NationStates Jolt Archive

I have seen quite a few UN Proposals (some of which became Resolutions) which has been wrongly categorized. I'll quote the current Proposal in queue to illustrate my point:


Labeling Standards
A resolution to improve worldwide human and civil rights.

Category: Human Rights
Strength: Mild
Proposed by: Antrium

Description: SEEING THAT some companies may label their products incorrectly, or misuse words like “fresh“ and “organic“, and also seeing that there is a rising number of people that need to be able to know what is in what they are eating, this proposal imposes the following:

I. If a product is marketed in one or multiple countries that speak different official languages, all labels on the product must be in all official languages of those countries, and must all translate to mean the same thing.

II. Defining “fresh” as “not stale, sour, or decayed” and “not altered by processing,” and defining “organic” as “food produced with the use of feed or fertilizer of plant or animal origin without employment of chemically formulated fertilizers, growth stimulants, antibiotics, or pesticides.” Nothing may be labeled “fresh” or “organic” unless it fits the above definition.

III. All people have the right to know what is in the food they eat. This means all packaged products must be labeled with (if applicable) the ingredients of the product, and nutrition facts, which should include the amount of fat, trans fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, sodium, protein, vitamins and minerals, and calories in the product. Also, all packaged products must be labeled with the country where the product was grown/made.


The way I see it (sorry if I understood it wrong), this Proposal’s category should be Social Justice, not Human Rights, as the resolution restricts economic freedoms (by imposing Labeling Standards) in the name of increasing quality of life.

The question is, is there anything Moderation can do about this? The most logical option will be giving Moderation power to change category and/or strength of any proposals if they believe that they were set wrong.

1) It is not social justice. From Hackian Laws (the current proposal guidelines)

Category

Category violations are pretty simple things, and often happens with 'Social Justice'. If your Social Justice proposal doesn't deal with "reduc[ing] income inequality and increas[ing] basic welfare", you've got the wrong category. This also includes proposals to ban guns forever being labeled as "Gun Control: Relax". This also includes Medical Marijuana Proposals under Human Rights, by the way.

If it is any category other than human rights, I would think free trade (as it standardizes something at the economic level).

Actually, now that I think about it....it would probably be moral decency more than human rights (the exact opposite position), so we do have a category miscategorization one way or the other

2) As long as the proposal hasn't hit the floor yet, it can be deleted by a game moderator. Once its hit the floor, only the admins can remove it, and the admins have stated they won't. They did a sweep of the initial resolutions (once they were in position to) but outside that, they never have.

3) I believe that the official route for asking for a proposal to be deleted for illegality is through the getting help page, though I've seen a few in-queue legality challenges on the moderator forum. Regardless, this isn't the place.

1) It is not social justice. From Hackian Laws (the current proposal guidelines)

If it is any category other than human rights, I would think free trade (as it standardizes something at the economic level).


My office if fairly busy, but could there be other provisions in the Most Glorious Protocols that might further define social justice as measures that restrict economic freedoms?

The proposal categories, as I understand them:

Social justice: Increase in welfare and social assistance for the lower class, often at the cost of increased tax dollars which leads to decreased industry. The problem is this isn't about human welfare or investing money into anything, this is standardization of a system. Granted, there probably should be a small hit to industry (and I mean SMALL) because of the cost of changing over the labelling....and hiring lawyers, but the base fact is you're really trying to stop the spread of misinformation. Admittedly, it does match the second requirement of the base description (increasing human welfare), but the fact is that you have an and joining the two, so its basically more about giving the bottom access to something to increase the general well being of society as a whole. This doesn't do that.

Human Rights is increasing the freedoms of someone, but this resolution is about stopping misinformation - and actually restricts the freedoms of some (the freedom to write half-truths, etc, or not write anything at all, or whatever). Admittedly, these are company freedoms. The only argument is the right to not be misinformed....but that's more of something that should be provided to you, not something that you move to do (if you follow my train of thought).

Moral Decency is restricting ones rights for the better of society - which I think hits this proposal on the head. As I said, it removes the rights of those who make the labels to write whatever they want, and it helps society in general because misinformation is not spread.

Free Trade I think is a partial match, because its trying to reduce trade barriers to increase trade. It certainly removes trade barriers, as it helps standardize labeling procedures, and it could increase economy because of that and promote more trade, but this is more of a side effect from the resolution than an actual purpose of.

Mod ruling:
http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=9646778#post9646778