No More Halfway Measures: The 2016 Tea Party Platform

Last edited Sun Sep 2, 2012, 12:45 PM - Edit history (1)

I just stumbled upons something I wrote a while ago that seems relevent right now in this Party Convention season. It's the 2016 Tea Party Pledge to Privatize Citizenship. Originally posted on July 4th, 2011:

Today as we celebrate the American Revolution, let us look forward to future milestones of freedom, independence, and the ultimate triumph of free market forces. Once again Americans will lead the way, when the Tea Party of 2016 unveils its manifesto. The road will be long and hard and resistance will be furious, but true freedom, profound individual capitalism, will not be denied us. Here now, reconstructed from the future through the science of guided interest group polling, is the outline of our coming liberation as seen and described by the Tea
party of 2016:

The true free market solution to government tyranny and mismanagement could not be more obvious. Privatizing citizenship in one bold stroke would modernize and improve the delivery of government services far more effectively than anything another century or two of compulsory democracy could accomplish; through unfettered competition. Perhaps even more important, privatized citizenship empowers the individual to select the choice that is right for him or her self, liberating us all to seek the leaders and legal system that best meets our own unique individual needs.
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Government after all is a service; a rather unpleasant one perhaps - akin to sewage treatment or garbage removal, but a service none the less. Throughout history, when left to his own devices, Man has always chosen to be governed in some sort of manner. Some chose tyrannical despots and others chose benign despots, while a few more esoteric sorts experimented with concepts like oligarchy. But in all cases people remained free to vote with their feet - or rafts if located in places surrounded by water. Heavy handed bureaucrats had not yet invented Passports and Visas. Individuals could search for their ideal community in any social grouping holding similar enough world views so as not to kill them upon their arrival.

In recent centuries so called Democracies have come into fashion as a means to deliver government services to individuals. They co-exist today alongside a broad array of more traditional time honored government models, such as monarchies and dictatorships. To each his own, as well it should be, but is it really? Compulsory citizenship makes a total mockery of that concept. It is the well spring of all tyranny, and the reason why government is held in such poor esteem by all thinking individuals. No matter what its outer trappings, at root compulsory citizenship IS Communism. What power can an individual really hope to have have when the government owns you rather than the other way around?

The answer, our ultimate liberation, lies in privatized citizenship. If true government is a service (unlike the communism we now live under) it should be agreed upon and arranged for by both parties, through a contract stipulating the actual rights and obligations of each party to the other through that contract. Governments should compete for citizens on the open market, much like health insurance companies here do for customers today. In that way will government become more affordable and responsive to our individual needs, under the threat of losing citizens to other more competitive nation states if they should fail in that effort. Compulsory citizenship provides no incentive for governments to improve.

On the open market over time it will become clear which nation states are generally more desirable to contract for citizenship with. Some may offer special amenities, such as warm weather, or good ski slopes, that prove popular with many perspective citizens. Citizenship in those nations, all other things being equal, will rise in value which would be reflected in the cost of a citizenship contract for that country. Some liberals might cry out that its unfair for poor people to be priced out of citizenship in, for example, nations with nice beaches. By so doing they only show their own lack of understanding of the power and ingenuity of unleashed market forces.

All men may well be created equal at birth, in that we all tend to have the same number of toes and fingers, but equality ends right there as even those born with but one eye can clearly see. One need only look at the natural state. Rabbits get lots of sex but they also get eaten quickly. Birds are able to fly but they then must contend with windmills. Nature is not socialist. Everyone has a calling, everyone has a burden, no one is truly equal. Privatized citizenship embraces the natural order and by doing so enhances it, for through it all are blessed by the bedrock of true liberty: choices.

With Privatized Citizenships, even the poorest benefit from increased choices. True they might have to shop for citizenship in land locked nations, but they could seek out the one boasting native music most pleasing to their ear. And if beaches really are that important to someone on a limited budget, perhaps a discount citizenship is affordable in a nation where the King can legally claim any women for one of his wives. There might even be a country so starved for forced labor that it would pay the poor to become citizens there.

While subject to the terms of a four year citizenship contract an individual would be legally bound to the rules of that State for the duration of that contract. Those rules would all be spelled out somewhere in the citizenship contract, which could make each one a fascinating weekend read. No reason to worry whether your first born female will be thrown into a volcano to appease an angy goddess, just look under "human sacrifice" in the index before signing a contract should that be a particular concern of yours.

What of those so lacking in personal initiative that they refuse to shop for citizenship during the designated open enrollment period you ask? Or the handful of social degenerates so loathsome by nature that no nation will offer them a citizenship policy? It seems to be a curse upon humanity that in any population that aspires to generate winners some will still resort to losing. There exist tested means to deal with this contingency, where stateless individuals could still live; Refugee Camps.

Acknowledged medical and religious experts will determine what is the bare minimum needed to sustain human life, and this shall be guaranteed to all refugees, regardless of the nation of their former citizenship. Conditions in these camps may indeed be deplorable but that in turn will provide compelling market incentives for all malcontents and slothful individuals to better themselves to become eligible for citizenship in one or more nations.

With privatized citizenship for all, the world will become a continuing free market test of efficient means for governing, unearthing constantly new cost cutting and profitable methods for limiting bureaucracy while still maintaining adequate levels of social control. No longer will the most productive members of society be burdened carrying the weight of the least able among us. The introduction of citizen choice will make that a thing of the past as peer groups naturally congregate in nations most suited to their personal gifts. Innovation will flourish as elites shake off the shackles that now now bind them to meritocracy. And all of humanity will be humbled to finally witness the greatness that lies within some of us. Privatize Citizenship Now!