3. Congresleden die hun belasting niet hebben betaald voordat de deadline verstrijkt, worden op de zwarte lijst geplaatst in de Debatsectie van het Congres, en zullen worden onderworpen aan de bijbehorende sancties, zoals vastgelegd in Artikel 13.
I looked quickly trough the archives and the following were the reasons used for blacklisting:
- Accepting citizens requests illegally.
- PTO risk. (A player was accused of creation of accounts to boost his party into the top 5 for congress seats)
- Leaking info.
Nr. one is dealt with in the SCI protocol.
Nr. two can 'label' players that are a PTO risk for the country which can help in preventing them from getting into congress. If they do manage to get into congress they will be robbed of any decisive power behind the scenes, countering your story about PTO'ers taking over the country legally basically.
Nr. three is a result of article 14 in the congress law being incomplete. You may not leak classified info, but no punishment is defined. Congress can judge if the leak was severe enough for a blacklist in this way. Sadly this is often influenced by party politics.
They will be robbed of congress rights, because they are PTO'ers, but if you don't know they are, till they start a vote to blacklist people, they can take over the country legally. It's just a theoretical thing. In practice a PTO'er would have taken over the country long before he is ever going to use this.
It is hard to see this reasons as a new citizen or an outsider, because as you said, you have to look into the archives to know this. The reasons are not in the blacklist laws.
And I like that very fact. It leaves room for congress to work, and it doesn't need adaptation anytime something new pops up. It however, required people who act in a smart way with this freedom, something that isn't always the case...
The blacklisting of zeeuwsmeisje vote is made in the private congress forum, did you get permission from the COC(odan) to publish this in an article?
On topic: i don't like blacklisting, and it's indeed way to easy to blacklist someone. I don't know any solutions now, but i think making a list of penalties and the punishments for it is a good start.
First I had some information of the private forum, but I have deleted it. The other information about the blacklisting of Zeeuwsmeisje is found in the normal section of congress.
Ok perfect, just to make sure. You don't want to be blacklisted 😉
Reason for blacklisting ZM is officially still classified according to the law.
It is just an assumption. The fact that she's fighting for our enemy is well known by some articles which I read. But you are right, I shouldn't know it for sure.
The blacklist is public info. The debate a s vote is classified. http://enetherlands.nl/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=7612&sid=6cedd1a9bde772e3a1e35db7219762e5
good article
please read also, vote and sub
LATIN AMERICA REVIEW VOL. 6
Germany DE/EN
http://www.erepublik.com/de/article/2448576/1/20
Chile ES/EN
http://www.erepublik.com/de/article/2448598/1/20
That would sort of sting…”a newbie being blacklisted, and not knowing why”. I’m sure that there is an unwritten rule of fair warning for beginners -- if there isn’t, there should be…
Experience gets taken into consideration, and also the willingness to learn from what you apparently did wrong unknowingly.
For example, not all CMs illegally accepting citizens were blacklisted. If it is obvious they were only guilty of "newbieness" I guess they're always excused. But if it happens again, or they are experienced they probably won't escape the blacklist.
Congress won't accept a blacklist vote unless they are given an obvious reason.
So the vagueness that any reason is fine makes the blacklist more versatile.
The two thirds majority is there to make sure it requires broad support.
It is mainly meant to keep people who are a threat to eNL out of position where they can do damage. Those people who are blacklisted are mainly those who:
- owe the state money and refuse to pay (congress tax, training loans)
- abuse their congress power to create chaos (for example starting illegal Natural Enemy laws)
- let in potentially dangerous citizens.
- are PTO risks (typically let into eNL illegally)
- damage eNL by leaking secret info to enemies, or to the general population.
we have more laws than citizens!
its all ridiculous!! & the best way for the 'old guard' to control and monitor new eCitizens.. power= corruption!
Just saying 🙂
I may be as old boys as it gets but I am very much in favor to rewrite the lawbook in a much shorter form keeping common sense in mind.
I've read your article, but not the comments my eyes became tired for a moment 😛 Voted 🙂
Oh, Spir Tus: Keep up these articles by the way. They do lead to interesting discussions. 🙂
And your unique perspective may turn our to help the older players to learn what they can do better to make new players feel at home.