An IMMODEST Panarchist Proposal
I'm fascinated by different possible social structures and the factors which can promote or inhibit the formation of any specific structure. I only dabbled in anarchy for a few weeks before seeing it as impossible to implement without certain fundamental changes - it'd be as if I were to try to make my car into a plane while keeping the chassis.
Anarchist in general and anarcho-capitalists in particular have a large hurdle to overcome: any large (> 150 people) society without a state will fail in short order - it will collapse or become anarchist only in name if it fails to address things which keep people poor against their will or which entice people to fight one another or it doesn't adequately address the reputation problem in larger societies.
Still, the need for a government seems kludgy, partially because I'm opposed to god objects as a programmer, but especially because of my guiding principle about values. This continued to nag at me until I was determined to find a libertarian-friendly way in which people could actualize their goals while hopefully being self-sustaining even if highly turbulent. The result was a form of highly-transparent geo-panarchism using a traceable currency with opinion-non-fungibility (basically Bitcoin-turned-Whuffie).
This is a thought experiment that is not meant to be implemented in an existing social structure. The changes are probably too great to get from here to there. I suspect that it could be implemented from scratch in a brand new charter city (i.e. composed entirely of immigrants who agree with the core principles and help establish them as norms).
Anarchist in general and anarcho-capitalists in particular have a large hurdle to overcome: any large (> 150 people) society without a state will fail in short order - it will collapse or become anarchist only in name if it fails to address things which keep people poor against their will or which entice people to fight one another or it doesn't adequately address the reputation problem in larger societies.
Still, the need for a government seems kludgy, partially because I'm opposed to god objects as a programmer, but especially because of my guiding principle about values. This continued to nag at me until I was determined to find a libertarian-friendly way in which people could actualize their goals while hopefully being self-sustaining even if highly turbulent. The result was a form of highly-transparent geo-panarchism using a traceable currency with opinion-non-fungibility (basically Bitcoin-turned-Whuffie).
This is a thought experiment that is not meant to be implemented in an existing social structure. The changes are probably too great to get from here to there. I suspect that it could be implemented from scratch in a brand new charter city (i.e. composed entirely of immigrants who agree with the core principles and help establish them as norms).
The Two Possibilities I See
I've been interested in power and hierarchy – the relation of humans to impose beliefs or circumstances on one another. I’ve waded through enough convoluted arguments for and against rights or constitutions or laws that I see what I feel is the brick wall at the back of the stage – raw power, ability. This power doesn’t have to take the form of overt force. In fact an often more powerful and pernicious form of power is that of memes which restrict avenues for thought. Gothe laments "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."
Societies are held together, in part, by a shared identity and sense of a collective stake in the future. Unfortunately, such identity thinking can easily be hijacked by those seeking to secure positions of power. Once people identify with institutions; where institutions stand in place for a society itself, it’s easy to get people to act in ways counter to their stated interests. Eliezer Yudkowsky brilliantly points out what I consider some of the obvious problems in identity thinking.
I do not wish to claim that all institutions or hierarchy are bad or that the benefits of institutions or hierarchy never outweigh the costs. I do wish to make the case that they are dangerous and that they can foster situations which work against the interests of those ceding power to those institutions - often by seeking first their own perpetuation even at the expense of the purpose for which they were formed.
While some people are stronger and more capable than others, they all have to go to sleep and get old at some point where they will become vulnerable. The primary way of getting power over others is to either have a greater strength of numbers or to get others to fear or respect you without having to actually physically deny them opportunities through indoctrination. You need people to respect you or whatever institution or office or station you represent to build an army.
Generally the kind of power I'm concerned about starts with getting others to believe it is in their best interest to cede power to or respect others. There are cases where it's beneficial to entrust others with power. However, there are lot of cases where people just want power and will get others to follow them for reasons which those others haven't thought about. I'm okay with habits and institutions and rituals, but I'm against using those items unmindfully. You wouldn't just eat any old chemical you found in a lab. Why are you putting any old philosophy in your brain and turning it into a habit?
Platitudes like "we are the government" or "the laws represent the will of the people" or "if we don't do something, bad thing X will surely happen" may be partially true, but they gloss over and aggregate values into a few simple boxes. Worse, they allow people to ignore or at least tolerate a chain of abuses because by hacking the primate mind's in-group preference. Elections and various illusions of control act as a pressure relief valve to reduce the threat of meaningful change from the oppressed. These strategies are especially effective when people are fairly comfortable and lazy – it’s easier to hold out meager hope of change within the system than it is to work for effective structural change outside of it. Compare actual riots in poorer countries to the physical acquiescence to law enforcement during conflict seen in The United States.
The only two possibilities I can see for human societies where people can harm or inconvenience one another (namely where people don't live inside a computer simulation - conflicts which I believe actually define society to a certain degree) are that power is retained by individuals by and large or that it is ceded to authorities who may either delegate it downward or try to maintain ultimate decision-making power. In computer science terms, the two authority models could be represented by a tree or a graph.
Another way of looking at this, which supervenes pretty well onto the first, is it's a choice between individuals being trusted by default and losing power and status when they do wrong or individuals being untrusted by default and gaining power and status when they do right. The latter has the potential to concentrate power in fewer hands and flies in the face of my stance on the prerequisites of authentic societies. It's also fairly illogical as commonly presented.
History has shown that large societies turn to some form of command-and-control structure even if many aspects of the society are left to decentralized or market mechanisms. There are enticing arguments for why this is the case case which appeal to conversion/conquering effort disparities, as there are those from a programming perspective, but those arguments aren’t critical for this thought experiment. What I want to do with this proposal is lay out a blueprint for what I see as the basis of a workable large-scale society with a decentralized or even non-existent governmental structures. So far as I know, no such societies exist and they may not even be possible given common human values and proclivities.
Unlike general political proposals, I will not make appeals to rights or law – those things are not part of nature-sans-agents and thus have no power outside of agents... what matters are general human dispositions and aversions and the ability of humans to get others humans to fear one another or find each other useful.
Societies are held together, in part, by a shared identity and sense of a collective stake in the future. Unfortunately, such identity thinking can easily be hijacked by those seeking to secure positions of power. Once people identify with institutions; where institutions stand in place for a society itself, it’s easy to get people to act in ways counter to their stated interests. Eliezer Yudkowsky brilliantly points out what I consider some of the obvious problems in identity thinking.
I do not wish to claim that all institutions or hierarchy are bad or that the benefits of institutions or hierarchy never outweigh the costs. I do wish to make the case that they are dangerous and that they can foster situations which work against the interests of those ceding power to those institutions - often by seeking first their own perpetuation even at the expense of the purpose for which they were formed.
While some people are stronger and more capable than others, they all have to go to sleep and get old at some point where they will become vulnerable. The primary way of getting power over others is to either have a greater strength of numbers or to get others to fear or respect you without having to actually physically deny them opportunities through indoctrination. You need people to respect you or whatever institution or office or station you represent to build an army.
Generally the kind of power I'm concerned about starts with getting others to believe it is in their best interest to cede power to or respect others. There are cases where it's beneficial to entrust others with power. However, there are lot of cases where people just want power and will get others to follow them for reasons which those others haven't thought about. I'm okay with habits and institutions and rituals, but I'm against using those items unmindfully. You wouldn't just eat any old chemical you found in a lab. Why are you putting any old philosophy in your brain and turning it into a habit?
Platitudes like "we are the government" or "the laws represent the will of the people" or "if we don't do something, bad thing X will surely happen" may be partially true, but they gloss over and aggregate values into a few simple boxes. Worse, they allow people to ignore or at least tolerate a chain of abuses because by hacking the primate mind's in-group preference. Elections and various illusions of control act as a pressure relief valve to reduce the threat of meaningful change from the oppressed. These strategies are especially effective when people are fairly comfortable and lazy – it’s easier to hold out meager hope of change within the system than it is to work for effective structural change outside of it. Compare actual riots in poorer countries to the physical acquiescence to law enforcement during conflict seen in The United States.
The only two possibilities I can see for human societies where people can harm or inconvenience one another (namely where people don't live inside a computer simulation - conflicts which I believe actually define society to a certain degree) are that power is retained by individuals by and large or that it is ceded to authorities who may either delegate it downward or try to maintain ultimate decision-making power. In computer science terms, the two authority models could be represented by a tree or a graph.
Another way of looking at this, which supervenes pretty well onto the first, is it's a choice between individuals being trusted by default and losing power and status when they do wrong or individuals being untrusted by default and gaining power and status when they do right. The latter has the potential to concentrate power in fewer hands and flies in the face of my stance on the prerequisites of authentic societies. It's also fairly illogical as commonly presented.
History has shown that large societies turn to some form of command-and-control structure even if many aspects of the society are left to decentralized or market mechanisms. There are enticing arguments for why this is the case case which appeal to conversion/conquering effort disparities, as there are those from a programming perspective, but those arguments aren’t critical for this thought experiment. What I want to do with this proposal is lay out a blueprint for what I see as the basis of a workable large-scale society with a decentralized or even non-existent governmental structures. So far as I know, no such societies exist and they may not even be possible given common human values and proclivities.
