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I don't know about that, but I do think there should be some investigation and a bit of soul searching before we fundamentally alter the only democratic portion of government. What sort of things do other regional legislatures take the lead on, and is it appropriate for the Storting to do so here? I do think it's a bit premature to decide that there's nothing left to be done with a legislature.

Many other regions have very minimal laws. In New Hyperion, for example, we have a few laws about who's responsible for what, and then just about everything else is left up to the Autarch or Chancellor.

I don't actually see why we can't take such a minimal approach here, either. It doesn't have to become an absolute monarchy, but since we are so small, compared to a real country, we could really just hold UH elections every 4 months or so, and have the citizenry vote on laws directly. We could keep the UH and OH around just to fulfil the requirements of the laws we already have, but give them the minimum amount of power. That way, any citizen can propose a law, and immediately have it go to vote himself after a few days. It then gets voted on by everyone, and the Storting just serves in an advisory role. The Storting's new responsibility would be to update the laws page and whatnot.

While I disagree with Reon when he states that the UH passes laws for the sake of passing laws, it certainly does feel that way sometimes. Most of the laws are never even used by anyone else but the Storting. All the energy we waste by fighting amongst ourselves could be spent far better elsewhere.

Here's the thing...if there's nothing left for a legislature to do, why bother with direct democracy? Surely there would be as little for an open assembly to do. If we're going to fundamentally alter a part of government, I'm sure we could go ahead and modify that current laws so they don't require the Storting. It just seems like if we're saying that it's already not necessary, and we're going to shift things to direct democracy but keep the Storting in some role, that would make the Storting even less necessary and thus even less active then what it is now.

I think there's a few paths to go about this...do we want to explore making the Storting more active, changing or removing the Storting, or some combination of the two?

Some combination of the two, I think. We could abolish the Storting, and immediately give those serving on it something new to do, since we really don't want to lose the people currently serving in the Storting's insights.

(That guild system we're discussing in PM comes to mind, especially since it is far less political than the Storting).

I like Reon's suggestion about having a bill of rights. We could add to that by direct democracy then, and leave all other laws up to the Cabinet, or solely the Monarch.

I like Reon's suggestion about having a bill of rights. We could add to that by direct democracy then, and leave all other laws up to the Cabinet, or solely the Monarch.

Or the monarch as advised by the cabinet... The riksrad exist simply as an advisory board for the monarch after all.
Also Moot, while I do think the legislation is useless and the democracy is imaginary I think we're recommending keeping some of that direct democracy so people don't get too upset.
Though I do agree that we should definitely not try and set up the underhusen as an advisory board for that stuff... That's the overhusen's
Job and we would leave it to the overhusen in my perfect world..,

That, and the fact that we probably need the citizens to agree on a bill of rights...

There actually is a declaration of rights in the Fundamental Laws

I know, but since we would be scrapping much of the citizens' law-making abilities, it seems fair to give them direct access to that declaration.

We use multiple sources of law, and the monarchy still has sovereignty, so it shouldn't be a difficult transition.

Related, it's interesting that Reon is the only member of the Underhusen to reply since the issue was brought back up, in spite of everyone else but Hannah being on the forums in the last 24 hours. You would think that members of the Underhusen would want to weigh in on the destruction of the Underhusen.

If most of the Underhusen haven't noticed or replied to such a profound proposal directly effecting their chamber, it's no wonder that it's so inactive, to be honest.

And it's no wonder that it's a terribly ineffective board of people...

Let us hear what they have to say for themselves.

@HannahB
@Aragonn
@BraveSirRobin
@Crushita Telcontar

I've already put out my opinion but since that was quite a while ago I will say it again.
I fully support the destruction of the Underhusen as we've really passed any laws that need to be passed. There is only so much we can govern in NS and we've set the rule of law for just about everything. Anything that comes up can be handled by the Overhusen or the Monarch I feel.

Well, there we have the opinion of one of the current Skrifa.

Is that the general sentiment within the Underhusen?

2/5 of the underhusen think so... We need only one more to make a majority... Though we'll need the support of the whole region to do this sort of thing...
If people could start bothering the other skrifa on IRC and other forms of contact that would be lovely...

I am inclined to agree with Reon's arguments, but I do think that it might be a little easier to remove a lot of the legislative power and turn it into an advisory body, just so every law doesn't have to be re-written.  Direct democracy would probably work well, I think. 



Note:  I did want to refrain from voicing an opinion for a bit as well, because I thought for a bit that I might just be looking favourably upon this proposal because Reon was my mentor, just in case people were wondering why I wasn't participating in the debate.  I've been following it pretty closely, though.