ideas-voluntarySocialism

voluntary co-op.

designed to take on the positive functions of government, in order to let governments scale back to their police and military functions -- this way, coercion is minimized (freedom is maximized).

members pay 2% of their after-tax income (they would be required to submit copies of the tax returns that they submit to their government) -- call this the dues.

children of members become members (see below). otherwise it's just an insurance plan or just something like AAA.

Provisional membership:

New people are admitted (not just anyone, only people who share the ideology of the association) to provisional membership. dues are collected, but the main benefits are not given during provisional membership (fringe benefits, like discounts, libraries, etc, are given -- but no stipend). provisional members don't have a real vote (but they have a nonbinding vote -- and possibly are expected to use it from time to time to show committment to democratic processes). after 9 years of provisional membership, members decide whether to offer them admission.

anytime during provisional members, the provisional member may decide to leave the association. in this case, they get their dues returned to them, unless the association invested them and lost the money, in which case they get a portion of their dues returned (proportional to the value of the association's investments). the association does not promise that they will get anything back, and there is no fiduciary duty. the association should try to give the member the real value of the dues (i.e. adjusted for inflation), so leavers won't have lost money due to inflation -- maybe the association should give some of the investment returns, too (but mb not, to encourage commitment).

if offered admission, they have the option of refusing it and leaving (and probably getting some money back), or accepting. if they accept, they will no longer be able to get any money back upon leaving. at this point they become junior members.

Minors may not be provisional members.

Sponsored provisional member:

A sponsored member is like a provisional member, except that they are freely chosen by their sponsors (they don't have to be admitted by the community; but when they advance to junior membership, they still must be admitted; but see below), and they may be minors.

Sponsored members are admitted automatically to junior membership at the end of their 9 years unless they have been convicted (either by the association, or by an outside court) of a crime (or infraction of the association's rules), in which case they are subject to the same admission procedure as provisional members.

Children younger than age 9 may not be sponsored provisional members (but they may be earmarked for later sponsorship in case the sponsor dies before their sponsee is 9, in which case the sponsee inherits the sponsorship at age 9).

Sponsored provisional members who are minors are not assessed dues for receiving living expenses and educational expenses (i.e. this is not counted as income).

Sposored provisional members who are minors and who choose to leave the association may choose to "pick up where they left off" later, in exchange for whatever money they were given when they left (the idea being that if some 11-year-old kid throws a pouty fit and resigns, this shouldn't invalidate the parent's sponsorship if they want to join later).

The sponsorship of Sponsored Provisional Members who are not minors and who leave reverts back to the sponsoring member, who can then sponsor someone else instead.

junior membership:

receives main benefits (stipend)

senior membership:

After 9 years of junior membership, they become senior members.

Senior members are eligible to sponsor new members. The way it works is that each senior member can sponsor one new member.

Senior members cannot sponsor anyone but their children or adopted children until they are 50 years of age (the idea being that, if they initially think they won't have children but later change their mind and want to have children, those children can be sponsored)

After their sponsorships have been used, two senior members who are younger than 65 may still both choose to give up their membership in order to sponsor one other person (in which case the sponsors are automatically re-admitted as sponsored provisional members, if they choose; however, if they re-advance to senior membership, they will not get more sponsorships -- although they may continue to give up their memberships again to create another sponsorship).

families:

So, consider a two-parent family, where each parent was a sponsored member. This means that, upon turning 9, they became Sponsored Provisional members, and then upon turning 18, (unless they behaved badly) they became Junior Members, and start receiving a stipend. They probably didn't make much up until age 18, so maybe they didn't pay much dues, but now until age 27 they are paying 2% of their after-tax income. At age 27 they start a family and have a child, which they sponsor; this consumes one parent's sponsorship. Soon after, they have a second child; this consumes the other parent's sponsorship.

If they want to sponsor a third child, both parents will have to give up their own stipend (and their vote) for 9 years (while still paying dues).

Main benefits:

For now, just the stipend. In the future, maybe health care also.

Stipend:

Much of the real interest on the money accumulated by the association is dispensed evenly to each non-provisional member (the principal is never tapped). This forms a stipend.

