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Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 2:01 pm
by rotting bones
Torco wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 12:39 pm that's the thing, they don't, but you evidently *can* have different modes of production for any given level of development of the means of production.
I have argued for anti-authoritarian socialism in the Capitalism thread. I did it extensively and for years on end. I only stopped when I caught myself slipping into strange parables after repeating the same points for the zillionth time.
Torco wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 12:39 pm capitalists can, it's not clear why market stateless societies couldn't. <i wouldn't call the erdani 'anarchist', then again, I wouldn't call libertarians anarcho anything either>. then again, no DARPA no fund things, so perhaps they'd take longer.
Centralized ML states don't necessarily hinder electronics manufacturing. The point is, won't electronics be prohibitively expensive unless mass produced? Nowadays, a lot of manufacturers of digital electronics find it prohibitively expensive to have their factories in the US.

To organize mass production, you have to hand over a lot of power to the organizers. If the organizers start using their power in state-like ways, you have to keep assassinating them. Sure, maybe most of the organizers are ideologically opposed to statehood, but the Roman nobility was ideologically opposed to kingship. Could they have kept the Caesars at bay indefinitely by killing them all? Maybe.

Maybe all the killing will alter the gene pool until we shrink from authoritarianism like we do from snakes. I heard dogs are wolves suffering from Williams Syndrome. When humans get it, it makes the victims excessively friendly, lowers their IQ and gives them fairy-like faces.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2023 4:58 pm
by Torco
I think that the notion that statelessness requires a developmental disorder is the most superlative version of new man theory I've heard :lol:
Centralized ML states don't necessarily hinder electronics manufacturing. The point is, won't electronics be prohibitively expensive unless mass produced? Nowadays, a lot of manufacturers of digital electronics find it prohibitively expensive to have their factories in the US.
hmmmm.... i don't know... it's true that some technologies are much better implemented in economies of certain scale, but then again networks are pretty large, aren't they? and anyway I'm sure such a market society has some big companies that can afford to build big factories (and exploit the working classes too). also, a lot of our current obsession with microchips has to do with the fact that, because of irrationalities associated with our own economic system, these days you need like six gigs of ram to multiply six by twelve. Most of the things we do with computers routinely, I'm convinced, could be done just as well (in principle, that is) with much more rudimentary hardware and clever, orderly programming. there's nothing species discord is doing that could be done in 1953, except adoption. sure, we have many more teraflops of computing power but I wonder... do we need them, for everyday use? other than video? or do we just can't afford not to have them cause of obsolescence and bloatware?

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 4:40 am
by rotting bones
Torco wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 4:58 pm I think that the notion that statelessness requires a developmental disorder is the most superlative version of new man theory I've heard :lol:
A developmental disorder is not necessary. It's possible since the system requires killing over long periods of time.

It could also be that the raw materials for electronics are plentiful or something.
Torco wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 4:58 pm hmmmm.... i don't know... it's true that some technologies are much better implemented in economies of certain scale, but then again networks are pretty large, aren't they?
Maybe if they and/or their affiliates extend outside the city and across the country?
Torco wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 4:58 pm and anyway I'm sure such a market society has some big companies that can afford to build big factories (and exploit the working classes too).
In theory, oppressed workers could switch networks. There may be egalitarian state-like mechanisms inside the socialist network and irrational control mechanisms for the others.
Torco wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 4:58 pm also, a lot of our current obsession with microchips has to do with the fact that, because of irrationalities associated with our own economic system, these days you need like six gigs of ram to multiply six by twelve. Most of the things we do with computers routinely, I'm convinced, could be done just as well (in principle, that is) with much more rudimentary hardware and clever, orderly programming. there's nothing species discord is doing that could be done in 1953, except adoption. sure, we have many more teraflops of computing power but I wonder... do we need them, for everyday use? other than video? or do we just can't afford not to have them cause of obsolescence and bloatware?
The rational parts of this market are driven by the need for ever more realistic video games and accurate data processing (including AI). Don't get me started on bloat.

In this world, we'd see a UNIVAC if we're lucky.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 5:01 am
by Ares Land
rotting bones wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 10:53 am
Ares Land wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 4:11 am As for technology, think 1940s. Computers are cutting edge technology and cumbersome things.
They may be hulking monstrosities, but are they used in business or connected to networks? The UNIVAC dates to 1951, so I don't want to presume.
I believe there's some rudimentary commercial use. I have the vague, undevelopped idea some smart guy would use it for insider trading, deciphering private commercial communications. If by network, you mean computer networks, there are none so far.
rotting bones wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 9:03 am It's not obvious that anarchy can be scaled to, say, financing for electronics manufacturing. But maybe, with enough assassinations, things will work out. Stable societies don't necessarily provide stable lives for individuals either.

This could make for amusing stories about assassins struggling to meet their quotas and blaming the erosion of traditional values.
To organize mass production, you have to hand over a lot of power to the organizers. If the organizers start using their power in state-like ways, you have to keep assassinating them.
Heh, sorry, I'm not sure I understand that objection :) A successful electronics company requires a lot of organization, but the organization skills required to mass produce vacuum tubes are entirely different; it's not like being a successful manufacturer gives you an edge in guerilla warfare. I don't think anyone worries about Intel organizing a coup!
As for the economics, electronics was proved profitable and while production is outsourced to a cheaper country now, it wasn't in the past and may not stay outsourced in the future.

Assassinations of would be dictators is understood as an ultimate recourse; in practice there has been no need for one in decades. (I think a few times people have taken a shortcut and organized an assassination of inconvenient people, like, once in ten years on average. It's no different than one of our democracies where such things do happen too.)
People being people, yeah, a lot of them have a romantic view of the good old days of network ward when men were men and matters were settled with guns.
Sure, maybe most of the organizers are ideologically opposed to statehood, but the Roman nobility was ideologically opposed to kingship. Could they have kept the Caesars at bay indefinitely by killing them all? Maybe.
The analogy with the Roman republic is apt. The Republic functioned for centuries before the early civil wars. Likewise Western democracies also rely on everyone being committed to democracy. It's possible such committment will cease in the future;there's no expectation the current organization will really last forever.
Likewise the Erdan system is currently stable but of course it could change into another system over time.
This brings up an interesting question... if you split timelines at, say, feudal-medieval tech level, and then you make a stateless society at that point and then it progresses technologically... would their advanced tech take a similar path as ours? probably not, right?
A good question. I don't know. I think the Industrial Revolution would still have proceeded in some way. Other technologies I'm not so sure about For instance I don't think we could have nuclear power without the state getting involved at some point.
rotting bones wrote: Sun Feb 12, 2023 2:01 pm Maybe all the killing will alter the gene pool until we shrink from authoritarianism like we do from snakes. I heard dogs are wolves suffering from Williams Syndrome. When humans get it, it makes the victims excessively friendly, lowers their IQ and gives them fairy-like faces.
My personal view is that it's already happened. Human beings have been social animals for millions of years (depending on when you start counting hominids as human, and even then our non-human ancestors were likely pretty social primates) there's already been plenty of selection pressure.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 6:12 am
by Ares Land
A few random, assorted thoughts on economics.


Externalities -- the case of pollution
(This will, I think, answer bradrn's question more completely.)

Suppose a chemical plant is rejecting noxious chemicals in the water, the atmosphere or both.

The typical way to handle this is as a type of class action. One of the affected parties - typically an ad-hoc association will be set up - will get power of attorney (a signature may suffice), and possibly a small sum, for expenses, from anyone that is demonstrably affected by pollution, giving it legal power to bring a case against the offending factory.
Our anti-pollution association will pick a judge to act as mediator. Typically the factory will get another one.

The polluting factory has the option of ignoring the anti-pollution association; at which point it bears the reputational and financial costs of being outlawed by the association's judge.
The other, safer option is for the factory to pick a judge of its own.

Ultimately the case will be decided by a largish panel of judges (this is one of these complicated cases that ask for a complex, diverse pattern of judges).
A compromise will be sought; the offending factory will have to pay damages to the association, which in turn refunds its individual members.

The amount awarded may be extremely high -- if it is desired that the polluting activity ceases altogether, or relatively low -- if it's understood that the business is providing an important service and that pollution is an unescapable consequence of its activity. Varying the amount provides an incentive to switch to cleaner activities.

