The untapped potential of franchulates

[Ashcroft Burnham]

[b:3kxgkscf][u:3kxgkscf]The untapped potential of franchulates[/b:3kxgkscf][/u:3kxgkscf]

I know that franchulates has been a hot topic in recent months, although there seems to have been some confusion about exactly what franchulates do and what they are for. A number of members of the CSDF, for example, consider franchulates (at least as the proposal currently stands) to be " a solution in search of a problem", and it is currently unclear exactly what they could achieve (as the proposal stands now), apart from permitting a few existing citizens to own a bit of mainland land a little more cheaply than they otherwise might, since (1) people have to be existing citizens to enfranchulate, and (2) franchulate holders cannot sublet their land.

With a few small changes, however, the franchulates scheme could be a very potent tool for expansion indeed, and could, potentially, with a little luck and a lot of determination, have a marked impact on SecondLife as a whole in the long term.

[b:3kxgkscf]Problems that franchulates solve[/b:3kxgkscf]

If franchulates as it currently stands is a solution in search of a problem, the slightly revised version that I suggest has found some real problems to solve. Those are:

* the proliferation of greifers on the mainland, and the fact that each landowner has to ban each griefer individually;

* the cost of having a premium subscription to own land;

* the higher relative cost of owning smaller parcels of land (this is what the current proposal seems mainly to be aimed at); and

* the fact that, on the mainland, enforcement mechanisms (of contracts in particular) are severely limited, limiting the scope and complexity of potential commercial transactions.

[b:3kxgkscf]My suggested modifications[/b:3kxgkscf]

The slight changes that I propose are:

* to permit people to become a citizen *by* enfranchulating their existing mainland land-holdings to us, so that that person would then hold land under the CDS and be a citizen thereby;

* to permit, in certain circumstances, franchulate holders to sublet parcels of enfranchulated mainland (but prohibit sub-sub-letting);

* to permit people to enfranchulate entire private islands if they want;

* to negotiate a notarised contract in each case of enfranchulation tailored to the particular requirements of the franchulate holder(s) in question, setting out that person's duties and rights as regards the franchulate, and for that contract to stipulate things like (a) requirements for [i:3kxgkscf]some[/i:3kxgkscf] sort of restrictive covenants on building to keep [i:3kxgkscf]some[/i:3kxgkscf] sort of theme (although not as strict as on the private islands, and the franchulate holder would get to decide the theme); (b) in the case of a sufficiently big franchulate, the provision by the franchulate holder of additional marshals of the peace to cover that area if thought necessary; (c) whether or not the franchulate holder would be allowed to sub-let (those who are should probably pay a premium rate, although that could be the subject of negotiation if the person has something to offer the CDS in other respects); and (d) the length of time that the franchulate holder would be allowd to go into arrears before the court could order repossession of the franchulate for sale to another potential franchulate holder (and only sale absolute if that fails);

* to have an automated mechanism of sharing CDS-wide ban lists between our franchulates and private islands, and an automated reporting mechanism for misdeeds on our land; and

* to put the Chancellor in charge of organising the franchulates and negotiating in respect of them, and let the Chancellor use her or his powers of delegation to permit franchulate holders who are allowed to sub-let become effectively provincial governors, setting planning controls, organising events, and other such things.

[b:3kxgkscf]Effect of my suggested modifications[/b:3kxgkscf]

If what I propose is incorporated into the franchulates proposal, then enfranchulation is transformed from a system to enable existing citizens to get mainland land cheaply to a system whereby we can expand very quickly indeed by offering a number of distinct advantages to mainland landowners, and generate extra revenue in the process.

