Embracing Change: The Future of City-States and Governance

This episode dives deep into a radical new governance model, proposing a system where an individual's civic value and vote are gauged by their economic contributions. The discussed model incorporates AI as citizens, utilizes blockchain for transparent governance, and aims to attract cutting-edge industries. It further addresses demographic challenges, proposes a tiered society, and introduces tribal-like social structures for enhanced social services. The session also critiques current democratic systems and emphasizes the need for innovative governance to handle future societal complexities.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] existing governing systems assume that every citizen has equal value when they objectively do not. Our system assumes an individual's value is correlated with their utility to the state

Malcolm Collin: Well, if your vote is based on the amount that you're paying in taxes, now there's a huge disincentive to using tax loopholes.

Simone Collins: Is the core of governance design as it should be approached by everyone going forward.

 What will incentivize people to do a thing that is good for everyone? It is about aligning incentives, period. Don't look at what was done in the past.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collin: Hello, Simone. Our country is dealing with the aftermath of the election, and yet we filmed this before the election. With that being the case, I need to say that democracy doesn't work. It is a terrible system. One person, one vote.

Speaker 12: This year we explored the failure of democracy, how the social scientists brought our world to the brink of chaos.

Malcolm Collin: The guardian. Caught us saying this and did a piece on us recently where they aired for us [00:01:00] on our behalf, our plan for a new governance system for a charter city.

Thanks guardian. I love it. The guardian has been our biggest supporter. I feel so much when I watched them trying to deal with our raise in fame as being very much like

Speaker 2: Four! I mean five! I mean fire!

 It's

typical. Why has it done that?

I'll just put this over here with the rest of the file. 0

Malcolm Collin: . And all they can think to do to attack us is more and more articles that get our message to more and more people. And nobody like, you know, they'll do an article, like here's their horrifying system of government that they developed.

And then [00:02:00] they, they put the whole slide deck there, which shows that they're just being misleading, and it's actually a pretty nuanced and neat system of government, which is fundamentally, like, what, what is this system fundamentally elitist communism, you could call it. And I actually think when we talk about the Haven State Network that I think society is going to descend into, so a quick, Note on why charter cities are important and the direction I think society is going.

So with rapid fertility collapse, you're going to have two phenomenons. One phenomenon is many countries are going to have depopulated regions and regions that are experiencing massive brain drains, especially if there are smaller country, like the aisle of man, which is where we were gonna pitch this.

Or you know, think of something like Greece or so many countries around the world that are in otherwise relatively stable areas. But as soon as somebody gets educated, they leave, right? Like there's no reason to stay and they've got beautiful landscapes, beautiful areas that people could set up shop.

But. It [00:03:00] is. It is really hard to keep people and the best way to do that. The best way to draw educated people back is to get the types of businesses that employ educated people back. And that means the types of companies doing like cutting edge genetic research or crypto or AI. And so I created a governance model That was designed to draw all of those types of companies into the country.

One where AI can have citizenship, where cutting edge genetic research can be done, where the governance model was baked into a DAO, which is a type of a blockchain ledger, basically. Every aspect of it was designed to be as friendly to like cutting edge economic stuff as possible and as adaptable to changing things as possible.

But that's that's why I was like, okay, so I'm going to pitch this to these to these regions, but at the same time, the second effect of fertility collapse is going to be that right now, you know, you have like one elderly person for every, [00:04:00] let's say three working age people, we will reach an age where every working age person is going to be supporting like three elderly individuals.

And in addition to that. Elderly individuals will make up the majority of the electorate, and they will be able to vote more and more resources to themselves. And so, even though it's not like a viable system they're not gonna say one day, oh, we should cut Social Security. I mean, we've already seen that they're unwilling to do that.

And so, what ends up happening then? Well Um, taxes go up on the few economically productive individuals that are left. And as we pointed out, it's the economically productive regions of countries that typically have the lowest fertility rates. So if you look like was in the United States, and it would be so great if kids from poor family had just as much of a chance of being economically productive as somebody from an economically productive family.

However, that's just not true. That is not a nut that societally we have figured out how to even come close to cash. Cracking, which means in the next generation, dramatically fewer people are going to be economically productive than was in this generation, [00:05:00] which means the taxes on those individuals need to be astronomically higher.

Well, here's the problem. Things aren't region locked in the way that they used to be. to be in terms of economic models. It used to be that if I was a big CEO, I'd have a skyscraper and tons of people and hundreds of thousands of employees or I'd have oil fields that I needed to protect. And so a country could tax me and I couldn't just like leave.

They're like, Oh, well, then we'll just see the assets or the oil fields or the human talent. Right. Now with AI, this is really flipped on his head to an extent. And we've seen this with the new startups, but we've also seen this in the way that big companies are going. We're like, they're just hiring a lot fewer people and like programming and stuff like that because they just don't need it, which concentrates the wealth in fewer and fewer people, which means these smaller and smaller groups of economically productive individuals.

When the state goes after them for their money, they're just going to say, F it, I'm leaving. Especially if charter cities exist as an alternative and these charter cities are nice, Fun places with a lot of interesting people. And you're like, well, how can [00:06:00] you do that? How do you sort of work your way into it?

Well, you can start with them being vacation spots by that. What I mean is you build like yearly conferences. They're like, maybe the next iteration of like a hereticon or something like that is always happening at one charter city. So everybody goes,

Simone Collins: you also can create it as a place where people take research sabbaticals.

So some early city states have reduced regulation on biomedical research, and that's something we would certainly propose for any city state. We were involved with is like, a no holds barred, though, always with informed consent medical research area. So, then, in that case, you would create a temporary market of medical companies and researchers who will come and take a sabbatical in this area to run.

Clinical trials on something or to run a Ph. D. You know, thesis like on some experimental treatment or thing that would be really cumbersome from a regulatory standpoint to study or research or vets or validate [00:07:00] in some other country.

Malcolm Collin: And these are what we call the Haven state network. And so we'll go over a governance model for one proposed of these.

