A New Global Civilization
Strategy For Change
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
― Buckminster Fuller
The "render obsolete" strategy puts the right burden on those seeking change.
The new system must be better than the old system, in all the ways that the old system is good.
The judgment that it is better will be made by those that will one-by-one freely choose to switch to and participate in the new system. (The pocket calculator rendered the slide-rule obsolete in just this way. The electric refrigerator rendered the icebox obsolete in just this way.)
The "render obsolete" strategy does not involve coercion, conquest, or any other form of threat or violence.
The strategy does not involve ideological appeals or persuasions, or appeals to historical processes or religious prophecies.
The strategy does not involve protesting in the streets or spending billions on zero-sum political campaigns and lobbying.
The strategy does not involve making leaps of faith with fingers crossed, or burning things to the ground with no tested idea of what will come after.
The first step of the strategy is to use the science and engineering methods to create an actually better system, with rigorous study, experimentation, and testing to verify and demonstrate that the new system is indeed better than the old system, in all the ways that the old system is good.
An Experimental Approach to Civilization Design
It is now newly feasible (with our new technologies) to study and compare candidate global civilization designs by modeling them on virtual worlds in a laboratory. (That is the claim, ready to be tested.)
This approach applies the science and engineering methods to the experimental laboratory study of such competing designs, as the first step toward implementing a single selected design in the real world.
This approach applies "First, do no harm" to civilization design work, at every step.
Since every sub-system of an operating global social system is entwined with and interacts with every other sub-system, fully understanding the effects of changes to any sub-system requires making those changes in vivo, while studying the entire social system as it operates.
This can be done in virtual world models, without putting lives and livelihoods of entire populations at risk.
Modeling is no substitute for real-world testing. But it can be and should be a pre-requisite for real-world testing. If not enough is known to enable realistic population-scale modeling (that can survive peer review), that should be taken as evidence that not enough is known to justify population-scale testing in the real world.
How To Model Civilization Designs on Virtual Worlds
A global civilization has:
Any number of separate virtual worlds can be created, each with a standard resource base, a standard set of populations, and its own particular social system (the variable of main interest).
The essential work of the social system as it operates (manufacturing, farming, health care, etc.) can be conceptualized (for modeling purposes) as being performed by sets and sequences of projects. (An eight-hour work-shift is a project. An investigation is a project. Submitting a proposal is a project.) Analysis of work into projects and nested sub-projects can be as fine-grained as it needs to be.
(Analysis of work into projects is also arguably the best way to set up to continually integrate artificial intelligence into our global work-world as it advances, and provides a suitable basis for continually improving fine-grained training and appraisal. So the analysis of work into projects potentially has multiple benefits beyond its use in modeling.)
Each project has requirements (facilities, tools, ingredients, training, etc.), is performed, and may produce work-products and side-effects. These can all be represented in the model.
The performance, work-products, and side-effects of completed projects can be appraised. (The work of appraising is another project.)
Projects are triggered, sometimes directly by decisions, sometimes by policies (set by decisions) that wait for events.
Decision-making in the models comes from modeling the decision-making of actual humans and of decision systems involving multiple humans.
The "Visible Hands" Laboratory Project
The Lab will exist to enable any collaborating collection of individuals in the world to interact with the laboratory software to design, set up, iteratively test/modify, and fully demonstrate their own new civilization, with all of its necessary sub-social-systems fully operational and operating on its own virtual world.
It will be possible to compare the virtual world civilizations as they operate, with respect to any and all metrics of interest.
The Lab will not care which virtual civilization demonstrates itself to be the best. The purpose of the lab is to enable all of us (who are interested in such matters) to identify which virtual civilization is the best, according to whatever criteria each of us values.
In order to succeed with respect to the larger, ultimate project (to start a new real-world civilization), an experimental civilization design must first demonstrate itself to be viable, sustainable, and attractive on its virtual world.
The attractiveness of the civilization (to those beyond its creators) will in large part hinge on its arrangements that affect answers to this question: Is it a civilization in which I would wish to live?
— Teams Separating
The first experimental virtual world will have a collection of teams working on it.
At the point that the first irreconcilable disagreement regarding societal arrangements arises (perhaps whether to enable private ownership of property or not), the original collection of teams will split into two collections, and one of the collections will start up a second virtual world.
