Theme: Sovereignty

QUESTIONS ON VOTING UNDER PROPERTARIAN CONSTITUTION

by John Mark

Curt, 3 questions/clarifications:

QUESTION 1. Do I understand correctly that each state can choose who gets to vote (depending on what system they choose from the options presented) BUT only citizens can vote – and because the bar for citizenship is so high, most people will not be voting regardless of where they live?

Answer:

(a) CITIZENS: I’m pretty confident on the citizenship criteria – and that’s clearly a federal issue. So I think that’s settled. Yes, Visitors have limited insurance by the courts – they are not equals in court as is a problem in our ‘law’ today. Residents (you are born a resident not citizen) are insured by the government, and citizens (someone who has earned citizenship), and sovereign (someone who has earned the franchise) all seem to be fine.

(b) VIA NEGATIVA VENUE: all people have the via-negativa vote via the court, to oppose anything that would harm them. So we have clearly provided a juridical defense to all. But the question is who we provide political OFFENSE(Power) to. Because trade (economic markets), personal and group defense (court), and political offense (political force), provide increasingly powerful levers with increasingly powerful requirements for positive incentives, knowledge, and ability. I think in most cases the people would seek court protection from bad policies, and that only good policies would survive. I don’t like providing a vehicle for bad people to produce bad policies. Remember that while you can produce whatever commons and norms you want you can’t lie or engage in irreciprocity or violate the natural law to do so. And so, I’m pretty confident that the courts will do better than the state as a means of ‘political’ defense. And I don’t see much value in voting other than to throw the bums out. But I’m also aware that democracy is a sort of idiotic cult or false religion. And so it’s not easy to say ‘you can’t vote’.

(c ) VIA POSITIVA VENUE: And as for voting, we provide a set of options (they aren’t in there yet, but I might add them today after this post). Voting was a very tough subject to work through, because the tolerance for, and value of, inclusiveness increases as scale decreases. So, voting in say, your village, or town, or county, vs your city or state is very different.

On the other hand what we see is people invading an area, then voting to CONSUME ALL POSSIBLE RESOURCES WITHIN IT and then leaving it exhausted by their hyper-consumption. So obviously we have to deal with the empirical reality of a parasitic majority especially since the addition of women.

But how much does voting matter? Really?

So we either

(a) limit voting to the original approval and disapproval of raising of funds (b) limit voting dramatically to a senate, or (c) we create houses for the classes of people by demonstrated merit, or (d) we let people continue the insanity of universal majoritarian democracy and pay for it – with people voting by their feet – because the treasury and the military, in the end, limit what idiots can do.

In summary: we provide a set of options – but I’m not sure it matters. The competition between court and government under the p-constitution will make it very hard to play silly games. And there is no escape from accountability (ie: california, new york, connecticut) by voting benefits then departing without taking the debts. Under P, there are no state, county, or local debts. They are all apportioned to individuals. And you take your debts with you if you migrate.

QUESTION 2. There may be more than 50 states because of the (rather ingenious) system where localities can form polities if they can get enough people together? (State lines may end up being redrawn, not just as we separate from the leftist cities but as localities form their own polities?)

Answer: I expect the number of states to increase and then decrease in pursuit of advantages of scale. I expect city-states to economically insulate themselves from nearby areas. I expect revitalization of each state’s cities. I expect restoration of public transport. Eliminate diversity and you eliminate public frictions, and begin to restore the commons.

QUESTION 3. Will the blue independent city-states be their own states that form part of the system of governors of states, live under propertarian law, under the supreme court etc, or will they be treated more as independent nations? Will we allow them to “do whatever they want” as long as they don’t allow foreign military presence, or are we ruling them – placing them under P-law, not allowing immigration to those areas either, etc, and just letting them form their own gov’t under P-law and “our rules” but w/ preference for redistribution?

Answer: Every territory must adhere to the natural law in oder to defend states from each other. There is no moral reason to do otherwise. Every other option is simply an attempt at parasitism. so everyone is under the same NATUAL via negativa law for the same reason the founders chose that method – prevent conquest of the continent (island) by hostiles. But within it, whatever norms people want are possible there. This will rapidly split people by norms but prevent economic, political, demographic warfare.