[b:3kxgkscf]Advantages to landowners of enfranchulating[/b:3kxgkscf]

The advantages to [i:3kxgkscf]us[/i:3kxgkscf] are obvious: we get lots and lots more citizens, and more money. The advantages to existing landowners may be less obvious, but they are substantial. They are, in summary:

* "owning" land under the CDS does not require a premium account (and every good businessperson knows that the key to success is cutting overheads;

* as under the current proposal, neighbouring franchulate holders could each make their neighbour's fees cheaper by allowing the CDS to earn bulk land discounts, and pass some of that onto the franchulate holders;

* CDS-wide ban lists, coupled with a robust court and marshals of the peace system could provide highly effective protection against all but the most determined alt-happy griefers (on which see more below); and

* a robust judicial system could make contracts enforceable that would be impossible to enforce against people not in the CDS (on which see more bel0w).

[b:3kxgkscf]Further details on griefers[/b:3kxgkscf]

One way in which our system would be effective against griefers is that sharing of ban lists would mean that a griefer who is banned for griefing on one bit of land would also automatically be banned from everywhere else in the CDS, so that, for any given area of land, far fewer individual banning decisions would be necessary. Furthermore, as we grow, a ban from the CDS would be a greater and greater punishment, as a person would be banned from more and more territory. That alone might encourage at least some griefers to leave CDS land alone. Furthermore, our (soon-to-be, hopefully) judicial system would reassure people wanting to enfranchulate that a ban from the CDS really means something: that it is made judicially, on proper grounds.

Indeed, if we get big enough, the 300 allowed bans from SecondLife might not be enough: we might need more sophisticated banishment tools. What would probably work for that is an object that contains a script that automatically teleports home anybody entering the parcel in question whose name matches a list of names held in an XML file on a webserver somewhere. That list could, of course, have far more than 300 people on it. That object could also serve the dual function of dispensing blank notecards when touched, and sending notecards dropped on it to all the marshals of the peace, so that people could use it like a police call box: touch for a notecard, type a griefing report on it, drop it on the object, and wait for a marshal of the peace to come online and deal with the problem.

This would likely be an extremely sought-after service amongst many landowners who do not have the resources to maintain their own ban lists, and are plagued by marauding griefers who grief them, and, more importantly, their customers while they are offline. Smaller landowners would probably not have to provide marshals of the peace on their own, but larger landowners should be asked either to provide their own marshals of the peace (the landowner could just be one her or himself), or contribute financially towards others. (As an interesting aside, that would be an intriguing half-way house between a feudal system and a modern taxation economy). The anti-griefing structure alone would probably be reason enough for many to enfranchulate.

[b:3kxgkscf]The contract economy[/b:3kxgkscf]

One thing that strikes me about the SecondLife economy is that it is almost entirely composed of (1) land; and (2) the virtual equivalent of manufacturing industry. Nearly all retail seems to be undertaken by the manufacturers direcltly, and there are very few services to speak of (with the notable exceptions of sex and gambling, but that is perhaps not surprising, and the somewhat more surprising exception of banking, although many people are wary of the unregulated banks). One of the reasons for that is probably that, given that contracts cannot effectively be enforced in most of SecondLife, the only sort of business that can effectively be done is either where (1) there is no possibility of fraud; or (2) there is a high degree of personal trust between the parties. (1) covers basic manufacturer-retailing of objects, scripts, textures, etc. (with the exception of the possibility of photograph-stealing textures), and (2) covers closely-knit small business collectives, but, aside from that, the business that one can do in SecondLife is limited.

One cannot, for example, safely give a copy/trans permission object to a intermediary retailer and then trust that retailer to give one a fixed share of the proceeds of sale, nor can one enter into an insurance agreement with any real way of trusting that the insurer will pay out. Building projects, where lots of diverse groups not personally known to each other each contribute a pre-arranged little bit to a large overall plan for an agreed sum of money is also not workable without a way of enforcing contracts, and there are doubtless countless other examples of things that businesspeople would like to do if only they could enforce their agreements.

