Example Debate
Example Debate — Gun Control
(See also: Example Debate — Climate Change)
Imagine that the Decision Website is fully up and running. We just announced the new topic of Gun Control. Below is a simplistic example of how that debate might progress various steps.
Thousands of applicants have been received to participate in the debate, and three hundred have been randomly chosen using a simple questionnaire about available time, general beliefs on the topic, and special qualifications. It’s a relatively diverse group, but this is just the start of who will participate.
Goals
The 300 participants get logged into their dashboards and begin the initial work to state the goals and the problems to overcome. It’s not an agreement per say, but the main objectives surface.
The general public, watching from without, submitted the Arms Industry aspect. The group senses the breadth of the subject and the needed experience and calls for additional participants with interests in the above objectives. 200 more are selected by the original 300, making the total 500.
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Brainstorming
The brainstorming phase has come and participants submit an array of issues and concepts.
Mass shootings, domestic violence, suicide, school shootings, workplace shootings, murder-for-hire, armed crimes, gangs, organized crime, government tyranny, civil war, national invasion, gun collection, shooting sports and competition, shooting recreation, home/business/personal protection, wildlife management, gun safety, gun safety classes, trigger locks, hunting, public carry, public display, BB and pellet guns, automatic weapons, assault weapons, military grade weapons, semi-automatic weapons, alternate types of guns, 3D printed arms, clip size, ammunition, illegal arms dealing, international arms dealing, age requirements, felony restrictions, background checks; government tracking, constitutional right, arms manufacturers, arms retailers, gun dealers, secondary sales, purchasing procedures, federal/state/local laws, red flag laws, ownership responsibility, children access, mental health, law enforcement, stolen weapons.
The public has weighed in with few extra entries and we feel like it’s a good start.
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Subtopics
From the brainstorming procedure, our next step is to decide how to divide our debate into subtopics and which subtopics can be grouped together. Subtopics will be debated separately, and each have its own collection of concluding “position statements.”
A few of the subtopics are not controversial and merely need a general discourse to result in a solid definition. These include gun collection, shooting sports and competition, and wildlife management.
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Thinking about Opinion Camps
We decide to collect data from our participants as to what types of overall opinions and solutions we will encounter in the debate. It’s a spectrum ranging from making guns illegal and confiscating existing weapons to lifting all restrictions. Surprisingly, there are a lot of perspectives in between with the general public adding even more combinations.
The decision is made for every “opinion camp” to write a draft “position statement” that briefly describes the solution they envision.
Camps realize that they will need to participate in each subtopic, and so seek additional recruits if their numbers are insufficient.
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Debate Style Decision
The group decides on the initial step to assign each subtopic with definitions and general discussions about how that issue relates to the bigger discussion. It’s an orienting task. When we realized there is a “no gun” camp, only the wildlife management subtopic remains not controversial.
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Team Organization
At any turn an “opinion camp” can recruit more members that have certain expertise. The new members can assist in the varying topics, perform research, and help with other tasks. The number of participants in our example swells to over a thousand.
Each “opinion camp” is equipped with organization tools to assign member roles and tasks and plan their strategy as a collaborative team. To support their argument, they compile lists for needed statistics, relevant studies, white papers, and a glossary of terms. Remarkably, all of this activity can be watched by the general public, underscoring our dedication to transparency. While credentials, background , and expertise of participants are visible for task assignments, camps use a pseudo user-name structure for team members in order combat credential bias in the debate.
At this stage, the entire body of participants has agreed to debate together in each subtopic. Simultaneously, every camp, as well as independent individuals, will write an evolving “position statement” for each subtopic to allow participants to understand each camp’s perspective. Additionally, each camp will maintain their overarching “position statement” for the larger topic of gun control.
Gun Control is ripe for a people’s debate!