Unlike general political proposals, I will not make appeals to rights or law – those things are not part of nature-sans-agents and thus have no power outside of agents... what matters are general human dispositions and aversions and the ability of humans to get others humans to fear one another or find each other useful.
The Known Problems of Centralization
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The problems of power centralization are obvious and well-known to those with a libertarian bent. People in positions of concentrated power lack the context with which to make decisions that satisfy the desires of those being affected. People in power, like all people, tend to look out for their own interests and will often sacrifice the ends they were given power to bring about when those ends and their personal interests come into conflict.
One size fits all is a way to all but guarantee that a lot of people don’t get what they want. This is not to discount economies of scale, which certainly exist, but the benefits of such scale can easily be more than negated when efficiencies are aimed at what many consider the wrong end. Any authority necessarily imposes values, but concentrated systems are more likely to impose values others wouldn't choose for themselves. Concurrency and accuracy-of-solution can be shown to by systems theory and programming best practices to take a hit in centralized command-and-control structures. On the way up, information must be aggregated and abstracted such that context is lost. Often times it is also filtered since every human relationship has both useful and political aspects leading to the self-censoring of subordinates. |
Due to lack of context, leaders of centralized systems know almost nothing about a lot of things rather than a lot about a few things.
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On the way down, issued commands can be interpreted with a certain leniency by subordinates who can't see the whole picture. Delegating authority downward helps, but that's just the beginning of employing a decentralization solution where decisions are made closer to the point of information and effect. If the commands come from on high, however, they were still likely made with information which is more abstracted than the delegates are using.
Societies built around central authority tend to not be readily adaptable to change though it's questionable how well radically decentralized societies would fair due to coordination and free rider problems. If a leader fails to recognize changing circumstances or individuals fail to prepare themselves based on a false belief that leadership and institutions will take care of them in hard times, social collapse becomes easy. In the cases where disconnection from purported truth from reality is especially strong, the path of least resistance may be social collapse rather than adaption.
Given the serious problems with authoritarian structures, why have authorities at all rather than letting each individual express their own values? There are numerous reasons why decentralization and autonomy tend to give way to centralization and authority as a society grows.
Given the serious problems with authoritarian structures, why have authorities at all rather than letting each individual express their own values? There are numerous reasons why decentralization and autonomy tend to give way to centralization and authority as a society grows.
- Authority can, when it succeeds, pull enough people under a unifying vision of what to value. This is useful for solving legitimate problems which require large levels of cohesion. This can be achieved by getting people to identify with the authority or its institutions or, failing that, by getting outliers to fear the power of the authority.
- Centralized institutions are necessarily more organized in certain areas and can spend more efforts in fighting decentralized system which spend their energy in a multitude of different ways. As groups come into competition for resources, it's likely that those which were more organized - even if under a banner of authority - would win.
- Leadership is just another skill which can fall under division of labor so it's easy to get leadership castes when people don't have the time or inclination to lead themselves. People who delegate such authority are more likely to see the proclamations of their politician as good due to cognitive dissonance being unpleasant.
- Decentralized systems are adaptable, but unpredictable. More people, more unpredictability. Stability and change-resistance are common human desires. History has shown that people readily cede power and decision making to those who can convincingly promise them safety and stability.
- People don't appear to care enough to make decentralized systems work as traditionally proposed. Matching means to ends requires informedness and the ability to act.
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As society gets increasingly complex, effective human choice is relegated to the trivial – which breakfast cereal to have before work and the like. Informedness, competency, and the ability to affect others in a meaningful way all become less likely in large and complex societies. Where stability and a unifying vision matter more than liberty, even having "bad" central leadership is better than wildly disparate desires and anarchy. Matters which are considered important are only available insofar as offering such things as a choice benefits the system because, ultimately, evolution is practical. However, evolution doesn't explore the entire space of possibilities and, as humans, we have the luxury of constantly reexamining our operating premises.
To that end, I've seen few proposals on how to get people to act directly by lowering the cost of informedness, competency, and action. Rather than giving platitudes about freedom or rugged individualism or people caring about one another, it's effective to examine the structure of society which causes power disparities and hierarchical political institutions to form in the first place. If the functions of these institutions can be replicated and placed in the control of individuals, a large anarchical society may be possible even if it cannot function by some of the maxims of "suffix anarchists." The image to the should give an indication as to what I'm talking about. I'm ignoring changing the dispositions of others for now. It is certainly possible through traditional social tools currently and it may be possible through technological means later, but I think allowing people more accurate beliefs and more opportunities to bring action to bear against others who they want changed will prove sufficient. |
The vectors of attack for changing the actions of others; you either need to change their dispositions, beliefs, or deny them opportunities actively or passively.
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The Goal of this Project
The Primary Goal: A society which imposes the fewest goals possible at any involuntary institutional level.
This goal rests upon a few simple project principles:
The goal of society is to maximize the actualization of ends of its residents. If society doesn’t make one better off (as they see it), what reason can be given to have a society? Protection, trade, companionship, exchange of ideas – these are all ways of making people better off by allowing them to make real the states of affairs which they desire.
Some goals are necessary. For society to have cohesion some goals must be accepted by those in the society and others must, with no further information, have a reasonable expectation that those others are operating toward the same ends. If this isn't the case, the cost for trade may become prohibitively expensive leading to a failure of that society to fulfill its goal (as defined previously). That doesn't mean it's right in some non-agent sense to impose these goals on others or that these goals are good in some non-agent sense, just that they are necessary for the goals which most others in the society have.
The degree to which societies fail to actualize the ends of their members or fail to adapt the same to new circumstances increases exponentially with the number of imposed goals. The cost of arbitrating multiple ends and the uncertainty of rulings ahead of time undermine trust and consequently trade. Thus, while some values must be imposed for the survival of society and hence the project, minimizing their number helps to avoid common traps which lead to dissatisfaction and non-adaptability.
Desires are "objectively" incommensurable. Quite simply, one cannot reduce desires to a common standard for comparison without making an desire-expressing evaluation. A cake isn't worth two pies. A murder isn't worth five thefts. The very act of comparing two things requires a metric with which to rank inputs. All metrics are expressive of desires and all desires come from valuers and are only valid in the context of those who share those desires. The result of this is no desires can be said to be acontextually better than any other, nor can any societies be said to be ametrically better than one another. Certain societies may be selected against in the long-run, but that is not itself a judgment unless natural selection is to be considered an agent. Yes, societies can be better for things, but agents have to care about those things for it to matter.
Societies which impose the fewest goals should, all else being equal; best achieve the actualization of ends of its residents. All imposed goals necessarily deny opportunity for others through imposition. Opportunity is critical to actualize ends which, as mentioned before, is the goal of the project. Removing imposed goals is tantamount to removing restrictions and generally raising the actualization of ends. The all else being equal is critical because it's possible for imposed goals to actually allow more ends to be actualized - for instance where people are either ill-informed or fail to recognize certain causal links such that being forced to do something actually works to their subjective benefit. The system I propose imposes internalization and truth which may piss people off, but can actually lead to greater actualization of ends (generally) even for the people imposed upon.
The best way to express desires is to give up something in exchange for something else. By what other measure can one even remotely tell how strongly one values something short of a brain scan? Since values are incommensurable, each person is left making his or her own personal evaluation every time they give up one opportunity for another.
There are, however, two problems with this assertion.
The first is that it presumes that the agent has true beliefs which may not be true. If people don't have true beliefs - even if the individual observing another dosens't have true beliefs - it can be hard to determine what desires others have. A belief that the agent holds true beliefs (in the pragmatically workable sense) is ultimately both the charitable position and lazy position. The range of false beliefs is nearly boundless, true beliefs are a much smaller subset and cohere with one another in idea-space. It should be the case that a properly-thinking agent would expect others to also be properly-thinking if for no other reason than it's less computationally expensive to hold that position. If an agent is right about certain things then they can be charitably assumed to be right about related things - god box notwithstanding.
The second problem is that it presumes that people are actually able to give something up which others can recognize. If there are two people, one of whom has a million dollars and another who has ten dollars and the latter strongly desires a kidney replacement they are unable, at least through the vehicle of money, to express that desire. My proposal addresses that with a combination of a dividend to all members of society and a systemic restructuring to strongly favor internalization of economic exchanges. Sure it's not going to solve the equality of opportunity problem 100% but there's no better way which doesn't involve trying to correct for luck - which lowers overall actualization and thus is against the spirit of the project.
Anything which undermines truth, trust, or trade will tend to undermine society. Without truth, people cannot map means to ends and cannot accurately express their desires. Without trust, people cannot work together. Without trade, people cannot exchange ideas to discover truth and cannot create excess wealth to trade or to weather difficult times.