With our system of law, of course (as I propose it with my Judiciary Bill), people will be able to enforce agreements effectively. Of course, the enforcement is only really effective [i:3kxgkscf]against[/i:3kxgkscf] people who are already citizens of the CDS, so why would anybody join us just to make it more likely that he or she would be sued, without having any better chance of suing anybody else? The reason is that, if people (whether citizens or not) know that they can enforce against a business effectively by virtue of it being in the CDS, they would be prepared to do business with it on terms that they would not otherwise be prepared to do. The ability to be sued would be a strong [i:3kxgkscf]selling poing[/i:3kxgkscf] in any business that depends on trusting it to perform its obligations. If there are people out there who say "I'll only do business with you on those terms if you're in the CDS so that we can sue you if you don't deliver on your promises", then that is a strong reason in itself for people to enfranchulate. (Our provision of limited liability companies, too, would be a good reason for businesses to join us: perhaps one day we will even have our own stock exchange!)

If people were able to do business with CDS businesses on terms more sophisticated and mutually favourable than businesses outside our jurisdiction because our legal system would mean that the agreements could effectively be enforced (ultimately, by taking away the offending party's land if the person flatly refuses to co-operate at all), then that could conceivably have, in the long-term, a profound effect on the whole SecondLife economy, boosting the services sector in particular.

Overall, the combination of being able to dispense with a premium account, in some circumstances benefiting from bulk land discount, more effective protection from griefers than any small mainland organisation could provide, and enforceable contracts would quite likely make enfranchulation a very attractive option indeed for landowners on the mainland, especially those who run businesses or cultural attractions.

[b:3kxgkscf]What would become of our island sims?[/b:3kxgkscf]

Supposing that franchulates were to take off as I hope that they might, and large numbers of people were to enfranchulate, so that the number of franchulate holders exceeded the number of citizens of Neufreistadt and Colonia Nova, what then?

I like to think of us in those circumstances as a bit like the British Empire, only with mutual annexation instead of conquest, and mutual advantage instead of subjugation. Our seat of government, and centrepiece of Confederation cultural life, is the quaint, densely-populated island of Neufreistadt (and hopefully before long Colonia Nova, too), but our franchulate empire would extend much further than that, deep into the mainland, but our culture and government would still revolve mainly around our islands. The enfranchulated mainland would maintain much of its original identity, with an over-arching infusing of CDS government, justice and, sometimes, culture to hold it all together.

[b:3kxgkscf]Telling people about us and getting people to trust us[/b:3kxgkscf]

The two main things that we must get right if we are to succeed are (1) publicity; and (2) trust.

As to publicity, people are not going to enfranchulate if they do not know that we exist, or what the advantages of enfranchulation are. It is a great pity that we have recently lost our public information officer, and the Chancellor should make it her or his priority to find a suitable replacement. Once we get the judicial system set up, and work out the details of how franchulates work, we need to publicise them, and the advantages outlined above, as much as possible. We should take Adam Hawthorne up on his offer of a consolidated, CDS-owned website, for example, and make more progress with finalising the agreement for Dianne's flag so that we have a solid brand identity.

As to trust, people will naturally be wary at first of signing their land over to an unknown institution. However, since a large number of people already use the wholly unregulated SecondLife banks, there must be a goodly number of trusting people out there, and businesspeople may well think that it is worth the risk. Once a few people have joined us and found us trustworthy, of course, word will spread, and others, who may have been wary before, may come to trust us more, and join us based on the experiences of others. The more who join, the more who will want to join.

Important to trust, of course, as I have outlined elsewhere, is getting the balance of powers right, and having a fair, rigorous and independent judiciary, as I propose. People are likely to be far more willing to trust us if they know that any disputes can be settled through a proper judicial process, and that the government is as much bound by the rule of law as everybody else (both in theory and in practice, which is why it is important to have judicial appointments wholly independent of government).

[b:3kxgkscf]Conclusion[/b:3kxgkscf]

With the proposal as I frame it, the potential for us to expand, and, in so expanding, benefit not only ourselves, but possibly a huge number of other users of SecondLife by going some way towards solving some of the problems that have been inherent in SecondLife until now, and quite possibly transform large parts of the mainland into areas where people can be as free of griefers as we are in Neufreistadt, have their land more cheaply than they otherwise might, and able to conduct complex commercial transactions in confidence.