Camps now organize their team with roles, assigning people to different subtopics and varying tasks. People with good writing skills are assigned to that task for each subtopic and the position statements. Researchers are asked to seek out studies, facts, and statistics that are needed to go in the Reference section of the Decision Website. Those people are also involved in critiquing other reference entries to state how accurate a document is, and what it does and does not prove.
For more on the Reference Section
Other members will watch the discourse and ask for clarity, proofs, and definitions as well as challenge any submissions for logic and accuracy problems. We have folks that respond to challenges on our submissions as well. We have managers watching our camp progress and those assigned to interact with the general public on our position.
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Subtopic Debate
The subtopic debates are messy at first when camps make vigorous efforts to defend their point of view. Various threads discuss elements within the subtopics. Discourse settles down as each side realizes the objective of making their perspective clear as well as understanding the other camps’ approach. The challenges by every camp encourages a refinement of thinking as well as explanation. It’s a hard-nosed debate done in a civil fashion. “Position Statements” are being progressively tweaked to reflect the debate.
As the subtopic debates wind down, gun safety has found broad support. Requiring biometric trigger locks on all new sales as well as free locks for existing guns seems to be popular in spite of the cost. Trigger locks go a long way to prevent accidents, restrict access for children, allow families to restrict access at stressful times, deter theft, protect gun collections, and improves everyone’s feelings about home defense.
Balance to government tyranny has made a strong case, but assault weapons and even automatic weapons haven’t been shown to stand up to government’s military capability. The local armory idea is being suggested as a compromise. Tyranny appears to be the only viable roadblock for removal of assault weapons, large magazines, and bump stocks.
Open the door to new ideas and we’ll be surprised!
The mass shooting discussion, including schools and workplaces, did not take long to come together in recognizing the grievous tragedy and its place as the top priority. Much time was spent analyzing the individual cases against which gun control measures would have prevented the incident. Trigger locks and school metal detectors were seen as mitigating ideas.
The debate on school surveillance moved toward consensus when it shifted to entry points rather than full school coverage. In most subtopics the cost factors are seen as surmountable with a public resolve to fix our problems. A separate subtopic was created to address costs, talking about the real effect of the national debt and its relationship to taxes.
Mental health and suicide discussions show support for waiting periods on all guns and are working on an exception for immediate hunting purchases. Other ideas, including for domestic violence, are the ability to voluntarily give up control of your trigger-locked guns to a 3rd party such as a spouse or family member.
The debate on background checks is contentious, especially as concerns the secondary market. Government tracking is so absolute when every gun transfer is registered. A method for a gun seller to make an anonymous background check is in discussion. Possible compromise leverage is seen in limiting background check denials from all felonies to just violent crimes and restraining orders.
Red Flag Laws are hotly debated. One possible alternative being discussed is allowing citizens to put a warning on other people’s record causing a temporary denial of gun purchase through a background check. Situations such as a restraining order, domestic disputes, mental health, and suicidal tendencies come into play.
The gun industry debate has been relatively rude with very little concern for sales and profits.
Are the people really concerned about
corporations making money on weapons?
Efforts to tackle crime issues are focusing on implementing harsher penalties for using guns in illegal activities. Stiffer penalties are also being sought for straw purchases, control of armor-piercing ammunition, carrying of unlocked guns, and possession by a convicted violent criminal.
Open carry has minimal support, but more consideration is given to conceal carry. Statistics showing when conceal carry was deemed useful as a deterrent is a stumbling block for proponents, but there is backing in some conditions. Much of the current debate is over when and where to require trigger locks when guns are outside the home.
Hunting, sporting, gun ranges, and even recreational plinking haven’t got much pushback. Ideas of accessible gun safety classes are popular and there’s even talk of government subsidies for classes.
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Position Statements for Subtopics
Camps are in the process of finalizing their “Position Statements” for each subtopic within the realm of gun control. This process entails addressing various challenges to ensure that each camp articulates any potential drawbacks to their position
Some camps share the same opinion on a subtopic although they differ in their solution to the entire gun control topic. These camps may opt to merge their positions to amplify support and garner more votes for their shared stance.
