Sunday, June 30, 2013

4. Change citizenship like cell phone plans

Great care needs to be taken in designing the govlet system so that multiple govlets can compete on a fair ground. We want to protect the citizens' freedom to change their govlet affiliations, however that doesn't mean that there should be no restrictions or penalties.

Let's consider two govlets: govlet A has higher tax rates, and offers excellent social services such as education, retirement and health care etc; while govlet B collects no taxes and offers no services. Both govlets could be successful in isolation, however when putting them in direct competition, govlet A is no longer viable if there is no restriction on citizens' mobility between govlets. Someone can easily take advantage of the competition by staying with govlet A for its education benefits during school age; then switching to govlet B in his working years to avoid paying taxes; then switching back to govlet A for better retirement and health care benefits; then finally switching back to govlet B right before death to avoid estate tax. You can see that he is getting the better end of the deal from both govlets and let others foot the bill.

It is clear that without restricting the citizen's mobility between govlets, the competition among govlets would quickly create a race to the bottom situation and force all of them to adopt the same no tax/no service policies, which defeats the original purpose of preserving the political freedom. Freedom does not exist if there is nothing to choose from. The real question is therefore who should be responsible for designing and enforcing the constraints. Federal government is not a good option because it would inevitably offer a one-size-fit-all solution, that will benefit some but hurt other govlets, i.e, rob Peter to pay Paul. The fairest choice is for each govlet to legislate and enforce its own citizen's exit conditions and constraints. Such conditions and constraints would have to be agreed by the citizen when they join the govlet. Similar practices are already common in private sectors, where a company often offers upfront incentives to attract customers but with hefty early termination penalties attached. The cell phone carrier's package plan is a typical example of such an arrangement.

Govlet could model the exit restrictions after cell phone carrier's early termination penalties. In the example above, govlet A could force citizens to given up 20% of their total assets at exit either as an early termination penalty or as an estate tax. Sounds harsh, but it is still not quite fair because the earning power grows much faster at later years of an individual's career, thus if a citizen choose to exit govlet A right after he/she  graduates college, then there is very little assets for the govlet to claim. A fairer penalty would be a percentage of their future income for certain years, in exchange for the social benefits already received. The actual percentage and the duration can dependent on the duration of benefits received, and the cumulative taxes the citizen already paid. Whether to enforce exit penalty, and in what from and amount are critical decisions that a govlet must choose carefully to match its own economic policies.

The exit penalty may sound coercive but it is not, a perspective citizen must agree to the govlet's exit penalty policies before he can join the govlet, therefore it is coercion-with-your-own-prior-consent. Every govlet should clearly declare their exit conditions in the constitution so that everyone is clear of the deal they are getting into before joining the govlet. The exit penalty is not an attractive feature for a govlet, therefore every govlet has the incentive to minimize the exit penalty in order to attract more citizens. Through competition, we have reasons to believe that the exit penalty will quickly reach equilibrium, which is the right amount to deter enough people from exploiting and abusing the political freedom, and protecting the livelihood of the govlet system.

No comments:

Post a Comment