Our current governments only offer package deals, you either get the whole package or nothing. For example, every state government comes with the total package of taxation, economic policies, social services, criminal justice, education, court and legal system, environmental regulation etc. If you happened to like the economic policies in Texas, but prefer the criminal justice in New York, then you are out of luck, there is no way for you to get both at the same time.
Rarely anything else we consume in life comes strictly in package deals. We all buy our grocery, clothes, cars and housing separately, it would be extremely inconvenient and wasteful if these things have to be bought as a whole package. But this is exactly what we get from our governments.
In the govlet system, you have the freedom to pick and choose the government services. A govlet does not have to offer the full package as our current governments do; as a matter of fact, there are strong incentives for a govlet to only offer a limited number of services that have go together and nothing more. For example, if a govlet’s objective is to improve social services, such as healthcare, education and retirement benefit, it must also collect taxes in order to fund the social services, and maintain a legal system to prosecute tax evaders. However, the govlet does not need to offer criminal justice as it is not its main political objective and core competency; citizens can get crime protection from other govlets specializing in fighting crimes.
On the flip side, an individual is free to be affiliated with multiple govlets at the same time. Since every govlet comes with certain costs, such as taxes and the risk of being criminally prosecuted for breaking its laws, the individual has very strong incentive to only choose the govlet services he/she really needs and is willing to pay for by money and the possible jail time.
Under such a competitive environment, most govlets are likely to become highly specialized, just like today’s corporations do. There are several reasons for it, first pursuing a smaller number of political goals makes a govlet appealing to more people. For example, a govlet that is pro union and pro gun control is less popular than a govlet that is only pro union because some pro union people are anti gun control. A pro gun control individual can always join another specialized govlet for his gun control agenda, thus there is no reason to bundle them together. By picking and choosing, everyone gets exactly what he/she wants. Secondly, specialization improves the efficiency, for the exact same reason today’s corporations become more and more specialized. Thirdly, specialization makes it easier to evaluate the costs and benefits of govlets, thus helping citizens to make choices and facilitating direct competitions. It is much easier to compare different brands of the same product than packaged deals consisting of many individual products. Fourthly, it gives the individual citizen the power to decide which service to cut in bad times, thus avoiding the usual cross the board budget cut fiasco like the ongoing sequestration. Under a govlet system, the least essential government services will get cut first by the collective decisions of individual citizens. Besides these, another important advantage of specialized govlet is to encourage people to experiment with innovative political ideas by putting them into practice. The start up cost for a small group of people to form a specialized govlet on a particular agenda is much lower than forming a full service govlet.
Full service govlet could still survive because some people will prefer the traditional one-size-fit-all government. The full service government may choose to outsource some of its services to specialized govlet to improve efficiency, through inter-govlet contracts or treaties. For example, a full service govlet could pay a specialized govlet on crime protection for police forces and criminal justice. Similar to the corporate worlds, govlet might find it is to their best interests to collaborate with each other through bilateral and multilateral contracts and treaties or govlet unions. Most of the innovations in the modern marketplace could be copied by govlets, and we have good reasons to believe that many of them will be successful in governing if they are successful for corporations.
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