It might not work, of course: that is true with all great innovations, but, for the potential that it can achieve, it is very much worth a try.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

Ashcroft,

For once, I can't agree more with you )

Yes, in my mind, what I see that is happening in SL is that business proliferates. But it's totally unregulated business. True to their libertarian roots, LL somehow hopes that from chaos, order will magically appear, with people banding forces together to promote a sense of organisation. It is quite obvious that this is why we look upon Chili Carson's project for a [url=http://slcocincubator.info:2whsqyja]Second Life Chamber of Commerce[/url:2whsqyja]. It's quite obvious that we'll hold a "local chapter" of that in Neufreistadt, one where we would promote the SL CoC's business ethics and codes of conduct — but with a twist: in NFS, we woule be able to [i:2whsqyja]enforce[/i:2whsqyja] the results of a dispute.

Well, I'm just rambling along, which I shouldn't, but I also expect that Aliasi's new position as Chancellor will be able to leverage the promotion and marketing SL-wide. It's time people learn that we're still here, we're deadly serious on our system, and that people have to forget their misguided ideas that you can build societies by "hugging everybody together as close friends" Although we humans are gregarious, we are not [i:2whsqyja]that[/i:2whsqyja] gregarious. I'm still astonished that, after 3 years of Second Life, we just have a few dozens interested in regulating the world, using democratic processes to establish a Code of Law. A few dozens out of three quarters of a million! Isn't that so strange?

One could agree that we're mostly "unknown" in SL, and as SL grows exponentially, we're going to become more and more unknown. Hmm. Yes, we definitely need to deal with [i:2whsqyja]that[/i:2whsqyja], quickly and effectively

I also agree, though, that the rules for franchulates and the whole legal procedures need to be firmly established before we can start a Big Marketing Campaignâ„¢ (for instance, I've seen that advertising on NWN is not TOO expensive).

[Ashcroft Burnham]

[quote="Gwyneth Llewelyn":9kwbjkmm]Ashcroft,

For once, I can't agree more with you )[/quote:9kwbjkmm]

For [i:9kwbjkmm]once[/i:9kwbjkmm]? :-p

[quote:9kwbjkmm]Yes, in my mind, what I see that is happening in SL is that business proliferates. But it's totally unregulated business. True to their libertarian roots, LL somehow hopes that from chaos, order will magically appear, with people banding forces together to promote a sense of organisation. It is quite obvious that this is why we look upon Chili Carson's project for a [url=http://slcocincubator.info:9kwbjkmm]Second Life Chamber of Commerce[/url:9kwbjkmm]. It's quite obvious that we'll hold a "local chapter" of that in Neufreistadt, one where we would promote the SL CoC's business ethics and codes of conduct — but with a twist: in NFS, we woule be able to [i:9kwbjkmm]enforce[/i:9kwbjkmm] the results of a dispute.[/quote:9kwbjkmm]

What we would be enforcing, of course, would be CDS law, not the Chamber of Commerce's internal code of conduct. They are inherently very different things as they serve very different purposes: because the former is enforcable, and the latter is not, for example, the former has to be far more detailed and formalised than the latter.

In any event, I very much hope that the enforcement of binding resolutions to disputes is not in future combined just to Neufreistadt (the Bavarian island sim), but extends, as I propose and explain above, to, eventually, substantial chunks of mainland.

Our function is very different to that of the Chamber of Commerce: its is to promote businesses and educate businesspeople: the code of conduct is a function ancillary (but important) to that. Ours is to provide a soceity governed by enforcable (and justly enforced) rules.

What I propose is bringing Confederation law to large swathes of the mainland by voluntary annexation for mutual advantage, not enforcing in a single island sim a code of conduct that was never designed to be enforced.

It may be that we are merely misunderstanding each other, but I thought that I ought to make that point clear as a precaution.

[quote:9kwbjkmm]Well, I'm just rambling along, which I shouldn't, but I also expect that Aliasi's new position as Chancellor will be able to leverage the promotion and marketing SL-wide.[/quote:9kwbjkmm]

It has been very encouraging how the appointment of a chancellor has resulted in a significant flurry of activity on the forums and in-world. An executive has evidently done us good.