But before we get into that, I will note. Okay. Ironically, I think one of the most common governance types within the Haven State Network is likely going to be communists. And people can be like, what? Aren't these like hyper capitalists and elitists? And it's like, well, communism actually kind of works when you can kick out nonproductive individuals.

And given the level of post scarcity that these may have, like you go to something like heretic on, we don't pay for anything at heretic on because the individuals who are running it just have so, so, so much money that they're like, Oh, if I have interesting people there, that's fine. You know, people will have new ideas.

I'll get to meet new people. That's, that's what I'm there for. The people running these havens might have so much money that it's just like, Oh, you know, I, I, I pay for all the daily expenses of individuals so long as they are economically productive.

Simone Collins: [00:08:00] Yeah.

Malcolm Collin: And I think that this is where the guardian, when they were talking to me about the Haven model I set up, they were like, yeah, but what about people who aren't economically productive?

And I was like, well, my state's not really for them. I'm so sad they didn't publish that. I was like, there's plenty of other countries that can take people like that. And right now we just haven't really done that globally speaking, but I think that more states need to be like, Oh, the economically productive people who need the state to support them.

Yeah. Maybe somebody else can take care of them. When you were talking

Simone Collins: about this last night, you simply cannot have in any sustainable fashion. a country or city state that both has porous borders and generous social programs. You can have one or the other, period.

Malcolm Collin: And this is a quote from my grandfather that somebody on Twitter tried to get us to denounce him for and I was like, because he uses an

Simone Collins: out of date, not flattering, possibly slur term to refer to immigrants.

Speaker 10: And some goddamn f*****g goo [00:09:00] bags!

Malcolm Collin: But I don't think the term was considered that offensive back in his day. They're like, denounce your grandpa for saying something racist in a really poignant, forethoughtful economic point that most mainstream politicians of today still don't understand.

It's a really good point. When you hugely restrict who can come into a country and who can stay in a country, you can be incredibly socially generous. But when you are completely free for anyone to enter then you have to be incredibly socially restrictive. Eventually, any system that is socially generous and has open borders will, like osmosis, equalize with the outside environment for individuals who are not economically productive in training the state until the state is offering nothing more, and then it's just no reason to live there.

So. Let's get into the actual plan we put out here. The slide deck was titled, The Next [00:10:00] Empire. Really, really catchy there. So, on page one, and I'm actually going to read it and then we'll discuss each page. Is it possible to create a region with a high economic output and a high fertility rate?

Fertility rates are falling in every developed nation across the world, especially in technologically engaged regions with high economic output. This yields a unique opportunity to create a charter city poised to become a dominant world power in the near future. Almost every nation in the world is based on a failed experiment. Two and a half centuries ago, an ancestor of one of this project's founders, George Washington, so that's one of Simone's she is descended from He's

Simone Collins: a great, great, great, great something uncle.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah, and he didn't have any kids himself, so that would make her the closest related living pathway. Worked with a diverse team of visionaries to create a new model government. Unfortunately, the model failed to match their vision almost immediately with safeguards against things like political party formation, failing within their [00:11:00] lifetimes.

Despite this, almost every nation on the planet today has based their governing structure on the outline of the failed compromise. This group tentatively created. When creating a new governing system under which large populations will live, it makes sense to go with systems that seem relatively safe and functional while distributing as much power to stakeholders as possible to lower the odds of revolt.

Never to lest if we were to craft a world power de novo with an opt in population, they would almost certainly build something very different. These systems were built not just for computers,

 But for an agriculturally focused subsistence society without trains and planes, imagine how a system intentionally designed from the ground up could fare.

And, and I do think a lot of people forget that, that the model that the founders created was both a compromised and a failed compromise within their own lifetimes. And yet almost every democracy since then has been based on it. Yeah, it made [00:12:00] sense to do because you don't want to make up a new system if you just fought a revolution and you can't really risk that.

And you have, you know, hundreds of thousands of millions of people living under it and you don't want to risk something falling apart. Right. But if you were creating something de novo, of course, you would want to create a completely new system.

Simone Collins: Why would an existing country secede land to this kind of experiment with rapidly collapsing and aging populations across the developed world, especially in rural areas, many countries are desperate to save their faltering economies. Why would a young person who has left a decaying rural area for college return once they are educated when almost all of our world's economic opportunities are clustered in one of a handful of dense population centers around the world?

Our project will allow us to transform a region on a downward trajectory into one of the world's future tech hubs, a center for dynamism, investment and growth. , why won't existing charter cities succeed? For a charter city to succeed, it must be appealing to the host country, generate revenue, e. g. attract companies [00:13:00] and generate citizens, e.

g. attract immigrants. Most extant charter cities are primarily concerned with realizing an ideological vision. While ideological vision can attract a small number of immigrants, it will always be fundamentally less sustainable than a persistent and obvious economic opportunity not available. Anywhere else in the world to bring the smartest, most economically productive people in the world to a place that places opportunities must be economically attractive and meaningful in a global context.

And this is what we're getting at when a lot of city states are focused on just being vacation areas. You really have to have a reason to go because there are. There's an endless number of amazing vacation areas. I'm not going to say there's a ton

Malcolm Collin: of vacation areas. They make a few big mistakes. They try to attract ideological extremists.

They're like, you agree with our ideology so much more than your host country's ideology, or wherever you were born's ideology, that you will move to where we are.

Simone Collins: Well, at a risk of [00:14:00] making it like a social club, and framing it as such like a society is well, then it's attractive to people who really care about social ties.

And what you're proposing to them is essentially socially isolating them. You're taking them away from major international cities. And you're putting them in a city state. That is the opposite. So it's like trying to select for people who are the least likely to buy into this. If they were going to take that approach, you would need to select for religious extremists who want to go off and make a compound.

Which is what we tried

Malcolm Collin: to do in the way that we structured this. Exactly. Yes, but religious extremists have multiple religious factions and you'll see how we do that. But in addition to that I will note that one that Patrick Friedman, who has been on the show before talking about charter cities, he finally got fed up and decided to just start his own.