Functional rights require respect (in the broad sense of the term). It's not necessary to posit natural rights. If they don't exist in the same way that gravity exists, that is if people can violate them without harming themselves then why tout them so much? In reality it's because you're trying to con those with power into respecting you by lying to them about nature being on your side. Does that really work? If that view of rights is not helping you then ditch them. If you want rights, get other people to respect you - and if you're not willing to come up with a better lie (lies are problematic in general because they can be discovered) - you can do that by being useful to them or by giving them real reasons to fear you. Power disparities are dangerous because, even if someone doesn’t care about you, if you can bring force to bear against them if they displease you, they are less likely to displease you. If they have most of the power and you have little power, they don’t need to care what you think.
There is no progress without context. The notion of progress in the unexamined sense should be ditched and this experiment is not concerned with progress, only value expression and actualization in a stateless society. If the people in the society want to form a gigantic death cult and kill themselves off by year three, that is not necessarily an indictment of the experiment and it doesn't mean that the society was "wrong" or "regressive." Societies change and, though there are trends, progress only occurs in the context of a goal.
This goal rests upon a few simple project principles:
The goal of society is to maximize the actualization of ends of its residents. If society doesn’t make one better off (as they see it), what reason can be given to have a society? Protection, trade, companionship, exchange of ideas – these are all ways of making people better off by allowing them to make real the states of affairs which they desire.
Some goals are necessary. For society to have cohesion some goals must be accepted by those in the society and others must, with no further information, have a reasonable expectation that those others are operating toward the same ends. If this isn't the case, the cost for trade may become prohibitively expensive leading to a failure of that society to fulfill its goal (as defined previously). That doesn't mean it's right in some non-agent sense to impose these goals on others or that these goals are good in some non-agent sense, just that they are necessary for the goals which most others in the society have.
The degree to which societies fail to actualize the ends of their members or fail to adapt the same to new circumstances increases exponentially with the number of imposed goals. The cost of arbitrating multiple ends and the uncertainty of rulings ahead of time undermine trust and consequently trade. Thus, while some values must be imposed for the survival of society and hence the project, minimizing their number helps to avoid common traps which lead to dissatisfaction and non-adaptability.
Desires are "objectively" incommensurable. Quite simply, one cannot reduce desires to a common standard for comparison without making an desire-expressing evaluation. A cake isn't worth two pies. A murder isn't worth five thefts. The very act of comparing two things requires a metric with which to rank inputs. All metrics are expressive of desires and all desires come from valuers and are only valid in the context of those who share those desires. The result of this is no desires can be said to be acontextually better than any other, nor can any societies be said to be ametrically better than one another. Certain societies may be selected against in the long-run, but that is not itself a judgment unless natural selection is to be considered an agent. Yes, societies can be better for things, but agents have to care about those things for it to matter.
Societies which impose the fewest goals should, all else being equal; best achieve the actualization of ends of its residents. All imposed goals necessarily deny opportunity for others through imposition. Opportunity is critical to actualize ends which, as mentioned before, is the goal of the project. Removing imposed goals is tantamount to removing restrictions and generally raising the actualization of ends. The all else being equal is critical because it's possible for imposed goals to actually allow more ends to be actualized - for instance where people are either ill-informed or fail to recognize certain causal links such that being forced to do something actually works to their subjective benefit. The system I propose imposes internalization and truth which may piss people off, but can actually lead to greater actualization of ends (generally) even for the people imposed upon.
The best way to express desires is to give up something in exchange for something else. By what other measure can one even remotely tell how strongly one values something short of a brain scan? Since values are incommensurable, each person is left making his or her own personal evaluation every time they give up one opportunity for another.
There are, however, two problems with this assertion.
The first is that it presumes that the agent has true beliefs which may not be true. If people don't have true beliefs - even if the individual observing another dosens't have true beliefs - it can be hard to determine what desires others have. A belief that the agent holds true beliefs (in the pragmatically workable sense) is ultimately both the charitable position and lazy position. The range of false beliefs is nearly boundless, true beliefs are a much smaller subset and cohere with one another in idea-space. It should be the case that a properly-thinking agent would expect others to also be properly-thinking if for no other reason than it's less computationally expensive to hold that position. If an agent is right about certain things then they can be charitably assumed to be right about related things - god box notwithstanding.
The second problem is that it presumes that people are actually able to give something up which others can recognize. If there are two people, one of whom has a million dollars and another who has ten dollars and the latter strongly desires a kidney replacement they are unable, at least through the vehicle of money, to express that desire. My proposal addresses that with a combination of a dividend to all members of society and a systemic restructuring to strongly favor internalization of economic exchanges. Sure it's not going to solve the equality of opportunity problem 100% but there's no better way which doesn't involve trying to correct for luck - which lowers overall actualization and thus is against the spirit of the project.
Anything which undermines truth, trust, or trade will tend to undermine society. Without truth, people cannot map means to ends and cannot accurately express their desires. Without trust, people cannot work together. Without trade, people cannot exchange ideas to discover truth and cannot create excess wealth to trade or to weather difficult times.
Functional rights require respect (in the broad sense of the term). It's not necessary to posit natural rights. If they don't exist in the same way that gravity exists, that is if people can violate them without harming themselves then why tout them so much? In reality it's because you're trying to con those with power into respecting you by lying to them about nature being on your side. Does that really work? If that view of rights is not helping you then ditch them. If you want rights, get other people to respect you - and if you're not willing to come up with a better lie (lies are problematic in general because they can be discovered) - you can do that by being useful to them or by giving them real reasons to fear you. Power disparities are dangerous because, even if someone doesn’t care about you, if you can bring force to bear against them if they displease you, they are less likely to displease you. If they have most of the power and you have little power, they don’t need to care what you think.
There is no progress without context. The notion of progress in the unexamined sense should be ditched and this experiment is not concerned with progress, only value expression and actualization in a stateless society. If the people in the society want to form a gigantic death cult and kill themselves off by year three, that is not necessarily an indictment of the experiment and it doesn't mean that the society was "wrong" or "regressive." Societies change and, though there are trends, progress only occurs in the context of a goal.
The Charter City
The model by which this project is to be implemented is that of a charter city, also called a "charter protectorate" in this proposal since it will possibly contain many cities. There are numerous reasons why a charter city is preferable to working within an existing political structure: the primary reason is to eliminate or greatly reduce the conflicts which impede progress. In my home country, the United States, there are so many politically-connected groups, so many voters who stand to lose if the status quo is interrupted, and so many laws which strangle proposals such as this one that it is simply less effort to start over. As society becomes more stagnant due to such forces, there is a rapidly diminishing return on investment for efforts directed at fundamental changes.
When land and initial infrastructure are purchased from private donations and all prior owners have been properly compensated in low-tax or no-tax areas, there is no one left to claim a theft (even though a geo-theft still occurred from people generally); no existing landowners or privileged individuals can claim harm. Nor can newcomers: everyone who moves to the charter city ostensibly knows what they are getting into even if the actual effects of the experiment cannot be predicted very far out.
The initial newcomers will be going there because they're looking for freedom or an adventure. They can help establish the norms for their children and second-wave immigrants who are more concerned with the opportunities provided by the protectorate. The only people who could claim harm are children born in the protectorate and they should automatically have citizenship in the host country so as to be no worse off than if they were born in the host country. As children already suffer for the geographical birth choices of their parents, the point is largely moot anyways; the system need be no better in this area than what exists elsewhere.
Charter cities are not beholden to many of the rules of their host country, certainly not the same amount as officially-incorporated sub jurisdictions. This allows wide latitude in the types of societies which can be tried, though maybe not to the degree that a perfect execution of this experiment would demand. Charter cities are indeed expected to try substantially different policies than their host country, to fail or succeed based on the strength of ideas not on luck of geography or historical political circumstances. This view is bolstered by the fact that all lands offered for charter cities at the present time are not particularly large or well-endowed with natural resources. It is expected that how well a charter city functions will be determined almost entirely by its efforts rather than luck.
Charter cities are typically defended at the national level which can mean fewer levels of government to keep happy and more pushback against powerful countries who like to play the policeman of the world when certain state actors are threatening their interests or hegemony.
When land and initial infrastructure are purchased from private donations and all prior owners have been properly compensated in low-tax or no-tax areas, there is no one left to claim a theft (even though a geo-theft still occurred from people generally); no existing landowners or privileged individuals can claim harm. Nor can newcomers: everyone who moves to the charter city ostensibly knows what they are getting into even if the actual effects of the experiment cannot be predicted very far out.
The initial newcomers will be going there because they're looking for freedom or an adventure. They can help establish the norms for their children and second-wave immigrants who are more concerned with the opportunities provided by the protectorate. The only people who could claim harm are children born in the protectorate and they should automatically have citizenship in the host country so as to be no worse off than if they were born in the host country. As children already suffer for the geographical birth choices of their parents, the point is largely moot anyways; the system need be no better in this area than what exists elsewhere.
Charter cities are not beholden to many of the rules of their host country, certainly not the same amount as officially-incorporated sub jurisdictions. This allows wide latitude in the types of societies which can be tried, though maybe not to the degree that a perfect execution of this experiment would demand. Charter cities are indeed expected to try substantially different policies than their host country, to fail or succeed based on the strength of ideas not on luck of geography or historical political circumstances. This view is bolstered by the fact that all lands offered for charter cities at the present time are not particularly large or well-endowed with natural resources. It is expected that how well a charter city functions will be determined almost entirely by its efforts rather than luck.
