Citizenship

[Gxeremio Dimsum]

With the thoughts about expanding CDS, and the recent legislation regarding microplots and group-owned land, I thought I might stick my toe into the water of the Nstadt forums and share a few thoughts on citizenship in Nstadt and the CDS.
There are 2 current benefits to citizenship: the right to vote, and the prestige of belonging to a noble experiment in virtual-world democracy.
There is a third potential benefit which seems on the way: assurance of recourse for violated contracts, in other words knowing that the people you're dealing with are accountable to someone if they violate your agreements.
There is very little reason, in my estimation, why these three benefits should be reserved for people who own x amount of land in a CDS sim. The attraction of having land in a CDS sim should be the same as other sims (traffic or lack of it, good neighbors, etc.) with the added advantage of having a say in the rules of the locality. This is to say, that citizenship can and probably should be a prerequisite for land ownership, but land ownership needn't be a prerequisite for citizenship.
The issue, as I understand it, is enforceability of punishments, and also avoiding election fraud. Here are my proposals in these areas:
1. Issues of land and zoning should be dealt with at the sim level, in kind of a neighborhood association approach, rather than by the CDS. This means a reimagining of the current RA as either a neighborhood association board, or a governing body of CDS, but not both.
2. The CDS should allow anyone at all to be citizens so far as these conditions are met: their RL identities be known and verified (but kept private - this requirement is to avoid alts being a problem and to provide a final recourse for serious disputes), a deposit be made and publicized (a la the publication of land fees) so people know up to what monetary damages that person could be held accountable in a dispute, and a very small citizenship fee (tax) be paid occasionally (perhaps this could be waived for landowners in CDS sims).
Thus, if I want to enter a binding agreement with person X, I could see how liable they are in CDS courts if they break the agreement, and perhaps the CDS could even set up a bureau to investigate and then publicize complaints against citizens and former citizens. Maybe a rating system of five stars for no complaints, 4 for minor complaints that were resolved, 3 for serious complaints that were resolved, 2 for minor complaints unresolved, 1 for serious complaints unresolved, etc. This would provide very valuable information to other people, and give legitimate people an incentive to become citizens to prove their good reputation as either buyers or sellers. The CDS could democratically establish and revise norms for all kinds of interactions between citizens.
If these two proposals were accepted, I could see the CDS growing very large indeed, as it would tilt the approach of the CDS towards primarily serving citizens, rather than primarily ruling them. I welcome your thoughts on this issue.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

[quote="Gxeremio Dimsum":n5casms5]With the thoughts about expanding CDS, and the recent legislation regarding microplots and group-owned land, I thought I might stick my toe into the water of the Nstadt forums and share a few thoughts on citizenship in Nstadt and the CDS.
There are 2 current benefits to citizenship: the right to vote, and the prestige of belonging to a noble experiment in virtual-world democracy.
There is a third potential benefit which seems on the way: assurance of recourse for violated contracts, in other words knowing that the people you're dealing with are accountable to someone if they violate your agreements.
There is very little reason, in my estimation, why these three benefits should be reserved for people who own x amount of land in a CDS sim. The attraction of having land in a CDS sim should be the same as other sims (traffic or lack of it, good neighbors, etc.) with the added advantage of having a say in the rules of the locality. This is to say, that citizenship can and probably should be a prerequisite for land ownership, but land ownership needn't be a prerequisite for citizenship.[/quote:n5casms5]

You may not have seen the forum posts, but the idea of landless citizens has been discussed at some length before. Pelanor proposed an idea whereby, instead of owning CDS land, a person could become a citizen by putting up an escrow of money. A number of problems were identified with that, however, the primary ones being (1) that enforcement against liquid capital is far less effective than enforcement against land; and (2) creating lots of citizens who have no land with us would likely create a disperate society, not so much a nation, but members of a dispute resolution club. We aspire to more than that. I shall not recite here all the details of that discussion, as it can be found on the other thread.

[quote:n5casms5]The issue, as I understand it, is enforceability of punishments, and also avoiding election fraud. Here are my proposals in these areas:
1. Issues of land and zoning should be dealt with at the sim level, in kind of a neighborhood association approach, rather than by the CDS. This means a reimagining of the current RA as either a neighborhood association board, or a governing body of CDS, but not both.[/quote:n5casms5]

This can be done without removing the important land requirement for citizenship: see [url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 1:n5casms5]here[/url:n5casms5] for an explanation. The better model is the one where the Representative Assembly works as a national legislature, and local issues are left to locally-elected councils, established by franchulate charters, to decide.