And I really like the charter city that he's starting as a model, which is, it's in Africa and instead of focused on trying to get like white people from the United States to move there who already have like great jobs and live in a fairly stable country, it's focused on just being [00:15:00] marginally better than the other countries in Africa and focused on disproportionately getting economically productive people from the other African countries to move there.

Simone Collins: Can we actually just create Wakanda? That would be so cool.

Malcolm Collin: Oh, I don't think so. It's just supposed to be like marginally safer, marginally economically more productive marginally. And I'm like, that's great that I mean, yeah, that does sound

Simone Collins: good. And it would it would attract talent. It bothers me so much that I've met while traveling, you know, sitting around in airports or in cars, so many people who have immigrated from African countries that are unstable, who are very smart, very educated, and then they go to a country like the UK or the U.

S. and they are Uber drivers, they're cooks. What? Like, this is totally wasted talent. If they could just move to a country, In Africa, that allows them to be what they have trained to be what they're educated to be. I mean, I see the same with Venezuelan immigrants as well. And we saw this all the time in Peru.

Some guy would deliver groceries to us and be [00:16:00] like, so, like, what's your background? And they'd be like, well, actually, I'm from Venezuela. And, you know, I used to be a biomedical researcher. And here I am delivering your groceries. And I just. Hate that so much. So I love this concept, but I also wish it was so cool.

Malcolm Collin: If you look at the way that we structured this going forward, what you're going to realize is that a lot of charter cities are built to try to attract people. And we are building this to try to attract dollars which is very different. Well, and beyond that, to

Simone Collins: it, to attract intelligence.

So not just intelligent. Agentic people, but intelligent agentic AIs who can count as citizens in this city state.

Malcolm Collin: Right. But, but the larger point being is that do not think when you're building a city state, how do I get people to move here? Think how do I get cash producing assets to move here? Whether it's companies or AIs or anything

Simone Collins: else.

Well, because if there is cash there, people will show up.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah, people come when there's cash. [00:17:00] People don't necessarily bring cash, especially if they're ideological extremists.

I signed a permit allowing them to have their concert here. Their little festival should pump some money into our economy. They're hippies! They don't have any money!

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like with the EA movement, when suddenly daddy crypto box, Sam Bingman freed showed up and was like doling out those, those grants.

Everyone was an effective altruist all of a sudden. So how, how the city state will attract and create economic demand. So one, and this is probably my favorite part, although I love AI citizenship too, but number one, no holds barred medical research. Enshrine into the constitution That the only medical research not allowed is that which lacks informed consent.

This attracts both extant and cutting age businesses to develop therapies and innovations, including artificial wombs and human genetic modification that are high in demand, but nearly impossible to develop in a heavily regulated environment. This will also create a medical tourism industry. So [00:18:00] you get the vacationers coming in for the cancer treatment that the FDA won't approve, and you get the researchers who are doing their fellowships.

But, okay, AI citizenship is also super cool here. Enshrine into the Constitution citizen rights for synthetic intelligences. As AI develops, much of the world's economic opportunity will be generated by AIs themselves. However, restrictions on AI owning property or capital will make most nations difficult places to host these centers of economic production.

So I love being a safe haven for them. And then Dow operation, writing the government into blockchain allows us to make the city state's currency, literal tokens within the government. This will make the region attractive for cutting edge web three projects.

Malcolm Collin: So I think that this is, and this is the interesting thing.

is if you're thinking right now, how could you make AI a citizen? Right? Because if you go as a one person, one vote system, making AI a citizen doesn't make any sense because an AI could just clone itself and then [00:19:00] have tons and tons of votes. And you don't know, like what have an AI? It's not a well, well programmed AI and it's dramatically less competent than the average person.

You can't have AI be a citizen in that respect. So many people may hate that we have moved away from a one person, one vote system, but in a way we've actually made the system more inclusive by doing that because now we can have AI politically participate, whereas it's impossible for AI to politically participate in the one person, one vote system.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I like that. So, to move on, most importantly, the government must incentivize the creation of highly productive economic actors. To your point, Malcolm, our model achieves this by 1 creating reproductive technology due to the conditionally enshrined protection for medical innovation, which allows for the possibility of mass production of genetically selected humans and to providing an incentive systems that grant more voting power to the creators of economically productive agents, including [00:20:00] A.

I. S. And corporations. You're most excited about the governing structure, aren't you? What? You're most excited about the governing structure, aren't you? Do you want to

Malcolm Collin: talk more about it? Yeah, you can go straight to the governing structure. The, the mass production of what we should mean is what we meant by that, is government subsidized.

Genetic selection. Not that like people would be forced into genetic selection. Obviously nothing in the system causes that,

Simone Collins: but I think that becomes apparent when you look at the sort of tribal, religious, tribal based system of distributing, yeah, but we'll get to that in a second. First, let's go

Malcolm Collin: over the overall governance structure.

Simone Collins: The proposed government is run by a single executor, basically a dictator, who has full control of the government's laws and operational structure during their tenure, though, to be clear, and I'm adding this, it's not in the deck, they can't just nullify this system, for example, you know, you can't like, wish for more wishes when you get a three wish genie.

This maximizes efficiency and flexibility, while also allowing for the [00:21:00] Judicious and timely removal of an inefficient executor or one who exploits their position for personal gain. Note, executors can be AIs, and honestly, I imagine most of them will be. Once every four years, an executor must be unanimously selected by three wards.

At any time, an executor can be immediately recalled and replaced if ever two wards decide so. Executors are therefore given much more power than the head of any existing government structure. However, they are also easier and faster to recall.

So there are the three wards. that are selecting the words.

Malcolm Collin: I want to talk about the executor model and why I chose it. So it allows for like, if you look at problems in the U. S. Government right now with all the bureaucracy that's been building up and everything like that, this would allow, for example, a president to immediately just clear it all out if they wanted to.