Charter cities are typically defended at the national level which can mean fewer levels of government to keep happy and more pushback against powerful countries who like to play the policeman of the world when certain state actors are threatening their interests or hegemony.
The Corporation
The executive model of the proposal involves a quasi-government whose only purpose is to be a repository of truth and a recorder of individual expressions of desire. Jeez, that doesn't sound entirely anarchist. True, and I am working to figure out ways to minimize the roles of this organization but, in the context of a world not entirely anarchist, it is probably necessary to have a unified interface with other countries or at least the host country.
The corporation may have a few other roles such as managing immigration, fostering a transparent society, and identifying individuals. It will also serve as the exterior interface to the charter city which will deal with the host and guarantor countries and manage a trust fund and handle certain public infrastructure investments so long as they are not forcibly imposed on anyone. The only role the corporation may have involving force is to work with their host country to forcibly eject squatters and people attempting illegal entry to the protectorate. If any of these roles can be outsourced without putting at risk the experiment, then they should be.
If any recurring roles are needed in the corporation, they should be temporary assigned by guaranteed random lot to reduce any possibility of cronyism or nepotism.
The structure and incentives within corporation is where significant effort must be expended, at least up front. The ability, for instance, to determine and correctly report identity is critical. While this is a technological problem, it must be one resistant to the will of individual humans who would spread falsehood to personally gain. This is especially important if there is a single entity whose records are considered authoritative.
The corporation may have a few other roles such as managing immigration, fostering a transparent society, and identifying individuals. It will also serve as the exterior interface to the charter city which will deal with the host and guarantor countries and manage a trust fund and handle certain public infrastructure investments so long as they are not forcibly imposed on anyone. The only role the corporation may have involving force is to work with their host country to forcibly eject squatters and people attempting illegal entry to the protectorate. If any of these roles can be outsourced without putting at risk the experiment, then they should be.
If any recurring roles are needed in the corporation, they should be temporary assigned by guaranteed random lot to reduce any possibility of cronyism or nepotism.
The structure and incentives within corporation is where significant effort must be expended, at least up front. The ability, for instance, to determine and correctly report identity is critical. While this is a technological problem, it must be one resistant to the will of individual humans who would spread falsehood to personally gain. This is especially important if there is a single entity whose records are considered authoritative.
The Roles of the Police Replicated at the Individual Level
This proposal is predicated on the assertion that one large reason why people cede authority to others is because they don’t have the time, knowledge, or ability to do certain things on their own. There are also certain psychological identity, icon/symbol, alpha male reasons why individuals cede power, but that is beyond the scope of this document; we're not focused on changing general human dispositions but redirecting the consequences of those dispositions to results which benefit more people.
If the first assertion is correct then lowering the barrier to act or be informed should cause more people to act or, rather, allow more people to act.
Stable societies require adherence to rules or, more generally, the ends which those rules ostensibly further. Beyond getting people on the same page, the existence of laws is kind of pointless. If people already desire what the law is furthering, then they don’t need a law to act “correctly.” If they disagree with the end that the law is furthering, then words aren't deterrence… only force is.
So long as individuals have an incentive to detriment society for their own personal gain, the survival of society requires someone to ensure that norms are respected and that arbitration is fair and impartial. There has been much anarchist writing on how both the police and judicial aspects of government can be privatized. While much of the writing on arbitration makes sense and is starting to be put into practice now, privatizing the police has had a far from stellar track record (not that public police forces are great either). It’s easy enough for one to competently ask "what prevents private police from becoming the new state?" There have been many trees and much ink wasted on responding to this question but I’ve seen little which addresses the actual structural problem: it doesn't matter what you call the government; the more power one has over you, the more state-like it becomes from your perspective. If people aren't actively working to keep others in line then others will fall out of line. If people aren't willing to do the dirty work themselves, they're going down the road of statism - which is the opposite of personal responsibility.
The best proposal I’ve seen and one which respects the value assertions listed above is that of shunning or dissociating from individuals. This could fulfill one of the roles of police, enforcement, if it could be given teeth. Unfortunately, shunning rarely works because the shunned often have far more power than those doing the shunning and they can hide the effects of their actions due to the complexity of society. There’s also no continuous need to please others and this situation will only get worse in cases of technological unemployment. If I rip you off and have enough to live the rest of my life, I don't need to care what others think.
So, not only does shunning need to be done in an effective manner, as will be discussed later, the other aspect of police work needs to be present: detection.
If the first assertion is correct then lowering the barrier to act or be informed should cause more people to act or, rather, allow more people to act.
Stable societies require adherence to rules or, more generally, the ends which those rules ostensibly further. Beyond getting people on the same page, the existence of laws is kind of pointless. If people already desire what the law is furthering, then they don’t need a law to act “correctly.” If they disagree with the end that the law is furthering, then words aren't deterrence… only force is.
So long as individuals have an incentive to detriment society for their own personal gain, the survival of society requires someone to ensure that norms are respected and that arbitration is fair and impartial. There has been much anarchist writing on how both the police and judicial aspects of government can be privatized. While much of the writing on arbitration makes sense and is starting to be put into practice now, privatizing the police has had a far from stellar track record (not that public police forces are great either). It’s easy enough for one to competently ask "what prevents private police from becoming the new state?" There have been many trees and much ink wasted on responding to this question but I’ve seen little which addresses the actual structural problem: it doesn't matter what you call the government; the more power one has over you, the more state-like it becomes from your perspective. If people aren't actively working to keep others in line then others will fall out of line. If people aren't willing to do the dirty work themselves, they're going down the road of statism - which is the opposite of personal responsibility.
The best proposal I’ve seen and one which respects the value assertions listed above is that of shunning or dissociating from individuals. This could fulfill one of the roles of police, enforcement, if it could be given teeth. Unfortunately, shunning rarely works because the shunned often have far more power than those doing the shunning and they can hide the effects of their actions due to the complexity of society. There’s also no continuous need to please others and this situation will only get worse in cases of technological unemployment. If I rip you off and have enough to live the rest of my life, I don't need to care what others think.
So, not only does shunning need to be done in an effective manner, as will be discussed later, the other aspect of police work needs to be present: detection.
Transparency
The only way to have mass detection is to have a transparent society. Technology is moving in that direction anyways. From micro drones to lasers which can read your physiological state from hundreds of feet away, anonymity is coming to an end. It’s not a matter of retaining anonymity at this point. It’s a matter of ensuring that the cameras look on everyone rather than on the many by the few. Information disparities are just one form of power disparity and, like all power disparities, they make it less likely that those with power will limit themselves to things which aren’t harmful to others.
If the Facebook generation has taught us anything it's that people like to be voyeuristic and will comment on and rebroadcast what others are doing. What appears Orwellian is adopted if it's immediately convenient or has a slick user interface. It should be simple enough to have people police one another.
Any good libertarian is leery of such proposals. A "see something, say something" mentality recalls the overzealous Department of Homeland Security hype or Hitler's brown shirts. However, I must emphasize that that's not what this is recommending. If you see something, do something. If you're waiting on others to act for you, then you're ceding power and building the foundation of a state which may eventually topple on you.
I recognize that there are a lot of good reasons to favor anonymity. Most societies have so many laws that everyone can be branded a criminal if they are observed for even a single day. Rather than legalizing marijuana it's easier to just pretend that no one but hardened criminals smoke it. Real change comes from "coming out of the closet" about things and demanding respect, but that takes numbers and power. When ideas are young and unpopular, it's difficult for them to gain traction when they must endure the slings and arrows of established culture and social norms.
However, I must honestly ask, what’s the alternative? In order to keep society cohesive, someone must be doing some detecting and enforcing. Being able to live in society without helping it run by dealing with defectors isn't going to work. It's not just a bunch of douches that keep making statism happen. Statism is an attractor because it's an easy way to tackle the free rider/defector problems which fits human proclivites. Humans have a proclivity to respect authority because having alphas helped tribes survive in the past. That the state gets filled with douches makes sense given the propensity for humans to seek power. So rather than raging against the attractor, make a new one in the actual control of individuals and drain power from the other attractor.
Those sufficiently indoctrinated will tend to see those in authority as generally good if not occasionally flawed to outright übermensch. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both people with noble intentions and sociopaths are attracted to positions of power over others. This already leads to a skewed sampling of the population. Those who are noble are either corrupted as their fatal conceits are revealed and practicality demands that they venture into what they would’ve previously considered morally shaky ground or they are frustrated or outright ejected by the sociopaths leaving an even more skewed sample of the population - one which favors sociopathy over naive good intentions.
Given that such hierarchies are dangerous and that detection is a necessity for enforcement, even enforcement through dissociation, knowledge of the actions of others might as well be spread far and wide where people aren't trusted based on the colors of the costumes and insignia they don, but on the evidence they obtain and ability to convince one another (hopefully logically).
Rather than having "the state" fund detection and prosecution, let others bring suit on behalf of third parties for a cut of the compensation. If there were money at stake and public drones or cameras available for use, solving murders could be as simple as being the first to observe that two people enter a house but only one leaves.
