Citizenship Discussion (Forum Part of Commission)

Jon Seattle · Post by **Jon Seattle** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 1:04 pm

[quote="michelmanen":j2f5s96r]As long as we remain a purely landed gentry and exclude outsiders on that basis, we are nothing but an oligarchy pretending to be democratic. In fact, we are no more "democratic" in the modern sense of the word than was ancient Athens where citizens formed only the upper cast of the entire population of the polis.[/quote:j2f5s96r]So, we have indentured servants hidden somewhere in the CDS struggling to break their chains? People who will willingly pay fees for the privilege of being homeless vagabonds on CDS streets? As far as I can tell, your calling the current citizens of he CDS â€œlanded gentryâ€ has no real meaning other than a way to hurl mud. Trying to get people to feel terrible about renting their small patch of server resources.

By your reasoning we do not have the right to call ourselves democratic unless we offer a vote to any person, not resident in the CDS, even those who are out to do us harm. And of course, from your point of view, since we are keeping the rest of the world in chains, you could justify any action to bring down those terrible â€œoligarchs,â€ those everyday people who call themselves CDS citizens and vote.

If you truly want CDS citizenship to be more open, you have a very funny way of going about it. Building coalitions and getting people to see a common advantage to a new approach might be much more effective than this sort of rhetoric.

Beathan · Post by **Beathan** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 1:09 pm

Michel --

Your observation that land-based citizenship was abolished long ago is only half-right. It is true, that for social justice reasons, most countries have abolished the requirement that all citizens be male freeholders. However, residency requirements -- commitments to the actual territory of the country -- is still required for citizenship, and for voting. Even ex-pats, to maintain citizenship, must maintain territorial contacts and commitments.

In SL it is difficult to establish "residency" apart from "ownership" -- unless we allow rentals, which we have rejected for policy reasons (although we might want to revisit this). That the citizens of the CDS are committed to the virtual space of the CDS is critical. The CDS has virtual land and territory. This is a critical feature of the CDS. Allowing landless -- nonresident -- citizens whill create a citizen population whose self-interest would tend to undermine, rather than enhance, the CDS builds. The CDS is about our builds as we are about anything else.

I think that "non-resident citizenship" is a nonstarter. Let's move on to discussion how we can broaden citizenship by increasing the ranges and options for residency. For instance, I support having an alternate path to citizenship through civic service -- actual work on and in our sims by people with skills that enhance our community. I also think that we should revisit the issue of rentals -- or perhaps develop hostel-type or barracks-type housing. However, fee-based citizenship does not demonstrate, create or enhance strong ties to our actual virtual community.

Beathan

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:08 pm

[quote:38zbdmm5]fee-based citizenship does not demonstrate, create or enhance strong ties to our actual virtual community[/quote:38zbdmm5]

not does "land owneship" by absentee landlords.

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:09 pm

[quote:2dmmovce]Trying to get people to feel terrible about renting their small patch of server resources.[/quote:2dmmovce]

Not at all. Just exposing the utter lack of logic and consistency in your arguments.

Jon Seattle · Post by **Jon Seattle** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:12 pm

[quote="michelmanen":2l5yemqp][quote:2l5yemqp]Trying to get people to feel terrible about renting their small patch of server resources.[/quote:2l5yemqp]

Not at all. Just exposing the utter lack of logic and consistency in your arguments.[/quote:2l5yemqp]Not at all. Utterly failing to expose any such thing. Wanting something (on your part) is not an argument.

Gxeremio Dimsum · Post by **Gxeremio Dimsum** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:33 pm

[quote="Beathan":3szm36v9]
I think that "non-resident citizenship" is a nonstarter. Let's move on to discussion how we can broaden citizenship by increasing the ranges and options for residency. For instance, I support having an alternate path to citizenship through civic service -- actual work on and in our sims by people with skills that enhance our community. I also think that we should revisit the issue of rentals -- or perhaps develop hostel-type or barracks-type housing. However, fee-based citizenship does not demonstrate, create or enhance strong ties to our actual virtual community.[/quote:3szm36v9]

Nor does theoretically sharing a barracks, which need never be used since you don't sleep in SL, nor one-time work on city projects like building a structure but never taking part in the community.

The only possible means I see to solve this issue is to make each sim locally governed for estate/zoning issues, but to make the CDS project generally about expanding democracy, human rights, and rule of law as far as possible throughout SL. People who own land in a sim are part of the local POA and automatically part of the CDS, while others can become CDS citizens-at-large and vote in RA elections, hold posts, etc. The RA would cease to have powers normally associated with a POA, except perhaps to set the parameters for what POAs could and couldn't decide on.

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:45 pm

Thats very very interesting Gxeremio.... let me think about it...

Tanoujin Milestone · Post by **Tanoujin Milestone** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 2:40 am

[quote="michelmanen":enyh85hf]not does "land owneship" by absentee landlords[/quote:enyh85hf]
Well, Citizens are free to be absent as long as they wish - participation is voluntary - but i see some point... somebody help me to sort this argument - does it change category?

Thanks for pointing out the dark side of ancient city states, Michel, but this is a little like beating a scarecrow - as Jon said: where *are* the idiots we are suppressing?

If someone could provide a link to an article on the political structures of the free cities of the renaissance - i still have problems to find a correct analogy to our situation here... thanks (yes, horror stories of corruption and murder, i know )

Supplement: i met some Resis interested in self government and showed them around, trying to outline what this is all about -
"how many citizens?" - "76" - "lol"

Patroklus Murakami · Post by **Patroklus Murakami** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 3:24 am

The interesting question for me in this discussion centres on 'interests'. While we maintain the tie between citizenship and land ownership we all, to some extent, have similar interests. It's expressed very well on the wiki page - "The Confederation of Democratic Simulators (CDS) is a self-governed community, whose purpose is to enable ownership of high-quality public, private, and open-space land; create a themed yet expressive community of public and private builds; and implement novel democratic forms of self government within Second Life." There's more to us than that, as we have discussed elsewhere, but this expresses something quite fundamental about where we have come from and what we're about.

