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Notes -
Here's a previous explanation I gave once.
The briefest version, I want maximum "localism" in the Talebian sense.
Or if you prefer:
Utopia of Utopias (Nozick).
Archipelago (Scott Alexander).
Patchwork (Moldbug).
Polystate (Zach Weinersmith).
Reading The Machinery of Freedom gets into the nitty gritty.
It's all the same idea. I'm forgetting a few others who pretty much came up with the same thing. Or maybe there was a common, preceding inspiration.
I think the smallest political 'unit' should really be the family, and the largest political unit should be something slightly smaller than a U.S. state.
This allows individuals to move to where their preferred social rules are implemented.
In theory this helps cool the culture wars to the extent there's no longer a need to fight over a single seat of maximum power (i.e. the Federal Government) that determines how trillions upon trillions of dollars are spent. Of course, I view leftism as a totalizing ideology so we'd still be fighting them to prevent the creation of the single seat of maximum power.
Gender Politics might very well pervade ANY society you set up, but I'd hope to at least de-centralize them so the average person isn't judging "men" or "women" as abstracts, but only those members they actually deal with in person.
Anyway, my preferences in the political locality that I would join:
Family as central political unit = For any democratic processes, the family casts a vote as a unit. One vote for each member of the family, which includes dependent children. The declared "head of household" actually casts the family votes.
Head of household is declared at the time a couple enters a 'marriage' contract. If a couple doesn't enter such a contract, then they don't get to vote as a unit, simple as.
There'd be no strict 'age of majority.' Instead there'd be a fairly standardized set of tests/criteria that any growing child could take that, if passed, would 'prove' they're ready for adulthood and thus can be granted independence of their parents. Similar to taking a driver's test to be allowed on the roads.
I like to just cut through the "age of consent" debate (cursed). In this situation, you'd have 15-16 year olds who are capable of consenting to marriage... and then there'd be some 20-25 year olds who still aren't allowed to vote.
For criminal justice, there'd basically only be three types of punishment:
Corporal Punishment, probably caning, swiftly administered. For petty crimes.
Exile, for repeated/chronic petty crimes, or committing harms that are greater than their ability to repay.
Execution, in the rare case where they're judged a dangerous, ongoing threat to human life.
Everything else is reduced to a 'civil' matter. You hurt someone, you make compensation.
Incarceration, in my view, is good ONLY for keeping someone locked down while awaiting some other step in a process. So jails would only exist to keep people for short stints, and nobody would be expected to stay for more than a year.
For gender issues I'd expect that the male/husband would be the 'head of household' in most marriages. But hey if they want to do it differently that's fine. So I do expect that downstream of this setup, the socioeconomic structure of this locality would favor Married Men, Married Women, and children. Single Males and single females would likewise be at a political disadvantage. I'd wager a guess that prostitution and similar activities would be illegal (Petty crime for the first few offenses, exile if there's multiple). Similar with drugs, although selling certain drugs might qualify you for the "dangerous, ongoing threat to human life" category.
Personally, I wouldn't want to criminalize prostitution, drug use, or gambling. But I'd want there to be friction. Like, limit the vices to one particular area of the locality, and you have to have proper licensure to even enter that area. There'd probably be a social stigma attached to going there at all.
I don't expect racial politics to 'go away' in this scenario. But I hope the norms would be healthier. Focus in on the things we have in common, I guess. There'd be no segregation or Jim Crow or Affirmative Action laws, but people who want to self-segregate are free to do so.
Most social functions would be privatized, including charity and welfare and I'd expect churches and social clubs to be the backbone of the individual communities.
I'd like to see some version of Futarchy used to make larger-scale decisions, but for local decisions I think the Hayekian Knowledge Problem, and the need for Skin in the Game means such decisions are always best made by those who actually live in that locality.
Fundamentally, I want to live in a High Trust Society with traditions and social institutions geared towards maintaining it against all interference. Then people can build their lives, their careers, anything they want, really, on top of that.
Do you think you would have to suppress or destroy most social media to make most that even possible
The thought has crossed my mind.
Or develop an app that is basically designed to mute/filter out all the worst, noisiest polluters of the digital commons.
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Please, please link to the original version of "Archipelago", not to the (horrible) revised edition.
Easy enough.
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