In America, a state government is almost a sovereign except that it transferred some of its power to the federal government, such as defense, international relationship and money supply. The state governments do compete with each other for citizens; but the high cost of relocation often deters people from moving. In order to create real competitions among state governments, people must have the freedom to form new state level governments, and people anywhere in the country must be able to freely choose and change their state level government affiliations. How to achieve these goals?
A traditional government always has a well defined geographical territory for it to exercise the jurisdiction. Before modern times, the society was less mobile and most people stayed with the same community for their whole life, therefore a geographical territory and people within naturally formed the unit for governing. The conflicts and wars in old times were mostly about fighting for the control of territory and people. Through wars, conflicts and changes of control, a government's territory usually settled along natural geographical borders, such as rivers and mountains, where it is the most effective to organize defense and border control. Physical proximity also minimized the costs for vital government services and functions, such as election, taxation, law enforcement, education, road construction etc. Therefore, a well defined territory has always been the optimal and most economic form of governing, until today.
With today's highly advanced transportation and communication network, I argue that a government no longer needs a well defined territorial boarder; furthermore, a physical boundary could be a limitation for governing. In modern times, we have brought down the borders in all aspects of our lives through the highly advanced and interconnected transportation and communication networks, and as a result people's life have become much richer and productive than previous generations. Most of the government's functions that used to require physical proximity, such as the election, taxation, legislation sessions and court hearings, can now be conducted effectively using modern technologies, such as video conferences, digital identifications and electronic voting. Government services that can't be provided electronically, such as law enforcement, education and health care can be organized centrally and provided through local contractors and vendors, which are paid directly by the governments or through government issued vouchers. The construction and maintenance of public infrastructure can be organized as public traded companies funded by multiple co-operating governments. The private sectors have long developed effective mechanism to provide services to customers all over the world, and the method to pool resources together to undertake huge projects. There is no fundamental reason why any of the main government services are so different that they can't be provided effectively without the geographical borders. The only government function that absolutely requires a geographical border is to keep other governments out, in order to maintain the monopoly power.
The fundamental idea of the new form of governing is to use modern technology to facilitate the free association of people with similar political ideologies, regardless of their physical locations. Once organized, people with similar political beliefs may form their own governments that are not limited by any geographical territories. We refer these borderless government as govlet. The jurisdiction of a govlet is limited to its own affiliating citizens; any citizen in the United States can freely choose and declare his/her govlet affiliations. A govlet has similar powers as our current state governments, it can write and enact its own constitution and legislation and enforce it among their own citizens through its legal system and police forces. A govlet is essentially a governing by consent body, which avoids the "tyranny of the majority" which has been pervasive throughout the history of the territory based democracy.
Since the govlets are founded by people with similar political ideologies, they will adopt the best policies to implement and advance their political beliefs. Of course nothing prevents people with conflicting political beliefs to form a govlet, but it is unclear why people would want to seek constant and endless confrontations that have crippled our current governments. Under such a system, it is expected that some govlets will have high taxes and good public services; some will have low taxes and poor public services; others will be somewhere in between. The govlet with high taxes and poor public services will lose its citizens to other govlets and will eventually go out of the governing business. Under this new form of government, every person in the country can freely choose his/her govlet affiliation without physically moving, which creates fierce and direct competitions among govlets. Each govlet has to improve its efficiency in order to survive and grow its citizen base, which will inevitably lead to lower taxes and better services for all.
In this new government form, various special interests groups will most likely form their own govlets to advance their special agenda, which is perfectly okay and even welcome. Indeed, every govlet is formed to pursue the special interests of its affiliating citizens, thus every govlet is a special interest group. This system will keep the politics and politician honest, in contrast to our current government where every special interest is pursued in the name of public good. The public good is best served when everyone's freedom to pursue his/her own special interests is protected.
There is every reason to believe that such a competitive free market approach for governing would be much more efficient than our current one-size-fit-all government monopoly. This new form of competing governments is also morally superior because it offers every citizen the political freedom to practice what he or she believes, without resorting to any coercion.
In the upcoming blogs, I will consider many important issues around the govlets, such as the resolution of jurisdiction, implications of changing govlet affiliations, contract enforcement, and the prevention of segregation and criminal govlets etc.
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