[quote:n5casms5]2. The CDS should allow anyone at all to be citizens so far as these conditions are met: their RL identities be known and verified (but kept private - this requirement is to avoid alts being a problem and to provide a final recourse for serious disputes), a deposit be made and publicized (a la the publication of land fees) so people know up to what monetary damages that person could be held accountable in a dispute, and a very small citizenship fee (tax) be paid occasionally (perhaps this could be waived for landowners in CDS sims).
Thus, if I want to enter a binding agreement with person X, I could see how liable they are in CDS courts if they break the agreement, and perhaps the CDS could even set up a bureau to investigate and then publicize complaints against citizens and former citizens. Maybe a rating system of five stars for no complaints, 4 for minor complaints that were resolved, 3 for serious complaints that were resolved, 2 for minor complaints unresolved, 1 for serious complaints unresolved, etc. This would provide very valuable information to other people, and give legitimate people an incentive to become citizens to prove their good reputation as either buyers or sellers. The CDS could democratically establish and revise norms for all kinds of interactions between citizens.[/quote:n5casms5]

See above: this is very similar indeed to Pelanor's idea, and has the same problems with the power of the deterrant and our capacity to create civil soceity in the form of a virtual nation as listed above.

[quote:n5casms5]If these two proposals were accepted, I could see the CDS growing very large indeed, as it would tilt the approach of the CDS towards primarily serving citizens, rather than primarily ruling them. I welcome your thoughts on this issue.[/quote:n5casms5]

The distinction between "serving" and "ruling" is not one which exists in the way that you seem to think that it does: all democratic governments are there to serve their citizens, but they do so (and can only do so) by exercising some degree of coercive authority over them. Some of that authority might be devolved to local communities, and it might be exercised sparingly, but, in a true democracy - a true nation - the extent to which that power is exercised, and who exercises it, must ultimately be a matter for the democratic process, through the elected legislature, to decide. The legislature will only have the practical power to do that vis a vis any georgraphical area if land ownership under the CDS is a citizenship prerequisite.

[Gxeremio Dimsum]

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":1882enek]You may not have seen the forum posts, but the idea of landless citizens has been discussed at some length before. Pelanor proposed an idea whereby, instead of owning CDS land, a person could become a citizen by putting up an escrow of money. A number of problems were identified with that, however, the primary ones being (1) that enforcement against liquid capital is far less effective than enforcement against land; and (2) creating lots of citizens who have no land with us would likely create a disperate society, not so much a nation, but members of a dispute resolution club. We aspire to more than that. I shall not recite here all the details of that discussion, as it can be found on the other thread.[/quote:1882enek]

(1) Seizing land actually creates a problem for the government rather than just for the perpetrator. Now there's one less tenant, and the real value of land (as in sale value) is not very high at all. It's not REAL land, they can simply take their rent money (for that's what it really is) elsewhere with little ill effect to them ("boo hoo, I'm out L$500 in land"). (2) A dispute resolution society is not the highest aim of the CDS, but it is surely the effect of franchulates (if your other posts are to be believed). So why poopoo an idea that does the same thing while attracting more people and being easier to administer? Is it better to buy a piece of virtual land that goes unused and therefore can't be used for better purposes, or to pay into the system via an escrow and taxes? To me, it's hard to argue that land a better citizen makes, especially in SL. Reputation is a more valuable commodity in the virtual world, and my proposal addresses that through publication of the amount in escrow, and information about investigated complaints against the citizen.

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":1882enek]The distinction between "serving" and "ruling" is not one which exists in the way that you seem to think that it does: all democratic governments are there to serve their citizens, but they do so (and can only do so) by exercising some degree of coercive authority over them. Some of that authority might be devolved to local communities, and it might be exercised sparingly, but, in a true democracy - a true nation - the extent to which that power is exercised, and who exercises it, must ultimately be a matter for the democratic process, through the elected legislature, to decide. The legislature will only have the practical power to do that vis a vis any georgraphical area if land ownership under the CDS is a citizenship prerequisite.[/quote:1882enek]

Ashcroft, when citizenship is entirely voluntary, the language of service is more useful and more appropriate than the language of ruling. There should be a strict limitation on the powers of the "national" government of the CDS (as in the US Constitution) and an emphasis on what good the structure will do to its customers/constituents. Requirements should be made clear up front and changed rarely and with very good reason; services can be added regularly without complaint, but rules cannot. To summarize my argument from earlier - there must be a compelling reason to do something that is entirely voluntary; the higher (and to potential citizens' eyes sillier) the requirements, the lower the number of citizens. I would love to see democratic representation and decision-making spread over most or all of the grid, but that takes showing people that there's an advantage to it that justifies the costs.
What some who are in power seem to forget is that yes, the government itself exists to serve the people, but many of the individual leaders of government took the job for reasons other than simple altruism. And that's fine; it's human nature. But limitations must therefore be built into the system to protect the reputation of democracy itself. It's not the only choice for Second Lifers, you know.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