If that was the will. Of the voters, you can completely restructure the way the state structures in between electoral cycles. You could flip [00:22:00] between a capitalist system and a communist system. You could flip between a currency based on a Dow to a currency backed by gold. You could flip from. You know, a like one type of medical system to a completely different type of medical system.

It allows for radical, radical and fast changes to happen within the government. But because you have the system where if two wards ever turn against you, you are immediately removed. You have a reason to do it. To be paying attention to what the voters actually think of the various voting bodies and you can't just run rex, you know, through everything, right?

You need to pay a lot of attention to what the actual voters are thinking of the things that you're doing because the voters have a much more direct. Lens to sort of touch you. I'd also note here that it also provides the break between the voters and who is actually running things, the executor, [00:23:00] that the founders tried to create with our governance system, with our electoral governance system.

So what the founders thought is, well, Your average citizen isn't really smart enough to know how to vote for, but they'll like know who's smart locally, so they'll vote on an elector and the elector who will be better educated because they were like a popular, smart, local person will then vote on, you know, who's the president, for example.

But the problem is, is because we ended up with so, so, so many of those. It doesn't really make sense to vote on them anymore. Now you just vote on the president directly. So you know who's going to be for people who don't know that that's how the U. S. System works. That's how the U. S. System works. I even think it's legally enshrined in some areas that they have to vote for whoever, like, I don't even know, I think in most states who I'm really voting for is my elector to vote for me for Donald Trump.

But that's the way it works. Now. This system rebuilds what the founders were trying to do is that system because there's only three words and because there is [00:24:00] three words, that means it's the discussion between the three words as to who they chooses the executor. And so it wouldn't necessarily make sense if you're running for award.

To run and say, I want this particular candidate to be the executor because then if another ward who was running on a different candidate ends up the executor, then the executor just then gets chosen by the third world, which is basically an unelected ward. We'll get to how they work. But the point being is, that would be a very bad way.

to run. It makes it so that you would never do that. So you're always actually going to be voting on a ward, not voting on the executor themselves. And because you're always voting on a ward, and it'll make sense why you would only want to vote on the ward in just a second, the wards themselves, when they get in a room and they're saying, okay, Who's the most competent person to run the country right now in line with what I told the voters that I was going to achieve for them.

They're actually having that conversation in a meaningful way and in a way that [00:25:00] the founders wanted us to have as a country, but we've never really had. So continue.

Simone Collins: So how are these words selected? Remember that companies, programs, AIs, and any other productive member of the economy counts as a citizen.

We have the word of the present, the voting power of citizens in this election is determined by their local tax contribution to the governing system, minus the amount the governing system has spent on them to determine their net utility to the state. Any salary paid to a government employee is treated the same as payouts like welfare.

If an individual If an individual wants to pay more than their share for of taxes for additional voting power title privileges They can't.

Malcolm Collin: So this is this is the first ward is elected basically by how much you pay in taxes net how much you take home and an individual could could say, well, why don't govern it workers?

Because basically, this would mean they'd be very hard to get any vote within this particular system. If you are, say, [00:26:00] a teacher paid by the government. or a doctor paid by the government if the government ends up subsidizing doctors. And this goes to something that we argue in our governance book, which is to say wards of the state should never have a vote.

If you can vote to just increase your own salary, basically, if that's one of the things that you may want, then you shouldn't have any voting power. Obviously you should be. Given a salary based on the, the desires of the people who are actually paying you, which are the reflective

Simone Collins: of the utility you offer to the state.

Malcolm Collin: Well, no, it's not reflective of the utility totally because a teacher or a police officer still has utility to the state, but in the same way, like, if you look at the United States and people are like, oh, people in D. C. don't have a vote in presidential elections. Because they can influence what's happening in Washington just through like socially what's happening in DC, which is absolutely a true thing.

It's sort of the same thing. A police officer or a teacher or a anyone who's working [00:27:00] on behalf of the government administration. Intrinsically touches and affects that administration and that administration's policies, and as such, they don't need an additional vote to have their voice heard their voices already being disproportionately heard within the governance system.

So that's the other thing here. One is, is you don't want to create the negative incentives by giving words of the state of vote. And the other is, is to say they're, they already have an ability to outsize impact the voters, but the 2nd note I'd make here with these sorts of individuals is I find it really perverse and I was, you know, telling this to the Guardian article that one person could pay like 50, 000 times as much of another person as taxes gives the state 50, 000 times as much as another person and they don't get one iota more say in how that money is spent or what's the best way to spend that money like that seems to me ridiculous and deeply unfair.

Simone Collins: I wonder if it's a cultural thing because I definitely with everything in my life. Have [00:28:00] this intuition of, well, if someone paid for it, then they get to call the shot. Like if someone paid for my vacation, then they get to decide what we do every day. If someone is paying me to do work, then they get to decide how I do that work.

And I think this should be the same way with government. I mean, if someone's paying for government, then they get to decide how the government works, right? It seems, but is that a cultural thing? Because this seems to be so foreign to other people.

Malcolm Collin: I well, whether it's a cultural thing or not, this system is sure to draw economically productive agents, whether they are.

And you see how this breaks the AI problem. No longer do you have the problem of like AI is being able to spam themselves. If an AI is being economically productive and contributing to the state, then it should have a say in what the state is doing correlatory to how much they're contributing to the state, at least within this branch of the government.

If a company is paying a bunch of taxes. That company gets a vote, and there's other places where companies get votes, by the [00:29:00] way. In London, companies get votes and companies get votes in Hong Kong. So that's not a particularly novel concept, but the vote being correlatory to how much they're paying into the state is.

Same with individual human actors. If I'm an individual with a ton of money, I can come into the state. And now, in addition to this, I am actively punishing myself by cheating my taxes or by finding tax loopholes. Because I have a lower vote, the more I take advantage of tax loopholes. So this has the additional model of sort of forcing taxes onto the table.