Fringe benefits:

Besides the main benefits, some of the real interest is spent on overhead, and some of it on fringe benefits (discounts, maybe meeting space available to members, bikes to rent cheaply, AAA type stuff, etc -- also other social service-type stuff, such as addiction counseling, free lawyer consulting, etc).

Steady state:

At steady state, assuming a fixed lifespan, the sponsorship system does not grow the size of the association (since eventually the sponsoring member dies), except via the senior sacrifice mechanism. Therefore, excluding that mechanism, the stipend that can be payed per-person should not decrease over time, even if all of the real interest were paid out as stipend. In fact, it should increase over time, because every now and then some member will get rich, and their dues will exceed their stipend.

There are only two ways the system grows:

(A) new people joining as provisional members. In this case they are over 18, so they are probably making some money with which to pay dues (the association can reject applicants who don't seem likely to make money), but they are not getting a stipend. Therefore, they association is using their money to build up savings which will later generate interest from which to pay their future stipend

(B) two senior members reverting to sponsored provisional members in order to sponsor a new member. Assuming that the senior members will be making money while they are provisional members (and they will have to in order to survive, since they won't receive a stipend), and assuming that the sponsored member does not (maybe it is a child), this means that the association can start building a new pool of savings for each of the sacrificing members, and can use its saving for one of them to supply the new sponsored member with interest-earning capital with which to pay a stipend. In this case, the association profits substantially because the interest-bearing capital connected with the second sponsoring member can be put into the general pool and used to increase the stipend level for everyone. This cost serves as a disincentive for families to force the association to grow faster than replacement rate via sponsorships.

they get benefits

children of full members (up to some number of children, say, 2) automatically become members upon turning 18. (perhaps each child must be sponsored for 36 years (i.e. if two parents, 18 yrs apiece) before becoming members.

lottery in case of too many children (jen's idea)

another idea is voluntary socialism via societies like the elks with their own taxes -- the rich are incentivized to join to gain contacts. could also be libertarian lobbying groups. sounds like the Masons, etc, used to be like this (back when all the important people in a town would be members).

so how to achieve this again (the situation where so many important people are members that there's a strong selfish incentive to become one, even though you are "taxed"). mb to appeal to more people, you could get membership by donating to your charity of choice, not just to the group itself -- just like tax credits.

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ok new idea to simplify the way that you pay for people's children:

first, instead of thinking only about dues, also think about perpetuities. Attached to each member is a perpetuity that pays their stipend.

at the birth of a child, immediately 50% of each parent's membership is transferred to the child (without the parent's consent). when the child reaches 18 they get the payouts instead of their parents, but until then the parents still get them as the child's guardian.

if the child fails to qualify for membership, the membership does not revert back to the parent, it reverts back to the organization (it is consumed). This is so that the parents don't have an incentive to get their child to fail. (what if the kid dies? hmm... don't want to give the parents incentive to murder their child, but it would be sad if the kid dies and the parent then can't afford to have another. i think the killing the kid thing is unlikely, so if the kid dies the membership should revert)

so if two parents have two children, the parents are no longer members and no longer get a stipend after the kids are 18. Maybe there is some 'member emeritus' status in this case so that they continue to get the free trade provisions w/r/t trading with the community, and whatever other non-stipend services are offered; and some sort of senior support benefits that the parents get by virtue of being the parent of a member.

now what if the parents have more than two kids? we want each kid to have a whole perpetuity or none, so the first two kids become members and the rest don't.

however, if the parents can afford to, they can buy memberships for the other kids. this would support the cost of the organization buying new perpetuities in trust to them.

note that these perpetuities are held in trust for the person they are bound to, but they revert to the organization upon death of the members, or upon their expulsion, and they transfer to a child.

now what if a man has two kids but doesn't know, or doesn't tell his family, and then later has two more kids? In theory, the first two kids should get his perpetuity, and their is none left for his next two kids. But these kids may grow up expecting to have memberships and then suddenly the first two kids are revealed. So there should be some date after which the transfer to the kids becomes final even if the organization didn't know about some other prior-born children who should otherwise have gotten them.

note that this first-born-so-as-to-not-break-up-the-perpetuity is like primogeniture.

there's something else old called 'fee tail' or 'entail' to prevent property from being sold, but the perpetuity is only being held in trust anyways so i don't think that applies here.