[quote="Gxeremio Dimsum":htlifqgm](1) Seizing land actually creates a problem for the government rather than just for the perpetrator. Now there's one less tenant, and the real value of land (as in sale value) is not very high at all. It's not REAL land, they can simply take their rent money (for that's what it really is) elsewhere with little ill effect to them ("boo hoo, I'm out L$500 in land").[/quote:htlifqgm]

That removing a citizen's land means that there is, temporarily, a reduction in state income is not a sufficient reason for our state not to have the power to do so. Some citizens might be more trouble than their income is worth. Even under your model, citizens would pay ongoing fees: removing a person who persistently fails to comply with orders made against her or him from citizenship will have the same effect on the collection of those fees, only there will not, in return, be the capital asset of land (small though it might be) to set against that.

[quote:htlifqgm] (2) A dispute resolution society is not the highest aim of the CDS, but it is surely the effect of franchulates (if your other posts are to be believed).[/quote:htlifqgm]

No, it is not the only purpose of franchulates. The purpose of franchulates is to enable our government, our civil soceity, to extend far beyond sims that we pay for in advance by a process of mutual annexation. Dispute resolution is a very important part of what it is to be citizens of a virtual state, but there is far more to it than that.

[quote:htlifqgm]So why poopoo an idea that does the same thing while attracting more people and being easier to administer?[/quote:htlifqgm]

Because it does not do the same thing, as already explained.

[quote:htlifqgm]Is it better to buy a piece of virtual land that goes unused and therefore can't be used for better purposes, or to pay into the system via an escrow and taxes? To me, it's hard to argue that land a better citizen makes, especially in SL. Reputation is a more valuable commodity in the virtual world, and my proposal addresses that through publication of the amount in escrow, and information about investigated complaints against the citizen.[/quote:htlifqgm]

I have already addressed elsewhere, in response to a post by Pelanor on citizenship, exactly why it is important to tie citizenship to land, and others have responded in agreement. I refer you to that post since I have no intention of writing the same thing twice.

[quote:htlifqgm]Ashcroft, when citizenship is entirely voluntary, the language of service is more useful and more appropriate than the language of ruling.[/quote:htlifqgm]

You were seeking to suggest that there was a substantive division between the two, and that a government ought be no more than a provider of services. The point that I made was that a government is of little use, and the services that it can provide of limited value, if it does not have some significant authority. The whole point of govermnent - the whole social contract by which our soceity is regulated - is that people agree to give up some of their freedoms in return for the benefits that come from all in that society being governed by the same rules, and giving up those same freedoms. Any good government, whether in the first life or in SecondLife, is there to serve its citizens, but it does that, and can only do that, by governing authorotatively and, often, with rules.

[quote:htlifqgm] There should be a strict limitation on the powers of the "national" government of the CDS (as in the US Constitution) and an emphasis on what good the structure will do to its customers/constituents.[/quote:htlifqgm]

This is all very vague - what, precisely, do you think that the limits should be and, in respect of each limit, why, precisely, do you think that it should be so, rather than anything else?

[quote:htlifqgm]Requirements should be made clear up front and changed rarely and with very good reason; services can be added regularly without complaint, but rules cannot.[/quote:htlifqgm]

You are making assumptions about people that are not supported by evidence: the point, as I stated above, of a virtual nation, just like a real nation, is that people (in our case voluntarily) give up freedoms in return for others surrendeing the like freedoms in order that all shall benefit. Whether additional freedoms ought be surrendered is a matter for the democratic process - each citizen will, after all, have a say in the composition of the government, and in just how much of what freedoms are restricted for what purposes. It would be overly restrictive and wrong in principle to prevent a democratically elected government discharging those duties.

