Talk:Simultaneous policy
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Your description of Simultaneous Policy asserts that it is not a new idea because the need for simultaneity is already inherent in the present mode of international treaty-making.
I would like to suggest that Simultaneous Policy is indeed new because it differes markedly from international treaty-making in the following ways:
There are three main differences between SP and traditional international treaty-making:
Firstly, traditional International treaty-making assumes that, once a treaty is agreed, participating nations are completely free to implement its provisions. In the current competitive environment, however, when governments return from a Treaty Summit, they run up against the problem of competitiveness. With respect to the Kyoto protocol, for example, the green taxes needed to reduce emissions risk making the industries of nations implementing such taxes uncompetitive thus risking jobs (and votes) being lost. Consequently, the fear of uncompetitiveness remains and those taxes inevitably get watered down and the full provisions of the Treaty then remain unfulfilled. This is why even the very modest internationally agreed targets for reducing emissions and other such targets are continually being missed.
Instead, SP would re-regulate global capital and TNCs thus eliminating the forces which presently cause each government to fear that a full and proper implementation of the necessary taxes and measures will cause uncompetitiveness and job losses. Once SP measures to re-regulate global capital, tax havens and TNCs are in place, therefore, treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol could, for the first time, actually be fully implemented!
Secondly, most of today's International Treaties tend to consist of agreements on TARGETS, leaving the MEANS to achieving them open to each participating nation to decide. The underlying fear of uncompetitiveness thus remains because, although many countries ought to be imposing such taxes to meet the agreed targets at about the same time, there is no detailed agreement between them on their precise timing nor on which industries will be affected and to what extent. Under SP, by contrast, SPECIFIC industries, products or taxes could be identified as part of SP with the likely effect on the competitiveness of each nation having been assessed, and if necessary compensated for, AS PART of the agreement.
Finally, and most importantly, international treaties are commonly initiated by GOVERNMENTS and NOT by civil society. (At best, civil society might be requested to ratify a Treaty via a referendum.) It could therefore be said that, in the case of conventional treaty-making, "governments lead civil society".
However, if one country is by far the most powerful in the world, as the USA is, there is absolutely no compunction on its government to cooperate in any treaty or agreement which might in any way reduce or constrain its power, freedom of action, way of life, etc. This is essentially why the USA will not play the game with respect to the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court or most other such treaties which it percieves as threatening its dominant economic position. (And lets face it, if any other country found itself in the USA's position, would its attitude be any different?) So with one country being dominant, you have a stalemate and the ability of governments to lead the process is consequently rendered virtually useless because, without the participation of the dominant government, nothing useful can be achieved.
SP is different because it permits members of civil society, through their adoption of SP, both to participate in formulating the 'Treaty' itself (i.e. the measures of SP) and, because adoption of SP represents a commitment on how adopters will vote in future elections, it enables them to bring intense electoral pressure to bear on politicians to cooperate (i.e. to pressure them into adopting SP too). In other words, with SP, civil society has the potential to lead governments, not the other way round. And this use by citizens – particularly those in the USA - of SP’s novel form of electoral pressure is thus potentially capable of bringing the US government to cooperate and thus to break the present US-dominance-stale-mate.