[quote:9kwbjkmm]It's time people learn that we're still here, we're deadly serious on our system, and that people have to forget their misguided ideas that you can build societies by "hugging everybody together as close friends" Although we humans are gregarious, we are not [i:9kwbjkmm]that[/i:9kwbjkmm] gregarious.[/quote:9kwbjkmm]

Very well put

[quote:9kwbjkmm]I'm still astonished that, after 3 years of Second Life, we just have a few dozens interested in regulating the world, using democratic processes to establish a Code of Law. A few dozens out of three quarters of a million! Isn't that so strange?[/quote:9kwbjkmm]

Actually, a significant proportion of people to whom I have spoken about this idea are very interested indeed in it: I recently gave an interview for the SecondLife Business Magazine, which should be out in early October, on this very subject. It seems to me that the point is not so much that nobody us but is is interested, but that nobody but us is taking the initiative (or have the resources or imagination to take the initative) to do anything about it.

[quote:9kwbjkmm]One could agree that we're mostly "unknown" in SL, and as SL grows exponentially, we're going to become more and more unknown. Hmm. Yes, we definitely need to deal with [i:9kwbjkmm]that[/i:9kwbjkmm], quickly and effectively

I also agree, though, that the rules for franchulates and the whole legal procedures need to be firmly established before we can start a Big Marketing Campaignâ„¢ (for instance, I've seen that advertising on NWN is not TOO expensive).[/quote:9kwbjkmm]

Yes, I quite agree: we should be planning how we do the marketing now, though, whilst we implement my judicial system proposal and refine the franchulates scheme as suggested above, so that we are ready with our marketing as soon as possible. We should market under the name "The Confederation of Democratic Simulators", not "Neufreistadt", as the former describes the state, and the latter the Bavarian island sim, and it is the former that we are advertising, not the latter. In any event, "Neufreistadt" is hard both to spell and pronounce, and "The Confederation of Democratic Simulators" is more descriptive.

[Pelanor Eldrich]

Getting back to franchulates for a minute, I had a very productive chat with Jon and I personally would like to see some amendments that would satisfy the CSDF vision without compromising what the DPU has done.

Moon is working on the language. Here are some of the ideas we looked at.

Franchulates is a bit of a misnomer for what we're doing. The Snow Crash concept, as I understand it is as follows. A corporate HQ of sorts franchises exact copies of small discrete micronations. Think of McDonalds restaurants. Each franchise has "citizens" who likely do business at a single branch but can are in effect "citizens" of the corporate HQ and can expect the same services and experience (think "Big Mac") regardless of which franchulate they visit. Each franchulate is run by the identical "3 ring binder" set of rules, similar in thought to a standardized version of Jon's "Town Hall in a Box". There is extrememly strong central control. It's a corporate fascist republic of sorts. Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong and Uncle Enzo's are certainly not democracies.

So maybe there's a better word we can use, like protectorate or something (wink at Ashcroft).

[b:1tfqpmey]1)Population Growth[/b:1tfqpmey]: Unless we create more microplots the existing franchulate bill is population growth neutral. Ash mentioned discarding the citizen a priori requirement. I'm ok with this. The new franchise owner becomes a citizen. A concern for me here was representation and voting in local elections. What is the sim residency of the franchulate dweller? Jon solves this by tying each mainland franchulate to a CDS sim. This could be done as part of the application process as an agreement between chancellor and franchise applicant. See my next post for thoughts on citizenship and subletting.

[b:1tfqpmey]2)Welcoming Groups:[/b:1tfqpmey] As written the law has a 1 to 1 relationship between citizen and franchulate. This makes it difficult to welcome large groups. Jon solves this by allowing applications from groups holding pooled land. Ideally it would be contiguous land, but it needn't be. I must reiterate that the CDS estate owner of the "parent island" would own all the mainland.