[quote:htlifqgm] To summarize my argument from earlier - there must be a compelling reason to do something that is entirely voluntary; the higher (and to potential citizens' eyes sillier) the requirements, the lower the number of citizens.[/quote:htlifqgm]

If people think that our requirements are silly, then of course those people will be dissuaded from joining, but strict requirements do not necessarily entail silly requirements: people may very well [i:htlifqgm]prefer[/i:htlifqgm] a soceity with requirements that are in some respects stricter than others because, overall, they benefit from the fact that others also have to meet those strict requirements. Indeed, if that were not so, nobody would ever have joined Neufreistadt (or Caledon, or any other covenanted sim) at all, since we restrict what people may do with their land (by requiring that the builds be medeival Bavarian in style), rather then permitting them to do as they please, as in many areas of SL. Many people [i:htlifqgm]choose[/i:htlifqgm] to come to us precisely [i:htlifqgm]because[/i:htlifqgm] our requirements are restrictive.

As to silly requirements, the best way of preventing silly rules is by having a robust democratic process, not by placing arbitrary limits in advance on the exercise of democratically-acquired power.

[quote:htlifqgm]I would love to see democratic representation and decision-making spread over most or all of the grid, but that takes showing people that there's an advantage to it that justifies the costs.
What some who are in power seem to forget is that yes, the government itself exists to serve the people, but many of the individual leaders of government took the job for reasons other than simple altruism. And that's fine; it's human nature. But limitations must therefore be built into the system to protect the reputation of democracy itself.[/quote:htlifqgm]

That is why we have checks and balances. That is not a reason to have citizenship based on anything other than land, or drastically to reduce the power of central government.

[Gxeremio Dimsum]

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":2cwuhwtg] No, it is not the only purpose of franchulates. The purpose of franchulates is to enable our government, our civil soceity, to extend far beyond sims that we pay for in advance by a process of mutual annexation. Dispute resolution is a very important part of what it is to be citizens of a virtual state, but there is far more to it than that. [/quote:2cwuhwtg]

Erm, so what more is there to it? When it boils down to it, dispute resolution (and dispute prevention through the democratic creation of rules) IS the aim of government. The only other benefit I see is power over the property of others, and that's not very compelling.

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":2cwuhwtg] Because it does not do the same thing, as already explained.[/quote:2cwuhwtg]

Explained where? To turn your common question around on you - tell me precisely what a franchulate does for the CDS that having a landless citizen does not do?

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":2cwuhwtg]I have already addressed elsewhere, in response to a post by Pelanor on citizenship, exactly why it is important to tie citizenship to land, and others have responded in agreement. I refer you to that post since I have no intention of writing the same thing twice.[/quote:2cwuhwtg]

I called your bluff here. I assume you're referring to the post at http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtopic.php?t=356 , in which you basically said land CAN have sentimental value for some people, and the more CDS land there is, the more powerful the banning tools. Why does it hurt either of these points to allow landless citizens, and for those who have land not in an official CDS sim offer them the list of names for banning? The arguments you gave were not, in fact, agreed to by others, but challenged.

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":2cwuhwtg] This is all very vague - what, precisely, do you think that the limits should be and, in respect of each limit, why, precisely, do you think that it should be so, rather than anything else?[/quote:2cwuhwtg]

Good lord, man, I'm not trying to write out a legal code; just give a principle for doing so! Limits in the UDHR are a good start, including the right to not have laws enforced against you retroactively. Another limit should be the possibility of secession/giving up citizenship.

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":2cwuhwtg] You are making assumptions about people that are not supported by evidence: the point, as I stated above, of a virtual nation, just like a real nation, is that people (in our case voluntarily) give up freedoms in return for others surrendeing the like freedoms in order that all shall benefit. Whether additional freedoms ought be surrendered is a matter for the democratic process - each citizen will, after all, have a say in the composition of the government, and in just how much of what freedoms are restricted for what purposes. It would be overly restrictive and wrong in principle to prevent a democratically elected government discharging those duties. [/quote:2cwuhwtg]

I don't know about you, but I don't consider my involvement in Nstadt giving up freedoms at all; I continue to own land that is zoned differently outside of the city. I'm here to help work out how the forms that are in place can become more meaningful and more widespread. It is absolutely not wrong to restrict the power of government - Magna Carta, U.S. Constitution, and UDHR among others do just that.
I will try to draft a bill on citizenship that takes many of Pelanor's ideas and expands them to include the value of reputation and transparency. The CDS might do well to bring on many citizens, and thus more revenue and prestige, without the need for all of that to be tied to land purchases.
BTW, I'm a little disappointed that after your constant encouragement to post on the forums, you're the only one responding to what I write. I may as well just chat with you inworld if I don't get the benefit of others' thoughts.

[Pelanor Eldrich]

I'm glad and feel good about the fact that we came to nearly the same idea independently. I'm still putting together my thoughts on citizenship (and whipping up a chart or two), don't worry and stay tuned.

