Children of people owning Tradable Citizenships. As with other property rights, children don't automatically inherit them.
There is eons-long tradition in how inheritance works. Commonly, the oldest son would get the family farm and the youngsters would go forth and make their own way in the world. Women would marry into other lines and there were many strategic marriages - the common notion of romantic love as the basis of marriage is foolish.
Marriage evolved as a way of getting sex and children under civilized management. Instead of simply going out and rutting with children dropped around like chimps and life having to exist like chimps, at a very low hunter gatherer level, people realized that when boys and girls reach puberty and get randy, there is going to be sex, as always.
Pair bonding had already evolved to ensure care and protection of children, but it was then culturally ordained and sanctified with the community deciding that a pair were hereby identified and the bloke was responsible for any babies that came out and adultery had to be banned as a destruction of the process.
The village got together and witnessed that said bloke was now liable for the woman and any children. Sex could then proceed with reduced social carnage, though of course, given the close human genetic relationship to bonobos, there was plenty of trouble to still deal with. Neither did it solve the problem created by nature to ensure population of the planet - far more offspring than the environment could sustain. War was inherently part of life for all species, from plants to people.
The spare young males were given a sword, or club, or wooden stick, and sent off to the borders to conquer neighbouring tribes, get some land and women. The opposing tribes were all doing the same. It was populate or perish; and win the arms race too. The women having the most babies were in the bigger tribe so their tribe could defeat neighbouring tribes. Tribes with fewer babies were small and easily conquered and the men killed or enslaved.
The battle proceeded for thousands of years until now we have political entities, aka tribes, measured not just in the hundreds, or thousands, or even millions. There are now tribes a billion strong - China and India.
But many things have changed from the red in tooth and claw world of our antecedents.
Wealth is no longer found, gathered, or hunted. Wealth is now almost entirely an act of intellectual action, based on co-operation and exchange of property with others who similarly create wealth. Tribes can't conquer a neighbouring tribe and take over the iPad production line, or Google software development process, or Toyota's robotic car factories. Wealth is no longer found in the land.
100 years ago, the vast majority of humans lived on the land in rural subsistence economies. Now, the proportion of wealth derived from land is small compared with that from other activities. Hong Kong, Singapore, Belgium and other countries have trivial wealth from harvests. Even those harvests are largely intellectual pursuits with tractors, hybrid seeds, fertilizer and pest control, harvesting and processing having a large part to play in the final price of the products.
Fishing is not just a making of chucking a net at the surging tide from a dinghy. Growing cattle is not just a matter of going into the forest and spearing some unfortunate animal. Growing apples isn't a matter of stumbling on some fruit-bearing trees.
A vital part of the reproductive process is that women now choose to have children [for the great majority of them] thanks to contraception. Children do not result from the mere act of reaching puberty and the irresistible urge to have sex one way or another, after some acclimatizing to the idea. "Irresistible" to so many that the others don't matter.
China has had a one child policy for decades and countries without that policy have also seen world-shaking reductions in children per woman, from 10 [the historical norm] to less than 2. So contraception works, both mechanically and psychologically.
An interesting aspect is that as children grow up in families with no siblings or only 1, what will happen to the culture of having children and families as the norm? There seems to be an answer developing already - some women are breeders and in NZ are having 3 children. Others have none. There is quite a baby boom going on at present, as women and men [some of them] WANT to have children. Children now result from wanting the children rather than as a simply result of sex.
Decades ago, one of my maths lecturers introduced a maths lecture with his normal 5 minutes of off-topic. He commented that God was cunning because to ensure population, he didn't just leave the delight of the pitter patter of little feet as the incentive, but made sex highly desirable in itself. I forget exactly how he put it, but that's all I recall from the lecture.
While I haven't concluded exactly how citizenship ownerships would be handed down, there is already some cultural precedent and also some huge change in human population process suggesting that it's timely to abandon the old model of humans as serfs and chattels of the state [be 'the state' king, emperor, dictator, politburo, democratic winner, or tribal chieftain].
But there is room for some continuation of the idea of full citizen with voting rights and others, such as visitors, non-voting citizens without ownership, criminals, and what have you.
Citizenships could be inherited by a nominated child or disposed of with other property in a person's deceased estate, such as shares in a company or the family farm.
If a couple had two children, both would be able to have a citizenship. If a couple had three children, one would miss out and would have to make their way in the world without the benefit of a citizenship. They wouldn't be voting so would not be able to vote to take opm as now happens in the unfortunate democratic process which has evolved over a century or two.
The incentive to over-populate the planet is already absent, and it would be even more absent if some children would be disadvantaged. To make things even among a few children, parents could sell their citizenships and divide the money equally among their children, leaving each to find their way in the world and buy a citizenship if they are inclined to and able to do so.
Citizens would probably not vote to tax themselves. So children would have incentive to get working and buy a citizenship, on time payment if needs be.
With citizenships being highly valuable, and $billions raised by selling them to new citizens from other countries, citizens could pay themselves substantial dividends. A well-managed country might need enable citizens to live entirely on the profits from selling extra citizenships.
There is no practical limit on how much wealth a country can have. The limit is how well run it is. With incentives to do things sensibly, instead of the now normal voting to take opm, shining cities on the hill could become reality and the norm.
Mqurice |
