Open budget primary

[Michael Allan]

This is fairly complicated.  But it's interesting too, because it
shows how different types of primary come together in the budget.

conseo said:
> Yes, if [supply side] accounting happened in the same process, then
> budget drafting would be embedded in the process, right? ...

We spoke since.  Here's a summary of how we figured the budget is
decided, and how that decision is guided by the participants.  The
summary reveals some holes, which I try to fill in below.  It looks
like whole-budget drafting fits in one of them.


         Issue  Guiding Primary            Decisive Authority
  ============  =========================  ========================

        Forced  Legislative (tax law) [1]  Assembly
       revenue

      Unforced  Planning (production) [2]  Executive (sub-office)
       revenue
                Planning (donation)   [2]  RAC pledger [3]
                                           + executive (sub-office)
  ------------  -------------------------  ------------------------
        Forced  - (supplier contracts)     None
  expenditures
                Legislative           [1]  Assembly
                (statutory expenses)

      Unforced  Budget (expenditures) [4]  Executive (finance)
  expenditures

  ============  =========================  ========================
        Budget  ???                        Executive (finance)
                                           + assembly

                                           - - - - - - - - - - - -
                                           + judiciary (all decisions)


Forced revenue comes from taxes guided by legislative primaries and
decided by the assembly.  (These could be member fees for other types
of organization, but I use government as my standard here.)  Unforced
revenue may come from production (goods and services charged for),
which is guided by planning primaries and decided by the officer who
is charged with executing the plan.  Unforced revenue may also come
from donations that are pledged to specific variants of the plan via
the RAC, the pledged amounts being decided by the pledger (of course)
while the variant is chosen by the executive; the pledge is redeemable
only if the pledged variant is chosen.  (We discussed how wealth could
influence the planning decision here, and we mostly agreed it's normal
in this context, and not a problem.)

Forced expenditures come from supplier contracts that are already in
force for materials, manpower, capital and such.  Payment for these is
mandatory by contract law, and not decided by anyone.  Expenditures
may also be enforced by statutory law, as with statutory programs or
services.  Unforced expenditures - the discretionary balance among
departments, programs and services - are guided by the budget primary
for that purpose, but decided by the finance officer.

The sum of all these decisions is the budget (bottom left), which
again is decided by the finance officer, typically in conjunction with
the assembly, which has a veto.  Note that we're missing a primary
here to guide the budget as a whole (???).  So I guess we need:

  (A) Budget primary (whole budget)

It might be implemented like a legislative primary [1], with variant
budgets instead of bills.  It also needs special markup to read data
from external sources that are shareable by the variant drafts, and it
must render the data on the fly, instead of writing them directly to
the text.  These data include things like the latest results of the
expenditures primary, cost of supplier contracts, interest rate
projections, and so forth.  It also needs spreadsheet-like
capabilities to display intermediate and final calculations on the fly
instead of writing them in.  Then it might be possible to patch
variant budget drafts using text diffs, like we patch bills.  The
drafting medium (so modified) is the budget composing tool we spoke of
earlier.  The chief financial officer uses it to compose the official
budget.  And rivals for that office in the *executive* primary (or
budding future candidates) tend to be experienced drafters in the
*budget* primary, where they all work more-or-less together.

All decisions in the authority column (above) are subject to judicial
review.  Courts may strike down or alter decisions.  So the judiciary
is a decider, too.  But the deciders - the members of the assembly,
executive and judiciary - are themselves the products of decision.
Here's how *they* are decided:


       Issue  Guiding Primary          Decisive Authority
  ==========  =======================  ===========================

    Assembly  Single and multi-   [5]  Electorate
              -winner electoral

   Executive  Executive electoral [6]  Electorate (presidential)
                                       or assembly (parliamentary)

   Judiciary  ???                      Executive, electorate,
                                       or executive + assembly
  ==========                           - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  Government                          + judiciary (all decisions)


The sum of all the decisions on the left is a government.  But we're
missing another primary here (???), the one that guides the choice of
judges.  Judicial appointments are one-off, so I guess it would
similar to a single-winner assembly primary [5].  Maybe call it:

  (B) Judicial bench primary.