Once the “position statements” for each subtopic are completed, the general public will have the opportunity to vote for their preferred stance. Interested individuals can sign up for notifications to stay informed. However, it’s worth noting that the level of public participation is a concern as it could be susceptible to manipulation through organized group efforts. Consequently, these votes are primarily utilized as unconfirmed polling data by participants in continuing debates.
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Final “Position Statements”
The entire group decides on a different approach for the closing push towards a conclusion. Rather than debate together, camps are tasked to compile their final position in their most complete and compelling rationale.
Once again camps will challenge each other to publically state limiting factors and negative consequences. No opinion gets to remain isolated and buffered from critique.
Indeed, this is the time to examine presentations from other camps to identify common ground. By merging their concepts, camps can craft proposals that resonate with a broader audience, because this vote… matters. The push for public involvement is to create a national opinion. Consensus now has teeth. Compromise makes sense.
Ranked voting is used for the general public. They state a first, second, and third choice with appropriate values assigned. In addition, the top two choices enter a runoff.
The National Opinion
It’s all over. The votes are in. Our national opinion reflects the best solution that human logic presently envisions.
And the winner is…
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Example Debate — Climate Change
There are plenty of national topics that are ripe for debate. Immigration, gun control, police reform, economics, UBI, etc. Let’s look at Climate Change as a well-rounded challenge. It’s critically important and has lots of interconnected components. It also may show how the citizenry can come together.
Participants
We need experts for this discussion on Climate Change, and we need to discover how experts might differ. Our experts need to come from a broad spectrum of disciplines. A climate scientist is not a biologist, not a social psychologist, not an economist, and so forth.
Plus, we will need participants from every opinion camp, socio economic level, and culture. We are all in this together and we will be directing society on a course that calls for democratic input.
While selection of participants may heavily utilize credentials, the debate will decide if those credentials will be made public. An opinion from a PhD is not a guarantee of accuracy. Opinions require proof and logic if they are going to be trusted by the public. Shortcuts, as in “trust me I have a doctorate in biology,” will not work. It won’t be easy for the credentialed folks, especially as to using language the majority of us understand, but they are building an explanation of our world, not for the scientist community but for the citizenry. Good news… ask an AI Chatbot to “rewrite my words at a tenth grade level.” So easy.
Effects of climate change could be catastrophic.
Don’t you want a voice in our response?
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Tackle the Evidence
For this debate, the group of participants first chooses to tackle all of the evidence of climate change. The scientific community has already done good work in this area. They publish papers and use a peer review system. But it’s not sufficient. It lacks an organized method to debate opposing views. Also the citizenry has not been given clear layman information. We don’t know which authors to trust, nor do we have the time to read extensive books. Excerpts in the media have the potential for spin. The Decision Website needs to overcome this.
Climate Change is so ripe for a people’s debate!
We can start by letting participants submit studies, white papers, statistics, and even longer written articles. These will all go into a reference section of the debate. The next step will be to allow a critique of these references. Examples might be who funded the study, conflicting data, and nuances that should be considered when interpreting the study.
For more on the Reference Section
Once the reference material is in place, our real debate on the evidence can take place. Climate change can be broken down into smaller subtopics or categories of topics, each with its own conclusions. Our goal is to come together about what’s really happening on our planet and apply some priority as to which changes are the most important.
The end result will be a series of “position statements” as to the evidence of climate change. Viewpoints here could be quite similar, given the nature of scientific studies and statistics. Yet, it’s a time to ensure the public that all perspectives are included.
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Progression of the Planet Warming
How does the evidence of climate change progress over time and interconnect with other factors? What are the projected consequences and how does it snowball? What should we expect in the weather and effects on the planet?
The group has decided to tackle this aspect apart from the evidence as it includes more forecasts and predictions. The ending “positions statements” for this subtopic will have added variety.
