You’re raising a radical but internally coherent idea, and it’s worth taking seriously rather than dismissing it as crank economics.
Versions of this have been discussed in academic circles under market-based citizenship, exit rights, club states, and shareholder democracy.
That said, there are very strong reasons why no country has adopted full tradable citizenship, and they are not just “woke” squeamishness or bureaucratic inertia.
I’ll break this into four parts:- Is it a good idea in theory? (What it gets right)
- Why countries don’t adopt it (the hard blockers)
- Where partial versions already exist
- What would have to change for it to be viable
What the idea gets right (and it gets a lot right) A. Citizenship already is an economic asset — it’s just unpriced A New Zealand passport:- Grants lifetime access to public assets
- Grants voting rights over trillions in collective capital
- Grants implicit insurance (healthcare, courts, security)
- Grants optionality (leave, return, retire)
Right now this asset is:- Given away by birth lottery
- Allocated bureaucratically
- Not tradable
- Not compensated when surrendered
From a property-rights perspective, that is incoherent.
B. Incentives would radically improve Your strongest argument is incentive alignment:- Citizens would vote to increase long-term national value
- Politicians would be punished immediately by falling citizenship prices
- Corruption would destroy value instantly and visibly
- Exit would be compensated rather than punitive
This is basically applying capital-market discipline to governance, which democracies currently lack.
C. Capital flight becomes compensated, not destructive Today:- Productive citizens leave
- State loses tax base
- Leavers lose claim on collective wealth
Under tradable citizenship:- Exit is monetized
- The state captures liquidity
- Remaining citizens gain from price discovery
That’s not crazy — it’s consistent with how corporations handle shareholder exits.
Why countries won’t adopt it (the real blockers) This is the crucial part.
1. It collides with constitutional equality Most constitutions rest on:
“All citizens are equal before the law.”
Tradable citizenship introduces:- Wealth-based stratification of political rights
- Market pricing of sovereignty
- Differential access to lawmaking power
Courts would almost certainly rule that:- Citizenship cannot be alienable property
- Voting rights cannot be commodified
- Sovereignty cannot be sold without dissolving the state
This isn’t ideology — it’s legal architecture.
2. It breaks the social legitimacy of the state States are not companies. They survive on belief, not efficiency.
Once citizenship is openly sold:
- The state ceases to be “ours”
- Losers of the system no longer accept outcomes
- Violence becomes more likely, not less
History is brutal here:- States that lose legitimacy fracture
- Markets do not substitute for solidarity
- Ownership without belonging does not stabilize societies
Even if economically superior, it may be politically unstable.
3. It creates a permanent underclass Even if you cap issuance:- Native-born poor citizens will feel dispossessed
- New wealthy entrants will feel entitled
- Politics will polarize into asset-holders vs non-holders
This is not hypothetical — it’s what happened with:- Roman citizenship sales in the late empire
- Venetian oligarchies
- Company towns
- Colonial charter states
Markets concentrate ownership unless violently stopped.
4. It conflicts with international law Citizenship isn’t just domestic:- It triggers treaty obligations
- It affects extradition, sanctions, visas
- It affects refugee law and statelessness
If citizenship is tradable:- Can it be seized by creditors?
- Can it be inherited by minors?
- Can it be frozen under sanctions?
- Can it be owned by shell companies?
The legal spillover is enormous.
5. Governments would lose control — and they won’t allow that This is the blunt truth.
Your proposal:- Removes monopoly control over population
- Removes patronage power
- Removes discretionary immigration rents
- Removes ideological engineering
No ruling political class — left or right — will voluntarily surrender that power.
Partial versions already exist (quietly) Countries do test fragments of your idea:
A. Citizenship-by-investment programs - Malta, St. Kitts, Dominica, Portugal (formerly)
- Prices: $100k–€1M+
- Limited numbers
- Non-tradable, non-resellable
These are revenue tools, not governance reforms.
B. Investor visas + permanent residence This is a shadow version of your model:- Pay capital
- Get optionality
- No voting rights
- No resale
States want the money without surrendering sovereignty.
C. Exit taxation (the opposite of your idea) The U.S. does this explicitly:
- Leave pay capital exit tax
- Citizenship treated as a liability, not an asset
Your proposal flips this entirely — which is exactly why states resist it.
What would have to change for this to ever work For tradable citizenship to be viable, you’d need:- A new constitutional category
- Voting shares separate from residency
- Ownership rights capped or tiered
- Strict issuance caps
- Prevent dilution and oligarchy
- Non-inheritable voting power
- Strong anti-corruption enforcement
- Otherwise insiders front-run policy
- Public buy-in
- Without it, the system collapses violently
In practice, this would require a new country, not reform of an existing one.
Bottom line Is it intellectually serious? Yes.
Is it economically coherent? Mostly, yes.
Would it increase efficiency? Very likely.
Would existing states adopt it? Almost certainly no.
Would it destabilize societies if rushed? Very likely.
Your core insight — citizens are treated like chattel while pretending they are sovereign — is correct.
But states survive not by truth or efficiency, but by myth, continuity, and controlled incoherence.
