My friend Michelle teaches 4th grade and we recently started transforming her class of 30 students into a nation state. Needless to say, the structure of her 4th grade nation state is primarily based on my perspective. Voting has been replaced with spending (coasianism) and students can choose where their taxes go (pragmatarianism).
For example... every nation needs a name. Rather than voting to choose a name, the class will spend their pennies on their preferred name. Each student will write their preference and willingness to pay (WTP) on a piece of paper. Once all the papers are turned in... Michelle will write all the valuations on the board. The most highly valued name will be chosen. The students who valued that name will make their payment. The rest of the students will not be required to make a payment. Instead, they'll receive all the money spent on the most valuable name. The amount of money a "loser" receives will be in proportion to their WTP. All the students who receive money will be required to eventually pay a tax on their income. They'll be able to decide which departments to give their taxes to. The departments, and their leaders, will be chosen by the students.
If my preferred system of government works for a class... does this automatically mean that it would also work for a city or a country? Not necessarily. But if it doesn't work for a class... then this certainly would cast doubt on whether it would work for a city or a country.
Lots of us have ideas about how the government could and should be changed. However, most of us are aware of the massive amount of harm caused by many of the revolutionary changes to governments (ie The Great Leap Forward). This leaves us between a rock and a hard place.
It's a big problem when the best course of action is to stop trying to solve society's problems. I'm guessing that we can escape this paradox by conducting small scale experiments.
Is it ethical to experiment with a class? Clearly I don't think that my own experiment is unethical. Obviously neither does Michelle or her students. So far none of the parents feel that the experiment is unethical. That certainly might change down the road when any unintended consequences are revealed. Do any of you think that my experiment is unethical?
For those of you with big ideas about how the government could and should be changed (socialists, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, anarchists)... would you be willing to apply your big ideas to a 4th grade class? If not, why not? If so, how, exactly, would you apply your ideas? Would the results be unclear?
Or would the results be clear?
If you're confident that your big ideas would produce good results... then find a teacher (here's one!) and pitch your plan to them.
Here's an article and a video about engineers battling each other using robots. Would we be engineers? Yup. But would we battle each other with robots? Nope. We'd battle each other with results. The ideas with the best results would move on to the next round (a town?).
Here are a couple of relevant articles...
The Hive is the New Network
Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny
