Results of Platform Vote #4 and Adopted Sections
Gennady Stolyarov II
The U.S. Transhumanist Party conducted its fifth vote of the members and the fourth vote on its platform planks on May 7 through May 13, 2017. Official ballot options can be found here.
Detailed results of the voting have been tabulated here. In one instance, where no majority was reached in the first round of voting, options were selected based on the ranked-preference method with instant runoffs.
As a result, the following sections of Article III of the U.S. Transhumanist Party Constitution were adopted.
Section XXXIII: The United States Transhumanist Party stands for the rights of any sentient entities defined in the Preamble to the Transhumanist Bill of Rights as possessing Level 5 or more advanced information integration. Any such sentient entities, including new kinds of sentient entities that may be discovered or developed in the future, shall be considered to be autonomous beings with full rights, and shall not be made subservient to humans, unless they as individuals pose direct, empirically evident threats to the lives of others. The protections of full individual rights shall extend to Level 5 or higher-level artificial intelligences. However, Level 4 or lower-level entities â including domain-specific artificial intelligences that have not achieved sentience â may be utilized as part of the production systems of the future, in a similar manner to machines, algorithms, computer programs, and non-human animals today and based on similar ethical considerations.
Section XXXIV:  The United States Transhumanist Party holds that sousveillance laws should be enacted to ensure that all members of peaceful communities feel safe, to achieve governmental transparency, and to provide counter-balances to any surveillance state. For instance, law-enforcement officials, when interacting with the public, should be required to wear body cameras or similar devices continuously monitoring their activities.
The United States Transhumanist Party supports the use of technologies which increase monitoring of police action and policing activities, with expressed goals of increasing policing accountability.
The United States Transhumanist Party advocates for a requirement that data pertaining to recordings of police action be transmitted and recorded beyond police control, so as to be protected from falsification, deletion, and selective curation by police.
Section XXXV:  The United States Transhumanist Party considers it imperative to achieve reductions of the United States national debt in order to avoid calamitous scenarios of extreme inflation, default, and burdensome future tax increases on individuals. The United States Transhumanist Party supports the following measures to reduce the national debt:
1. Elimination of wasteful federal spending on programs, goods, and services where equivalent positive results could be obtained through lower expenditures.
2. Cessation of foreign military occupations and the return of American troops to be stationed exclusively on American territory. However, if a mutually appropriate defense treaty with another country requires the United States to station troops in that country, those troops would be allowed to remain there until the treaty obligations are fulfilled or reduced by mutual agreement with the affected country. If the United States continues to station troops in any country due to mutually appropriate defense treaties, the United States Transhumanist Party supports greater reciprocity in allowing military personnel from that country to be stationed in the United States for purposes of training and information exchange.
3. Removal of barriers to technological innovation and technologically driven economic growth, in order that a surge in such growth could increase federal revenues so as to generate increasing surpluses, as long as federal spending does not materially rise from current levels.
4. Elimination of the current cumbersome system of federal contracting, which favors politically connected incumbent firms whose advantage consists of navigating the system, rather than performing the best possible work. Instead, all federal agencies should be empowered to purchase supplies and equipment and to requisition projects from any entity capable of satisfying an immediate need at a reasonable cost. Exclusive and preferential contracts for particular entities should be prohibited, and all payments by federal agencies for work by non-employees should be determined on a case-by-case basis.
5. Digitization of as many federal services and functions as possible â to eliminate the waste and expense of paperwork, physical queues, and legacy information technology systems.
Section XXXVI:Â The United States Transhumanist Party supports the elimination of graduated taxation and income taxation more generally. Instead, the United States Transhumanist Party advocates a flat percentage-of-sales tax applicable only to purchases from businesses whose combined nationwide revenues from all affiliates exceed a specified threshold. This tax should be built into the price of goods from such large businesses and should not impede transaction efficiency in any manner. Transactions pertaining to wages, salaries, gifts, donations, barter, employee benefits, and inheritances should remain completely untaxed, as should transactions involving solely individuals and/or small businesses, for whom the establishment of a tax-reporting infrastructure would be onerous. Furthermore, all taxes on land and property should be abolished.
Section XXXVII:Â The United States Transhumanist Party supports more proportional representation of professions and occupations among legislative and executive government officials, instead of a system in which the plurality of political offices are held by attorneys. In particular, the United States Transhumanist Party holds that a greater proportion of politicians should possess training in mathematics, engineering, and the physical and biological sciences.