The two virtual worlds will thereafter proceed separately (with much sharing of code and data for features that are common to the separate worlds).
Through this separation process, it will always be the case that the collection of teams working on any particular virtual world will be internally in agreement regarding what societal arrangements to experimentally try out.
There will not be much need during this phase for bridging or compromise within any collection, or among collections. There will be collaboration without competition within each collection, and collaboration without direct competition among collections. The focus will be on imagining and setting up societal arrangements that will render each civilization viable and sustainable on its virtual world.
Through these collaborative processes, we want all of the various societal arrangements that may be of interest to anyone to be experimentally tried out.
Moreover, when like-minded people gather, they tend to become more vehement and extreme in their jointly held beliefs. We want that too, during the "separation phase" of the lab work. The science and engineering processes need to be free to venture "outside the box", as far as interest and findings may lead.
— Visible Hands
A civilization model has reached maturity in the Lab at the point that it has convincingly demonstrated itself to be viable and sustainable on its virtual world.
Each model is intended to be capable of serving as a "Visible Hand". (A Visible Hand is an alternative to the "Invisible Hand" that has been magically keeping capitalism from running into ditches and such over the last 400 years or so.) All civilization models must/will be fully transparent, open to inspection and study by anyone in the world.
Just as with the Invisible Hand, each Visible Hand must be capable of effectively and efficiently driving an actual civilization on the real world. (Arranging to provide to every civilization member everything needed to live a comfortable and secure life, within the budget that the planetary resource base provides, is just the sort of game that our new technologies can potentially help us play very well. Model-driven economies have the potential to become full "can render obsolete" alternatives to market-driven economies.)
— Teams Joining
As multiple models reach maturity, the teams of those worlds will turn to the task of somehow joining their models with other models. Teams that succeed in joining their models will have a new model that will potentially be attractive to more people, and will thereby potentially have more resources available for the future task of starting up the corresponding real world civilization.
Ultimately, the winner of the "Global Civilization Design Contest" will be determined by the quality and quantity of resources that the competing contenders can marshal as they attempt to start up their preferred design on the real world.
Thus, with viability and sustainability given (all mature contenders have those), attractiveness will be the determining factor.
What Constitutes "Better"?
Different people may have vastly differing views regarding what constitutes a "better" global civilization.
"Conan! What is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies -- See them driven before you,
and to hear the lamentation of their women!"
It is perhaps safe to say that Conan has no interest in a world in which all belong equally, except in the "All belong to me!" sense.
— Hierarchy or Equality
During the "teams separating" phase of the Lab project, we want the Conans of humanity (along with all others interested, of whatever persuasion) to try to create viable and sustainable and attractive versions of civilizations that they would view as better.
During the "teams joining" phase, a perhaps irreconcilable (we'll see) separation may develop between collections of teams that value having Power Over Other People, and collections that value having fully egalitarian power relations among all people.
(There may also prove to be other sorts of irreconcilable separations — we'll see.)
— Attraction or Coercion
If that irreconcilable separation into camps occurs (hierarchical versus egalitarian), then the contest may become one of attracting into one camp or another those who are "between camps" (for example, those willing to tolerate the existence of oppression if the civilization design delivers better conditions for their personal lives and loved ones, and the trains run on time).
If the Conan teams wind up with "all bosses and no workers", they will perhaps not have enough resources to compete successfully with the egalitarian camp in starting up their corresponding civilization in the real world.
Or, if the most ambitious and highest functioning people are attracted to the Conan civilization, perhaps they will find ways to coerce the meek into serving them in the real world.
Certainly that has happened in the Invisible Hand global civilization that we now have. The meek are serving those holding Power Over Other People in both nations and corporations, without feasible choice to do otherwise. (Arguably we are living in a budding Conan Carnegie global civilization, with power highly and increasingly concentrated.)
— All Belong Equally
One extreme opposite to the Conan (or Carnegie) civilization would be a civilization in which no one (individual or group) has any enduring Power Over Other People, or any enduring personal/private control of affects-the-public goods or services or natural resources. (None more equal than others.)
In such a society, meritorious individuals would be recognized and admired and heeded, but not empowered relative to others. Societal arrangements would not reward merit with power. The expert would always and only wield the unforced force of the good reason, in practical discourse among equals.
(Democracy and meritocracy are polar alternatives: the more democracy, the less meritocracy, and vice versa. In a meritocracy, the meritocrats are more equal than others with respect to power.)