For instance it's established by precedent that smokeless fuel carries a relatively minor fine whereas coal carries a higher one. Relasing pollutants in certain areas can carry a lower fine than in others.

It's often the case that the damages are not awarded to the anti-pollution association but to a trust fund instead. The trust fund is then mandated to provide finance for other organization; hospitals, or the sewer system.

In effecting polluting industries keep on paying fines to various trust funds. This acts in effect as a pollution tax.

The offending party isn't always easy to identify. In some case it may be the same as the dependants. A case in point is domestic fuel.
The case of domestic fuel proved impossible legally, and also possibly lethal in the largest cities.
Eventually several networks offered to provide arbitrators in a law case between the Clean Air Association and a selection of coal producers and merchants. It was understood that the damages requested would be proportional to the quantity of coal sold, with the full understanding that the costs would ultimately be borne by the customers.

Coal in Ash'ashuma is sold as high prices - a significant fraction of the cost going to various hospital trust funds. By contrast smokeless fuels is less heavily fined.

If the results are unsatisfactory, the initial arbitration can be challenged at any time. A new association may be formed -- or the old one revived -- with the aim of getting a new arbitration if it turns out the fines awarded aren't sufficient deterrent. Companies may feel the trust fund are corrupt and would prefer to give to another one; come to think of it any association may feel the same way.

Taking domestic fuel as an example, there are in effect several semi-permanent arbitration boards to periodically review the situation and several trust funds to collect the fines. (The Erdans like having multiple redundant institutions; in their worldview a single permanent arbitration board would necessarily be corrupt.)

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 8:32 am
by rotting bones
Ares Land wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 5:01 am A successful electronics company requires a lot of organization, but the organization skills required to mass produce vacuum tubes are entirely different; it's not like being a successful manufacturer gives you an edge in guerilla warfare. I don't think anyone worries about Intel organizing a coup!
Capitalist industries rely on government repression to protect their profits. I don't want to go through the details of a macroeconomic business cycle all over again.
Ares Land wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 5:01 am My personal view is that it's already happened. Human beings have been social animals for millions of years (depending on when you start counting hominids as human, and even then our non-human ancestors were likely pretty social primates) there's already been plenty of selection pressure.
In the last few millennia, it has been mostly kings propagating the lineages of their pet creatures.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 8:53 am
by Ares Land
rotting bones wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 8:32 am
Ares Land wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 5:01 am A successful electronics company requires a lot of organization, but the organization skills required to mass produce vacuum tubes are entirely different; it's not like being a successful manufacturer gives you an edge in guerilla warfare. I don't think anyone worries about Intel organizing a coup!
Capitalist industries rely on government repression to protect their profits. I don't want to go through the details of a macroeconomic business cycle all over again.
More planned on the economic system later on, which I'll think might address your point.
rotting bones wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 8:32 am
Ares Land wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 5:01 am My personal view is that it's already happened. Human beings have been social animals for millions of years (depending on when you start counting hominids as human, and even then our non-human ancestors were likely pretty social primates) there's already been plenty of selection pressure.
In the last few millennia, it has been mostly kings propagating the lineages of their pet creatures.
The sort of totalitarianism is only made possible by modern technology. In premodern times kings had a lot of power, but not that much. (As one data point, the French absolute monarchs, headed the strongest state at this point did not reside in their own capital because their security couldn't be guaranteed there.)

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2023 10:42 am
by Ares Land
Money

Many banks -- not all -- print their own money. The Erdani currency follows a duodecimal system; the conventional name are the 1 dyollas = 12 nellasi = 144 derrolasi = 1728 nollasi

Then we get three different standards: gold and labour. The gold standard has further complications which involve the use of silver and other commodities, which I'll ignore for now.

The labour standard fixes the price so that the day rate for an unskilled laborer is at 2 nellasi a day.
By contrast the gold standard is set up so that 1 dyollas is worth a certain quantity of gold (about 5 grams)

A further complication is what the Erdani call strong money. It concerns money obtained through loans and whether these loan involve fractional reserve or not.

A very brief and probably incomplete account of fractional reserve banking: one tool available to bank is both receive deposits and uses that money to make loans. Basically, A deposits 1000 nellasi; so does B, for a total of 2000 nellasi. The bank loans out 1000 nellasi to C. The total amount of money is now 3000 nellasi, 1000 more than we started these. This works because a) the bank will get 1000 + interest back from C in the long run b) Neither A nor B are going to withdraw their 1000 nellasi right away.
This is a mutually beneficial scheme except in case of a bank run: when A and B (and other clients) lose trust in the bank and try and withdraw everything all at once.
In the real worlds, this is something all banks practice. The risk of bank runs is mitigated by the legal requirement that banks have some of the money on hand (the so-called fractional reserve) plus the central banks and other institutions helping out when there's risk of a bank run.

Following early legal cases and bank runs, a legal precedent/requirement was established, according to which banks are required to advertise that they use fractional reserve system -- some actually don't, and basically act as warehouses -- and what guarantees they offer.
The result is a distinction between hard money and soft money. Money loaned out from a bank that practices fractional reserve banking is weak money; hard money deposited into such a bank is converted to weak money. When you make a withdrawal, you have the option of withdrawing either weak or strong money. (There are various grades of strength depending on the guarantees the bank offer, but let's not get into that.)
The advantage of weak money is that a) it's a lot easier to get a loan b) banks usually offer a small premium for the use of weak money, which means exchange rates are favorable; basically you get a little extra depositing into a weak money bank.
The main drawback is that weak money is a lot riskier.

Multiple standards

To further complexify matters, there are several competing standards within each standard. Banks and more generally employer that use the labour standard can either affiliate to War Bonds, the Bank of Gonsen or Social Credit. Banks that use the gold standard are the Regent's Mint, the Farmer's Union and the Guild of Goldsmiths and Silversmiths. Each of these six institutions essentially performs the work of a central bank.

This isn't as important with the gold standard (essentially everyone uses Guild standards anyway), but the War Bonds, Bank of Gonsen and Social Credit all have the possibility of defining exchange rates and devaluating.
Social Credit is mostly active in Ash'ashoma which is in a class of its own economically; the generally less economically affluent south goes for Gonsen. (The War Bonds have a presence all over. the name is mostly historical, by the way: they do not actually issue war bonds.)

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2023 3:20 pm
by Ares Land
Property

Under a state system -- as existed in the Second Empire, property is essentially defined through state intervention: private property is recognized as belonging to someone, in accordance to relevant laws, as registered by the state or state-empowered agents; conflicts over property are decided by the judicial system and enforced by state forces.

The Erdan system of course directly contradicts most of this.
Conflicts are decided by arbitration, with the panel of judges decided ultimately by consensus, as a compromise between the wishes of both parties. The enforcement is left up to both parties, or to a third party selected by the judicial panel.

As for the relevant laws, each of the judge in the panel follows their own code, with the decision reached by negotiation and compromise. Essentially three kinds of legal codes are in competition:
  • Conservative legal codes that view private property as an absolute right.
  • Socialist legal codes that absolutely denounce private property.
  • Religious codes (Temple, Ashkaroshi or Rilril) that allows private property softened with various provisions of charity and social justice.
The Erdan views on property results from whatever common ground could be found.

An easy case is what we sometimes call possession: ownership of goods or real estate that are clear intended for their owner personal use: someone's home, or car, or furniture. That was recognized by all parties in a straightforward fashion.
The real problem lied with productive capital, defended as an absolute by the conservatives and rejected just as absolutely by the socialists.

For many businesses the socialist solution was actually adopted; the property of regime collaborators was seized and often -- not always -- set up as cooperative businesses.

Others remained as privately owned.
One problem with private property is the repartition of gains between labour and capital.
The most common practice is a profit-sharing arrangement: both workers and owner get a share of the profits. This can be done in several ways: one is to distribute dividends to the workers as well, the other to farm out part of the business -- a factory, for instance to the workers. The workers are free to run the business as they please, getting the profit, minus an agreed-upon rent. (This happens in the real world for agricultural land; it was common practice for land in Erdani as well and was extended to other kinds of businesses.)

Essentially productive activities in Erdani can be classified as collective property (owned cooperatively) or private (in which case part of the dividends must be redistributed.) There's a fair amount of movement between both classes: as privately owned businesses can be set up as a co-op, or as co-ops restrict memberships and hire non-associate workers.

Another problem is what happens with failed business or businesses that turn out non-profitable over time. Job loss can be held as damages and prosecuted as tort laws -- this makes an owner liable for bad decisions. One way to avoid this, as it happens, was to spread out the decision making and share management decision between capital and labor. Another way is to allow workers to buy, at a preferential price, a business and set it up as a coop.

It was, largely, the conservative legal school that came up with these decisions. Post-liberation most of the industry was confiscated by worker collective, under the umbrella of such networks as the Metal Union or Land Reform.
Businesses remained privately owned; this happened mostly in areas where conservative networks were stronger, and also with the cooperation of the workers themselves. That cooperation was encouraged by such concessions as those listed above; the general idea was to keep socialist ideas from spreading.

Another motive was -- and in fact, still is, to discourage wealth accumulation from rival networks or individuals. The system is set up in such a way that no network or individual gets in a position to get a monopoly in an area; that's a strong incentive for preventing rivals from accumulating wealth.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2023 6:44 pm
by keenir
Ares Land wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2023 3:20 pm Property
Very very interesting.

I'm afraid I have a question, though; sorry.

It might be dismissable/ignorable as too small to draw attention, but what about ameteurs(sp)...nonprofessionals doing something to earn a few extra bucks or as a hobby. Like if I want to start a lemonade stand - I'm both the owner and the worker of the stand; presumably I don't have to share my profits with the grocery store or farmer I bought the lemons from, right?
The Erdan system of course directly contradicts most of this.
Conflicts are decided by arbitration, with the panel of judges decided ultimately by consensus, as a compromise between the wishes of both parties. The enforcement is left up to both parties, or to a third party selected by the judicial panel.
makes for a good reason to always have a judge either in the family or in your pocket. :)

So if I want to spread my lemonade stand across all of Erdan, I'd have to franchise them like McDonalds&such things, yes? Because by the time I hire a worker for each stand, and we work out the division of what profits we get, I might as well just sell each one, right?

Another problem is what happens with failed business or businesses that turn out non-profitable over time. Job loss can be held as damages and prosecuted as tort laws -- this makes an owner liable for bad decisions. One way to avoid this, as it happens, was to spread out the decision making and share management decision between capital and labor. Another way is to allow workers to buy, at a preferential price, a business and set it up as a coop.
Sounds like a good argument for the Erdani to avoid agricultural industries or large-scale farming.

Even if, say, Group A doesn't acumulate wealth (as mentioned at the bottom of the Property post), a bad growing year for Group B will make them vulnerable to being bought by Group A - whether A is a bank, a network, or just another set of farms.

Another motive was -- and in fact, still is, to discourage wealth accumulation from rival networks or individuals. The system is set up in such a way that no network or individual gets in a position to get a monopoly in an area; that's a strong incentive for preventing rivals from accumulating wealth.


Please continue; i'm enjoying reading these.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 2:54 am
by Ares Land
keenir wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2023 6:44 pm
Very very interesting.

I'm afraid I have a question, though; sorry.

It might be dismissable/ignorable as too small to draw attention, but what about ameteurs(sp)...nonprofessionals doing something to earn a few extra bucks or as a hobby. Like if I want to start a lemonade stand - I'm both the owner and the worker of the stand; presumably I don't have to share my profits with the grocery store or farmer I bought the lemons from, right?
Thanks!
Nope. Small businesses or one-person businesses are typically OK.

You need to share the profits if you're the sole or the majority source of income for the person you're contracting with. So assuming you own a lemonade megacorp and the sole client of the farmer, you would have to share profits.

The underlying reasoning is that by nature, in such cases, your employees (or subcontractors, as the terms may be) are not entirely free to negotiate contractual terms. In theory such a contract would be invalid; the contract is made valid by additional compensation.
makes for a good reason to always have a judge either in the family or in your pocket. :)
I think it helps no matter where :)
The other side still has the same rights as you do in terms of picking judges, so there's no guarantee the verdict will be in your favor.

So if I want to spread my lemonade stand across all of Erdan, I'd have to franchise them like McDonalds&such things, yes? Because by the time I hire a worker for each stand, and we work out the division of what profits we get, I might as well just sell each one, right?
The system does encourage franchise-like systems or more general small companies interacting as a network rather than huge megacorps.
That said, negotiating wages and profit share isn't usually too complicated; just go along with the usual rates.
Sounds like a good argument for the Erdani to avoid agricultural industries or large-scale farming.
Exactly -- one idea underlying the system is to discourage latifundia. Under the Second Empire agriculture was dominated by huge agricultural estates and it was fairly obvious the system didn't work.
Even if, say, Group A doesn't acumulate wealth (as mentioned at the bottom of the Property post), a bad growing year for Group B will make them vulnerable to being bought by Group A - whether A is a bank, a network, or just another set of farms.
Indeed, it does happen. The system slows down but does not entirely prevent wealth accumulation.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2023 10:25 pm
by rotting bones
Continues to be interesting.
Ares Land wrote: Mon Feb 13, 2023 8:53 am The sort of totalitarianism is only made possible by modern technology. In premodern times kings had a lot of power, but not that much. (As one data point, the French absolute monarchs, headed the strongest state at this point did not reside in their own capital because their security couldn't be guaranteed there.)
True, but it was much harder for peasants to defy their local lords.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:16 am
by Ares Land
Common property.

We've covered two models of property: private (a privately-owned company, for instance) or collective (a worker coop). There is in practice a certain degree of overlap between the two.

Erdani recognizes a third model, common property. These covers what economists would call common resources and public goods.
These are resources that have no clear owner: roads, railroads, the atmosphere, the justice system, public security, and so on.

One way to define property is that the owner of a resouce can demand arbitration if his property is violated and obtain compensation for that violation. You own your house because you have the right to obtain compensation if it's damaged or burned down.

We've covered the case of atmospheric pollution. Nobody owns the atmosphere, or more accurately everybody owns it.
The solution is that anyone can act as the owner; in practice a sufficient number of citizen can act legally, in front of a court, as 'owners', with the right to seek compensation for atmospheric pollution, in the legal form of an association.
Compensation for damages on pollution can go in part to the association, but not entirely. The legal owners of the atmosphere include the entire population, so compensation should in theory be redistributed to everyone.
In practice compensation is shared between the association that brought the case and a fund dedicated to a suitable public good.

That's actually pretty easy! Unlike a road, the atmosphere doesn't require maintenance. Damage to the atmosphere is easy to measure, suitable compensation can be found.

Roads

A road could be handled as private property: an entrepreneur buys up some terrain, builds the road and charges a toll. In fact it sometimes is handled that way. There are two problems with that approach under the Erdan legal system:
  • Preexisting roads. The Second Empire was responsible for road construction so technically owns all roads. The Second Empire died before settling a succession, so there's no one to buy the road from.
  • Suppose you want to build a road from Ash'ashomato Yerdus. In practice there are only a few choices availables as to the path the road will take. You select one of the possible routes, buy up the terrain, build the road and collect the tolls. The problem is that you not only own the physical terrain (which is something that had a previous owner you could buy up from), but you also own the most efficient route between Aros and Yerdus. Can you own the most efficient path? It wasn't the terrain owner's, so they could not sell it to you? It's not even intellectual property (the best path is pretty trivial to figure out)
Legally speaking, there's really no way to own a road. How can we maintain them?
Under the Erdan system, this is handled by setting an ad-hoc committee and a trust fund for road maintenance. The committee is set up by petition: get enough signatures and you're in. Membership can be rescinded by petition -- or worst case scenario, setting up an alternate committee and going to court.
The committees are generally local; they federate at various levels to handle issues of greater scope; there are dedicated committee for each route of national importance (such as the Ash'ashoma - Yerdus roads).

Committees, associations and trust funds all act as proxies for the entire population -- who are the legal owners of the road.

The whole idea that ownership of the most direct path between two points is impossible is, by the way, a rationalization devised after the fact. The system was set up that way, for more prosaic reasons: the idea was that no single network could control transportation in a given part of the country, which would have upset the balance of power.

Health

Hospitally can be privately owned or collectively owned. Doctors can have a private practice.