Causes of Climate Change
The full range of causes needs to be discussed and understood. For instance, how focused should we be on greenhouse gases, and what part could be natural climate shifting or solar patterns? If the majority of the scientific community is right, this task should be easy. But opposing views have a right to be heard and the people have a right to be sure.
We again start by submitting more studies, white papers, and statistics into our reference section. Text from books and longer written articles can be submitted as reference. These will all have a rigorous debate of their own concerning who funded the study, how data should reflect the resulting theory, and nuances that should be considered when interpreting the study.
For more on the Reference Section
Now we can begin the debate on causes. We will start to realize that verbiage of “believing science” is just media and political rhetoric. Scientific studies, theories, and interpretation all have factors with varying degrees of reliability. Everyone is interested in what’s provable, logical, and probable. The good news is that with effort we can sort this all out to come to a better agreement and even unity.
Next we can break the topics apart into manageable parcels. What are all of the causes and how important is each one?
We will use “Position Statements” to summarize each “causal” subtopic. We are fine-tuning our opinions.
Decisions to mitigate climate change are
bigger than the scientific community!
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Our Options
So now we have discussed the effects, projections, and causes of climate change. Maybe we decide it’s not going to be so bad, and we just hunker down and adapt to the climate shift. Maybe we determine that the human impact is minimal and changing our lifestyle is unnecessary. Possibly climate change is coming like a lion and we’re at a pivotal decision and action point. We can analyze and decide together, and at this stage of the debate we debate options of what we can do.
What can we do to mitigate global warming? How do we prepare and fund our response to climate disasters. What is our societal will and how does that fit globally?
Scientific experts will help us evaluate what effect reducing methane gas has compared to solar installation on homes? Should power plants shift to nuclear energy or hydrogen or solar or fusion or wind? What’s our best option and what are the drawbacks of each? Is the trend of electric vehicles our hero? What new technologies and methodologies should we count on to store carbon dioxide? How does consumerism come into play?
Do we agree on our humanitarian approach? Will insurance need to be nationalized? Will we have to view monetary policy (see MMT) in a new light to treat the national debt as inconsequential? How do we approach climate refugees?
What can we do when faced with an entrenched economy that cannot seem to change unless profits are clear? What is the political will of both politicians and the citizenry? We need to prioritize our course of actions, and we need to overcome the bias of special interests.
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Final “Position Statements”
The group has decided that the usual final “position statements” are not enough. People will need to vote on our general understanding of climate change, as well as the directions we will go. That is, there are going to be several layers to the final decision. The Decision Website is built such that each debate can design its own format and style of decision making.
One layer is humanitarianism and how to pay our way. Another is how we respond to effected citizens? How do we coordinate on a global scale? How do we proceed economically and politically?
We will vote on our top solutions for each, and decide on priorities of action.
Voting
The people will decide on a national opinion. We will look at probabilities and choose a direction. We will have the choice to work together on solutions. The Decision Website becomes a tool for acting as well as our source of information.
Action
We have voted and have a plan of attack. But what can we as citizens accomplish? Fully understanding the issues was vital.
But what about government and what about business? It’s quite possible that we need to act on climate problems before we change the Constitution and get real control over government. We can at least map out our rudimentary plan for the future in the Decision Website. It lets us know the path to more involvement of citizens in democracy and how to protect it.
Assuming worse case climate consequences, money will be needed for victims of climate disasters and the displacement of populations. A different debate in the Decision Website should be concerning Modern Monetary Theory and the government’s ability to print money without real consequence from the resulting national debt. With climate change, the understanding of money becomes a global issue and a time to choose between producing whatever humans are able versus tying our own hands behind our backs to awkwardly live with restraints. I apologize, I’m slipping into some personal opinions here. But at least it brings to the foreground the discussions that will need to take place.