Observing physical action is not the only area where transparency is needed. Financial transparency is critical. The reasons are two-fold. Firstly, when attempting to stop crime it's often the question of "cui bono?" or "who benefits?" which is the most elucidating. Secondly the ability to track money allows the ability to dissociate from bad money; while dissociating from an individual gives the actor a certain amount of power, dissociating from an offender’s money is a potentially huge force multiplier.
If the Facebook generation has taught us anything it's that people like to be voyeuristic and will comment on and rebroadcast what others are doing. What appears Orwellian is adopted if it's immediately convenient or has a slick user interface. It should be simple enough to have people police one another.
Any good libertarian is leery of such proposals. A "see something, say something" mentality recalls the overzealous Department of Homeland Security hype or Hitler's brown shirts. However, I must emphasize that that's not what this is recommending. If you see something, do something. If you're waiting on others to act for you, then you're ceding power and building the foundation of a state which may eventually topple on you.
I recognize that there are a lot of good reasons to favor anonymity. Most societies have so many laws that everyone can be branded a criminal if they are observed for even a single day. Rather than legalizing marijuana it's easier to just pretend that no one but hardened criminals smoke it. Real change comes from "coming out of the closet" about things and demanding respect, but that takes numbers and power. When ideas are young and unpopular, it's difficult for them to gain traction when they must endure the slings and arrows of established culture and social norms.
However, I must honestly ask, what’s the alternative? In order to keep society cohesive, someone must be doing some detecting and enforcing. Being able to live in society without helping it run by dealing with defectors isn't going to work. It's not just a bunch of douches that keep making statism happen. Statism is an attractor because it's an easy way to tackle the free rider/defector problems which fits human proclivites. Humans have a proclivity to respect authority because having alphas helped tribes survive in the past. That the state gets filled with douches makes sense given the propensity for humans to seek power. So rather than raging against the attractor, make a new one in the actual control of individuals and drain power from the other attractor.
Those sufficiently indoctrinated will tend to see those in authority as generally good if not occasionally flawed to outright übermensch. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both people with noble intentions and sociopaths are attracted to positions of power over others. This already leads to a skewed sampling of the population. Those who are noble are either corrupted as their fatal conceits are revealed and practicality demands that they venture into what they would’ve previously considered morally shaky ground or they are frustrated or outright ejected by the sociopaths leaving an even more skewed sample of the population - one which favors sociopathy over naive good intentions.
Given that such hierarchies are dangerous and that detection is a necessity for enforcement, even enforcement through dissociation, knowledge of the actions of others might as well be spread far and wide where people aren't trusted based on the colors of the costumes and insignia they don, but on the evidence they obtain and ability to convince one another (hopefully logically).
Rather than having "the state" fund detection and prosecution, let others bring suit on behalf of third parties for a cut of the compensation. If there were money at stake and public drones or cameras available for use, solving murders could be as simple as being the first to observe that two people enter a house but only one leaves.
Observing physical action is not the only area where transparency is needed. Financial transparency is critical. The reasons are two-fold. Firstly, when attempting to stop crime it's often the question of "cui bono?" or "who benefits?" which is the most elucidating. Secondly the ability to track money allows the ability to dissociate from bad money; while dissociating from an individual gives the actor a certain amount of power, dissociating from an offender’s money is a potentially huge force multiplier.
Money
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Money in this system needs to meet strict criteria for transparency and the inability to be controlled by a central authority - even if that inability is sometimes limiting. To date the best system is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is electronic which is convenient and, given the plethora of credit cards in use, convenience trumps privacy concerns. Bitcoin is "currency by consensus" meaning that no individual, not even the initial programmers can arbitrarily change the rules for validity or the supply. Bitcoin is fully transparent, though pseudonymous.
Given certain addresses associated with identities, it's possible to track the flow of money throughout the system. It's then a simple enough matter to not only boycott an individual, but all of their money. Since the "taint" of money can be followed throughout the system, blood money would be less valuable than clean money. The proposal "takes the fun out of fungibility." Best of all, the tainted money is highest in proportion to clean money in the accounts of the corrupt individual or company and their friends or frequented establishments or vendors. These close associates have the most to lose from poorly behaving agents and also have the most power to cause them to change. |
People really balk at a transparent monetary proposal because they imagine all sorts of scenarios where taxes are difficult to avoid or where jaded lovers catch one another cheating. To that, I say "good." Taxes, if they are necessary, should be difficult to avoid. If people don't want to feel shame when getting caught cheating on their lovers they either shouldn't be ashamed of it, or shouldn't do it.
The alternative to transparency and personal responsibility is the state; I cannot put it any more bluntly. If people are to make good decisions, then they need to be informed and that requires financial transparency. I know it's a huge cliché but, if you're not doing anything bad with currency, then there shouldn't really be strong reasons to obscure its source.
While there are some bitcoiners like myself who are really interested in the notion of boycotting individual units of currency, most howl about the destruction non-fungibility lays on a currency. They see the currency only as a promise that it was created in accordance with the rules. I say it should, instead, be both that promise and a promise that the person holding it is entitled to hold it - that is that he or she did (or was) something that others found useful; if it doesn't represent putting something positive into society, it shouldn't provide a benefit to the bearer. Currency, to be the lifeblood of a society, should be a confluence of truth, trust, and trade.
Still, the "fungibility fanatics" have a point - non-fungible currencies will be replaced in daily use by fungible currencies. Why would people need to use a transparent, quasi-fungible currency? Well, history has shown that so long as a sufficiently large majority of people use a certain currency, primarily by its being required for taxes, using alternative currencies solely for anonymity or to cover crime is rarely worth it. The reason why anti money laundering laws are so effective is that people need banks to pay for things. Buying large ticket items in cash or barter is suspicious and creates more paperwork for the sellers, so each link in the chain has a personal incentive to make the next link conform to certain financial requirements.
I can't speak to the effects of quasi-fungibility since, so far as I'm aware, such a system has never even been widely possible in the way which I'm about to propose it, but I think that its being required for unavoidable taxes would eliminate the problem.
The alternative to transparency and personal responsibility is the state; I cannot put it any more bluntly. If people are to make good decisions, then they need to be informed and that requires financial transparency. I know it's a huge cliché but, if you're not doing anything bad with currency, then there shouldn't really be strong reasons to obscure its source.
While there are some bitcoiners like myself who are really interested in the notion of boycotting individual units of currency, most howl about the destruction non-fungibility lays on a currency. They see the currency only as a promise that it was created in accordance with the rules. I say it should, instead, be both that promise and a promise that the person holding it is entitled to hold it - that is that he or she did (or was) something that others found useful; if it doesn't represent putting something positive into society, it shouldn't provide a benefit to the bearer. Currency, to be the lifeblood of a society, should be a confluence of truth, trust, and trade.
Still, the "fungibility fanatics" have a point - non-fungible currencies will be replaced in daily use by fungible currencies. Why would people need to use a transparent, quasi-fungible currency? Well, history has shown that so long as a sufficiently large majority of people use a certain currency, primarily by its being required for taxes, using alternative currencies solely for anonymity or to cover crime is rarely worth it. The reason why anti money laundering laws are so effective is that people need banks to pay for things. Buying large ticket items in cash or barter is suspicious and creates more paperwork for the sellers, so each link in the chain has a personal incentive to make the next link conform to certain financial requirements.
I can't speak to the effects of quasi-fungibility since, so far as I'm aware, such a system has never even been widely possible in the way which I'm about to propose it, but I think that its being required for unavoidable taxes would eliminate the problem.
LVT and Property
While it would be fairly easy to implement a pay-as-you-earn wage/capital or pay-as-you-trade sales tax with a transparent currency, doing so would work at cross purposes with at least two of the assertions above: that the purpose of society should be to allow maximum goal actualization and that the best way to express desires is by giving something up.
Wage, capital, and sales taxes violate the former because they impose artificial costs on one or the other side of a trade. Given that voluntary trade is mutually beneficial given the beliefs of the agents at the time, interfering with it or otherwise adding costs to is not a way to maximize goal actualization. If you're worried about exploitation, then foster truth and transparency instead of inhibiting trade. Transaction taxes thwart desires in ways which are disproportionate with benefit, unequal and unfair in other regards, and flat out arbitrary. It doesn't allow people to express desires unmolested or at least unmolested in cases where interference isn't necessary to achieve the project goal.
Wage, capital, and sales taxes violate the former because they impose artificial costs on one or the other side of a trade. Given that voluntary trade is mutually beneficial given the beliefs of the agents at the time, interfering with it or otherwise adding costs to is not a way to maximize goal actualization. If you're worried about exploitation, then foster truth and transparency instead of inhibiting trade. Transaction taxes thwart desires in ways which are disproportionate with benefit, unequal and unfair in other regards, and flat out arbitrary. It doesn't allow people to express desires unmolested or at least unmolested in cases where interference isn't necessary to achieve the project goal.
