You are right that choosing to work somewhere does NOT make you their slave. Quite the contrary. I too have worked in various countries; Canada, England, New Zealand, Belgium, for greater or lesser periods of time. I have invested in USA, UK, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and via my shareholdings in countries around the world. None of that makes me a hostage or slave, even if we consider the slogan "No taxation without representation" a good idea.
As you say, it's light footed and free to flit from country to country as the whim takes and the attractions beckon. Belgium went to considerable lengths to attract major companies to set up shop there and paid a lot of money to my wife because she had children. They insisted to me that she should receive the money though I explained to the government department that we were well off and employed by BP Oil, and were foreigners and did not intend living permanently in Belgium. It was $1000 a month [4 children]. Real money. No wonder Islamic Jihad is swarming the place.
It's the citizens whose property is held captive by those who happen to be in charge at the time who are hard done by. To take an extreme case [which is what one does in engineering = test boundary conditions to see if the theory is correct], consider a slave in the USA. The law was explicit = people were held prisoner and forced by whip and rod to work as directed without pay. They were neither free to leave, nor entitled to a share of the state's assets, nor even to the product of their own labours. Turning them loose to work for other people at the going rate was an improvement, but they still didn't own the state assets. If they left the country which they couldn't do because they didn't have the price of a ticket or anywhere to accept them, or a marketable skill worth the move, they could not sell their share in what they had created. The value of what they created would be taken over by their prior captors.
Yes, that blog article is aging. I don't develop the idea because my experience is that people are basically Luddites and unable to see the possibilities of things. They don't even read to the end of that, if they ever do find it.
I came up with the idea of encoded cellphone signals using Fourier transforms in 1989 and was lucky enough to find a company that was developing exactly that idea. It took half a decade for the idea to be accepted as valid and many people claimed it was a dumb idea which wouldn't work. NIH syndrome is quite a problem.
Anyway, I'm working on something bigger than Tradable Citizenship but along similar lines. Again, hardly anyone can understand the ideas, but I think I can do it anyway. Tradable Citizenship requires hordes of people to not only understand it, but to push the idea. As you can see, hardly anyone can understand the idea [they say things which clearly show they don't grasp even the simplest aspects]. I just enjoy my life and am able to live largely above the fray, so if those stuck in the bog of life want to continue as they are, as indentured state serfs, good for them. I can go to live in many places, they can't. So it's not really my problem. Perhaps a politician who likes all that government stuff will adopt the idea and push it as a way of getting elected. It's not patented, so they are welcome to it. I would like such a system.
I don't see why people who like communally owned state-run property with no individual entitlement to dispose of their share of that property should object to being called communists. That's exactly what communism is. The community owns things and dictates the rules. It's not private property. <Them are fightin' words, man!.... :) > Hippie communes run on the same lines and they don't work either. Spending opm is fine, until the op get sick of providing the loot. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck ... it starts to look as though it might be a duck. If the shoe fits, wear it. Communism is very popular, though nowadays people like to use different words "public private partnership" for example.
<It appears to me that under a Tradable citizenship regime there would still be "one man, one vote". Can't quite see how this would give an individual any additional great leverage over the government. > There would still be those out to swindle others and ride on the gravy train. But only paid up citizens would vote. There would be greater incentive to make the place better rather than loot it while the looting is good before others grab the goods = the old tragedy of the commons problem, which is what democracy causes. Might as well grab what's available then shoot through to Australia or somewhere. Others are going to grab it anyway, so best to grab while the grabbing is good. If people could see a personal ownership stake growing or shrinking as politicians do stupid things such as borrowing another $trillion, they would start to vote in a more sensible way.
If they realized what value is being given away, they would be more assiduous about protecting their borders to avoid free-loaders arriving to dilute ownership. Since they figure it's not worth much, they don't much care. If they realized the full extent of their loss, they'd be take more interest.
If there was no share price for companies, it would not be so easy to see whether the company is doing well or not. Market pricing of things is a great way to see what's really going on. Even if facts are not known directly, they are exposed in the share price. Citizens would be more likely to vote for good politicians if they could see the value of their country going up or down according to political decisions and outcomes. Going down the gurgler would be directly observable rather than an uneasy feeling based on a weak currency, which is seen by some people as a strength [accusations that China wants a low currency for example].
Waiting for financial disaster is hardly a good way to run a railroad: < Big Gov in Washington still has an excessive leverage over me, and that would be true. However, I expect that this will change, as the current crisis unfolds. The size of the Fed government is proving to be unsustainable, and it will shrink. More powers will go to the states, just as it was envisioned by the Constitution. > Being forced by bankruptcy out of a bad plan is harsh reality, but icky at best, with much unhappiness.
Mqurice |