Assuming that climate change can be mitigated, what can we personally do? Citizens can install solar panels on our roofs and buy electric cars. Let’s be real, we’re not all likely to switch from a meat to a plant diet. People can change their purchasing habits and spend less on consumer items since everything we buy has to be produced with manufactured materials and energy. It would be good for us to see how advertising has been shaping our view of a successful and happy life. But that’s about it for us personally. Is that enough?
Science has already contributed with plant based meat and other options for energy creation. Carbon storage mechanisms may be another help. Citizens could effect a momentum change to support scientific progress.
Businesses cannot easily make significant alterations to help climate change. The priority of profit for shareholders is built into their corporate charter. Their hands are basically tied. That’s simply the way our system works. If you are the sole owner of a business, then you can do whatever you want. But your company will be swimming dangerously upstream in the face of our economy’s competitive nature and the fact that publically traded companies are glued to the profit motive.
Government is the only one who can change the rules for business. For instance, the fossil fuel industry may need radical and immediate change. What politician has that kind of resolve? We know how interconnected politicians are with business. Politicians control the laws while business provides the reelection funds. Still, we might be surprised. Elected officials could strengthen their backbones with ethical fortitude. The people have been waiting for that for… millennia.
Politicians are heavily influenced by business.
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So are drastic measures needed for business? Definitely… if the timetable scientists suggest is verified by our discussions.
The citizens could form a voting block to pressure politicians to boldly enact business regulations concerning greenhouse gas emissions. The use of the Decision Website would be critical for this. We have to admit that current steps that government has enacted don’t seem to be enough. Is a stronger hand will be necessary? This will be resisted within business and stalled by the courts.
Our new found common ground can also give citizens another power over business. Citizens could throw their consumer money towards companies that make big environmental moves. Our purchasing power will ensure that volume profits for compliant companies will go up. This power is not to be dismissed. We could affect any company just by stating our discontent with their environmental direction. Their stock prices will plummet the next day, and their board of directors will take the hit.
This is real power. We do not want to ruin any business, but we do want change. And this power will cause business to follow our lead. If fact, our involvement could be just the element business needs to help them get over their impasse on profits. In other words, our pressure could be welcomed by business, and shareholders too could realize that profits have merely shifted to a long term approach and on an even playing field.
What if citizens rallied together to support
businesses that reduce carbon output?
Another option to effect business will be presented as well. It is called Stakeholder Capitalism and promoted by the World Economic Forum with a substantial following among global leaders. It has the concept where companies get rated (ESG) on their Environmental/Societal/Governance compliance. That seems like a good idea and maybe we can use the Environmental rating ourselves. But Stakeholder Capitalism has teeth and quite possibly too big of a bite. According to the concept, companies that don’t have a good rating will find themselves limited in funding options and whatever else the “Stakeholder Committee” can muscle.
And that’s the problem. It is a power shift in the economic world, which is the “big bite”. While businesses could be motivated to conform to limits on greenhouse gases, a new power would arise in this group called “shareholders.” While shareholders could theoretically include common people, it is far more likely to end up being a thin swath of society with existing money and power. Almost assuredly, this new economic power would convert to political power. That adds an additional layer of authority to smother the voices of the people. We can do better.
Again, the Decision Website emerges as a unique tool capable of empowering citizens with significant influence in the world. Prior to this debate on Climate Change, we should separately debate the Stakeholder Capitalism concept. We go in eyes wide open.
To summarize, citizens get complete and balanced information. We see clearly what options are available, their effects, and priority. Citizens then can personally make the sacrifices and changes that make sense. Do not underestimate the people’s strength and resolve. Citizens will put pressure on politicians to act according to our good thinking. Watchdog groups or the WEForum or a utilization of the Decision Website will analyze business to determine where the populous will put their consumer dollars.
Change is being made, and the citizens have a unified plan to manage the effects of climate change. And don’t forget, we also have a plan to gain more democratic control.
So maybe next we debate…
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