I'm having a hard time working out what the interests would be of someone who pays a Citizenship Tax (equivalent to owning 128m2 or some other arbitrary amount) but owns no land in the CDS. Would they, for example, be as keen on territorial expansion as many of us are? What would the point be of territorial expansion when we can simply expand our numbers (and our revenue) by welcoming more landless citizens? Would they be more, or less, interested in taking an active part in community life by attending events, hosting their own, joining a political faction, holding public office, teaching classes in the School etc? Or would they be interested in tinkering with the Constitution for the sake of it? (This seems to be the 'CDS disease' in my opinion and one of the things that diverts our energies unproductively). There's really no way of knowing unless we try it. But the problem I have is that this is a 'one way street'; if we change our citizenship requirements in the way suggested, everything changes, there's no way to predict what those changes will bring, and there's no going back! There are considerable potential benefits - more people means more builders, more event organisers, more activists and more revenue to finance expansion, events, goods and services for our citizens. But there are considerable potential disbenefits which have been rehearsed elsewhere. It's a bit of a leap in the dark and, though I haven't written off the idea, I'd like to see more consideration of 'interests' and evaluation of the potential disbenefits and how to mitigate them.

Leon · Post by **Leon** » Sat Sep 01, 2007 11:55 am

[quote="Tanoujin Milestone":dfsurodd]Thanks for pointing out the dark side of ancient city states, Michel, but this is a little like beating a scarecrow - as Jon said: where *are* the idiots we are suppressing?

If someone could provide a link to an article on the political structures of the free cities of the renaissance - i still have problems to find a correct analogy to our situation here... thanks (yes, horror stories of corruption and murder, i know )

Supplement: i met some Resis interested in self government and showed them around, trying to outline what this is all about -
"how many citizens?" - "76" - "lol"[/quote:dfsurodd]

I couldn't say it better, thanks Tan.

L

Patroklus Murakami · Post by **Patroklus Murakami** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 2:13 am

In another thread Michel has said the following:[quote="michelmanen":1kns3nqh]We don't need any limits on citizens. Anyone ready to pay a citizenship fee and participate should be allowed the oppportunity to become one. Anything else is a direct barrier to our growth and development and is entirely retrograde and anti-democratic.[/quote:1kns3nqh]Well, this is an intellectually coherent position but it begs a number of questions. If we allow anyone willing to pay a citizenship fee to become a citizen and vote in elections then we are permitting an unrestricted expansion of citizenship. I don't think there are any nations, RL or otherwise, that place no restrictions on 'immigration' (for want of a better term). I don't understand why the proponents of this policy are refusing to engage with any of the potential downsides. If we change our requirements in this way future elections will be decided by whoever is able to persuade more of their friends in SL to come and vote for them. It would leave us wide open to takeover by a bigger group. It could easily lead to a situation where landowners were outnumbered by the 'landless'; what guarantees do landowners have that their interests won't be abused by the new majority?

Bromo Ivory · Post by **Bromo Ivory** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 6:36 am

Hi Pat -

The devil will be in the details. Asking someone to pay money to be citizens, and a possible deposit will be self limiting in a lot of ways - I don't think it will cause thousands of avatars to swoop into CDS. And if all of a sudden CDS had 250 members 76 of which owned land ... then so what? We'd have an awesome large community that would tend to be self supporting in many ways - we would also probably be busily building more and more SIMs since many of them would want a piece of CDS for their very own. (And yes, the pressure would be on to build lots of SIMs and lots of activities!)

But, I do understand people trying to limit membership - and to try to manage change to the electoral makeup.

But it really depends how we want to approach the problem of persistence. A democratic government is a good idea for a start and is proven to work - but it is only a solution to the "apathy of the single owner" issue as well as give residents a say in how their are governed (I will not make comments on the indirect way reps are selected). How can the community renew itself and become more and more dynamic?

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 8:51 am

Pat, Bromo, Beathan, I am very encouraged to see true dialogue being engaged on the issue of citizensihip and the andvantages and disadvantages of status quo and change. As of this moment, I think Gxeremio has proposed th boldest vision yet -yet the one also potentially able to address some of Pat's concerns about conflicts of interest between landless and landed citizens:
[quote:2ofjyzna]
The only possible means I see to solve this issue is to make each sim locally governed for estate/zoning issues, but to make the CDS project generally about expanding democracy, human rights, and rule of law as far as possible throughout SL. People who own land in a sim are part of the local POA and automatically part of the CDS, while others can become CDS citizens-at-large and vote in RA elections, hold posts, etc. The RA would cease to have powers normally associated with a POA, except perhaps to set the parameters for what POAs could and couldn't decide on.[/quote:2ofjyzna]

This proposal is entirely consistent with the long-term vision CARE has put forward, as well as with concepts of multi-level citizenship inluding both territorial and non-territorial considerations, as well as various levels of governance.

I therefore suggest that we take Gxeremio's proposal as a baseline for further discussions and try to address andvantages an disadvantages, in order to make sure we adopt the former and mitigate the latter.

Leon · Post by **Leon** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:05 am

Michel,

Just because you agree, doesn't make this the baseline for discussions.

Thanks
Leon

michelmanen · Post by **michelmanen** » Sun Sep 02, 2007 9:12 am

Leon,

I didn't say it did. I proposed to make it so. Can you see the difference? If not, I'll be happy to draw you a graph so even you can understand it

Regards,

Michel