Local Rule
Local rule in an ideal world has some features designed to defeat the corruption that can seize virtually any operation in which money and property are fluid, changing hands and where things need to go “through” people.
There is nothing as potentially vicious as a local board exerting power over a hapless resident who wants something others may refuse to tolerate. The temptation to gang up is often too strong to enable wiser heads to prevail.
Almost any enterprise involving a multiplicity of people is an invitation to the lower elements of our value spectrum.
Mindlessness bumps tolerance.
Selfishness dislodges helpfulness.
Ganging up takes the place of thoughtful democracy.
Degeneration rules.
So what is the answer?
It is to minimize ownership and increase affirmation of the community.
The harm of ownership is minimized when the possibilities of injury are limited to nonexistent.
For example, there can be no harm in an organization where the bulk of space is understood to be commonly owned. The ownership may not be legal but it has an actuality about it. Damage makes a resident liable, for example. But does he pay the owner? No. He pays the cost of repairs to those who do the work. The understanding is that, while resident, one is more or less an owner.
A merger of truths is accepted as reasonable.
Getting to this state is no mean feat. But let us assume that nations have, in the process of transition, granted mile square areas — on which cybercommunities reside — to residents over time and that there is no local ownership save that of “one’s own room”.
Space within a cybercommunity has four designations.
FIRST
Most space is public, open to all, squares, parks, meadows, ways.
SECOND
Much space is semi-public. Someone or a group has responsibility for maintaining it as a space or area. The public can enter and leave at will. “Ownership” floats among those who have reason to be related to that facility.
We are talking school rooms, infirmary space, places to eat, anything that fills the bill of semi-public.
THIRD
Semi-private spaces are attached to and adjacent to private spaces. They require an invitation for entry. They are the non-private rooms of a private area. Like everything else in the community they are leased or rented or subscribed to. Their maintenance, when not up to those who use the spaces, is up to the community.
FOURTH
Private spaces are “your own room” — successors to the private car.
No it will not be a mobile Winnebago. Such creatures will live, if at all, beyond cybercommunities.
Your own room will be a standard-sized private, soundproofed area that is entirely customized to your specifications.
It will be where you sleep.
It can also serve any other purpose including studio, work and so forth.
This is the most “owned” area of a cybercommunity. Its customization is like that of cars. It can be recreated anywhere. There will be models of your own room. You can have one if you move to China or if you want to move from California to Montana to Maine.
If you want a new room of your own, fine.
We need to see how the effort to achieve something like community goodness could actually materialize.
We need to minimize a sense of property and lessen the pull of ownership, but at the same time underline the need of all persons for a completely private space that can, if desired, go with them wherever they go.
There will be no money floating about.
Property itself will be firmly out of anyone’s clutches.
This should put a definite damper on the possibilities of corruption eroding things at the local, community level.
It may also be the case that a move in this direction will amount to a radical simplification of things. That would be more than welcome.
We certainly do not need the amount of legalism that hobbles our society today.
We need simpler rules that correspond to the need to reduce harm and increase wellbeing. We need the aid of evolved big data to help us ferret out what is gold from the dross of information that trillions of minds will be spewing out.
The premise of local control follows from the transition away from nation states, from warfare, from boundaries.
