The Book - Government

Government

Sometimes I have a moment of clarity and realize the insanity of the fact that I'm living on a planet with militarized borders between nations. So many tax dollars spent preventing and responding to violence at every level of government. It's truly dystopic - we are at war with each other in every possible way.

In the past, we have seen conquest after invasion, but the history of humanity does not dictate who we are. It's hard to know why empires expanded into territories that were not theirs, but we could guess that they thought their way of life was best, and that they wanted to impose it. Maybe people weren't educated, or religions were misleading, or dictators were acting unilaterally.

Today, we have a new opportunity to use the internet to form a democratic consensus world government. The world is ripe for change. Dare I say it, but if democratically, we all agree to leave each other alone, then we have majority consensus, and are theoretically entitled to slowly and amicably take power.

Obviously these world peace hopes are a stretch from the immediately pragmatic, but I iterate them to outline what's possible along this path.

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Immediately,

Our safety and security and self-organization is not the government's problem, it's ours. Nobody is ever happy with good governments, and bad ones are burning their countries down.

Further, governments do indeed spend our money however they see fit, which is often wasteful and inefficient and not in the best interest of the world as a whole, but given their scope, they have little choice.

Governments have their roles - in a perfect world, we would need regional governments to oversee infrastructure such as transit, and national and world governments to moderate core legal matters. The goal is to reduce the load on our governments, after all, we are the ones paying them. The more that can be handled internally in collectives, the less our government is responsible for. The less overall violence, and suffering, the easier on the government. The better we take care of each other, the less the government has to take care of us.

Our job is to take care of ourselves, so far as to remove the need to be taken care of.

A good government should only facilitate our taking good care of each other.

The amount of things governments are responsible for today is totally out of control, for example, our tax dollars pay for airports even if we don't buy flights. If I had my way, I'd say to throw out the whole airplane system as it's unreasonably inefficient, instead using trains and boats to travel.

National defense, space program, welfare, subsidies, bailouts, these are all none of the government's business, yet they spend like they are in charge, which in fact they are not. All in the name of preserving the mega economy, which is what we ask them to do.

Isn't national defense necessary? At present, yes, but I'd say we work for a peaceful planet with the intention of eventually taking down borders. I can't state strongly enough that this intention is critical, and that it's up to individuals to engineer and execute.

Is the space program necessary? Ten years ago I might have said yes, but it's clear that companies are doing this better. SpaceX Starlink satellite internet is already changing the world, providing connectivity equality in regions with infrastructure challenges.

Bailouts and subsidies are perpetuating failing industries like aviation, banking, and agriculture. Agriculture should be one of the most common exports of collectives. In the future, banking will be entirely not necessary - technologies like blockchain have shown that we can do this ourselves.

Regarding welfare, to take care of an individual, the answer certainly isn't to throw currency at them, it's to actually take care of them. In a better world, homelessness and poverty will be an exception, not a pandemic.

Figure: 2023 US Spending. Source: Congressional Budget Office

I'm going to resist pulling this apart to make an argument over each category, because the rest of the book does just that. Take note that probably 99% of spending would be unnecessary in a peaceful and healthy country. The services that are necessary can be provided at home in magnitudes of better quality.

Quality is what is in question here.

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I wish that we started with no government, and were moving toward slowly adding services that can be managed by a central entity for the good of everyone for a small price, but unfortunately we're starting backwards, which is doable, just not as easy.

For example, in a city with a beautiful waterfront or other scenery, we would probably want the city government to maintain public space. Large cities would have dense train networks, elaborate architecture, and would really be exciting to travel through, especially in a peaceful world. But because train networks and public paths would run only outside collectives, there would be no massive hospitality services such as restaurants, or hotels. There is little benefit of tourism to city residents who aren't selling anything, so the government needs not facilitate tourism at all.

We can't buy hospitality anymore than we can buy love, so if we want to invite travelers to stay in our home, we should, and then they can explore the city as they wish.

In some countries like Scotland, there exists a law called “right to roam”, which means that individuals are allowed responsible access, including camping, to all water and land for recreational purposes. That's a beautiful law, especially for a traveler. Collectives may gate their core community, but leaving much wilderness, and possibly providing water to travelers. In a world without constant housing crises, we would expect such a key kindness to not be abused.

It's also possible that one day collectives would welcome travelers freely, and when that felt safe, we would know we had truly changed the world.

These things are not the immediate focus of collectivism, but we should plan to be there one day. Today, even during a transition, large government funded waterfronts exist and so do hotels, and people still have money, so if we want to travel, we can as usual.

However travel might look in the future, I urge against collectives being set up for tourism or hospitality as it violates key principles. A world where we could travel freely and be welcomed instead of charged is a much more magical one.

A world without the use of money is a safer one, and this is what the government should be facilitating, if anything.

By reducing or eliminating the irresponsible use of currency, for example the carrying of money, or valuables on display in shopping environments, we will reduce or eliminate the need to police theft. By reducing and managing domestic disputes among ourselves in collectives, we make it none of anyone else's business. By not using roads, we reduce or eliminate traffic police. Most importantly, healthy and happy adolescents will break the cycles of senseless urban crime. Technology has improved to the point where it would be possible to identify when a stranger is present within the gates of a collective. We can take care of ourselves.

In politics and social media discourse, there is raging disagreement regarding the degree to which governments and police should be interfering, and the answer is that while severe public problems are ubiquitous, they must, but, they should not be. Arguing over the solutions to problems that shouldn't exist is a waste of time and effort. Should a country's military defend themselves when attacked, absolutely! Should they retaliate? Is retaliation self-defense? Should we give homeless people money? There's no answer to these questions except to say that it's all wrong. The ethical problems of the world are symptoms of deeper disharmony, not invitations for more argument.

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Specific national laws must be put in place that protect citizens by governing the rules for operating collectives at a very high level. We hope these things don't happen but we must plan for them because they will, especially during transition.

In the case where a citizen is disgruntled with collective administration and cannot work it out internally, they must have the right to initiate legal action against the collective.

In the case where a collective is disbanded, there must be some equalization in assets that is relative to what was put in initially, like a divorce proceeding, but a big one! To protect citizen's rights, the definition of marriage will have to change.

Archaicly, in many countries including Canada, the current definition of common-law marriage is that individuals are both having sex and living together, which seems normal until you consider the implications of such a definition, as marriage laws are designed to protect individuals' financial security in a separation. If either sex or cohabitation is not happening, individuals lose their rights.

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