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Let's assume that a few impositions are necessary though with the argument that a base level of public infrastructure is necessary thus necessitating taxes. While this experiment rejects forced public infrastructure investments, the argument can be made irrelevant. Even if taxes are necessary, there are certain forms of taxation which better fit with the assertions about desire expression which this proposal makes and those taxes should be resorted to for revenue before any taxes which fail to do so. What liberals have yet to figure out - at least as expressed in their classist rhetoric, is that the type of tax can be just as important as the amount of tax.
The tax system of this proposal is not one used to fund infrastructure or to redirect wealth in the "making things fair" sense, but in a compensatory sense and in a way which allows expression of desire by giving people a normalized means of expression. It also acts as an unavoidable tax pump which generates demand for transparent currency allowing monetary boycotting to work and general populace policing to have a shot at being viable. Even if none of the money is used on public goods, there are benefits to that tax. This tax system is that of land value taxation. |
Who's carrying more weight versus who's going to have a backache later?
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Land value taxation (LVT) taxes the rental value of all economic land. Any material or non-material opportunity provided without the labor or production costs of humans is considered economic land. This would include not only physical land, but fishing and mineral rights, riparian rights, in-situ oil, and the EM spectrum. Payment in exchange for access to such opportunities is considered rent. Since rent arises in proportion to the difference between the benefits of what could be had while availing oneself of other natural opportunities, rent is a market expression of how "unfair" things are and how much desire expression will be distorted in a market. This click-through explains how rent is dependent on opportunities and how it affects wages.
There are numerous reasons to choose LVT as the form of taxation:
Number five is especially important for this proposal to test the core desire expression assertion. The tax is not on the use of land. There's no involuntary government saying what one can and cannot do with land. There is only a cost to exclude others. Exclusion is sometimes necessary due to the tragedy of the commons problem, so it doesn't make sense to prohibit exclusion. But exclusion costs others opportunity and cannot be allowed. Markets require that individuals and groups have exclusive control to function efficiently but, without compensation, exclusion externalizes costs on others and is therefore not a proper expression of desire, nor does it allow property expression of desire from those excluded. While luck shouldn't be punished or prevented, it most certainly should not be subsidized involuntarily. That someone started using land first is not an excuse to create infinitely ongoing costs to others.
The downside of this taxing structure is that LVT is more complicated to administer since land isn't fungible like money is. However, all value is subjective and any tax rate or bracket boundaries would be arbitrary and imposed. LVT with bidding is honest about the subjective theory of value.
There are numerous reasons to choose LVT as the form of taxation:
- It can't be passed on much (if at all). Taxes on monopoly fall entirely on the seller. This observation has been a bedrock principle of economics for hundreds of years. Sales and income taxes can be passed on to the ultimate consumer.
- It doesn't require invasions of privacy to investigate. Property ownership is readily public and needs to be to determine trespasses. It can't be laundered or hidden offshore. Note that privacy and anonymity are different things. While this proposal uses principles which work against most forms of anonymity, those principles do not work against privacy - the ability to seclude themselves from interaction with society. They merely cannot demand that others refrain from sharing or releasing information discovered about them.
- It tracks well with benefits received. If a town makes good public investments, those with landholdings will get the windfalls (even if unrealized). They may end up getting their money back or even getting more money than the investments cost. Those with no landholdings pay for the investments through sales or income taxes and get no benefit. In fact, their rent goes up. One group pays nothing, the other pays twice.
- Maximum actualization of ends requires agency. Agency requires opportunities. Necessary opportunities which can be controlled by others demand that actualization of ends are privileges from others. Either there must be equal boundaries on property ownership or there must be non-equal boundaries on human agency. An economically efficient way to achieve the former is through compensation in money instead of an equal distribution in kind.
- It allows expression of desire – whoever is willing to pay more for land should be the one who gets to exclude others from it.
Number five is especially important for this proposal to test the core desire expression assertion. The tax is not on the use of land. There's no involuntary government saying what one can and cannot do with land. There is only a cost to exclude others. Exclusion is sometimes necessary due to the tragedy of the commons problem, so it doesn't make sense to prohibit exclusion. But exclusion costs others opportunity and cannot be allowed. Markets require that individuals and groups have exclusive control to function efficiently but, without compensation, exclusion externalizes costs on others and is therefore not a proper expression of desire, nor does it allow property expression of desire from those excluded. While luck shouldn't be punished or prevented, it most certainly should not be subsidized involuntarily. That someone started using land first is not an excuse to create infinitely ongoing costs to others.
The downside of this taxing structure is that LVT is more complicated to administer since land isn't fungible like money is. However, all value is subjective and any tax rate or bracket boundaries would be arbitrary and imposed. LVT with bidding is honest about the subjective theory of value.
Bidding and Boycotts and Dividends
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The LVT, coupled with a dividend, acts as a currency pump and dampens tendencies toward violence over resources by giving others reasons to respect claims. One of the corporation's primary mandates is taking in bids on certain natural opportunities, recording them, and paying out equal dividends to all human residents. This allows maximum desire expression and access to the value of natural opportunity by flattening wealth disparities over time. It also creates demand for the transparent currency though bitcoiners might accuse me of "squaring the circle." The corporation is not allowed to make judgments about any individual. It merely receives, records, pays.
Whoever pays the most money per unit time for a resource gains the privilege to exclude others. All money must be paid up front by someone so that estimates of life expectancy are not required. Out-bidders do not gain a right to use other people's improvements but, since the two cannot necessarily be separated, any people making improvements to economic land must recognize that such improvements may be lost – even if the new people can't use them, they don't have to maintain them or "pave around them" any more than a private landlord has to leave his tenant's improvements. |
The currency (and value expression) pump
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This is the biggest hurdle for adoption of a bidding-style LVT, but it is not one which the free market cannot offer solutions to. Obvious solutions to the problem include insurance, boycotts of unfair compensators, and technology which makes improvements movable. There are likely many more. It is not up to the corporation to impose any specific method though, at the outset, if it is determined that "training wheels" are needed, then one specific proposal may be implemented for a while with a fairly short sunset date.
People can delegate the authority to boycott on their behalf to others, though this is dangerous, or they can boycott things themselves. Boycotts have three stages. The first is the pre-boycott. The conditions are publicly recorded and have a start date, a list of accounts, and a concentration (usually 100%) as well as conditions which will cause the boycott to not take effect. There is no anonymous boycotting allowed through the corporation - if you're not courageous enough to stand by your accusation then you get to live with the effects you despise.
This announcement allows individuals and companies to change their behaviors and avoid punishment. The individual, or those they have ceded power to, can cancel the boycott in this time period. Boycotts can also take on an assurance contract form where the boycott will only go through given conditions aren't met and there's enough other boycotters.
The second stage is the boycott itself. All money in the accounts at the time of the pre-boycott are marked as tainted in proportion to the concentration. This is to prevent companies and individuals from moving money as soon as they find out there's a potential boycott. As money moves from account to account, the tainted level is retained proportionately. The boycott is enforced by creating costs on boycotters – making them put their money where their mouth is. Boycotters are not allowed to use tainted money to pay taxes: the proportion of tainted money is removed and sent to a dividend payout directly before anything is applied to taxes. The boycotted have their money valued by the corporation at the percentage of people who value it divided by the entire population. Non-individual human "agents" such as corporations are ignored in this total; if a corporation wants to stop another corporation from doing something, then the people who work for or otherwise support that corporation can participate personally in the boycott.
The final stage is when the boycott expires. It's probably wise to have a short limit on a boycott (such as a year). It’s also probably wise to deny the ability to cancel a boycott once it’s active to prevent spurious boycotts.
Why do corporations and individuals need registered accounts? That is, what prevents them from operating under the radar and using random Bitcoin addresses? Both entities need to pay taxes to have registered land holdings. Chevron and Joe Shcmoe can't own any real property, including in situ oil, unless they have registered accounts. While they could still have innumerable "holding addresses," individuals and companies can perform statistical analysis to figure out what addresses likely belong to who so that trying to hide from boycotts is a major pain.
Another, lesser, bright side is that individuals and companies can benefit from using "green addresses" to pay one another – non-double spends are guaranteed by the corporation under threat of tax/dividend liens when using these addresses. Secondly, for individuals, the account is necessary to receive dividend payouts.
Coupled with a transparent society, this is an extremely powerful and simple way to put power in the hands of individuals. People should be free to avoid currency from certain people and truth and transparency in the chain of financial transactions just makes people more informed when making such decisions. I can't overstate what I believe the benefits of this approach are. To list just one - a lot of things just get solved when people put their money where their mouth is.
Abortion, intellectual property, police brutality, just about anything you can think of can be figured out in the market so long as people are in competition for the base opportunities - economic land. If bids on economic land are dependent on the value of their bids which is a factor of the value of their currency which is a factor of the value others place in it, then suddenly one needs to not piss off other people! That's dyamism. The opposite of dynamism is, definitionally, static - a state!
Still, people are immediately convinced this would lead to bad results (yet are strangely fine with elections which are worse in nearly every conceivable way). Typically they envision scenarios where racists go hog wild and make other race's currency worthless. These fears are unfounded for at least two man reasons. There's also a consolation in the practically nil situation it actually happens.
