Meta Government
A System for Peaceful Experimentation, Evolution and Revolution of Governments
Governments have many problems and challenges. We talk about them all the time, but there is one problem we rarely talk about. It is so big and seemingly impossible to solve that we skip right past it and worry about the little things we think we can change. The problem is we have no way to create, split, combine, experiment or otherwise fundamentally change governments without violent revolution.
The Government Lifecycle
Governments grow over time. Laws are added but rarely removed. Eventually governments become too bloated and corrupt to be tolerated by their citizens. The only way we’ve found to get rid of a government is revolution.
Governments have a lifecycle. They are born. They grow. They slowly become old, and eventually, they die, usually in cathartic, nation-wide violence. We need a better way for governments to die and be reborn.
The One-Size-Fits-All Problem
We have another big problem. Somehow, one government must meet the needs and values of all the diverse citizens within its borders. It makes no sense to have one type of food, car or job for everyone. Why do we try to make one type of government work for everyone?
Here in Washington State there is endless friction between the Western and Eastern halves of the state. If there was some way to split the state, both sides would be much happier.
When we have a one-size-fits-all government, much of the political process is about one group of people imposing their own views on others (see my: Representation and Slavery). No one wins when we continually play the game of ‘my way! No, my way!’ We need a way for each person to live under a government that best suits them.
Experiments Needed
Last, no one really knows what does and doesn’t work in government. We are all just guessing. We have so little data, and we have no way to conduct fundamental experiments in government.
No one really knows what does and doesn’t work in government.
Astonishingly few governments have been tried. By my quick calculation less than 1000 governments have ever existed (countries & former countries). Edison made over 3000 attempts just to invent a rudimentary light bulb (Edison). We need continual experimentation to really understand what works, when, where and for whom.
Introducing Virtualized Government
I have an intriguing idea to address these problems. Take the region and population to be governed and split it into 10 to 100 self governing regions. These are the virtualized governments. Think of the United States, but with each state having almost total self-governing authority. Then add a meta-government with one, focused purpose: facilitate and enforce peaceful experimentation, evolution and revolution of the virtualized governments. This meta-government bares similarities to a federal government, except its role is extremely restricted, even more than the original Federal Government of the United States.
For brevity, I will call virtualized governments ‘peers’ and the meta-government the ‘supervisor.’
The Meta-Government Supervisor
The supervisor is restricted to an absolutely minimal role. It has four and only four responsibilities:
- facilitate the orderly commissioning and decommissioning of peers
- enforce open borders between peers
- enforce peer restrictions & boundaries
- protect the peers from external threats
Orderly Start and End of Peer Governments
The most important and novel role of the supervisor is enforcing the orderly birth and death of peers. It guarantees that there are between 10 and 100 peers within the system at all times. Every 10 years, an ‘epoch’, some peers are shut down and new ones are created using the following rules:
- Too-small peers are shut down. Any peer with less than 1% of the total population must merge with one of its neighbors.
- Too-big peers split and form new ones. Any peer with more than 10% of the population must split, forming at two or more new peers each with between 1 and 10% of the total population.
- Older, stable peers must give their residents a chance to vote every 20 years if they want to create a new peer: Any peer with more than 2% of the population, which didn’t perform a split-vote last cycle, must hold a split-vote this cycle.
Merging a too-small peer into a neighbor starts by other peers proposing terms. The residents of the too-small-peer then vote on the proposals using ranked-choice voting. The resulting peer’s population must not exceed 10%.
Splitting similarly starts with a set of proposals, this time generated from within the splitting peer. These proposals include new boundaries and constitutions for the newly formed peer(s). Every proposal must guarantee each of the new peers start with between 1% and 10% the total population. The peer’s citizens then vote, again using ranked-choice.
During the 10 years between cycles peer populations can grow and shrink as citizens freely move between them, have kids and die. Some peers may shrink below 1%. Others may grow bigger than 10%. After all the voting is finalized for a cycle though, all peers will once again have between 1% and 10% of the total population.
Enforce Open Borders
The most effective way to vote is with our feet. If 25% vote against some issue, no-one will care. If 25% of the population leave their peer, people will notice.
With this virtualized system, the success or failure of every peer is defined in terms of its population size. In order to make this work, people need to be able to move freely between peers.