Section XXXVIII:Â The United States Transhumanist Party supports emerging alternative energy sources and their technological implementations. However, the United States Transhumanist Party opposes government subsidies for any energy source â including fossil fuels. Instead, the United States Transhumanist Party holds that superior, cleaner, and more efficient energy sources will also tend to become less costly and more broadly adopted under a system of unfettered market competition and innovation.
Section XXXIX:Â The United States Transhumanist Party supports the creation of a âTranshumanist Olympicsâ where augmentations and modifications of the human body would not disqualify persons from competing.
Section XL:Â In addition to its opposition to intolerant interpretations of religious doctrines, the United States Transhumanist Party is furthermore opposed to any interpretation of a secular, non-religious doctrine that results in the rejection of reason, censorship, violation of individual rights, suppression of technological advancement, and attempts to impose certain beliefs by force and/or by legal compulsion. Examples of such doctrines opposed by the United States Transhumanist Party include Stalinism, Maoism, Neo-Malthusianism or eco-primitivism, the death-acceptance movement, and the doctrine of censorship, now prevalent on many college campuses in the United States, in the name of âsocial justiceâ, combating âtriggersâ or âmicroaggressionsâ, or avoiding subjectively perceived offense.
Section XLI: The United States Transhumanist Party understands that the role of President comes with great power and responsibility towards all citizens equally, regardless of ethnicity, race, sex, gender, religious conviction or lack thereof, political position, or societal class. It is the United States Transhumanist Partyâs view that the President, as an authority figure and head of state, should lead by example. The function of the President is to oversee and support the improvement of well-being for all United States citizens, and the welfare of the nation as a whole.
The United States Transhumanist Party recognizes that the power of the Executive Branch of the federal government has expanded far beyond the originally conceived Constitutional framework, so as to predominate over the Legislative and Judicial Branches, as well as over the institutions of civil society and individuals. The United States Transhumanist Party supports greatly curtailing and restricting the role of the U.S. President so as to confine that role within parameters originally conceived by the framers of the U.S. Constitution â particularly with regard to eliminating the unacceptable current prerogatives to unilaterally launch nuclear strikes and conduct military attacks, and to imprison, spy on, and assassinate Americans and others without due process.
Section XLII: The United States Transhumanist Party supports efforts to minimize conflicts of interest for government officials created by private businesses, religious institutions, not-for-profit organizations, special-interest groups, and certain individuals. However, the United States Transhumanist Party recognizes that the best way to minimize such conflicts of interest is not to micromanage the conduct of government officials â which can prevent petty improprieties but is inherently unable to avert the most damaging conflicts of interest among the highest echelons of power. Rather, the most promising solution is to reduce the scope of special economic privileges and protections that any government official would be capable of granting, thereby greatly diminishing the incentives of various special interests to even attempt to influence government officials.
Section XLIII:Â Irrespective of the means by which a government obtains its funds â be it from taxation or from other sources â the United States Transhumanist Party understands that a necessary function of government is to responsibly allocate such funds to protect the rights and increase the well-being of its citizens and other individuals within its jurisdiction. If a government requires the public to contribute to its funding, then the services, utilities, and research produced by that government should be easily and freely accessible to members of the public who have contributed such funds. Any government expenditure should be premised on the goal of increasing the well-being of citizens and other individuals within the governmentâs jurisdiction in the short, medium, and long terms, with the understanding that government exists to serve the people, and should allocate funds wisely with the intent of maximizing value per dollar for the purpose of protecting individualsâ rights and promoting their well-being.
Section XLIV:Â The United States Transhumanist Party supports efforts to have proposed laws accompanied by projections of expected results, including short-term, medium-term, and long-term effects. Such analysis should be based on scientific research and evidence and supported by the scientific and/or academic community with relevant subject-matter expertise. The intent is to have laws proposed to be created for the present day, and for such laws to function or improve in the future.
Section XLV:Â The United States Transhumanist Party supports efforts to depoliticize the appointment of Supreme Court Justices, and to further incentivize their impartiality toward political viewpoints.
Section XLVI: The United States Transhumanist Party supports efforts to revisit, condense, and simplify the law, with a focus on resolving issues among conflicting laws and closing illogical loopholes within the law.