[b:1tfqpmey]3)Local Gov't:[/b:1tfqpmey] We could either grant a praetorship of sorts or simply not have local franchulate gov't. A preatorship on a 512m2 franch might be overkill. On the other hand, if the franch is an entire island we'd want praetorship as a minimum. In fact, if it's a foreign sim, it might actually have a different form of local gov't that still upholds the CDS constitution (see #4).

[b:1tfqpmey]4)Annexing Foreign Islands:[/b:1tfqpmey] This is tricky. A CDS estate owner must own the island to join the CDS. If this is someone who has never been a CDS citizen, we'd need to keep a sharp eye on it and provide some mentorship. As in all franchulates there is a requirement to fully uphold the CDS constitution. I realize that where we set the bar is different between the two parties. The DPU favor a looser confederation while the CSDF would prefer a tighter republic. I'm sure we can met halfway in terms of where we set the "minimum CDS conformity" bar. If you want this mechanism to be able to annex Caledon we'd better give it some serious thought and ink.

[b:1tfqpmey]5)Economics:[/b:1tfqpmey] The aim here was to allow the AC to set price in a flexible way to allow a range of policies from corporate welfare to heavy taxation. In this way the AC can keep franchulates revenue positive, negative or neutral depending on CDS requirements and goals.

I realize this is a hefty shift from what was passed. I'm hoping we can have some discussion. Some of the disagreement involves notions of citizenship. I was going to post my more off the wall ideas in the LL political science forum, but it's closed so here goes...

[Ashcroft Burnham]

[quote="Pelanor Eldrich":1l9ymtf0]...So maybe there's a better word we can use, like protectorate or something (wink at Ashcroft).[/quote:1l9ymtf0]

How about:

* Protectorate
* Province
* Principality
* Franchised holding
* District
* County
* Colony
* Borough
* Mandate
* Territory
* Regulaterate
* Dependency
* Territorial dominionate
* Annexe/annexate
* Commonwealth
* Barony
* Duchy
* Earldom
* Emirate
* Fiefdom
* Viscounty
* Khnate?

Of all of those, however, I favour [b:1l9ymtf0]"province"[/b:1l9ymtf0], although there is much to be said for the continuity of the name "franchulate" given that it has become well-known in Neufreistadt circles already.

[quote:1l9ymtf0][b:1l9ymtf0]1)Population Growth[/b:1l9ymtf0]: Unless we create more microplots the existing franchulate bill is population growth neutral. Ash mentioned discarding the citizen a priori requirement. I'm ok with this. The new franchise owner becomes a citizen. A concern for me here was representation and voting in local elections. What is the sim residency of the franchulate dweller? Jon solves this by tying each mainland franchulate to a CDS sim. This could be done as part of the application process as an agreement between chancellor and franchise applicant. See my next post for thoughts on citizenship and subletting.[/quote:1l9ymtf0]

Hmm, actually, your other post didn't go into much detail about subletting. What did you think of my idea above about permitting the franchulate holders (provincial governers, or whatever they are to be called), in some cases, to sublet, and that the people to whom the land is sublet being citizens thereby (and bound by a covenant), and a requirement that franchulate holders (or whatever) obey [i:1l9ymtf0]some[/i:1l9ymtf0] theme, but giving them the power to decide, at the time that the contract of enfranchulation (etc.) is entered into what that theme should be?

[quote:1l9ymtf0][b:1l9ymtf0]2)Welcoming Groups:[/b:1l9ymtf0] As written the law has a 1 to 1 relationship between citizen and franchulate. This makes it difficult to welcome large groups. Jon solves this by allowing applications from groups holding pooled land. Ideally it would be contiguous land, but it needn't be. I must reiterate that the CDS estate owner of the "parent island" would own all the mainland.[/quote:1l9ymtf0]

Pooled land could also work, but we should not rule out controlled subletting.