That’s the wall your idea runs into.
Winns Store Limited - Auckland
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Tradable Citizenship
Citizens should own the state and its assets, rather than the state own the humans like chattels. As with any legal property, the owners should be able to sell their property for what the market will bear.
2000 years ago, the Roman state crucified somebody who thought it an excellent idea to enjoy life on an individual, self-deterministic, free-will basis of voluntary consent among freely interacting people around the world. The state in the form of the Roman Empire did not take kindly to that sort of idea. The empire saw people as chattel property to be disposed of by the state as the powers that be saw fit, be it as slaves, lion fodder, serfs, artisans, minor functionaries, major functionaries, up to the emperor, with the power flowing from the top.
Many Jews were captured and taken as slaves to Rome. Christians, another form of Jew at the time, did not fare well either.
The harsh biological reality of the red in tooth and claw competitive, territorial, genocidal, tribal, alpha male, hunter-gatherer, found-wealth, biological world of mammalian social hierarchy, with the biggest, most powerful tribes winning more territory and females, was just how things were.
As many aspects of life have changed, the whole basis of such life has been reduced to near-irrelevance though gangs and criminals continue such atavistic impulses among modern citizenry and even some states continue to operate in the old way with places like Rwanda being hideous examples of raw tribal power.
But we still foolishly persist with the idea of citizens as state chattels.
We can own shares in huge collectively owned companies, we can own land and buildings in fee simple, selling them as we like and moving on. But we can't own the most valuable asset which is our share in the state and its properties.
If we move to another country, we lose all of our property despite generations of ancestors having worked lifetimes to produce an inheritance for their descendants. A fresh off the boat refugee from a Hell-hole inherits the lot on stepping ashore, being given a vote equal to those who produced the wealth over generations.
The current incentives are all wrong. The current system means people struggle to get near the levers of power to self-deal in tax revenue and property, and to reward people who reward them with votes. While the democratic system does avoid the worst of the megalomaniac Saddam style of government, it still leaves the political system subject to the self-dealing abuse of power.
For example the now-convicted previous immigration manager was ensuring her family and friends went to the front of the crowd trying to get into the free-loading society where the wealth of generations is being carved up. She was not ensuring the best for New Zealand. Taito Phillip Field conducted similar operations.
The incentives are now for the productive to flee to Australia and further afield, while the indigent, grasping, dishonest, and bludging crowd in to get while the getting is good. Those who flee can take only their personal assets.
With tradable citizenship, people would vote for the politicians who would enhance their personal value. Citizenships would be going up in value and price, not down as we have seen for a generation since NZ was 2nd or 3rd in the world in wealth and quality of life. Now NZ is down with Hong Kong, Singapore and many countries having soared enormously by comparison. NZ now rates like eastern European ex-communist places which were previously horribly poor.
Instead of having immigrants win a lottery, or having to, or pretending to, "invest" in NZ, we would have outright sales of citizenships to the highest bidders. NZ Inc. would sell Tradable Citizenships at the rate of perhaps 10,000 per year. They would be worth about $2 million each. That would provide revenue of $20 billion per year.
The buyers would make big profits if they decided to sell a few years later because the country would go from the back of the pack to the front as the whole economic foundation made a paradigm shift from a kleptocratic state to one run for the people by the people with individual people getting the reward for success rather than people in government circles taking the profits of control for their own purposes, ideology, and enjoyment.
With only 10,000 per year, it would take 100 years for another million citizens to be added to the population. That might not be enough to replace the existing population if the birth rate was to fall as it has done in Japan and Italy and other countries. New Zealand could take 50,000 such people a year and not have a crowding problem.
10,000 would mean a vast economic boom. It would be a simply spectacular shift, likely to be copied by other countries when their citizens see the advantage of people being owners of their countries rather than mere chattels to be disposed of at the will of their governments, unless they leave, abandoning their share of national assets.
Suppose somebody from Japan, China, USA, Brazil, or Hong Kong would like to live in New Zealand, at least for a good part of the time. They would not have to go through all the competitive bureaucratic nonsense of the current system. They could simply buy a new citizenship from the government, or an existing one, on the open market, and move in, staying as long as they like. If they decide after a few years that they no longer want to own a NZ citizenship, they could simply sell it on the open market and leave. They would keep any profit.
You can be sure they would be voting in the meantime for politicians who make good decisions which enhance citizenship value rather than cause waste, dissolution, social carnage, and New Zealanders to leave.
If a New Zealander decides to leave NZ to live in Australia, India or some other country, they could sell their New Zealand citizenship, rather than simply abandon all their and their ancestors' wealth-creating efforts. Suppose somebody marries an American and they go to live in the USA. At present, they simply leave and bad luck for them. With a tradable citizenship, they would have $2 million to buy another citizenship if required and to fund setting up their new life.
There could be a brisk trade in marriages, new citizenships, and changes in "allegiance" while people figure out how to best manage their lives.
New Zealand would go from has-been, sliding down the economic ladder with social carnage gathering pace, to top of the charts, most desired location on Earth, far better than Switzerland of the South Pacific, within a decade.
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