The effectiveness of a boycott is related to the power each side can bring to bear against the other. In an internalized market, this is determined by how necessary each side is to the other. In the case of boycotting gays or blacks or other groups, there aren't that many people who are overtly bigoted enough to do that (since all boycotts are public record). The number of people boycotting is small and the group they'd have to boycott is largeish. Compare that to a boycott of murderers or, more generally, people who refuse to go to some mutually-agreed-upon or randomly-assigned arbitration service. The number of people who have an interest in preventing those behaviors is large and the number of people who would murder others or refuse to go to court is few.
The second reason is that people are still useful to others and people can get by on bigotry so long as they can be bigoted but not have it affect them in a direct manner. I heard a saying once that there were "no overt racists in first class." The point was that business people don’t see one another as black, yellow, red, or white for the purposes of business – the only color they see is green. Businesses who turn down customers of different races, genders, or sexual orientations are disadvantage to those who accept those people as customers. Someone can be racist, but they continue to knowingly or unknowingly shop at stores owned by black people or buy products created by black inventors. If they had to put their money where their mouth is, they'd either have to shut up or stand by their convictions at personal inconvenience to themselves as those goods and services would cost them more at the register.
People can delegate the authority to boycott on their behalf to others, though this is dangerous, or they can boycott things themselves. Boycotts have three stages. The first is the pre-boycott. The conditions are publicly recorded and have a start date, a list of accounts, and a concentration (usually 100%) as well as conditions which will cause the boycott to not take effect. There is no anonymous boycotting allowed through the corporation - if you're not courageous enough to stand by your accusation then you get to live with the effects you despise.
This announcement allows individuals and companies to change their behaviors and avoid punishment. The individual, or those they have ceded power to, can cancel the boycott in this time period. Boycotts can also take on an assurance contract form where the boycott will only go through given conditions aren't met and there's enough other boycotters.
The second stage is the boycott itself. All money in the accounts at the time of the pre-boycott are marked as tainted in proportion to the concentration. This is to prevent companies and individuals from moving money as soon as they find out there's a potential boycott. As money moves from account to account, the tainted level is retained proportionately. The boycott is enforced by creating costs on boycotters – making them put their money where their mouth is. Boycotters are not allowed to use tainted money to pay taxes: the proportion of tainted money is removed and sent to a dividend payout directly before anything is applied to taxes. The boycotted have their money valued by the corporation at the percentage of people who value it divided by the entire population. Non-individual human "agents" such as corporations are ignored in this total; if a corporation wants to stop another corporation from doing something, then the people who work for or otherwise support that corporation can participate personally in the boycott.
The final stage is when the boycott expires. It's probably wise to have a short limit on a boycott (such as a year). It’s also probably wise to deny the ability to cancel a boycott once it’s active to prevent spurious boycotts.
Why do corporations and individuals need registered accounts? That is, what prevents them from operating under the radar and using random Bitcoin addresses? Both entities need to pay taxes to have registered land holdings. Chevron and Joe Shcmoe can't own any real property, including in situ oil, unless they have registered accounts. While they could still have innumerable "holding addresses," individuals and companies can perform statistical analysis to figure out what addresses likely belong to who so that trying to hide from boycotts is a major pain.
Another, lesser, bright side is that individuals and companies can benefit from using "green addresses" to pay one another – non-double spends are guaranteed by the corporation under threat of tax/dividend liens when using these addresses. Secondly, for individuals, the account is necessary to receive dividend payouts.
Coupled with a transparent society, this is an extremely powerful and simple way to put power in the hands of individuals. People should be free to avoid currency from certain people and truth and transparency in the chain of financial transactions just makes people more informed when making such decisions. I can't overstate what I believe the benefits of this approach are. To list just one - a lot of things just get solved when people put their money where their mouth is.
Abortion, intellectual property, police brutality, just about anything you can think of can be figured out in the market so long as people are in competition for the base opportunities - economic land. If bids on economic land are dependent on the value of their bids which is a factor of the value of their currency which is a factor of the value others place in it, then suddenly one needs to not piss off other people! That's dyamism. The opposite of dynamism is, definitionally, static - a state!
Still, people are immediately convinced this would lead to bad results (yet are strangely fine with elections which are worse in nearly every conceivable way). Typically they envision scenarios where racists go hog wild and make other race's currency worthless. These fears are unfounded for at least two man reasons. There's also a consolation in the practically nil situation it actually happens.
The effectiveness of a boycott is related to the power each side can bring to bear against the other. In an internalized market, this is determined by how necessary each side is to the other. In the case of boycotting gays or blacks or other groups, there aren't that many people who are overtly bigoted enough to do that (since all boycotts are public record). The number of people boycotting is small and the group they'd have to boycott is largeish. Compare that to a boycott of murderers or, more generally, people who refuse to go to some mutually-agreed-upon or randomly-assigned arbitration service. The number of people who have an interest in preventing those behaviors is large and the number of people who would murder others or refuse to go to court is few.
The second reason is that people are still useful to others and people can get by on bigotry so long as they can be bigoted but not have it affect them in a direct manner. I heard a saying once that there were "no overt racists in first class." The point was that business people don’t see one another as black, yellow, red, or white for the purposes of business – the only color they see is green. Businesses who turn down customers of different races, genders, or sexual orientations are disadvantage to those who accept those people as customers. Someone can be racist, but they continue to knowingly or unknowingly shop at stores owned by black people or buy products created by black inventors. If they had to put their money where their mouth is, they'd either have to shut up or stand by their convictions at personal inconvenience to themselves as those goods and services would cost them more at the register.
I swear on my life that this will not be the outcome of boycotting currency.
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I promised a consolation. Let's say that it actually happens that there are enough racists to really put the hurt on other races. Well, firstly, those other races can boycott back, and they can trade within their own groups for full value. I deny that it will be a new area of Jim Crow laws. Blacks, at the time, couldn't really start businesses without government intervening or actually violence occurring. Almost all the land was taken by whites. These restrictions aren't in place. Blacks would be earning a dividend and would be as free as anyone else to start a business or take up land. People are required upon agreeing to live or remain in the protectorate to yield to outbidders. If there is a large problem with people being nails, the corporation is allowed to end the entire project which may revert ownership of parts or all of the protectorate back to the host country. Too many people will have too much invested to allow petty racism to get in the way of profit and personal enjoyment of life; it'd be like D.C. threatening to nuke the whole country if the constitution were violated.
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What if someone gets so heavily boycotted that they're in danger of starving? Well, they better beg, or leave, or try to steal but, if others are armed, they are likely to be shot if they choose the theft route. That sounds like cruel frontier justice, but such justice is efficient and would apparently be what people would want in such a system if it actually occurred. It avoids imposing means and ends on others that such people deserve to be taken care of. If enough people care, then it will happen. If they don't, then forcing them to care through the mandates of a state is an imposition.
For those who want a less cruel world, why not offer rehabilitation services for a cut of future dividend payments? That eliminates mandatory minimum sentencing, it rehabilitates people (or at least gets them to act rehabilitated which is good enough from most people’s perspectives), and it incentivizes advancements in psychology and social sciences to find ways to fix people which actually work.
What if society splits in two – for instance vegetarians and meat eaters? Well, then there are two societies living side-by-side and either they ignore one another or attempt to convert or conquer one another. One of the goals of this proposal is that, if any battle needs to be waged, it’s done via boycotts instead of weapons.
Dividends are paid out by dividing all receipts by the non-corporation (human) population and making deposits into the registered accounts of those individuals. Individuals may allow others to take money from their dividend on a public first-listed-first-paid system. This allows easy victim compensation with the risk being on the debtors that the individual won't die or leave before payoff. Money sent through the dividend is washed but tainted money is distributed only to those who aren't boycotting it prior to washing - anything else would make the boycotters hypocritical.
There may be a few rules on who can receive a dividend. Children will most likely have to have a sponsor and prove that they can act like an adult. The distinction of being born in the protectorate versus being an immigrant would be eliminated and people would have to sink or swim on their own merits. The advantage of tying a parent's dividend to the child initially is to prevent parents from being rewarded for having more children or being a bad parent and having irresponsible children. Recipients may have to be physically present in the protectorate to prevent absentee landlordism. Immigrants may have to live in the protectorate for a few years or donate a "fair share" amount of money or land from outside the protectorate to the corporation to prevent a lifeboat effect. These three policies will need to be analyzed more deeply in another document.
Why give all adults a dividend instead of people who actually have made a motion to want to use the resources? It's the most fair way which doesn't require trying to figure things out; the effects of exclusion have wide-reaching effects which tend to ripple through society and they are not always easy to untangle. Furthermore, it's practical - if you don't want factions, you pay everyone off. Lastly, it's accordant with a moral system which respects equal rights for humans.
For those who want a less cruel world, why not offer rehabilitation services for a cut of future dividend payments? That eliminates mandatory minimum sentencing, it rehabilitates people (or at least gets them to act rehabilitated which is good enough from most people’s perspectives), and it incentivizes advancements in psychology and social sciences to find ways to fix people which actually work.