BTW, I'm almost sure that the CSDF will propose a citizenship bill at some point this term. Many people are interested in the subject.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

[quote="Gxeremio Dimsum":21hta2ft]Erm, so what more is there to it? When it boils down to it, dispute resolution (and dispute prevention through the democratic creation of rules) IS the aim of government. The only other benefit I see is power over the property of others, and that's not very compelling.[/quote:21hta2ft]

I am planning when I have time to post a general thread on building civil soceity, in which I hope that I can address this question comprehensively, and explain why it is that having all citizens living (or at least having some land in) an area that can truly be called CDS territory, in that it is land over which the CDS has sovereign control, subject to the rule of our law, and the rights that it grants those who own land under is, is of very great benefit to us indeed.

[quote:21hta2ft]I called your bluff here. I assume you're referring to the post at http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtopic.php?t=356 , in which you basically said land CAN have sentimental value for some people, and the more CDS land there is, the more powerful the banning tools. Why does it hurt either of these points to allow landless citizens, and for those who have land not in an official CDS sim offer them the list of names for banning? The arguments you gave were not, in fact, agreed to by others, but challenged.[/quote:21hta2ft]

The substantive point I will address in the thread to which you referred, but although some people disagreed with what I wrote, some people also agreed to it, so it [i:21hta2ft]is[/i:21hta2ft] true that other people agreed with what I wrote. "Other people agree" does not mean "everyone agrees".

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":21hta2ft]Good lord, man, I'm not trying to write out a legal code; just give a principle for doing so! Limits in the UDHR are a good start, including the right to not have laws enforced against you retroactively. Another limit should be the possibility of secession/giving up citizenship.[/quote:21hta2ft]

The difficulty is with vagueness that, just as in our in-world debate, it can seem that our disagreements are far greater than they actually are. I don't think that [i:21hta2ft]anybody[/i:21hta2ft] here would advocate retroactive laws (that is, a law that enables a person to be punished or held liable for conduct which, at the time that the conduct in question was undertaken, was not punishable by law or conduct for which a person could in law be held liable), and nobody suggests that anybody should be forced to remain a citizen once he or she has become a citizen (how anybody would achieve that I have no idea), although secssion suggests people breaking away to form their own little states: emigration would be a better term for it.

[quote="Ashcroft Burnham":21hta2ft] I don't know about you, but I don't consider my involvement in Nstadt giving up freedoms at all; I continue to own land that is zoned differently outside of the city.[/quote:21hta2ft]

Perhaps I should be clearer: one surrenders some of the freedoms that one would otherwise have in CDS territory (and in respect of conduct towards other CDS citizens), but not freedoms that one has by virtue of participation in SecondLife outside the CDS, that does not concern the CDS or its citizens. Your non-CDS land that you own directly from LindenLabs is unaffected by our rules, and always will be unless and until you voluntarily decide to make your non-CDS land into CDS land by enfranchulating with us.

[quote:21hta2ft]I'm here to help work out how the forms that are in place can become more meaningful and more widespread. It is absolutely not wrong to restrict the power of government - Magna Carta, U.S. Constitution, and UDHR among others do just that.[/quote:21hta2ft]

Ahh, again ostensible disagreement stemming from vagueness. I never claimed that there should be [i:21hta2ft]no[/i:21hta2ft] restrictions on government actions, just that those restrictions should not be [i:21hta2ft]excessive[/i:21hta2ft]. The government must have [i:21hta2ft]some[/i:21hta2ft] substantial lawmaking power, albeit power against which there are adequate constitutional checks, in order to discharge its important functions effectively, and properly to serve the citizenry.

[quote:21hta2ft]I will try to draft a bill on citizenship that takes many of Pelanor's ideas and expands them to include the value of reputation and transparency. The CDS might do well to bring on many citizens, and thus more revenue and prestige, without the need for all of that to be tied to land purchases.[/quote:21hta2ft]

I will hopefully explain in my forthcoming post on building a civil soceity why it is important that we retain the citizenship connexion to land. That does not mean that we need not value reputation and openness.

[quote:21hta2ft]BTW, I'm a little disappointed that after your constant encouragement to post on the forums, you're the only one responding to what I write. I may as well just chat with you inworld if I don't get the benefit of others' thoughts.[/quote:21hta2ft]

Sometimes it takes people a while to respond - you see that you have now had another response. Sometimes also people can debate with you in world about something that they have read on the forums. Forums are slower than in-world debate in some respects (although actually more time-efficient), but all good things come to those who wait.