Simone Collins: Mm hmm. The ward of the future, a citizen's voting power in this election is determined by the net utility to the state of all citizens they have brought to the state, either by having and raising citizens, coding them in the case of AI or founding them in the case of corporations, plus half the net utility of any secondary recruits of their direct recruits brought, for example, grandchildren or spinoff AIs or companies.

Malcolm Collin: So this system is essentially meant to increase the number of people that exist within the [00:30:00] state. And you could think of it as a bit of a pyramid scheme, but that's the way society really needs to be structured population wise for people to have more people. And as you can see here, it means that me as an agent was in the state, you know, the guardian obviously wanted to frame this as the more kids you have, the more votes you have, but that's very explicitly not what it says.

If I bring an economically productive immigrant into the state, because when you immigrate to the state, you always say this person was my benefactor who brought me in that person's taxes, any taxes they end up paying, ends up contributing to this portion of my vote. However, if I bring an immigrant into the state and that immigrant is a net drain on the state, but I have like economically productive children, that immigrant's economic weight to the state ends up subtracting from the economic benefit that I produce through my children.

All right. So, I, I really love this as a system. It also means that people who found successful companies are going to have an outsized impact within this part of the system. And if you have, you know, grandchildren or an AI, you write, then creates another thing or a company you create, then creates [00:31:00] another company or creates an AI.

You also receive some benefit from that. So there's a, a, a huge reason to look into the future within this particular board.

Simone Collins: Exactly. Then, finally, there's the word of the past, and I find this uniquely fascinating because It provides a sense of continuity, but I never would have thought of it, and I think it's brilliant that you did.

And this is something you first started discussing in the Pragmatist Guide to Governance. So it's the ward of the past. This ward is elected by a vote from all past living executors. This lowers the influence of party politics and enables those with the most knowledge of being an executor to have say in who gets the job.

Actually, you know where this is also? It's in Asimov's Foundation series. Oh, he has this? Yeah, because the, the empire, although it's not a great example, because the empire is like crumbling and poorly governed, but it's, it's run by this clone of just the same person always. But there's like the old retired version of the clone.

There is the active middle aged [00:32:00] governing version of the clone. And then there's the young kid clone who's like apprenticing and learning under like the grandfather and the dad, and then like the young one. And it's kind of an interesting, I mean, it sort of creates a sense of

Malcolm Collin: how, how are there any correlation between these two systems?

Simone Collins: Well, because you have the previous ruler of the empire. Advising the current ruler of the empire in the

Malcolm Collin: system. It doesn't function that way. We talked about a system like that in the governance book, but this system explicitly isn't that

Simone Collins: they're voting. So this

Malcolm Collin: system, I'll explain it in different words and it might make more sense to you.

Okay. This system is like having a council of presidents. Mm-Hmm. , being one of the bodies that is important for electing the next president. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. Sorry. No, no, no. Take off this, take out this whole thing. I was. I'm very sleep deprived. I was thinking of something. Yeah, this is, yeah. It's like having all past presidents choose who they're voting for, but they're not influencing this person.

They can't take them out. Well, kind of. Working with the word of the

Malcolm Collin: [00:33:00] future or the word of the present, yes. The word of the past is why you would never have party politics for. So, I'll explain why. If there are party politics that differentiate between the two words, like somebody is much more likely to win one word than the other word the two voted words, this is the word of the present and the word of the future I suspect that it will be pretty broadcast from the perspective of the ward of the past if they are going to vote for one of these two parties.

And because of that, it doesn't really make sense to do that. I. e. you would basically know whoever the ward of the past was going to support is going to be the person who wins the moment party politics ends up developing. Which is why you need party politics to not end up developing. The word of the past also has a huge benefit.

If you look in like the U S it, one of the things that's always talked about is like past presidents are usually very friendly with each other. And they always like to go golfing together and a lot of the animosity between them dissolves really quickly because [00:34:00] you know, they've experienced something unique and now they're interested in the future of the state.

Well also they have more knowledge about the job than anyone else. Right. You know, they're going to be very good at potentially choosing somebody. But in addition to all of that it means that you aren't going to have the NASA problem where you have a wild party swings where one person, because the executor can do so much to overhaul society, right?

Like just say, well, okay. We're going to build like a totally different system for our governance structure. This makes it much harder to do that unless most past presidents also think that's a good idea. Yeah. Which is a really good system to prevent radical changes. And the only case in which you could do that, in which most past presidents don't agree to it is when the general population, or at least the economically productive population vastly agrees with it.

Anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: So, why not one vote, one person? Because apparently people think this is absolutely crazy. Like, here's what I was just thinking this morning. I [00:35:00] was like, oh yeah, I mean, Because the United States started out as one man, one vote. We didn't find that to work forever because we found that there were actually other contributing members to society that maybe also deserve to say like, like maybe not white people, like maybe women.

Like there's no, why would we assume that the voting system we have today is perfect? It wasn't perfect when the founding fathers started the United States and it's not perfect now. I'm not saying that our system is applicable to the United States at all anyway, but I'm just saying like, it's funny that people are so.

Insistent that our current voting system is unimpeded. So anyway, why not one vote, one person? Our system recognized that competence is not evenly distributed among a population and rewards individuals with more control over governing decisions when they have demonstrated proven measurable competence.

Our system furthermore lowers the voice of those who have, already work within the government or receive government support [00:36:00] as they are adversely incentivized to protect their own positions and privileges. Productivity is not the only contributory factor that warrants governing power. The system must also reward those who raise or build productive elements in a society while punishing those who bring citizens into the system that are net drains on resources.

Finally, the influence of past leaders on present leadership is designed to allow for more continuity than existing systems of government, dampening the NASA problem, as you say Malcolm, in which particularly large, long term projects are severely undermined with every administrative change. But I think here's where it's even more spicy, like, because some people are like, well, well, well, maybe I can get with one, like, different kinds of voting, but this is where I think it's so fun, because why not?

