Localities

The right to secede and establish a new government is a fundamental human right, the right that all others depend on. Localities shall be established based on common environment and needs of the people within them.

The People owe no allegiance to any government that does not represent them. They may, however, owe others financially, a debt that is not absolved as the result of a secession and must be resolved among all parties with a financial stake in the outcome. The People of the Globality shall have final authority in the determination of what is a fair settlement.

There should be no maximum Locality size, but the minimum size should be around 100,000 people, below which there would be insufficient resources to efficiently manage it. Localities need not be based on having a contiguous land mass.

For example, all the developments in an area could make up one Locality, with all the rural land around them making up another. There will have to be some sort of anti-gerrymandering control defined by statute to prevent the difficulty of determining the boundaries of a Locality. For example, an entire subdivision will have to fall within one Locality, determined by majority vote of people living within that subdivision. Localities should be encourage to grow as large as possible to maximize efficiency: The more jurisdictions there are in a given metropolitan area, the poorer the outcome (OECD report):

New Localities may join the Globality by popular vote of the people living in it. Each adopter, including the first adopter, in conjunction with Matchists in other existing nations will develop an Implementation Agreement that will define all of the conversions that will be necessary for the new Locality to integrate with the Globality and specify a timetable for their full implementation of Matchism, with a default value of 5 years, a minimum of 1 year and a maximum of 10 years.

For the first few Localities, entire existing nations should be required to convert at once. Whether or not to subsequently allow Localities to be formed from secession of an area of another country depends on the logistics, in particular whether the new Locality shares a common border with an existing Locality and how vigorously the former (presumably SDAP-led) nation would fight the secession.

The Implementation Agreements, which would include a supplemental set of Locality Laws and a list of Locality Goals, must be approved by popular vote at the Globality level. After implementation is complete, Localities would be free to modify their Locality Laws and Goals list based on the input of the local population alone.

The people within Localities shall be free to separate or combine with other Localities as they see fit, provided the minimum threshold is maintained. Should a Locality fail to function to a standard defined by The People, the Globality may redefine Locality boundaries as needed, or excise that Locality from the Globality.

If a Locality is dropped it would have to either set up their own national government or restart the joining process, putting it under complete control of The People under a new Implementation Agreement.

This ability to easily refine the borders of a Locality, while an administrative headache, are key to heading off the sort of ethnic tensions that SDAPs are designed to capitalize on, and eliminates the possibility of SDAPs climbing to positions of power with the promise of leading “their” people into an era of power and prosperity. Why start a war when the people can just take a simple bureaucratic action to achieve the same result? Nevertheless, the Globality needs to be prepared to deal with the possibility that the former Locality will attempt to acquire additional resources in a neighboring Locality through the use of violence, a possibility addressed by the GSF (see Defense and Disaster Relief) and in the Matchist War Scenario.

Locality income shall come exclusively from geoism, the Infrastructure Reimbursement Fee, and fees proportional to the cost of using governmental resources or infrastructure.

Geoism, also known as Land Value Tax, is calculated using the unimproved value of land. This differs from “property taxes” because it encourages (rather than discourages) improvements to the land to increase its value, making the world a better place for humans and maximizing the space available for the other species we share it with. By eliminating the need to create and enforce a local sales taxing system this will also significantly reduce the size of local government and also drastically reduce gaming of the system by people exploiting differences in Locality taxation rates and of non-compliance by exploiting loopholes in enforcement (not paying taxes on on-line purchases, for example). The IRP is discussed on the section on Inheritance.

Localities will be responsible for supplementing the Standard Laws and Codes that need only apply to specific areas or people. The Locality will also provide for the education and security of the individuals living within it.

Next: The System