Last updated: May 19th, 2010

The Cazort.net Political Platform:

Almost everything on cazort.net is inherently political; this page is simply a consolidated expression of our official views. We have underlying principles guiding our specific beliefs:

• Simplicity & Transparency - Make the law as simple and concise as possible. Make the law self-explanatory and written in common language that any literate citizen can easily understand. Simple laws make corruption more difficult. Overly complex law tends to benefit entrenched power interests, since legal expertise becomes more important than justice as the law becomes harder to understand and navigate.
• Eliminate Loopholes - Make laws have as few exceptions as possible; modify laws immediately whenever people are using loopholes to get around the law. Design laws in anticipation of deliberate attempts to comply with the letter of the law while avoiding the spirit of the law, and punish such attempts to whatever degree possible.
• Sustainability - Any civilization that is unsustainable will by definition eventually crumble. Thus, the capacity to endure in the long-run is a keystone of the Cazort.net political platform.
• Traditional Conservativism - If it's not broken, don't fix it. We do not believe in changing laws unless there is a real need to change the law in order to address a specific problem: this applies to both creating new laws and repealing or modifying existing ones.
• Traditional Liberalism - If it *is* broken, fix it. We believe in continuous gradual change to our laws in order to solve problems and improve our society.
• Inalienable Human Rights - View the page for more detail.

Specific Stances:

• The Economy - The centerpiece to our political platform is the belief that our current economy needs to be radically restructured. We believe that the solution to most modern social problems exist in the context of our economic system, and cannot be solved without changing or at least becoming aware of how that system works. We believe in eventually dismantling the system of central reserve banking which uses debt as a regulatory instrument. However, this would be a massive undertaking. It is important to lay out the problems with the current economic system as well as a vision of a different system for the future and a plan of how to get there. Our plan does not involve reverting to an older economy (i.e. gold or silver standard) but rather, changing the way the money supply is regulated and the way money is issued. We will soon develop a page specifically for this issue.
• Trade - We believe in fair trade, and free trade to the extent that fair trade is possible. Fair trade is trade that is sustainable and pays a living wage. We believe that it should not be legal to use trade to circumvent environmental, labor, or human rights legislation: we want to completely ban the importing of any materials for which it cannot be verified that the production processes fully complied with the same laws that would apply to domestic corporations. We also believe that trade should not be used to circumvent tax--for example, people buying out-of-stote mail-order goods should pay the same tax as if they bought the goods in-state. For resources on fair trade, check out the Fair Trade Federation or do a google search on "Fair Trade" to find a number of different organizations advocating fair trade.
• Religion - We believe that freedom of religion is essential to long-term prosperity. We believe that a society that systematically shuts out any long-term vision and a sense of meaning and purpose is extremely hostile towards religion and is not "free". It does not matter if one has freedom on paper, if one cannot have economic freedom. In our society, many people are forced by economic circumstances to work in jobs that they don't believe are doing any good for society. This violates religious freedom--according to these peoples' sense of purpose and meaning in life, they believe they would rather be doing something else. This desire to do something else stems not from a selfishness of wanting to have an easier or more fun job (which is not a human right) but rather, their belief that they should be helping others with their life (and this is a human right).
• The Environment - We believe that protection of the environment should be an utmost priority of our society. However, we are strongly opposed to the traditional regulatory stance. We believe that protection of our environment should be integrated into our economic system in such a way that such protection happens naturally, and does not require the intervention of an external authority.
• Culture - We believe that preservation of culture of all peoples should be a major guiding principle in our government. This has great political implications: it points to occurrences such as the "Cultural Revolution" in China as the catastrophes that they are, but it also points to problems at home: the wal-martization of America has systematically destroyed our culture in a more decentralized, but equally coercive way, using economics rather than physical force. We believe that preservation, creation, and development of culture should be at the forefront of both domestic and international policies. This encompasses both greater investment in the arts, as well as creation of economic structures that preserve rather than destroy culture.
• Women - We believe that sexism is a threat to human rights and to the prosperity of our society. We also believe that the status of women in "third world" nations is critical to the improvement of conditions in these countries. We also believe that the current power structures in our society and in the world were created primarily by men, and are oriented in such a way that men function better within them. One "missing" part of our platform is that we recognize the need for new power structures that are more egalitarian, but we have not yet devised or found such structures.
• Intellectual Property - While we support the notion of patent and copyright as an incentive to create new ideas, as well as a mechanism to ensure credit is given to the authors of new ideas, we oppose much of the current structure of "intellectual property" law in the U.S. For example, we are opposed to software patents and also opposed to patents of pharmaceuticals.