Yes. And this, right? So a tiered society, existing governing systems assume that every citizen has equal value when they objectively do not. [00:37:00] Our system assumes an individual's value is correlated with their utility to the state and optimizes around these individuals with the most utility to

the state all to ensure the competent operation of a state that attracts productive immigrants. To this end, not all citizens are equal within the state. Individuals can be rewarded with titles and additional privileges determined by the executor by opting into lump sum payments or higher tax schemes.

This is akin to paying for a premium membership, but at the state level, I love that premium membership in a government

Malcolm Collin: pay for like a Lord title or a knight title that gives you access. Honestly,

Simone Collins: honestly

Malcolm Collin: though. What were

Simone Collins: lords? It original work like lords, but premium members, that's what they were. It was a premium membership.

Yeah. We just need to bring things back to a natural or buy it often. That's how it was. Yeah. That's what, what do people think Lords were? What do people think barons were? And, and I think what's funny is that we we've lost this utility in society. By getting rid of classes. And I mean, titles now are only [00:38:00] a name.

They're only inherited. There's they're, they're functionless. They aren't real anymore. A real title is one that's bought. That's it. If you are not buying your way into a title, you don't really have a title because it doesn't do anything. Anyway, the set of laws an individual has to follow is determined by their title.

EG, a person opting into paying more taxes may have a different speed limit that applies to them and have reserved parking spaces. I love this. I love this so much. I mean, obviously from a certain perspective, it's incredibly dystopian because you're thinking about this from the perspective of some comedic movie in which some loser in society can't even park to go for a job interview because he's not

Malcolm Collin: Here's what you're not thinking about is when you can create opt in mechanisms for the ultra wealthy to pay more than their fair share and be happy and excited to do so, that's a tax burden that's not going to the middle class and poor.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, yeah, the flip side of that scene in which this guy is getting frustrated about not being able to park. Well, [00:39:00] yeah, but this guy also isn't paying very much in taxes. You know,

Malcolm Collin: the way I put it this way is. Am I okay with wealthy people in society having it a bit easier if they're paying like billions extra in tax dollars that I don't need to pay?

Yeah, of course. It seems dystopia until you think about it for five seconds and you realize it's perfectly rational.

Simone Collins: Well, and again, that's, that's us on the, okay, that's at least me on airplanes. You know how I am with business class. I always wish I could fly business class everywhere. But then whenever it comes to it, cause I obviously have my own discretionary income, I could spend my money on that because I, but I don't, cause it's dumb.

I don't, I don't want to, right. It doesn't matter to me. So every time I walk by business classes, I board a plane. I'm like, yeah, you know, they're sitting there and I wish I were sitting there, but also like, I don't want to pay for that. So they deserve to be here. Yeah. They're subsidizing my flight. Like that's fine.

I, this is a choice that I've made. And I think that that's what this comes down to is that. As long as people are framing things logically instead of being like, Oh, I deserve to be in business class, but I mean, I don't, I don't want to pay for it, but I [00:40:00] still deserve to be here. Well, that's not a plane that works.

That's not a plane that exists. Okay. You can either pay for business class or you can sit with the chickens. And Simone begrudgingly. And that's how it is. Anyway, I'll continue reading your slide. Words of the state. Individuals with net negative contribution scores, who are not state workers, are always treated as a separate class.

The consequences of this status are determined by the current executor. This system is designed to encourage productive immigration while also pressuring non productive citizens to leave the country. It works.

Malcolm Collin: It's a great system.

Simone Collins: If you don't want to sit in basic economy, fly on the plane. Don't fly on the plane.

Social structure for a person or entity to become a citizen. They must either start a new tribe or be accepted by an existing tribe. This is where we're getting into describing what Curtis Yarvin was the first person who was like, yeah, this sounds like the millet system. And you're like, yeah, tribes are associated with cultures and [00:41:00] cultural norms, e.

g. Catholics, Mormons, et cetera. That's where we're An individual's tribe is responsible for social services, medical care, schooling, social safety nets, et cetera. And can demand independent taxes that are collected by the state and distributed to the tribal group. An individual can switch tribes if they choose to, but only after both paying a fine and paying back their tribal group for all services rendered to them, net their tax or voluntary contributions to the group.

For example, if an individual joined the Catholic group for their good medical care, they would not be able to deconvert immediately after the medical issue was dealt with unless they paid for the tribe's net tax loss on their medical expenses. Individuals moving out of the group. from their parents homes, as well as individuals marrying for the first time, are exempt from this rule.

Tribal groups can apply any restrictions they want on joining, and can impose additional laws on their members. For example, a tribe may enforce monogamy, but are responsible for internally policing them. [00:42:00] This works well for me.

Malcolm Collin: If people struggle to understand, like, why this is so valuable is it makes it much easier for religious extremists to protect their culture and individuals with unique cultures to protect their culture, which is to say, when you move into the state, a portion of your social services and a portion of your taxes are going to your tribal group.

So when the state collects your taxes, it collects an additional amount of taxes, which can almost be thought of as like. in the United States, you have your federal taxes and your state taxes. And this, you would have your federal taxes and your, basically your religion taxes. But it might not be religion.

It might be like the urban monoculture. It might be like the hippie group. It might be like the atheist group, whatever group it is. It's like your religion slash cultural group taxes.

Simone Collins: I'm trying to think. So how would things be different for the Amish, for example, who already lived in a, In a very isolated state and sort of provide their own services to their own community.

How would it be different for them if they operated within this city state governing system versus what they [00:43:00] already operate with right

Malcolm Collin: now? The Amish. So, so in the United States, when I am choosing which state taxes I want to pay, I am. Choose which I want to live in. Okay. And then that determines which state taxes I'm going to pay.

So if I'm an Amish person, I'm paying for like the public school system, even though I'm not using the public school system, I'm paying for Medicaid and medical costs, even though I'm not using any of that, like it's very unfair to the Amish. I Anywhere in the United States, I'm often paying for things that are not things that I may culturally use.

