Meritocracy could be a huge leap, there could be some small steps we can take in that direction.
Primarily if we were to create a Political Party against Political Donations and make that popular then Meritocracy would be an easy jump just around the corner.
Thatâs okay in theory & I would support it if it was implemented right across the board.
However, weâve just registered 2 Meritocracy Parties, and for them to compete in any way with the big parties, we will simply have to accept donations. It costs ÂŁ500 to put up 1 candidate in 1 voting area in the UK, where both parties are registered.
So, there is the dilema : We canât be against political donations while accepting them at the same time. It would be seen as a tad hypocritical.
If youâre serious about a seperate political party/movement that stands against donations, then youâre free to go ahead & do it.
Compromise:
We can push for legislation that requires the identities (For random people who are not affiliated with a company or organisation it can just be labelled as private donations or something, however if the donation is over a certain sum, the identity of the private donation must be released), of any political donations.
The list of published donations could be released to the media which would make the corporate donations to mainstream parties hard to disguise from the public.
This appears to be a great resource to compare each specific countryâs political party financing policies, but also a great resource for cross-analysis and political processes in general: http://www.idea.int/political-finance/country.cfm?id=74
I think a party will most likely always have to play by a countryâs rules while campaigning, and would probably only be shooting itself in the foot if it did otherwise. By the same token, I donât see any reason why a party canât campaign to change that policy if they were to achieve power. I donât think there is hypocrisy(as long as the party is transparent and doesnât try to pretend otherwise) because the party in question doesnât currently control policy.
Here in America this would be a great step forward!
Eliminate the PACs or at the very least greatly reduce the amount of money PACS, lobbys, and interest groups can use to finance a politician and reduce their over all influence on government.
It is unfortunate we have to play their stupid games in order to come to power. I only hope it doesnât come across as a double standard. Hopefully people can understand why we need funding at this phase.
After reading all the posts, I thought this was fitting ⌠[ lol ]
I see the dilemma, how about a $1,000 maximum on political donations from any one source per year?
As $1,000 is not enough money for a politician to give favor back in return and therefore not large enough to function as a âBribeâ.
Please read this article if you havenât already: http://nr.news-republic.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=3&articleid=40472593
Quite an appropriate image. They may as well be race car drivers.
Ultimately, I think it ought to be solely a public expenditure. Ideas, not money should compete.
There is a way around this, instead of accepting donations you accept and add new members to your political party, and to become a member you agree to contribute towards registration costs and other costs. Eg. $100 per person, or $200 or whatever
Not many of us are that rich.
Political party memberships are on average ÂŁ10 per annum here in the UK.
Thatâs a great idea for the setting up & forming of new Meritocracy Parties though - that a small pool of people self-fund & share the costs.
My concern is that Meritocracy could be too much to swallow for the average person.
Being conditioned to ignore words they havenât heard before they might just simply ignore something that sounds too difficult to understand.
So maybe an intermediate political party like âEnd Political Donationsâ could be easier to gain popularity, as ideas on the Internet that go viral tend to be really easy to understand.
I think this is why, at least for now, we should focus on people who may already be sympathetic to meritocratic ideas. People who consider themselves to be âprogressiveâ or even âliberal.â At least at this phase, save all of the serious arguments and debates until meritocracy has gained more support by people who might already be more open to it.
Iâll look into it, I need 500 registered Australian voters to go along with it and then I can register a party here in Australia.
âActionâ Ed - I like it!
Hey how about this idea, since without political donations people can argue âonly rich self-funded people could be politiciansâ, or âpoliticians couldnât perform all their tasksâ. So how about all donations go through a 3rd party government account and the politician canât see who donated what, all the donations are made anonymous. So companies canât really pull the politicians strings because he wonât believe that they donated the amount they say they donated.
Maybe call it âPolitical Donation Anonymization Lawâ?
And perhaps the money is only received at the end of each month, that way someone canât say âIâll pay you exactly $50,755 tomorrow, when u get that amount youâll know its from me because I told you the amount in advanceâ. But if the money gets received as one lump some at the end of the month then that kind of loop-hole is not possible.
Finland has almost four times less population (less than six million) and we need ten times more signatures to start a political party 
These 5000 signatures must not be older than one year so it really takes a great momentum to establish a completely new party here. And if noboydy gets elected in two sequential elections then the party is demolished from the official registry and needs to collect 5000 names in a year again.