[EM] Open budget primary

[conseo]

Hi.

Michael Allan wrote:
>          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  Planning (expenditures) [2]  Executive (sub-office)
>   expenditures  + budget (expenditures) [4]  + executive (finance)
> 
>   ============  ===========================  ========================
>         Budget  ???                          Executive (finance)
>                                              + assembly
> 
>                                              - - - - - - - - - - - -
>                                              + judiciary (all
>                                                decisions)
> 
> We need two primaries for the unforced expenditures, and two deciders.
> On the primary side (left), the planning drafts for each program (or
> service etc.) must include their own budgets, specifically each must
> project the expenditures of the program.  These are either fixed (a
> number), or functions of program size, or other execution variables.
> These data are pulled into the two types of budget primary
> (expenditures and whole budget).  Now participants in the expenditures
> budgetary primary know how many votes a program needs in order to run,
> or to reach a preferred size, or capability, etc.  If it hasn't enough
> primary votes, they'll know they need to campaign, or increase the
> turnout, or turn their efforts to saving other programs.
> 
I see.

> On the decision side (right), the officer nominated to run the program
> decides whether to run it at all, and according to which plan (which
> variant draft from the planning primary).  So this decision affects
> actual expenditures.  Meanwhile, the finance officer for the overall
> budget has the authority to make changes here as well, of course.
> 
Ok.

> Although this is a complex practice, it looks like we're rationalizing
> it fairly well.  None of the primaries is looking to be too complex in
> itself, not even the whole budget.  The budget drafters need only
> choose which programs put forward by the nominated officers must be
> cancelled (not viable) or given haircuts in order to arrive at the
> correct balance with revenue.  The correct balance (deficit or
> surplus) can be guided by a separate policy primary.

Ok.
> 
> It looks like we could almost generate a default budget automatically
> from simple rules (again input from policy primaries), and then tweak
> the draft to correct anomolies.  Even the voting in the whole-budget
> primary might be simplified by a convention: vote for the draft that
> imposes the fewest tweaks, because it's likely to be the truest to the
> myriad of input primaries (what we're asking for).  Moreover, since
> each necessary tweak signals an anomoly in the input primaries (like
> asking for what's impossible), we might eliminate even those residual
> tweaks by shifting our votes in the input primaries and resolving the
> anomolies.  The primary budget might then be determined wholly from
> the input of external primaries; the whole-budget drafters *per se*
> (the tweakers) being effectively removed from the process in the end.

Yes, very good and very interesting. On the other hand executives or 
committees can be given power if the input primaries [3] would assign it to 
them unforced via [2]. So executive action can still be supportive in swift 
ways if this is seen necessary.

> 
> The finance officer offered such a "perfect" primary budget need only
> be concerned with executing it.  He/she would be purely an executive.
> That's perhaps the dream of every executive.  The clearer the mandate
> (what ought to be) the greater the power to make it a fact (what is).

Yes, especially if the whole planning is already done in process and the plan 
is kept up-to-date in near realtime. While being binding for a determined 
period, this still helps to assign resources for the next budget, which can 
already be planned with to a certain degree by the executive (after all this 
is an important qualification for office) and help expand executive power 
where it is necessary now. 

Maybe SemanticMediawiki can already cover that since the mapping only has to 
go from the right [3] to the budget primary on the left [2]. Pledges still 
propagate through the tree of the input primary with its pipes, yet they are 
patched until they may become the executive plan in which case only the 
mapping is necessary (one query, right?). To project different none majority 
versions of the plan (yet unpatched propasals as patched/applied) one needed a 
different tool/algorithm. For this we need changes to semantic properties 
logged or somehow queryable. This also needs a fast incremental counting, 
maybe like I proposed. (1)

conseo

(1) http://zelea.com/w/User:4consensus_WebDe/Trees_of_Transactions This has to 
be adjusted for the pipe indirection. Resources then flow through the pipes of 
the projected officers/executives and patching (resource flow) can be 
projected on different branches of the plan. The programmability would be in 
the pipes now (?). You could in fact write programatic descriptions of 
executive behaviour, freeing the executive to stear and programmatically 
expand and connect the process (e.g. with other executives' programs or 
production systems). The programs would be embedded in the drafts (hence 
collective procedure) and the executive is responsible for running them. This 
is all optional.