So, for example, I may be Catholic, and I'm paying into government funded abortions, or government funded prep for gay orgies. You know, I, well, you should see our episode on that. It's absolutely wild what's happening. But in this system, I move there and instead of choosing like which state I want to be to wherever I live within the system I choose which tribe I am affiliating with which is basically like a religion And then that determines an additional part in addition to like my federal my state taxes [00:44:00] an additional tax I'm going to pay which is determined by the tribe, but The tribe also gets to distribute things like medical care, things like education, things like all sorts of different social services that might be like free psychologists, free counseling, free you know, all sorts of stuff like that that might be very valuable to me.

And so if I'm something like the Mormon church and I'm coming here, basically the 10 percent tithe would be automatically added to the taxes and then distributed to the Mormon church and the Mormon church would distribute their They're services to members, you know, whether it's billing systems, et cetera.

And this is a really great system because it means that now me as a cultural group, I need to, on a per cost basis, also appeal to people. And the reason we have the system where a person cannot opt into a group and then opt out is it prevents scamming these groups. So I couldn't, for example, join the Mormon group in name only just to get access to their like medical care and then nope out the moment my medical bills were paid, you [00:45:00] know, I'd have to pay that back.

And somebody is like, well, that could cause abusive situations, but we noted that and we allowed for loopholes for the two most likely abusive situations. Yeah, this is your,

Simone Collins: your, this is as far as you can go with porous borders and a heavy social state.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. One is when you're married, you can pop out whenever you want, which is great.

You can pop into a new tribe whenever you want. You don't need to pay back stuff. And two is, and then this is only for first marriages. And two is. When you leave your parents household, you can pop out of any religion you want. So you're not stuck in your birth culture. Now, this is assuming another culture will have you keep in mind because you will be a burden to these cultures and you may be a burden to these cultures in terms of caring for you.

They may just say, eh, we don't want you because you're not a productive member. You don't seem sincere. You don't seem whatever. And I suspect that we're going to see a much more exclusionary view of who can join their membership. By religions that are in this system

Simone Collins: and when you even saw this when the puritans Went to the [00:46:00] colonies.

There would be all these discussions on Can you bring this servant? I don't know. Well, are they like a solid person? Are they productive? I don't know When they

Malcolm Collin: leave the indentured servant, do we actually want them being a puritan? Yeah

Simone Collins: there was there was yeah these were exclusive communities and people were very selective about who they brought in because they also knew that they were They were going to be largely dependent on each other and they couldn't afford a world in which there were deadweights.

All right, continue.

Individual bonds. This is largely inspired by Robin Hanson, right? Yeah. So hat to Robin Hanson. We love you. Every individual AI or company registered in the state, for example, every politically relevant unit. Pays two tax streams. One is paid to the state like normal taxes, while the other consisting of 25 percent of whatever the state is paid is paid to their bond holders.

The initial owner of an individual's bond is the individual's creators. For example, the child's bond would be split 50 percent [00:47:00] between their parents. Some tribes may demand a portion of this bond in exchange for membership. For example, the Mormon community may own 50 percent of this bond for every child born within their community.

The system is designed for three purposes. One, it yields a direct and large cash benefit for having a child and raising them well. This cash benefit exactly scales with the presumed economic productivity of the child. As parents can sell their children's shares, shares that will be worth less if parents do not raise the child to be economically productive.

Two, it provides an economic incentive for those with capital to invest in those without it. For example, those born into disadvantaged families. For example, if an otherwise smart kid was born into a disadvantaged family and their parents traded or sold their shares at a discount to another educational institution, that institution would be financially incentivized to educate the child and help them in any way it can.

We imagine most of the time these shares will be sold to educational institutions [00:48:00] or other types of companies that specialize in improving people's economic status is that will be in the best interest of both parents and children. Three, it provides a large economic incentive for companies, educational centers, and cultural groups to study methods for raising economically productive individuals.

This is a super fun idea.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. So, for people who don't understand, it'd be like if Simone and I had a kid. And then that kid, 25 percent of all the federal taxes they paid, end up going to ever hold the bond on them. And so, suppose like, polygenic screening costs a lot of money, but the companies that are offering it have a really high degree of confidence that it will help these people be more productive members of society, then the polygenic screening companies can say, okay, for 10 percent of any child we creates bond, we will do the polygenic selection for free.

Or an educational institution, and this is the problem with existing educational institutions, is they have no reason to actually care about a child's outcome. And I suspect that many services, like educational institutions and polygenic screening companies, [00:49:00] will Only be able to sell for bonds because me as a parent, if one educational institution is like, I'm going to charge you X many hundred thousand dollars a year and another is like, Oh, I just want the bond.

I'm like, okay, well, one of these is actually motivated to improve the kid's economic outcomes while the other is just motivated to take my money. Obviously I'm going to choose the bond holder. So there's so many society externalities to this or like a company like Google, if they're like really convinced that we can make X.

Type of people more productive. They could go into like a whole poor community and then just buy all the bonds in that community and then increase the value of those bonds by improving the quality of life of that community. Yeah, this

Simone Collins: is the core of governance design as it should be approached by everyone going forward.

So in the past governance design was created, but based on, well, this is how we do it, maybe if I tweak it a little bit, it might be less shitty. Whereas what you really need to look at is. What will incentivize people to do a thing that is good [00:50:00] for everyone? It is about aligning incentives, period. Don't look at what was done in the past.

Don't think that that, and people hear this, this concept that we first heard of from Robin Hanson and they're like, Oh, that sounds weird. I don't know. Like selling a bond. Are you like selling that person? Just stop, stop thinking about that and think about incentives. This is brilliant.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah. But as I was saying with Google, so like, suppose.

Google does something. It makes predatory actions beneficial. So let's talk about a predatory action. Google goes into a ghetto and they buy up all of the kids bonds in that ghetto and people be like, Oh, this is so predatory. Well now what does Google have an incentive to do? It has an incentive to renovate all the playgrounds.

