A free market of States

A Society must have rules

It might be argued that (some) people prefer to associate in groups that have some degree of coercion... That they would willingly choose to be bound by certain rules in exchange for the security of tribal association. Not everyone is instinctively an anarchist.

Would it be possible for groups of people to have their individual needs met, even sharing a common territory, and yet be within separate States? At the present time your membership of a Nation is determined by where you live. Would it be possible to introduce an element of choice to this process?

To begin with, we assume that participants are not differentiated by age, so that someone with much less to lose (in selling their future earnings) is not able to out-bid a younger individual: So then, how would the system work? It would be possible to "sell" your earning rights (and perhaps also rights to certain freedoms such as respecting property rights) and in exchange you would receive (some percentage of) membership of a State...

It would be possible to be a member of more than one State, to a lesser or greater extent... You would naturally have a kinship and shared interests with everyone in your "tribe". For example, you would "sell" 20% of yourself to one tribe and 10% of yourself to another. Different individuals may have different values so they could buy more "shares" in a State than someone else, for the same earning (percentage) loss.

Returning to the question of differing earning potentials... between someone old perhaps and a younger person, or someone less skilled. Is it reasonable for a person with less talent to be "worth" less to a community? To deny that they are is to deny the realities of nature (the market) entirely. It would be perfectly appropriate for a community to grant charitable membership to a proportion of people.

So how does this system answer the problem of someone who might be a "burden" on the State? Such a person would presumably be in possession of shares in the State. They would then be redeeming those shares for the welfare that they require... Given that no further earnings are possible, would it be in the interests of the State to abandon their commitments? No, it wouldn't be because to do so would be to damage the reputation of shares in that State... which would be against the interests of everyone in that State.

Equally it would be possible for separate States to trade their obligations... so for example a person might arrive at a hospital in the jurisdiction of a "neighbouring" State (each State would no longer have geographical jurisdictions, they would be similar to Corporations today...) and they would then be able to have access to the facilities since their shares are recognised by the hospital... The hospital itself could be entirely outside the system of States, instead operating privately, servicing all States equally according to how much credit each State has purchased.

So, to sum up, it might be possible to introduce a system of graded membership to the system of Government whereby a person can opt to have greater, or lesser, involvement in the state. It would also be possible for a population to have different, competing States which they could associate with by "selling" their own economic and political identities in return for State protection and services. This would allow more choice and greater Societal involvement since all associations would be voluntary. It would allow the market to punish a poorly-performing State by hurting the price of membership.

It would be different from a free market of companies because the individual would also give up certain rights such as the right to behave in a damaging way. In return for giving up those rights a person would benefit from State services. A reward for good behaviour... A troublesome person would need to pay more to join a tribe than someone who behaves well.

Wednesday 14th January 2009