What if society splits in two – for instance vegetarians and meat eaters? Well, then there are two societies living side-by-side and either they ignore one another or attempt to convert or conquer one another. One of the goals of this proposal is that, if any battle needs to be waged, it’s done via boycotts instead of weapons.
Dividends are paid out by dividing all receipts by the non-corporation (human) population and making deposits into the registered accounts of those individuals. Individuals may allow others to take money from their dividend on a public first-listed-first-paid system. This allows easy victim compensation with the risk being on the debtors that the individual won't die or leave before payoff. Money sent through the dividend is washed but tainted money is distributed only to those who aren't boycotting it prior to washing - anything else would make the boycotters hypocritical.
There may be a few rules on who can receive a dividend. Children will most likely have to have a sponsor and prove that they can act like an adult. The distinction of being born in the protectorate versus being an immigrant would be eliminated and people would have to sink or swim on their own merits. The advantage of tying a parent's dividend to the child initially is to prevent parents from being rewarded for having more children or being a bad parent and having irresponsible children. Recipients may have to be physically present in the protectorate to prevent absentee landlordism. Immigrants may have to live in the protectorate for a few years or donate a "fair share" amount of money or land from outside the protectorate to the corporation to prevent a lifeboat effect. These three policies will need to be analyzed more deeply in another document.
Why give all adults a dividend instead of people who actually have made a motion to want to use the resources? It's the most fair way which doesn't require trying to figure things out; the effects of exclusion have wide-reaching effects which tend to ripple through society and they are not always easy to untangle. Furthermore, it's practical - if you don't want factions, you pay everyone off. Lastly, it's accordant with a moral system which respects equal rights for humans.
Good Governance
This proposal is ultimately panarchistic because, unlike other land value tax proposals, towns and cities are not public in the standard sense of the word, and they are considered just another landlord with no special privileges. This may be seen as restrictive, but I believe it to be liberating. Rather than enforcing a lot of global rules for society, societies within the charter protectorate are in competition with one another for land and individuals. If a town is formed around a navigable port, it can't leverage that subsidies over other communities which may have better governments. (California does with its great weather and crap government.) Other governments or private individuals or groups always can swoop in and buy the land out from under the first community through a bidding process just as private landlords can. This is necessary to fulfill the goal of minimal imposition.
If the government charges too much, then N+G>V and people will move or outbid those in the town and just ditch the government (presuming N<V). The government is taxably constrained by what it's worth for people to live within its jurisdiction.
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Towns can impose sales and income taxes or sub LVTs. The proposal only considers what goes into the "master dividend pot" to be the authoritative bid. Thus, towns can raise local taxes which fund local infrastructure generally only when that infrastructure is roughly worth the asking price for the taxes. If the town demands too much, people may flee or outbid the town or others may come in and outbid the town. If towns try to keep geographical value local (e.g. they are over an oil well), then others can swoop in and share the wealth more widely.
Governments, like landlords, will tend to be efficient and fair under such a system because people will see the results of bad governance directly in their wallet rather than in some nebulous sense. They can have any structure they want – authoritarian, democratic, theocratic, but they must be considered worth it by not only those who live there, but those on the outside who may think they can do better. So, all land is private and people can come up with whatever weird rules they want? Yes they can, though there are a few minor details. |
Some Ground Rules
Everyone is free to leave the protectorate whenever they want and the corporation will not attempt to prosecute people inside or outside its jurisdiction; it has no such legal powers. For instance, if someone murders another and escapes to the border of the protectorate, the corporation is mandated to let them out of the protectorate. If they get caught before they get to the border, it's not the corporation's problem.
If someone is a complete outlaw (meaning they cannot afford land or rent or who have no sponsor) then they can be denied (re)entry on the grounds that they'll need to commit crime to survive.
No one can be automatically fined for anything; no one has involuntary access to the accounts of another. People have three choices – get the money up front, or demand that they go to court and hopefully people will boycott them if they don’t, or boycott them yourself and make the case to others. Like today, individuals and institutions can escalate things to get people to "volunteer" payment, but unlike the IRS there's no possibility of garnishment - that's one of the beauties of bitcoin.
By the previous two, towns and individuals won't have broad powers to punish crime in ways which act as a gravy train. For instance, if a town wants to make smoking marijuana a punishable offense, then they need to set up checkpoints at their border or take a security deposit from people entering their town. At best they can only trespass violators out of their town and can blacklist them, or they can detain or kill them at their own expense and risk major public boycotting, possibly of all individuals and businesses in the town. They might even be outbid entirely and lose the township - then where will they store the prisoners? It's possible that towns would be forced to choose to either have checkpoints which allow more rules or be more open and have to put up with some undesirables entering.
No one has a right to anonymity, the corporation is free to invest its endowment money surveillance technology. However, any information the corporation has must be available to all per the corporation's mandate. Individuals and private groups can, of course, divulge or withhold whatever they want. The standard the corporation shall use is that of introducing things into property versus passively collecting data. For instance, photons leaving someone's property would be fair game to photograph; the onus is on a property owner from preventing information leakage. Emitting radiation onto the property of another to get a picture would be trespass and the corporation would be prohibited from doing so. Basically, if you're outside and can be seen by a satellite or drone, you're probably fair game.
The corporation shall own a grid of rights of way overlaid on the protectorate at the time of purchase to be exempt from bidding and may not be sold, rented, or otherwise transferred. It is not to exceed 1% of the surface area of the protectorate and is to be made a regular grid unless there is a compelling case prior to the formation of the protectorate that natural features require modification of the rights of way layout. This is to fulfill certain rights of travel.
The corporation is bound to dissolve if the experiment is failing by certain criteria. It thus acts as a social stabilizer. In that case, the ownership of the land and infrastructure used by the protectorate will most likely revert to the host country and the people are left to deal with it. This is the "nuclear option."
If someone is a complete outlaw (meaning they cannot afford land or rent or who have no sponsor) then they can be denied (re)entry on the grounds that they'll need to commit crime to survive.
No one can be automatically fined for anything; no one has involuntary access to the accounts of another. People have three choices – get the money up front, or demand that they go to court and hopefully people will boycott them if they don’t, or boycott them yourself and make the case to others. Like today, individuals and institutions can escalate things to get people to "volunteer" payment, but unlike the IRS there's no possibility of garnishment - that's one of the beauties of bitcoin.
By the previous two, towns and individuals won't have broad powers to punish crime in ways which act as a gravy train. For instance, if a town wants to make smoking marijuana a punishable offense, then they need to set up checkpoints at their border or take a security deposit from people entering their town. At best they can only trespass violators out of their town and can blacklist them, or they can detain or kill them at their own expense and risk major public boycotting, possibly of all individuals and businesses in the town. They might even be outbid entirely and lose the township - then where will they store the prisoners? It's possible that towns would be forced to choose to either have checkpoints which allow more rules or be more open and have to put up with some undesirables entering.
No one has a right to anonymity, the corporation is free to invest its endowment money surveillance technology. However, any information the corporation has must be available to all per the corporation's mandate. Individuals and private groups can, of course, divulge or withhold whatever they want. The standard the corporation shall use is that of introducing things into property versus passively collecting data. For instance, photons leaving someone's property would be fair game to photograph; the onus is on a property owner from preventing information leakage. Emitting radiation onto the property of another to get a picture would be trespass and the corporation would be prohibited from doing so. Basically, if you're outside and can be seen by a satellite or drone, you're probably fair game.
The corporation shall own a grid of rights of way overlaid on the protectorate at the time of purchase to be exempt from bidding and may not be sold, rented, or otherwise transferred. It is not to exceed 1% of the surface area of the protectorate and is to be made a regular grid unless there is a compelling case prior to the formation of the protectorate that natural features require modification of the rights of way layout. This is to fulfill certain rights of travel.
The corporation is bound to dissolve if the experiment is failing by certain criteria. It thus acts as a social stabilizer. In that case, the ownership of the land and infrastructure used by the protectorate will most likely revert to the host country and the people are left to deal with it. This is the "nuclear option."
But what if it Fails?
Well, what if it does? The point of this experiment is not to prove whether this is guaranteed to work long-term, but whether it is possible short-term and what the pitfalls may be. There are many reasons why it could fail, including interference from the C.I.A., landed interests, etc. Failure might not show that there is anything wrong with the experiment itself; it could just be bad luck.
Conclusion
Either putting power in the hands of people is practical and beneficial or humans need others to rule over them – at least for the time being: when people can all live in computers without the ability to affect others against their will politics idissolves. Many anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-socialists (suffix anarchists) believe in one specific set of values or another and don’t focus on what system is necessary to get them there. The outline I have proposed rests on technological and sociological solutions which are already possible:
- Charter cities
- Transparent and traceable currency
- Surveillance and observation devices
- Land value taxation
- Strong and non-repudiable identification of an individual
- Shunning
Investing
This project will cost between $50 and $100 million to do correctly. That is for buying the host government off, buying the land, having savings to smooth things out with the host government, and to invest in infrastructure as necessary. The money will be raised by a phased assurance contract which goes online in 2016.
