I believe government should be much more localized and I like the idea of charter cities. Competition among governments is good for citizens just as competition among businesses is good for consumers. Of course, for competition to really work out, immigration should not be regulated.
Of course, for competition to really work out, immigration should not be regulated.
How does this follow? Unless I’m having a severe case of reading misapprehension, this is equivalent to arguing that there should be a market in housing because competition between landlords will result in good housing with reasonable rents—and then adding, as if it were obvious, that for competition to work out, landlords should not have any rules for screening potential tenants.
You know, unless you’re willing to live in open sea or in space or in Antarctica, you can’t possibly emigrate from a country without immigrating into another one.
Which is a reason why landlords aren’t analogous with countries. If you don’t like your landlord, you can (in principle) buy your own house, become homeless, live with your parents, etc.; whereas if you don’t like your country, even if your country allows you to leave, if you don’t find a country that allows you to enter you’re out of luck.
I have no real ideological objection to immigration regulation but it seems that at the moment it is a big barrier to making governments really competitive among each others. If there were many charter cities within a relatively small area, I guess it wouldn’t be an issue if some of them had stricter immigration rules. My personal guess is that governments with lighter immigration control would be the most successful (that was the case of the US a few decades ago) but I’d be happy to be proved wrong. As long as there is a realistic option for citizens to move from one government to the other, competition will work.
I like this idea, but for it to work how we want to, having immigration unregulated isn’t quite the right way to put it. Immigration needs to be free, perhaps by contract between charter cities.
There’d need to be protocols for the creation of the cities, for the transfer of land between them, for them shutting down, and so on. Perhaps this could be organized by a meta-government. I’m not sure how well a decentralized system would deal with that.
The barriers to entry would be very high, unfortunately, and while I’m not well versed on the economics of the development of monopolies, it appears to me that there might need to be some kind of regulation to prevent them from developing and allowing new charter cities to enter the market somehow. Unless the division of land was predetermined and static, which also solves the previous problems of land transfer and city creation.
In the end this ends up being a substantially less elegant system than initially imagined, but that doesn’t mean it’s still not potentially far more elegant and effective than the system we have now. States are supposed to operate and compete in a similar manner, but there aren’t enough of them for that to work well enough and AFAICT the federal government plays a much larger role than is ideal.
Forgive me if I’m being stupid, I only get over my social anxiety enough to post if I’m a little bit drunk.
Counterargument: cities can compete against each other not only by implementing policies that will benefit the average resident, but also by implementing policies that will attract already successful immigrants. Thus, localizing government could result in policies that are biased to the advantage of already successful people.
I believe government should be much more localized and I like the idea of charter cities. Competition among governments is good for citizens just as competition among businesses is good for consumers. Of course, for competition to really work out, immigration should not be regulated.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city
How does this follow? Unless I’m having a severe case of reading misapprehension, this is equivalent to arguing that there should be a market in housing because competition between landlords will result in good housing with reasonable rents—and then adding, as if it were obvious, that for competition to work out, landlords should not have any rules for screening potential tenants.
I think his point was more like ‘the landlords / cities must allow people to freely leave.’
Wouldn’t that be a lack of regulation on emigration, not immigration?
You know, unless you’re willing to live in open sea or in space or in Antarctica, you can’t possibly emigrate from a country without immigrating into another one.
Solvent’s point is that there’s a difference open immigration:
‘the landlords / cities must allow people to freely enter.’
and open emigration:
‘the landlords / cities must allow people to freely leave.’
Which is a reason why landlords aren’t analogous with countries. If you don’t like your landlord, you can (in principle) buy your own house, become homeless, live with your parents, etc.; whereas if you don’t like your country, even if your country allows you to leave, if you don’t find a country that allows you to enter you’re out of luck.
I have no real ideological objection to immigration regulation but it seems that at the moment it is a big barrier to making governments really competitive among each others. If there were many charter cities within a relatively small area, I guess it wouldn’t be an issue if some of them had stricter immigration rules. My personal guess is that governments with lighter immigration control would be the most successful (that was the case of the US a few decades ago) but I’d be happy to be proved wrong. As long as there is a realistic option for citizens to move from one government to the other, competition will work.
I like this idea, but for it to work how we want to, having immigration unregulated isn’t quite the right way to put it. Immigration needs to be free, perhaps by contract between charter cities.
There’d need to be protocols for the creation of the cities, for the transfer of land between them, for them shutting down, and so on. Perhaps this could be organized by a meta-government. I’m not sure how well a decentralized system would deal with that.
The barriers to entry would be very high, unfortunately, and while I’m not well versed on the economics of the development of monopolies, it appears to me that there might need to be some kind of regulation to prevent them from developing and allowing new charter cities to enter the market somehow. Unless the division of land was predetermined and static, which also solves the previous problems of land transfer and city creation.
In the end this ends up being a substantially less elegant system than initially imagined, but that doesn’t mean it’s still not potentially far more elegant and effective than the system we have now. States are supposed to operate and compete in a similar manner, but there aren’t enough of them for that to work well enough and AFAICT the federal government plays a much larger role than is ideal.
Forgive me if I’m being stupid, I only get over my social anxiety enough to post if I’m a little bit drunk.
Counterargument: cities can compete against each other not only by implementing policies that will benefit the average resident, but also by implementing policies that will attract already successful immigrants. Thus, localizing government could result in policies that are biased to the advantage of already successful people.