- Anyone can move between peers freely as long as the destination peer wants to accept them. Therefor, a person’s movement is only restricted if no other peer wants to accept them.
- Peers have full control over their foreign policy including trade and emigration with the outside world, but they are not allowed to restrict the movement of their people to other peers.
Equally important as the free movement of people is the free movement of goods and money. If people cannot move their belongings freely between peers, peers can coerce them into not moving by confiscating or overly taxing their belongings.
- Peers cannot tax or limit the movement of goods or money across their borders any more than they do between locations and owners within their borders.
- Peers have no authority over anyone who is not present nor owns property in said peer.
Enforce Peer Restrictions & Boundaries
With the exception of the enumerated powers of the meta-government, peers have sovereign authority within their territory. This includes full authority to police their citizens, police their international borders and determining their own, non-military foreign policy. If they infringe on another peer’s territory or break the open-borders requirements, the supervisor must intervene.
Each peer’s overall police strength is also restricted. In order to ensure no peer has the power to defy the rules enforced by the supervisor, the peer’s police strength must be limited to a percentage of the supervisor’s military power equal to the percentage of the total population currently in the peer. For example, a peer with 7% of the overall population cannot have a police force exceeding 7% of the total strength of the supervisor’s military.
Protection from External Threats
There will always be external threats. We want to minimize violence within peers, so we give the role of protection from external threats to the supervisor. However, we want to keep the supervisor as simple as possible, so we grant all internal policing responsibility back to the individual peers.
Virtualized Peer Governments
The peers are largely unrestricted. When they are created they can define their constitution however their citizens like. As long as the peer complies with all the requirements above, the most important one being that anyone can leave at any time, peers can have any conceivable structure.
My expectation is new peer constitutions will be largely based on the good parts of the peer they are splitting off from, but there is no requirement for any similarity. The new peer could be radically different or almost the same.
Simplicity is Essential
The supervisor enforces the rules of the system and defends it from outside threats. That’s it. This simplicity is essential. Unlike the virtualized peer governments it manages, the supervising meta-government has no supervisor. It is subject to all the problems of ‘normal’ governments discussed at the start, most importantly, ever accumulating corruption and eventual violent death.
Simplicity is the ultimate defense against complexity.
Though accumulating corruption cannot be stopped entirely at the meta-government level, it can be slowed down to a crawl by a diligent citizenry. However, citizens can only police and control what they can understand. The simpler the government the better chance the citizens have of keeping it simple and keeping it on task.
Governments in the Cloud
Technically savvy readers may notice parallels between ‘virtualized government’ and ‘virtual machines’ — the software technology which revolutionized the internet and made the cloud possible. The similarity is not accidental. Like virtual machines, virtual governments make it radically easier to experiment, try new ideas, and ultimately find ways to make our lives dramatically better.
Destination Mars?
Just a fun side thought: There may be an opportunity to apply these principles in the not-too-distant future. It seems plausible that there could be a thriving colony on Mars within the next 100 years (SpaceX). This is a rare and powerful opportunity for us to move beyond the need for violent revolution and open up a world of government vitality, experimentation and personalization.
Other Kinds of Virtualized Government
I have presented just one possible form of virtualized government. It’s a fascinating concept worth exploring in its own right. To distinguish the ideas in this essay from others, I offer this term: the PEER system — a system for Peaceful Experimentation, Evolution and Revolution of governments.
We Need Virtualized Government
We currently have no way to recreate, split, combine or fundamentally change our governments without violence. As governments grow, they inevitably become bloated and corrupt. They tend towards more and more centralized, one-size-fits-all solutions which poorly fit the needs and values of their population. As values diversify and become out of sync, governments stagnate, politically destructive, zero-sum infighting ensues and eventually the system collapses in violent revolution.
We can do dramatically better fitting governments to the unique and ever-changing needs of citizens.
Birth and death are a vital and inevitable part of nature. However, our governments are designed without any consideration for their death or rebirth. Not only can we build systems that embrace that vital cycle, but they can dynamically evolve to meet the needs and values of citizens. We can open up a whole new world of exploration, experimentation and dynamism in governments. Ultimately, we can do dramatically better fitting governments to the unique and ever-changing needs of citizens.
