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There could certainly be virtual, geography-free, government-like, organizations that would be orthogonal to local government. You could be a "citizen" of both
by imglorp 6y ago
There could certainly be virtual, geography-free, government-like, organizations that would be orthogonal to local government. You could be a "citizen" of both maybe? One could imagine health care, professional services, etc in exchange for some taxation? You still need local gov obviously for roads, police, etc.
One might even argue these virtual governments make more sense than, say, employer sponsored healthcare.
Estonia has one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia
- jimkleiber 6y agoExactly! I mean, in a way, governments seem like SaaS, just trying to provide all services, with tax being the membership fee, some members being more subsidized by other members. Geographic governments make sense for many reasons and yet it seems that virtual governments could provide other services. I wonder how much the Cathloic church is similar to this idea of a virtual or rather, geographically distributed government. Anyways, I appreciate you exploring this with me.
- imglorp 6y ago> some members being more subsidized by other members Good point, another essential part of civilization. You might add though, that some citizen/users can contribute in ways other than fees: in communes/collectives, you might say contribute some professional services in exchange for virtgov ones. Although barter is still basically money, the virtgov can sell that work product outside, like a corporation, because the lines are fuzzy anyway.
- jimkleiber 6y agoyea, good point. Maybe that virtgov becomes really good at providing emotional healthcare to its citizens and another gov, virtgov, corp, or org wants to get better at that, it could provide training or consulting for a fee