[quote:1l9ymtf0][b:1l9ymtf0]3)Local Gov't:[/b:1l9ymtf0] We could either grant a praetorship of sorts or simply not have local franchulate gov't. A preatorship on a 512m2 franch might be overkill. On the other hand, if the franch is an entire island we'd want praetorship as a minimum. In fact, if it's a foreign sim, it might actually have a different form of local gov't that still upholds the CDS constitution (see #4).[/quote:1l9ymtf0]

If you want local government at all, then this broad outline is sensible: have the smaller franchulates (or provinces, or whatever) tied to particular local government areas, and have the larger ones provide their own local government. Perhaps there should be separate category names for (1) our own island sims; (2) the franchulates that have their own local government; and (3) franchulates that do not have thier own local government. "State", "province" and "borough" strikes me as a workable heirachy. Boroughs could then be allied to either provinces or states.

However, I thought that the Chancellor's powers were designed such as to render otiose local government: how would you have local government working so that the local governers do not clash in their powers with the Chancellor?

You write of local areas having to uphold "the constitution": surely, more than this, they should be bound to obey CDS [i:1l9ymtf0]law[/i:1l9ymtf0]? After all, there is rather more to our law than just the constitution. It would be nonsensical to have, for example, different rules of contract law, or a different legal system in each different province. The principle should be that the common law should apply CDS-wide, and that any acts of the Representative Assembly or regulations made by the Chancellor should be assumed to apply CDS-wide unless they expressly state in the text that they apply only to a particular state or province.

[quote:1l9ymtf0][b:1l9ymtf0]4)Annexing Foreign Islands:[/b:1l9ymtf0] This is tricky. A CDS estate owner must own the island to join the CDS. If this is someone who has never been a CDS citizen, we'd need to keep a sharp eye on it and provide some mentorship. As in all franchulates there is a requirement to fully uphold the CDS constitution. I realize that where we set the bar is different between the two parties. The DPU favor a looser confederation while the CSDF would prefer a tighter republic. I'm sure we can met halfway in terms of where we set the "minimum CDS conformity" bar. If you want this mechanism to be able to annex Caledon we'd better give it some serious thought and ink.[/quote:1l9ymtf0]

The mechanism that I suggest above is the only practical way of doing it, otherwise it would be manifestly unclear what laws applied to what regions (and there is no way that we would ever have the resources to have a separate legal system for each province!). The power of the mechanism that I suggest above is that it enables a flexible approach to the degree of integration that can wax and wane over time as different constitutions of the Representative Assembly pass different Acts, such that the right balance can be found over time.

Am I right in deducing, however, that the disagreement between the CSDF and the DPU over the degree of integration is more about executive than legislative or judicial power?

And, incidentally, I rather doubt that we will ever annexe Caledon We should establish an embassy with them, though (or honourary consulate, as I think Justice suggested at one juncture).

[quote:1l9ymtf0][b:1l9ymtf0]5)Economics:[/b:1l9ymtf0] The aim here was to allow the AC to set price in a flexible way to allow a range of policies from corporate welfare to heavy taxation. In this way the AC can keep franchulates revenue positive, negative or neutral depending on CDS requirements and goals.[/quote:1l9ymtf0]

Flexible is definitely a worthwhile aim in economic policy.

[quote:1l9ymtf0]I realize this is a hefty shift from what was passed. I'm hoping we can have some discussion. Some of the disagreement involves notions of citizenship. I was going to post my more off the wall ideas in the LL political science forum, but it's closed so here goes...[/quote:1l9ymtf0]

We can but hope to be the new political science forum

[Pelanor Eldrich]

Hi Ash,

Yes to renting. The problem here is that while the non land holding renter is a citizen there are few other mechanisms available other than banning. Binding but difficult to enforce. Like your Ukranian parking ticket example.

Local vs. Federal gov't. Yes, we don't want to clash with the Chancellor. Provincial gov't works in Canada. Quebec has an entirely different (civil) system of law from the rest of the country. It can be done. I do like the British Empire model, and surely the vast Dominions of Great Britain circa 1900 were not all locally run by parliamentary democracies. They were, however, ruled from London by proxies/viceroys/governors general, no? Could that not work as well? Let Jerusalem have its Mufti, but London still calls the shots on the big picture...no?

