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This was one of the original ideas behind the United States, that each state would be a separate little petri dish and people could 'vote with their feet' for the policies they liked best. Maryland was for Catholics, Pennsylvania for Quakers, Massachusetts for Lawyers and Sodomites, etc
If you didn't like the policies your state was implementing, you'd go to one you liked better. Or failing that, just start a new one (like the LDS did in Utah).
We are hilariously far removed from that idea, definitely because of the civil war, but I think also maybe in large part because of the fin-de-siecle rise of 'pop culture' where everyone in the United States began (to some degree) consuming the same media
Anyway, it was good idea. Thanks for the good post
There is an issue when some of the petri dishes go down a route the rest of the country finds abhorrent, like slavery or crimes against humanity. I think against that, there needs to be some democratic calibration of the nation's values, and some careful questions posed to prediction markets about what initiatives are worth taking. And if a region rebels against the system and starts doing things against the nation's fundamental values, hopefully the rest of the nation hasn't neglected their militaries and can put a stop to it.
Doesn't this betray the point of allowing different systems?
What determines the nation's values considering your hypothetical? Since such values might need to be established and maybe through time a system with condemned values, might perform better.
And how do you stop areas which have similar ideologies from ganging up on groups they are ideologically opposed to? Even if their way would work better, if left to their own devices.
For example, different form of antinationalists materialists (lets say socialists and pro market types), which also are more made up of certain ethnic groups, ganging up and utilizing mass migration policies in their own area and freedom of movement to help take over against an area that is more conservative, more nationalist made up of a different ethnic group because they are intolerant of this arrangement and consider it evil, fascistic, and also have some ethnic hostility towards them. Groups being offended and finding something abhorent based on their ideology is a very real possibility. This idea of military used against what is abhorent, how does it avoid the states from fighting a big ideological war> Just like the focus on ideology and countries captured by ideologies, has helped inflame antipathies and lead to real war and conflict in our own history.
Wouldn't a part that strongly identifies with an ideology, be motivated to find a way to impose it to other areas?
Actually what kind of ideologies are chosen could very well determine what ideologies dominate through such dynamics of what are the dominant similarities between them which can be different if different ideologies are chosen. Once ideologies have a foothold they would work together and evolve, not based on prediction markets, but by such ideologies finding true believers who further modify them.
My prediction of this system is that some kind of war for dominance of ideologies is more likely than some enlightened ruler disciplining this system and being easily in control, as in some videogame where you can push the slider a little to the left and a little to the right.
Through some sort of democratic process.
If ultimately a super majority of the population decides they really like slavery or genocide, I don't think really any system has a good defense against that. I'm kind of relying on slavery and genocide actually being bad ideas, so a system that rewards good ideas won't have anyone do those things.
It does take buy in from people and leaders. That's why I proposed the hypothetical of a good spirited monarch who wants to do better, and this being the solution I think the good hearted monarch should arrive at. In a scenario more resembling real life, I don't think any real world executive actually has the power to implement such experiments without also getting the masses and other elites to buy in. Ultimately people have to be willing to prove the success of their ideology through creating good conditions on the ground instead of conquering their neighbors, which is a limitation, but I don't think there's a way around that. But I don't think this is a fatal flaw; it's decently rare in developed countries at least for one province to try to impose their ideology on another province by force.
In real life, I'd really just first try to encourage prediction markets more. For every important decision the government makes, such as passing bills or spending 300 million on building an aid pier for Palestine, I'd want there to be a few prediction markets trying to measure whether it's a good idea. My hypothetical was more prompted by thinking about what I'd want to do in a time like 1920, when there were many ideologies and little evidence of what I'd actually do.
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