To renovate all the school systems, to make sure all the houses get renovations and all the lead is tested. To give

Simone Collins: scholarships to all the children, to give them tutors. That's how it maximizes

Malcolm Collin: its earnings from these bond holdings. Like that is the key to making a state. It reminds me of this scene in Dune when they're like, [00:51:00] Oh, well, the smugglers operate underground.

We can't know what they're doing. And he goes, well, then why don't we just tax the smugglers, but make it legal? And they're like, wait, I hadn't considered doing that. And it's like, yeah, if it's legal, but tax now, there's a benefit to them being above board with us, but we can also better monitor what's happening.

And this is what we mean with things like, Well, if your vote is based on the amount that you're paying in taxes, now there's a huge disincentive to using tax loopholes. And it's the same with bondholders. Now there's a huge incentive for predatory actions, which aren't predatory at all, but benefit everyone involved. All right. Well, I am so excited that we got a chance to go over this. We've been meaning to do something on this deck forever. I am so glad the Guardian published this for us. Thank you. Thank you. And their outrage.

Of

Simone Collins: the, they thought we were harboring in this or, or trying to bring in this dystopian revolution and Patrick, I loved, I loved Patrick's tweet of, he like just shared this image of this beautiful sci fi utopia and [00:52:00] he's like, this is the world that the guardian doesn't want you to bring in. This is

Malcolm Collin: the dystopian they're afraid of, our like solar fun future.

How horrible. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, no. He has the best

Simone Collins: comments, by the way. Patrick, you got it, man. I read YouTube comments just to find yours.

Malcolm Collin: Simone, were the comments weighted towards negative or positive on this one?

Simone Collins: The Guardian? People don't go to Twitter to post positive stuff. They don't, they don't go to, to X and pat you on the back and say, good job.

Malcolm Collin: People actually think that this governing system would work. What are the flaws that we haven't thought of? What are the negative externalities we haven't thought of? And yeah, I'd be very interested to hear all of that. I am honestly, I think it's a brilliant governing system. I'd be really excited to see it implemented.

And Simone and I, even this morning, we're talking about going into the Charter City business. I was saying, you know, we should really [00:53:00] look at pitching this to a few countries, see if we can get this off the ground. I think people get really excited. Let's get a few ultra religious groups in on this. I mean, I think that that's what you really need to make this happen.

And in a few. Like incredibly tech forward organizations. And then we can build the first of the future charter cities or the first of the future Haven networks.

Simone Collins: No, on a less bright note. And this is something that I'm just really coming to terms with because most countries are not willing to, or politically unable to come to terms with the fact that you cannot have both porous borders and generous social services.

They will fall apart. Yeah. And we need, we need somewhere. I'm sure most people want somewhere they can flee to. That is okay. And I think most people are going to be willing to work for it. They're going to be willing to be productive members of society. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that even most people who are heavily dependent on social services and handouts would much prefer to be independent.

citizens. It's just that once you get [00:54:00] stuck on this stuff, you get stuck in a loop and it's really hard to get out. And I think that creating this and many other haven states that have similar systems, it's not just something of like, this could be a solution. We need this because we are going to end up between this, this, this social services and poorest borders dynamic and demographic collapse.

We are heading toward civilizational collapse and we need it. We need that techno feudal system of little cities upon a hill, little city States that survived this. So yeah, maybe we do need to get into this because. There has to be something left for people to flee to.

Malcolm Collin: Well, yeah, that we do. We do.

There has to be something for people to flee to because I

Simone Collins: don't like this. I don't like thinking you think through things. I'm like the rest of society. I don't think through things. This, this is fine. I like [00:55:00] thinking this is fine. And you just showing me the flames all around us.

Malcolm Collin: If we have any ultra wealthy people who watch this and want something like this set up let us know.

We're actually competent enough to put this together, but I want to see some bites before we do because the last time we tried to do this, we got a lot of interest from people who wanted to buy into the project. This was project Eureka, but we didn't have connections with capital that was interested and we didn't have

Simone Collins: the property.

Malcolm Collin: Yeah, we had the property. We could have done the whole thing for like 10 have been so inexpensive. I was very disappointed. And this would have been right outside Manhattan, which was so frustrating. Such a good property was an old convent. But they're completely different model than the model we're describing here.

But, and I don't want to go into that model right now. That's for a different episode. But for the model we're describing here, If you buy into this early, you could end up making an astronomical amount of money if things play out the way that we predict they will play out. But you would need to buy in enough to get this off the ground.

So [00:56:00] let us know if you're interested. This is one of the things that hard EA, if we end up getting a lot of money is going to maneuver to make realistic. And I just love you to decimum.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I love you too. And I love everyone else who's working on City States because the more people working on this, the better.

I mean, we want to get involved, but that's not just s**t on the people who are trying. I admire everyone who's trying. And obviously people have done a ton of groundwork. The fact that Prospera has people living there. I mean, this is happening. It's incredible

Malcolm Collin: that Prospera is off the ground.

Simone Collins: I just can't believe what you've done.

mover in this space. I have such massive respect to all the first movers. This is to me, it just, it's so impossible to, I mean, it can be done and it has been done, but anyway, huge respect. I love you. I love them. I love that we have a shot at the future, but I'm also so scared. I'm so scared. I'm so scared.

Love you to decimum. I love you too. It's scared.

Malcolm Collin: Oh, escalators.

Speaker 5: [00:57:00] You need the sign? Let me get the sign. The sign's right here, buddy.

Speaker 6: Can I take this sign home with us? I don't know, buddy. We'll have to ask them. Okay. Come on, Mommy. Do you Know what they say right on top here? Not on the bottom.

Speaker 7: What do you think it says?

Speaker 6: You, you do it.

Speaker 7: It says Trump Vance. And

Speaker 6: what does

Speaker 7: this say?

Speaker 6: And what does this whole

Speaker 7: word say, this

Speaker 6: long word? And what, and,

Speaker 7: and, and what does these

Speaker 6: numbers make? 2024?[00:58:00]

I sold a car. So, What? We gotta put up this sign? So, so, because they gotta vote. Everybody vote! Hey, come on,

Mommy! Let's go.