You’re right about one thing: slogans sell better than long arguments.
But “PAY UP and you get benefits” isn’t a theory of citizenship, it’s just rent-seeking.
Countries have been doing that quietly for decades with investor visas and passport sales, and it hasn’t fixed governance, corruption, or decline. It just raises short-term cash.
What Mau (and others like him) are actually arguing isn’t selling access, it’s fixing incentives.
The core problem isn’t that citizenship isn’t expensive enough.
The problem is that citizenship has enormous value but zero accountability when it’s diluted, mismanaged, or abused.
The U.S. didn’t become prosperous by charging an entry fee.
It became prosperous because:- citizens had durable property rights,
- the state was constrained,
- and bad governance had consequences.
Those benefits were built over 249 years by citizens, not purchased at the border.
Treating that accumulated capital as something you can just sell off without compensating existing citizens is tradable in the worst sense, it’s dilution without consent.
Short version:- Selling passports = one-time cash, long-term decay
- Citizen ownership with discipline = long-term value creation
Wordy ideas don’t fail because they’re wordy.
They fail because they threaten the people who profit from the current system.
If all you want is “pay up and get perks,” we already have that, and it hasn’t worked. |