The Erdani view is that denying medical treatment, for any reason, is equivalent to murder or injury. They also hold that labour must be compensated.
This leads to the interesting legal conclusion that doctors are entirely within their right to present a bill and expect payment, and that patients are just as entitled not to pay it if you can't afford it -- it could be equivalent to extorsion. They cannot deny treatment to patients either. They can refer them to a cheaper colleague... assuming this does not lead to a dangerous delay.

The underlying legal/ethic idea is that anyone in the position of saving someone from injury or death should do so. So doctors will argue that they have the obligation to treat the poor, but that wealthier people are under the obligation of paying the bill -- wealthier people meaning 'almost everyone', because of course people could pool resources to pay.

In practice this leads to a system where doctors are paid partly by their patient, partly by a public health fund, which makes public health, in part, common property. (There are other factors: there's an obvious cost to society if contagious diseases are not treated, there's a less obvious but just as real cost to have large portions of society suffering from preventable, severe illness or injury.)

Education

Education is in some respect similar. Schools can privately or collectively owned; Universities are each a sui generis entity. The University of Aros in Ash'ashoma is a network in its own right, and in addition to education offers legal advice and expertise.

Teachers should be paid so, naturally enough (to the Erdan mind) schools can present a bill. The issue is that:
  • Science, knowledge, the law, or anything taught by the school is common property. So in a sense charging for school mean asking for payment for access to something you already own.
  • The social benefits of everyone being, at the very least, literate is obvious. To go further: Erdani as an industrialized society with a sophisticated social system would collapse were it not for widespread education.
In practice funding is arranged, in part, by education trust funds.

Generalizing; financing all this

What we see (depending on country, of course) as state function the Erdans see as very distinct problems of their own with specific constraints.

Justice and the law are handled by amateur, semi-professional or professional judges organized in concurrent networks with cooperation, when necessary, handled by national or regional conventions. The money supply is left to free market organization with some judicial oversight. Some public works are handled by assurance contracts.
Most common property (sewers, air pollution, roads, educatio, health) involve a committee-trust fund system.

To recap:
local committees are set up, with a petition system that is essentially democratic in nature (this is similar to electing a representative in a legislature); a counter-committee can be set up at any time to control the first, with help from the judiciary in deciding which of the two is right and to what extent. The committee is associated with a trust fund, and it can use the fund to either contract to have the roads built, or finance health care, or provide financing to schools.
The committee's scope depends entirely on the issue at hand. For the road system (or for that matter, the sewers, or waste collection) the organization is geographical, with the committees federating to handle larger issues. For education it's a complex combination of geography, religion, politics and network affiliation. (The Ashkaroshi handle their own schools, there is a network of secular/socialist schools, other schools will make a point of their neutrality, others are dedicated to different pedagogical approaches.) For health the divisions are geographical, but also according to medical specialty.

How is everything financed?
  • Sometimes the answer is obvious. You pay a fee for use of the sewer network, and a fine if you don't use it.
  • There are more elaborate variants of the above system: there's a fee/fine associated with domestic fuels that is in practice collected by sellers and producers.
  • Sometimes a satisfactory, adhoc approach emerged. The judicial system charges its users; but if one of the guilty parties is clearly in the wrong, it has to pay the entire bill.
  • Lotteries and gambling, a relatively painless way to raise revenue.
  • Transfer of funds between different kinds of common property or committees. It makes economic sense, as an incentive, to collect fees/fines for using certain kind of fuels, but the air pollution committee has little use for the money. And in fact there are good reasons for it not to hold on to it; it may be tempted to overcharge or find pollution where there is none. So the fines they collect are distributed to other funds, typically to finance hospitals.
  • Transfer of funds, again. It's understood that revenue raised for schools in a wealthy area must be shared with poorer school committees.
  • Voluntary donation.
  • Volunteer work. A judge or panel of judge has the customary power of selecting people, at random, as enforcers or jury. Some people won't do it; but there are enough people to accept jury or enforcer duty for it to work.
  • Or simply, charging customers. Rich families pay for school; if you can afford it you'll pay for your own medical care or your insurance will. There are some toll roads.
In some cases, there's a complex combination of all, plus something else entirely. Education at the University of Aros in Ash'ashuma is free, in fact students are paid to study there. The University gets generous donations, it serves as a repository for various legal schools and offers legal advice. Students past a certain level are required to teach, do research, and for law degrees act as free judges or legal counsels. The University also rents out enforcement services. Finally the University has you sign an agreement to the effect that you're required to donate a fairly substantial sum should you become wealthy as an alumni.


Wealth redistribution

Capital and wealth are very nice things to have. I wish I had more of these myself. It comes with a number of drawbacks: wealth naturally accumulates, there are common goods/property that need funding, and besides the marginal utility of extra wealth is pretty low to his/her owner (really, does Elon Musk even notices when he loses a billion or two.)

Wealth accumulation has a negative effect: once every building in the city is owned by one of three people, there's no housing market there, unless you can keep building new condos fast enough to keep up. And as the Erdans know first-hand, if all agricultural lands is in the hands of a handful of landlords, the end result is millions of desperate people.

Here the two factions at play in Erdan history were the conservatives (who were prepared to defend private property as an absolute right) and the socialists (who wanted no capital wealth at all).

The answer is that past a certain wealth threshold, an annual donation must be made to the Petitions, a specific kind of committee (typically, the local one, but asset owners are free to choose which). The Petitions reaffects the donation to any of the various trust funds listed above, according to democratic procedure. (In practice members are elected on the understanding that they will vote for a give distribution of vote.)
It's possible for voters to challenge the Petitions Committee by setting up an alternate Committee, for instance.
Various committees may contest the Petitions' choice.

That last bit may need an example: suppose the Petitions (in accordance to the electorate, we expect) to allocate nothing to the Yerdus-Ash'ashuma highway. The Y-A committee has the right to ask for mediation on this decision. The decision has a chance to be overturned in some cases: if it's proven the highway is so underfunded and in lack of proper maintenance it's actually dangerous; or if the constant traffic there proves the highway is very much used and the voters are collectively acting as free riders.
(In practice the procedure is rarely applied)

Anyway, back to the wealth fee. The underlying reasoning is that it a) finances collective goods necessary to acquire wealth in the first place b) compensates for any collective harm that might have been done, even unknowingly, in the process of wealth acquisition. (An analogy might be zakat in Islam; I'm told zakat means purification, in the sense that purifies wealth of any evil associated with its acquisition.)

Wealth reporting is strictly voluntary, and of course tax evasion is one of those unavoidable sins. There are counter-measures if you're found out, though. There are several ways this could happen: The Petitions maintains a census board. Newspapers act as a concurrent agency. Another way is that if you list property at a given value, it expresses willingness to sell it at that price.
Say you own an apartment building, which you value at 4000 dyollasi. You sell it at 6000 dyollasi. The buyer has the opportunity to check your valuation, and sue for the 2000 dyollasi. More subtly this can apply to rent. If your tenants find out they pay collectively 600 dyollasi in rent a year, with average rental yield being at 5%, they have the right to ask for some money back. (Or more likely, decide they only owe you 400. The courts are not likely to back you if you decide to evict them.)

In practice the above was hammered out as a compromise between, again, the conservative and socialist legal school. The conservatives essentially figured out it was better to pay a little rather than have the socialist gain more control and lose everything. Ultimately it was a bad bargain; the idea of the wealth fee felt contrived to everyone at first but is now so thoroughly accepted cheating on it registers as theft. Of course organizations of socialist inspiration (the Metal Union, Land Reform) that happen to own assets have to pay the fee as well.
Another rationale was the hope that no single network could accumulate enough wealth to get a dominant position above the others.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:25 am
by keenir
Very nice food for thought, kudos.

Hopefully some of my questions are scenarios which the Erdani would not find themselves faced with - but they are what came to mind; sorry.
Ares Land wrote: Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:16 am Compensation for damages on pollution can go in part to the association, but not entirely. The legal owners of the atmosphere include the entire population, so compensation should in theory be redistributed to everyone.
In practice compensation is shared between the association that brought the case and a fund dedicated to a suitable public good.

That's actually pretty easy! Unlike a road, the atmosphere doesn't require maintenance. Damage to the atmosphere is easy to measure,
"Your honors, the majority of the smog afflicting this city is not from my clients' factory, but from the fireplaces of our accusers, as well as that quietly-hissing volcano to the north of our network. My clients wish to create a trust to bequeath the local hospital, but at a third the size of the trust being demanded by their accusers."

The Erdani view is that denying medical treatment, for any reason, is equivalent to murder or injury. They also hold that labour must be compensated.
This leads to the interesting legal conclusion that doctors are entirely within their right to present a bill and expect payment, and that patients are just as entitled not to pay it if you can't afford it -- it could be equivalent to extorsion. They cannot deny treatment to patients either. They can refer them to a cheaper colleague...
I'm suddenly thinking of people who feel they need a given procedure done (maybe a hypochondriac, maybe one of those people who keep having plastic surgeries)
assuming this does not lead to a dangerous delay.
?
What would happen if the doctor or the patient feared there would be a dangerous delay? (the doctor performs the job, then sues when it turns out there was not as much danger as said doctor or patient feared?)

Science, knowledge, the law, or anything taught by the school is common property. So in a sense charging for school mean asking for payment for access to something you already own.
But surely the point of the education is to learn the minutia, the finer points of law or whatever one is studying - which is locked away in the minds of the experts of those fields, and thus we're paying them for what they alone can teach us. (directly from them sitting alongside/as the teacher, or indirectly from their writings)
Justice and the law are handled by amateur, semi-professional or professional judges organized in concurrent networks with cooperation, when necessary, handled by national or regional conventions. The money supply is left to free market organization with some judicial oversight.
So...the network pays the judges they bring to arbitrate in a given case? Or the people pay - prosecutor and defendant both pay?
Sometimes the answer is obvious. You pay a fee for use of the sewer network, and a fine if you don't use it.
Wha?
So I pay to be able to flush my toilet...and I have to pay if I don't do anything that requires the toilet to be flushed?

Good grief, I'm kinda hoping the Erdani don't have any rituals or practices that requires fasting...or conspicuous consumption like at some galas.

Transfer of funds between different kinds of common property or committees. It makes economic sense, as an incentive, to collect fees/fines for using certain kind of fuels, but the air pollution committee has little use for the money. And in fact there are good reasons for it not to hold on to it; it may be tempted to overcharge or find pollution where there is none. So the fines they collect are distributed to other funds, typically to finance hospitals.
wouldn't a desire to bequeath/redistribute wealth encourage (rather than discourage) the committee to overcharge and-or to find pollution where others think there is none or too little to go to court over?
Transfer of funds, again. It's understood that revenue raised for schools in a wealthy area must be shared with poorer school committees.
"Now we shall ensure that those poverty-stricken capitalists must be properly indoctrinated - I mean taught, at our schools."
In some cases, there's a complex combination of all, plus something else entirely. Education at the University of Aros in Ash'ashuma is free, in fact students are paid to study there. The University gets generous donations, it serves as a repository for various legal schools and offers legal advice. Students past a certain level are required to teach, do research, and for law degrees act as free judges or legal counsels.
Wait...so someone studying judicial science, has to be a judge before they graduate the full course?

I mean, we have TAs - teacher assistants - but we generally try not to let them teach classes unsupervised until they've graduated (and even less chances are given to people studying more dangerous things, like operating heavy machinery, nuclear engineering, and deep-sea diving)
Capital and wealth are very nice things to have. I wish I had more of these myself. It comes with a number of drawbacks: wealth naturally accumulates, there are common goods/property that need funding, and besides the marginal utility of extra wealth is pretty low to his/her owner (really, does Elon Musk even notices when he loses a billion or two.)
Publicly and loudly. :D

(but point made)
Wealth accumulation has a negative effect: once every building in the city is owned by one of three people, there's no housing market there, unless you can keep building new condos fast enough to keep up.
But if every building has one of three owners, then those three are under obligation to be good landlords, making it so the poor and other people can live in the city...right?

So you can force the three to be good and hospitable, which presumably will require less cost and legal trouble for the housing network(s) and owners, than it would for the legal troubles and costs of lots of landowners being taken to court by lots of residents.

I probably missed something. Or several somethings. :)
And as the Erdans know first-hand, if all agricultural lands is in the hands of a handful of landlords, the end result is millions of desperate people.
Are the landlords refusing to employ anyone on their lands? Even automated systems need people working them - had the Second Empire achieved unsupervised automation, and thats why modern Erdan keeps the lands from ending in just a handful of hands?

Or is it that the networks are terrified of a landowner having a whole lot of land, and then letting it go fallow?

That last bit may need an example: suppose the Petitions (in accordance to the electorate, we expect) to allocate nothing to the Yerdus-Ash'ashuma highway. The Y-A committee has the right to ask for mediation on this decision. The decision has a chance to be overturned in some cases: if it's proven the highway is so underfunded and in lack of proper maintenance it's actually dangerous; or if the constant traffic there proves the highway is very much used and the voters are collectively acting as free riders.
That sounds like its too easily abused...the North Y-A Highway is beloved by the carpet-makers and loggers who transport their goods and the occassional fashion consultant over said highway -- but I feel like too many growers are transporting their lemons to other lemonade-makers & -sellers...so do I protest/take to court the Committee or the Petitions?
Say you own an apartment building, which you value at 4000 dyollasi. You sell it at 6000 dyollasi. The buyer has the opportunity to check your valuation, and sue for the 2000 dyollasi.
I'm guessing that Erdani don't have tv series about buying houses, fixing them up, and selling them ASAP. :)

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2023 8:28 am
by Ares Land
keenir wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:25 am Very nice food for thought, kudos.

Hopefully some of my questions are scenarios which the Erdani would not find themselves faced with - but they are what came to mind; sorry.
Thanks a lot! And no problem, really, I enjoy getting questions :)
keenir wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:25 am "Your honors, the majority of the smog afflicting this city is not from my clients' factory, but from the fireplaces of our accusers, as well as that quietly-hissing volcano to the north of our network. My clients wish to create a trust to bequeath the local hospital, but at a third the size of the trust being demanded by their accusers."
There is a lot of debating, not all of it entirely honest of course. The judge panel's decision, though, is informed by evidence:
  • In practice you can distinguish factory smog from fireplace-related smog by chemical analysis.
  • If the case is brought again -- which certainly can, and in fact such arbitration is handled by semi-permanent panels - and it turns out pollution has not diminished much, it's pretty clear the damages demanded the first time were insufficient.
I'm suddenly thinking of people who feel they need a given procedure done (maybe a hypochondriac, maybe one of those people who keep having plastic surgeries)
Hypocondria is a tax on any medical system, I'm afraid. In practice it's difficult or impossible to get a medical procedure done against medical opinion. In our societies they rarely do much more than harass the family physician.

What would happen if the doctor or the patient feared there would be a dangerous delay? (the doctor performs the job, then sues when it turns out there was not as much danger as said doctor or patient feared?)
Nobody is expected to predict the future -- If it looked urgent at the time, that's reason enough to do something.
But surely the point of the education is to learn the minutia, the finer points of law or whatever one is studying - which is locked away in the minds of the experts of those fields, and thus we're paying them for what they alone can teach us. (directly from them sitting alongside/as the teacher, or indirectly from their writings)
The Erdans see this as a paradox: experts can't restrict access to the finer points of law -- it may sit in their brain, but they don't own it. On the other hand, nobody has a right to force them to teach for free; that'd be slavery. So law is treated as a common property, that requires maintenance -- which means everyone has a collective right to access it and a collective duty to pay for its 'maintenance': in that case, teaching it.
So...the network pays the judges they bring to arbitrate in a given case? Or the people pay - prosecutor and defendant both pay?
The rule is that the party that has to pay damages to the other pays for the judge as well. (So 'prosecutor' if the defendant turns out innocent, 'defendant' if he's guilty.)
Wha?
So I pay to be able to flush my toilet...and I have to pay if I don't do anything that requires the toilet to be flushed?
You pay a set fee for the use of the sewer system; it would be uneconomical to measure how much you flush :) It's conceivable a hotel would pay a bit more.
If you don't use the sewer system, your refuse will end up on your neighbour's property at some point, and you'll be fined.

There's really no difference there from our system (this is financed by some kind of tax, we just don't think much about it -- I suspect the Erdans don't, either.)
Transfer of funds between different kinds of common property or committees. It makes economic sense, as an incentive, to collect fees/fines for using certain kind of fuels, but the air pollution committee has little use for the money. And in fact there are good reasons for it not to hold on to it; it may be tempted to overcharge or find pollution where there is none. So the fines they collect are distributed to other funds, typically to finance hospitals.
wouldn't a desire to bequeath/redistribute wealth encourage (rather than discourage) the committee to overcharge and-or to find pollution where others think there is none or too little to go to court over?
It could happen, but the probability is less than if the money went to the committee itself. A more serious problem is that the committee is entitled to a share of the fee/fine which of course can produce the wrong incentive.
You can sue the committee for overcharging though.
"Now we shall ensure that those poverty-stricken capitalists must be properly indoctrinated - I mean taught, at our schools."
Of course. There are that sort of debates. Funding for schools though is on a strict per-capita basis though; they are funded solely on the basis of the number of students. It's up to the families to pick what school they feel is better.
Wait...so someone studying judicial science, has to be a judge before they graduate the full course?

I mean, we have TAs - teacher assistants - but we generally try not to let them teach classes unsupervised until they've graduated (and even less chances are given to people studying more dangerous things, like operating heavy machinery, nuclear engineering, and deep-sea diving)
Think of it as a medical internship. In a hospital, chances are it'll be an intern that takes care of you.
Wealth accumulation has a negative effect: once every building in the city is owned by one of three people, there's no housing market there, unless you can keep building new condos fast enough to keep up.
But if every building has one of three owners, then those three are under obligation to be good landlords, making it so the poor and other people can live in the city...right?

So you can force the three to be good and hospitable, which presumably will require less cost and legal trouble for the housing network(s) and owners, than it would for the legal troubles and costs of lots of landowners being taken to court by lots of residents.

I probably missed something. Or several somethings. :)
First off, how much are they willing to sell? If they plan on selling a lot of it, it's not a big problem. If they wish to keep their hands on their property, it pushes real estate prices to extremely high values. That's a first barrier -- if you want to live in the city, you have to rent.
Second, given control on the stock of apartments, they essentially control the housing market and have a pretty free hand on setting the rent.
You could enforce any number of constraints on them, but that means a lot of costs and legal controls. They may abide by the regulation but decide to leave a good share of the apartments empty, for instance, then you'd have to do something about that to.


All in all making sure property doesn't solve all of the problems, but it keeps them at a manageable level.

If for instance, you own half the apartments in the city, it makes sense to leave some of them empty to increase prices; you lose money on the empty apartments, but that loss is more than made up by the increased rents.
If, on the other hand, no one owns enough apartments to significantly influence the market, they still can leave some of them empty... but lose money in doing so.

(Just one of the examples of the many things that can go wrong with a monopoly or an oligopoly)

In practice having various rules defending tenants would be possible, of course, and there are some in place but it's complex; whereas a wealth fee is a simpler expedient.
And as the Erdans know first-hand, if all agricultural lands is in the hands of a handful of landlords, the end result is millions of desperate people.
Are the landlords refusing to employ anyone on their lands? Even automated systems need people working them - had the Second Empire achieved unsupervised automation, and thats why modern Erdan keeps the lands from ending in just a handful of hands?

Or is it that the networks are terrified of a landowner having a whole lot of land, and then letting it go fallow?
Large latifundia have led to exactly that sort of problem. The problem is that huge landowners get a monopoly of sorts -- they can hire agricultural laborers at extremely low wages -- no single farmer can set up a farm for himself, and there's no one else than you to work for. They also get to set prices for food -- if only a handful of farmers control the market for agricultural products, they can set prices as high as they want.
So you get low wages and high prices. Latifundias are generally very poorly managed besides, and are often enough not terribly productive. Using a caricature here, if you set both prices and wages, you don't have much of an incentive to farm well.
That last bit may need an example: suppose the Petitions (in accordance to the electorate, we expect) to allocate nothing to the Yerdus-Ash'ashuma highway. The Y-A committee has the right to ask for mediation on this decision. The decision has a chance to be overturned in some cases: if it's proven the highway is so underfunded and in lack of proper maintenance it's actually dangerous; or if the constant traffic there proves the highway is very much used and the voters are collectively acting as free riders.
That sounds like its too easily abused...the North Y-A Highway is beloved by the carpet-makers and loggers who transport their goods and the occassional fashion consultant over said highway -- but I feel like too many growers are transporting their lemons to other lemonade-makers & -sellers...so do I protest/take to court the Committee or the Petitions?
I suppose you could take the Road Committee to court! It would all depend on the specifics, but for instance you could end up with a situation where heavy transport vehicle have to pay an extra fee.
Say you own an apartment building, which you value at 4000 dyollasi. You sell it at 6000 dyollasi. The buyer has the opportunity to check your valuation, and sue for the 2000 dyollasi.
I'm guessing that Erdani don't have tv series about buying houses, fixing them up, and selling them ASAP. :)
I'm not sure about what's on TV there for now :) That said, drastic improvement to the house would justify a higher price than reported, so perhaps they would in fact fix up houses a lot more!

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2023 6:52 pm
by keenir
Ares Land wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 8:28 am
keenir wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:25 am "Your honors, the majority of the smog afflicting this city is not from my clients' factory, but from the fireplaces of our accusers, as well as that quietly-hissing volcano to the north of our network. My clients wish to create a trust to bequeath the local hospital, but at a third the size of the trust being demanded by their accusers."
In practice you can distinguish factory smog from fireplace-related smog by chemical analysis.

"Your honors, I object - I reiterate that my clients are not denying that their factory has contributed to the smog, only to the degree of how much contribution. Is the learned Ares Land, whom no one doubts the sageness of their wisdom, suggesting that our city's smog cloud can only be generated by a factory or a fireplace, yet not both?"

(sorry; very sorry)

Basically, are you suggesting that someone be brought in to measure how much fireplace-related things are to be found in the smoke? Such people would have to work pro bono until the court case is fully resolved, wouldn't they? (ditto for a lot of other fields' at times of arbitration) That jacks up the post-case fine, yes?

Eeek, thought of something: what happens if the expert they want to bring in, says "No, my family is hungry, so I need to be paid now, up front, not after the case is over."
...do the judges simply go to another expert (though the above expert, being needy, is the sort of person who is supposed to be favored, yes?)
.......or does the court take out a loan (from a bank?) to pay the expert up front?
If the case is brought again -- which certainly can, and in fact such arbitration is handled by semi-permanent panels - and it turns out pollution has not diminished much, it's pretty clear the damages demanded the first time were insufficient.
Or the city was in a valley deep enough that heavy elements like smog don't leave easily. (or this time, my clients' original claim is correct - and while they may have possibly been the majority polluters before, most of the current smog is from fireplaces and people burning poison ivy)
:)
Wha?
So I pay to be able to flush my toilet...and I have to pay if I don't do anything that requires the toilet to be flushed?
You pay a set fee for the use of the sewer system; it would be uneconomical to measure how much you flush :) It's conceivable a hotel would pay a bit more.
If you don't use the sewer system, your refuse will end up on your neighbour's property at some point, and you'll be fined.
Have the Erdani invented the septic tank? :)

But surely the point of the education is to learn the minutia, the finer points of law or whatever one is studying - which is locked away in the minds of the experts of those fields, and thus we're paying them for what they alone can teach us. (directly from them sitting alongside/as the teacher, or indirectly from their writings)
The Erdans see this as a paradox: experts can't restrict access to the finer points of law -- it may sit in their brain, but they don't own it. On the other hand, nobody has a right to force them to teach for free; that'd be slavery. So law is treated as a common property, that requires maintenance -- which means everyone has a collective right to access it and a collective duty to pay for its 'maintenance': in that case, teaching it.
"Now we shall ensure that those poverty-stricken capitalists must be properly indoctrinated - I mean taught, at our schools."
Of course. There are that sort of debates. Funding for schools though is on a strict per-capita basis though; they are funded solely on the basis of the number of students.
Well, at least they won't have to have the social fear of "are our schools graduating our children whether they adequately learned the lessons?" in Erdan...the more kids in class, the better.
It's up to the families to pick what school they feel is better.
Better? if their kids can only get to one school, thats a choice of one; do families get fined for teaching their kids at home rather than send them to schools?

...could a family refuse the right to access said knowledge of things like law (by not sending the kid to school to study it)...and would such a family still have to pay for the maintenance?

Wait...so someone studying judicial science, has to be a judge before they graduate the full course?
I mean, we have TAs - teacher assistants - but we generally try not to let them teach classes unsupervised until they've graduated (and even less chances are given to people studying more dangerous things, like operating heavy machinery, nuclear engineering, and deep-sea diving)
Think of it as a medical internship. In a hospital, chances are it'll be an intern that takes care of you.
At the hospital system I go to, the interns sometimes come in & sit in on the nurses asking me how I feel, if I've had any pain, checking my temperature and pulse (and sometimes the interns get to ask too, but they don't get to take pulses or temperature-tkaings)...while the check-up proper is done by my doctor (or sometimes a really good nurse) -- there are sometimes an intern watching the doctor, but again, no touching the patient.

But if every building has one of three owners, then those three are under obligation to be good landlords, making it so the poor and other people can live in the city...right?

So you can force the three to be good and hospitable, which presumably will require less cost and legal trouble for the housing network(s) and owners, than it would for the legal troubles and costs of lots of landowners being taken to court by lots of residents.
I probably missed something. Or several somethings. :)
First off, how much are they willing to sell? If they plan on selling a lot of it, it's not a big problem. If they wish to keep their hands on their property, it pushes real estate prices to extremely high values. That's a first barrier -- if you want to live in the city, you have to rent.
But rent wouldn't have to be costly, given that people with money in Erdan society are encouraged - strongly so - to make things less expensive for the poor and needy.

And if I the owner have in my employ and-or my network, all sorts of engineering and cleaning experts to keep the properties in tip-top condition, pristine cleanliness and spick-and-span working order...and I preferentially provide housing to the needy and poor (which might irk some people - but thats not a complaint an Erdani could make openly, right? they might couch it in something else, though, methinks)...thats what people call a flex, right? (and a very good deed)

I'm probably blurring the line between the self and the network, though. :)
Second, given control on the stock of apartments, they essentially control the housing market and have a pretty free hand on setting the rent.
You could enforce any number of constraints on them, but that means a lot of costs and legal controls.
Ah.....I'd gotten the impression that, if someone is given a decision from a trio of judges - and does not appeal the decision - then they are obligated to obey the decision...and while some people are bad with obligations, that would just land those people back in front of those judges or other judges.

Thats why I figured it would be cheaper and easier to hand down such decisions to a small group of owners rather than to a large number of owners -- I had presupposed that the owners would comply, rather than keep getting dragged back into court...ergo my comment.

They may abide by the regulation but decide to leave a good share of the apartments empty, for instance, then you'd have to do something about that to.
Ahh...if I'm one of the three owners, my first concern would surely be making sure that if someone living in one of my properties had a problem, I'd get it tended to, rather than be a bad person who lets the problem fester (be it mold in fridges or broken washers, etc)...and tend to all of that before worrying that I don't have many properties being vacated.

I might need to rope in a hotel into what I own, so people moving to town in search of a residence, can stay at the hotel while their apartment/house is being built...I mean if the alternatives are to evict pre-existing residents from their house/apartment (which they'd be right to sue me for doing), or to leave apartment blocks and houses empty in the hope that someone moves to town.

I suppose I'm running my properties in a part of Erdan that doesn't see much immigration, so the need {for empty residences} isn't as great as it'd normally be.

If for instance, you own half the apartments in the city, it makes sense to leave some of them empty to increase prices;
:) I'm a weird landowner: I'd rather have higher prices because my properties are nice places to live & they don't stay broken if anything goes wrong.


That sounds like its too easily abused...the North Y-A Highway is beloved by the carpet-makers and loggers who transport their goods and the occassional fashion consultant over said highway -- but I feel like too many growers are transporting their lemons to other lemonade-makers & -sellers...so do I protest/take to court the Committee or the Petitions?
I suppose you could take the Road Committee to court! It would all depend on the specifics, but for instance you could end up with a situation where heavy transport vehicle have to pay an extra fee.
...which would severely irk the carpet-makers and loggers...so would they sue the Road Committee (who declared they need to pay the extra fee) or me? (as i am the reason the Road Committee declared it)
I'm guessing that Erdani don't have tv series about buying houses, fixing them up, and selling them ASAP. :)
I'm not sure about what's on TV there for now :) That said, drastic improvement to the house would justify a higher price than reported, so perhaps they would in fact fix up houses a lot more!
House flipping...thats what it was; sorry - my brain blanked.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2023 3:22 am
by Ares Land
keenir wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 6:52 pm Basically, are you suggesting that someone be brought in to measure how much fireplace-related things are to be found in the smoke? Such people would have to work pro bono until the court case is fully resolved, wouldn't they? (ditto for a lot of other fields' at times of arbitration) That jacks up the post-case fine, yes?
Yes, the expert fees would be reflected in the later fines, yes. That's a good thing.

As a factory owner, you know what you're emitting and how much. If you're honest about it, you can settle on an appropriate fee. If you're dishonest about it, you'll end up paying the same fine plus the expert's bill. You can be as tricky and difficult about it as you want: numerous appeals, ask for extra experts and so on -- but you'll pay huge fines if you're found out.

I haven't worked out the specifics of the payment but I don't expect it'd be a huge problem. At least of it would be paid upfront I think -- presumably on loan from a network or a bank.
Or the city was in a valley deep enough that heavy elements like smog don't leave easily. (or this time, my clients' original claim is correct - and while they may have possibly been the majority polluters before, most of the current smog is from fireplaces and people burning poison ivy)
:)
Not a problem -- the fees / fines would then be adjusted accordingly.
Have the Erdani invented the septic tank? :)
I think so :)

Better? if their kids can only get to one school, thats a choice of one; do families get fined for teaching their kids at home rather than send them to schools?

...could a family refuse the right to access said knowledge of things like law (by not sending the kid to school to study it)...and would such a family still have to pay for the maintenance?
There's no problem with homeschooling; there's no fine for it.
Suppose for some reason you don't want to pay for school. The first step will be not to use them, of course.
If you're subject to the wealth fee, some of that money would still got to school funding. If for some reason you object to that, one option is to donate the entirety of the wealth fee to some other common goods property of your choice. It'd be pretty much a symbolic gesture as the allocation of the Petitions' fund would be recalculated accordingly so schools get the same amount.

At the hospital system I go to, the interns sometimes come in & sit in on the nurses asking me how I feel, if I've had any pain, checking my temperature and pulse (and sometimes the interns get to ask too, but they don't get to take pulses or temperature-tkaings)...while the check-up proper is done by my doctor (or sometimes a really good nurse) -- there are sometimes an intern watching the doctor, but again, no touching the patient.
Oh! Over here interns have completed their studies and have an M.D. They're required to work as interns for a given amount of time before they're allowed to practice independantly. We also have the kind of interns you mention, which are confusingly referred to as externes.
I have something similar in mind for Erdani judges; younger students handle the paperwork or something, whereas older students -- that have finished their studies -- handle cases.
But if every building has one of three owners, then those three are under obligation to be good landlords, making it so the poor and other people can live in the city...right?

So you can force the three to be good and hospitable, which presumably will require less cost and legal trouble for the housing network(s) and owners, than it would for the legal troubles and costs of lots of landowners being taken to court by lots of residents.
I probably missed something. Or several somethings. :)
First off, how much are they willing to sell? If they plan on selling a lot of it, it's not a big problem. If they wish to keep their hands on their property, it pushes real estate prices to extremely high values. That's a first barrier -- if you want to live in the city, you have to rent.
But rent wouldn't have to be costly, given that people with money in Erdan society are encouraged - strongly so - to make things less expensive for the poor and needy.
Ah.....I'd gotten the impression that, if someone is given a decision from a trio of judges - and does not appeal the decision - then they are obligated to obey the decision...and while some people are bad with obligations, that would just land those people back in front of those judges or other judges.

Thats why I figured it would be cheaper and easier to hand down such decisions to a small group of owners rather than to a large number of owners -- I had presupposed that the owners would comply, rather than keep getting dragged back into court...ergo my comment.
Generally the honest landlord will get a smaller yield on his investments and lower capital gains, which means getting a monopoly or an oligopoly more difficult. If all landlords are honest, their capital gains will be somewhat smaller, wealth acquisition will be more difficult and you'll probably get a large number of small-scale landlords rather than a small number of large-scale property owners.

The wealth fee system is (hopefully) self regulating. If landlords, business owners and other asset holders are honest -- as you describe -- capital gains are relatively low, asset prices stay low. Asset holders pay small wealth fees, which is generally OK as wealth is more spread out, redistribution is taken care of naturally.
If capital starts accumulating, capital gains rises and asset prices do the same, wealth fees are correspondingly higher.
Ideally wealth fees work as an incentive: there's no point in trying to get very high ROIs as you'd end up having to pay higher fees; this should lead to lower prices and higher wages.

Or, on the other hand, businesspeople are free to be as ruthless as they wish to as long as they pay for the social cost of doing so.
...which would severely irk the carpet-makers and loggers...so would they sue the Road Committee (who declared they need to pay the extra fee) or me? (as i am the reason the Road Committee declared it)
You'd have a large mediation meeting, involving all stakeholders: representatives for the Road Comittees, yourself (probably an association of like-minded people), an association or support groups for Heavy Transporters, the petitions...

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 5:57 am
by Ares Land
What is Edani?

Erdani has no fixed borders; there's no Erdani citizenship either. Erdani can be defined as:
  • The territory of Metropolitan Erdani as it existed before the Liberation.
  • Those places whose inhabitants are represented to the National Convention or the National Petitions
i.e., wherever people vote for Petitions that federate with the rest of the Erdan Petitions, and wherever they use the services of networks that have representatives on the Convention is Erdani.
This more or less corresponds to the pre-Liberation borders. More or less.

There are complications. Local networks may opt out of the National Convention. People can subscribe to some of the Petition Funds but not all. Some networks may be invited to the Convention but opt not to attend regularly.
More critically: people are part of the network or the petitions system while being subjects of other states.
A few examples:
  • the Tarandim kingdom of Alwas combines both a monarchy and a faction system that is very similar to its model: the Erdan network system. Representatives of Alwas factions and the queen of Alwas have a seat on the national convention. They don't attend often and generally don't vote.
  • The Northern Territories are another non-state. Several local networks are traditionally held to be part of the Awanelo networks; the Metal Union likewise has a branch there. This means the Metal Union and the Awanelo network represent Northern Territories interes on the Erdan Convention; conversely both Awanelo and the Metal Union are present on the Northern Territories convention. The Northerners share their defense budget with Erdani and use the same currencies.
  • Ttavi, Erdani's eastern neighbour is very much a state, under an authoritarian regime. At the same time people living along its mountainous borders with Erdani are de facto, not de jure, under a network system that is plugged in to Erdani's at various points. They're also linked to Erdani through trade unions; some of the schools are part of the Erdan school system.
The former colonial empire remains linked to Erdani; the situation shows enormous variation. The situation of Alwas, a former protectorate, is one example of a possible arrangement.

Erdani lacks several other features of state. There is no immigration policy to speak off, no tariffs nor customs, and no common currency. (The Erdan strong gold dyollas is useful as a standard and is used largely outside Erdani, though within Erdani many will use different varieties such as the weak labour dyollas.)

Erdani, as a society, still on occasion need a way to interact with other societies on the planet. This is particularly necessary with states, and doubly so with authoritarian ones.
Taking again the case of Ttavi, the Ttavian government has a limited interest and understanding in the finer points of Erdan political theory. It wants an Erdan government to negotiate with, feels threaten by the activities of Erdan networks or petitions within its borders (the Erdans see this as free association of like-minded people; the Ttavians see a fifth column) and -- crucially -- could very well get the idea that invading Erdani would not be difficult and would make matters a great deal simpler.

The Peace/War Committee

The Peace Committee has the twin functions of handling defense and diplomacy.
It's funded through the petitions. Members are selected from the National Convention to represent all political tendancies: typically you'll have an equal number of member from conservative and socialist networks, and a somewhat smaller number from confessional ones. Membership is determined by rules from the Convention and vetted by the Petitions.
Decisions must be taken by consensus.

This results in a not-terribly-active kind of foreign policy. The Peace Committee handles diplomacy but what diplomacy exists is closer to what we'd call consular services.
Foreign powers generally find Erdani foreign policy particularly frustrating -- about the only decision that can be made are those that meet with general consensus. It has little power to commit Erdani to a foreign conflict or agree to an embargo.

The Peace Committee supervises the armed forces -- in times of war (as happened twice since the Liberation), it's called a War Committee.

Armed forces

Erdani maintains several armed forces, which are independant and to some extent in competition: the White, Black and Green armies, the Black navy and the Admiralty
The Black army traces its history to socialist militias; the Black navy from priand non-coms vateers. The White army and the Admiralty were historically Imperial military units that switched sides during the revolution. The Green and non-coms nd non-coms army stems from peasant movements.

Each of the five armed forces have a seat on the National Convention and to some extent act as networks in their own right -- this was granted as an effort to keep these independant from any specific networks. They are, at the same time, under control of the Peace (or War, as the case may be) committee.
All five started with different military culture; they eventually converged on a similar structure:
  • They're all-volunteer forces. After two years' service, volunteers can pick either reservist or permanent status.
  • Officers and non-coms are elected by veterans, reservists or permanents -- everyone gets a vote except for the volunteers.
  • Veterans get access to some legal services in peacetime, and some help in getting a civilian job.
Each of these armies or navies have different traditions and a somewhat political views (the White army and the Admiralty run conservative, the Black and Green armies are associated with socialist; the Black navy is unclassifiable.)

The idea of keeping armed forces separate is so they can check on one another (in case the situation was too clear, the White and Black army have a few ships of their own, and the Admiralty has a marine corps).
None of these have tried to seize power, though part of the Black Navy turned to piracy at one point.

Funding of the Army is through the Petition or voluntary donation. They are not well funded, and are a great deal smaller than we'd expect for a country of its size.

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 6:08 am
by bradrn
Ares Land wrote: Fri Feb 24, 2023 5:57 am The Peace Committee has the twin functions of handling defense and diplomacy.
It's funded through the petitions. Members are selected from the National Convention to represent all political tendancies: typically you'll have an equal number of member from conservative and socialist networks, and a somewhat smaller number from confessional ones. Membership is determined by rules from the Convention and vetted by the Petitions.
Decisions must be taken by consensus.

This results in a not-terribly-active kind of foreign policy. The Peace Committee handles diplomacy but what diplomacy exists is closer to what we'd call consular services.
Foreign powers generally find Erdani foreign policy particularly frustrating -- about the only decision that can be made are those that meet with general consensus. It has little power to commit Erdani to a foreign conflict or agree to an embargo.

The Peace Committee supervises the armed forces -- in times of war (as happened twice since the Liberation), it's called a War Committee.
I’m thinking this is starting to sound awfully like Switzerland.
None of these have tried to seize power, though part of the Black Navy turned to piracy at one point.
So what stops them from seizing power? What eventually caused the Black Navy to stop its piracy?

Re: Erdani - a stateless society.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2023 8:41 am
by Ares Land
bradrn wrote: Fri Feb 24, 2023 6:08 am I’m thinking this is starting to sound awfully like Switzerland.
Actually took this from something I read about the Haganah, which apparently ruled by a similar system in the 1930s -- ruled by a committee with right- and left-wing Zionist organizations equally represented.

The Swiss Federal Council follows the same idea, with all major parties/languages/etc. represented. The Federal Council, though, has other responsabilities -- including federal finances. The Peace Committee only takes care of defense and diplomacy.
Another distinction: Swiss neutrality is official policy, enshrined in a number of treaties. Erdani's neutrality is a pragmatic position comparable to US neutrality before 1917. There's nothing preventing it from foreign intervention as long as it has transpartisan support.
None of these have tried to seize power, though part of the Black Navy turned to piracy at one point.
So what stops them from seizing power? What eventually caused the Black Navy to stop its piracy?
Several factors:
  • Ideology first and I mean that in a good way -- nobody's really interested in a military dictatorship.
  • Tradition of rivalries between armed forces. The Black Army and the Green Army would intervene if the White Army tried to take over and everyone knows it.
  • Wide distribution of power structures. There's no convenient centralized body to handle money, finances, transportation, communication.
  • Loose command structure and elected army leaders. Democracy has many faults but keeps some of the obvious authoritarism out. Plus if the White Army leader tried to take over, chances are half the regiments or more would mutiny.
Piracy was handled by the Admiralty -- and about half the Black Navy itself -- turning against privateers-turned-pirates.
(Some people would insist it never really stopped. Ttavi complains a bit about Erdan piracy.)