I’ve given a lot of thought about governance and what form would be most fair and equitable. Of course, short of a major calamity or worldwide revolution against the growing global empire spearheaded by the US and it’s children organizations such as the WTO and IMF that feed the multinationals and the oligarchies that control them, there probably won’t be a chance to start with a clean slate.

In my version of an ideal government the individual maintains absolute sovereignty of his own domain, which then extends outward to encompass the family. Then the community. Communities can then form cooperative alliances, which can scale all the way up to encompass the whole world.

The important thing is that as sovereign rulers of our personal space, we can do whatever we feel like, so long as it doesn’t impinge on the rights of others. I believe this is the idea the founding fathers of the United States had back when they talked about Citizens, rather than the mere citizens to which we have since been demoted. The idea also scales upward. That means that a community can do whatever they like, so long as it does not impinge upon the rights of other communities. In other words, if your community wants to have a marriage unit of two males and two females, that is fine. Or three males. Or man and a dog. Whatever. Anyone who wants to live there will abide by the community standards. The whole world in it’s march to global government has the absolute wrong idea.

Of course, it gets really complicated to implement. How do you decide who has the right to build his house on top of the hill? Who has the rights to the water? The forests? It would seem that socialism or communism offer reasonable approaches to resource allocation, but not in any form I’ve ever seen implemented – at least not on a macro scale. But, that is the whole point. The answer lies in the community. If everyone in the community has an equal say, in theory, there should be equality. Of course, deciding everything by referendum could be painfully tedious. In my ideal community, there would be a rotating community council to handle day-to-day governance of the village. Membership on the community council would be mandatory and determined by lottery. Setting the whole thing up and creating a village constitution will be a major effort that will require everyone’s input.

Then there are issues of security. Communities would have to pool resources to patrol roads and waterways. These would likely be in the form of guilds, another form of community with the same rights as any other community. Travelers would have to agree to the terms set forth by the guild, or they can choose to travel the lawless lands.

I believe that individuals absolutely have the right to the fruits of their endeavors. I live in China and witness everyday both the legacy of callous indifference left over from the old communist system and the amazing dynamism of ideas taking off thanks to the hard work and ingenuity of the founders of new enterprises. In my ideal scenario, each village would have a village industry, which it would trade for goods and services with other villages in the network. Those individuals who are more industrious will likely acquire the ability to purchase more goods and services than those who are not – an aspect lacking in every pure form of communism ever put forth on this planet, although things are certainly changing in Russia, China and Vietnam.

Of course in all political systems it boils to politics and power. The richest and most powerful people in China are the same ones who would have been the richest and most powerful no matter what system came into place, or others just like them. The most vital aspect missing from all governments, especially the current system in the US, are proper safeguards in place against corruption and exploitation. The US was founded and built upon slavery. It is still run on slavery. We’ve just outsourced them instead of importing them. Well, we import plenty too, only they sneak in voluntarily.

Unfortunately, for my ideal system to take place, there will likely have to be a major calamity so that the world can fall into chaos and we can start from a clean slate. Out of the chaos, the ecovillagers and their network will survive. Of course, that shouldn’t stop anyone from attempting to work within the system for now. In fact, helping to create that network is my life’s great work.

[tags] government, governance, council, ecovillage, community, China, Russia, Vietnam [/tags]

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