[Ashcroft Burnham]

[quote="Pelanor Eldrich":13uorftk]Yes to renting. The problem here is that while the non land holding renter is a citizen there are few other mechanisms available other than banning. Binding but difficult to enforce. Like your Ukranian parking ticket example.[/quote:13uorftk]

Ahh, not so: we can order the landlord to forfeit the person's land. If the landlord refuses to obey the order, [i:13uorftk]her or his[/i:13uorftk] land could be forfeit.

[quote:13uorftk]Local vs. Federal gov't. Yes, we don't want to clash with the Chancellor. Provincial gov't works in Canada. Quebec has an entirely different (civil) system of law from the rest of the country.[/quote:13uorftk]

That must make things very painful for businesses who need to trade in more than one state.

[quote:13uorftk] It can be done.[/quote:13uorftk]

That, of course, does not mean that we would want to do it Where are we going to get the [i:13uorftk]people[/i:13uorftk] for all those little legal systems, for a start? Resources, as well as the desirability of coherency, dictates that we have one, single legal system, and, apart from expressly specificed local variations, one single set of laws.

[quote:13uorftk] I do like the British Empire model, and surely the vast Dominions of Great Britain circa 1900 were not all locally run by parliamentary democracies. They were, however, ruled from London by proxies/viceroys/governors general, no? Could that not work as well? Let Jerusalem have its Mufti, but London still calls the shots on the big picture...no?[/quote:13uorftk]

We can, of course, do it better than the British Empire because it doesn't take days for messages to get from one end to the other. We can be more centralised. Indeed, we can be more [i:13uorftk]flexible[/i:13uorftk] as to how centralised to be.

As far as I can see, the [i:13uorftk]private[/i:13uorftk] law (what constitutes harassment, the rules of contract, what a registered company is, court procedure, etc.) should be consistent throughout the CDS "empire", but [i:13uorftk]public[/i:13uorftk] law (planning regulations, tax rates/systems, whether subletting land is permitted, overall theming rules, etc.) should sometimes vary by locality depending on the requirements of each area. We need to have a considerable degree of consistency throughout our "empire" in order for it to be worthwhile spreading at all: we are, after all, a [i:13uorftk]nation[/i:13uorftk], not a collective land baron.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

[b:naamun54][u:naamun54]A further thought on islands[/b:naamun54][/u:naamun54]

Following on from the discussion of the [url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 4:naamun54]the technical aspects of franchulates[/url:naamun54], it occurs to me that, especially given some of the difficulties in having full control of mainland land, some groups who would otherwise buy mainland land because they could not afford [i:naamun54]enough[/i:naamun54] land to make it worth their while buying an island (as I understand it, a whole sim on the mainland is about the same price monthy as a private island) might want to have [i:naamun54]part[/i:naamun54] of a private island instead of a chunk of the mainland.

So, for example, suppose that group A, group B and person C each want about 1/3rd of a sim's worth of land. As things stand, they would have no choice but to buy 1/3rd of a mainland sim. Suppose, however, that, really, they would all prefer to be on an island. In the CDS, we could offter them that: A, B and C could band together to pay us the cost of the island, and then get proportionate bits of the island (under the Neufreistadt model of land ownership), and be under the jurisdiction of the CDS in the usual way, with a standard EO owning the whole island as far as Linden Labs is concerned.

It might be that, in some cases, the groups would like to have a very different kind of environment each: in that case, different local planning regulations would have to apply to different parts of the island. The leaders of incoming groups may want to have their own mechanism for deciding who can join their part of the island.

In those cases, it might be worth subdividing the islands into [b:naamun54]districts[/b:naamun54], each with their own local government. In those sorts of cases, it may be worthwhile considering having a goodly number of contiguous islands, to stimulate trade and commerce between the areas. They might be treated in a quite different way to the island [b:naamun54]states[/b:naamun54], such as Neufreistadt and Colonia Nova (but subject to the same [i:naamun54]national[/i:naamun54] control as described above).