Just as experienced primary budget drafters are the best candidates
for financial office, (and experienced primary bill drafters the best
candidates for the legislature), so maybe we need a drafting primary
for the judicial candidates.  I guess it would be one that provides
guidance for judicial decisions: [7]

  (C) Judicial case primary.

Again there are deciders in the authority column above (electorate)
who themselves are the products of decision:


       Issue  Guiding Primary          Decisive Authority
  ==========  =======================  ===========================

  Electorate  Legislative         [1]  Assembly (maybe others)
              (constitutional law)
                                       - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
                                       + judiciary (all decisions)


The constitution says who the electors are.  The constitution is
guided by a legislative primary and decided by the assembly under
special rules, such as super-majority, consent of other authorities
(executive, federal states), and so forth.

Mike


  [1] Legislative primaries.
      http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/legislative_action

  [2] Planning primaries. (not yet drafted)
      http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/administrative_action

  [3] Resource accounting framework (RAC).
      http://zelea.com/w/Category:Account

  [4] Budget primary (just expenditures).  The whole-budget primary
      (not yet documented) would run in parallel with this.
      http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/budgeting

  [5] Single and multi-winner electoral primaries.
      http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/assembly_election

  [6] Executive electoral primary.
      http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring

  [7] To be sure, it's important to bear in mind that: (a) primaries
      run long in advance of decisions and keep running afterwards;
      (b) while anyone is free to vote, anyone is also free to filter
      and recount the votes, e.g. restricting them to legal experts;
      (c) the appointments of higher judges tend to be secure; and (d)
      they have the authority to temporarily shut down sources of
      information, which includes things like case primaries.


conseo said:
> Michael Allan worte:
> > Thanks C,
> > 
> > > Since it is also combinable with our resource accounting, people
> > > could both determine the global budget and contribute more than the
> > > vote, but their "taxes" rather directly with their vote in form of
> > > resources.
> > 
> > I guess the budget vote is a vote for expenditures (i.e. for a program
> > or service or purchase).  Maybe the RAC pledge would be where the
> > voter contributes additional revenue as a kind of donation or
> > (government) "voluntary tax" toward the same expenditure.
> > 
> > You asked on IRC whether additional code might be needed for the
> > budgeting practice.  Two things I can think of:
> > 
> >  (1) Tool for finance officer to produce budget itself.  He adds
> >      revenue, debt servicing and other forced expenditures, account
> >      cancellations, and so forth.  The tool combines these with the
> >      current results of the budget primary, and produces the official
> >      budget.
> 
> I see.
> 
> > 
> >      Maybe candidate finance officers can produce their budgets in
> >      advance, as part of applying for office in the executive primary.
> >      Maybe the "opposition" finance officer (out of office) always has
> >      a shadow budget, as a kind of critique of the gov't.
> 
> Yes, if accounting happened in the same process, then budget drafting would be 
> embedded in the process, right? The finance officer would then define the 
> according accounts with targets and describe their distribution to budgets in 
> the account definitions. That way budgets could be defined globally through 
> the primary voting with votes through budget pipes, while resource flow could 
> contribute to budgets to allow economic expenditure "locally", in context of 
> the application of the budget. Both ends, global only expenditure, e.g. space 
> program, and a losely related local economic process beyond the global budget, 
> e.g. local growing cooperative, are covered that way. 
> Does that make sense to you?
> 
> > 
> >  (2) Tool to compare official budget with the primary, verifying that
> >      the wishes of the primary participants are being met, or what the
> >      discrepencies are exactly.
> > 
> > Probably these two are related, maybe even the same tool.
> 
> Ok, sounds interesting. Pipes have some drafting potential.
> 
> conseo