In the Lab, it will be possible to explore whether one or more viable, sustainable, and attractive versions of an "all belong equally" civilization can be created.
Core Variables of Civilization Design
Vicious Spirals
Vicious spirals (Positive feedback loops that produce increasingly bad results) are among the primary mechanisms that can terminate civilizations, or morph them into entirely different sorts of civilizations.
Even a single uncontained vicious spiral — like a single cancer cell — may be enough to produce such outcomes.
For a civilization design to be sustainable, all positive feedback loops that may potentially affect it adversely must be eliminated or reliably contained.
— Concentrated Power
Perhaps the most common and most dangerous sorts of feedback loops that affect civilization designs adversely are those produced by the existence of concentrations of power.
Stated generally, the problem is this: It does not matter through what means power is initially concentrated (through political, criminal, police, military, economic, financial, religious, or whatever other means) — the end result will potentially be the same, because any form of concentrated power can potentially be used to acquire more power of any kind. (When we see Christian(!) Popes able to initiate Crusades, we see evidence of this.)
The existence of concentrated power of any kind in any context potentially brings into being vicious spirals that may produce further concentrations of powers.
Then, as the power concentrations increase, the civilization design may commence to morph in whatever directions those wielding the power may prefer.
— Checks and Balances
The Founding Fathers of the USA understood and appreciated this danger: their design concentrated power in the federal government, and they understood that, unchecked, that power might grow.
To forestall that possibility, they arranged "checks and balances" among competing power centers within the federal government, and vis-à-vis the state governments and the voting public.
As a design solution, their checks and balances system had two major problems: the alignment problem, and the collateral damage problem.
Regarding the first problem, they understood that, if there were ever a partisan alignment across all of the power centers that were supposed to be serving as checks and balances for one another, that alignment would have the potential to jeopardize the design.
Any checks-and-balances system is a House Of Cards structure. It remains standing only so long as all of the card-pairs are leaning into one another in just the right ways.
The other problem they did not necessarily see as a serious problem. It is that as the giant Godzillas are dancing and fighting, keeping one another in check and the overall system balanced, the little people get trampled and ignored. (The Founding Fathers were all power-holders, so this was not their problem.)
— Don't Concentrate Power
In moving from kings to elected presidents, and from hereditary House of Lords to elected senators, the Founding Fathers took big steps along the civilization design dimension of diffusion of power.
A next big step that is now newly possible along that dimension is from presidents and senators to no presidents and no senators (no elections, no representatives).
What is required in order to be able to take that step is a new kind of decision system which allows and enables any member of the civilization's general public to freely choose to participate (on equal footing) in the process that makes any public matter decision.
All members cannot participate in all decisions — there are too many decisions, and too many members. But any member can participate in any decision.
This is arguably the best that the concept of democracy can offer, so far as (1) providing the maximum amount of personal agency with respect to public matters that can be provided equally to all members, and (2) moving the civilization design toward the diffusion end of the "diffusion of power" dimension.
Using a decision system that diffuses the power to decide across the entire general population can (together with various other arrangements, to be discussed) yield a civilization design that has no power centers.
Having no power centers can more reliably forestall and contain feedback loops that might increasingly concentrate power than can any system of checks and balances among power centers, and can do so without trampling and ignoring little people in the process.
Vote-Driven Democracy
But it is also important to remember what prompted the development of Athenian democracy in the first place. It was a reaction to tyranny. It was a recognition that the only protection against the corrupting influence of power is to share it equally amongst the population; a lesson which those who still crave power have been attempting to suppress ever since. -- Harry Stottle
The purpose of democracy was/is to protect humanity, nature, and future generations from the corrupting influence of power.
But (as history has shown time and again) an intrinsic problem with using voting to effect democracy (to share power) is that voters are no less susceptible to the corrupting influence of power than are tyrants, and voting is a pure power game: majority wins — might makes right.
One testable hypothesis is that voting cannot be used to reliably sustain a civilization design in which all belong equally. Majorities (and minorities empowered through majorities) will oppress, rob, ostracize marginal minorities routinely, because they can, and because they can benefit. In vote-driven democracies, marginal minorities are mostly "on the menu", seldom effectively "at the table".
And, vote-driven democracy has (historically) not even been able to reliably sustain itself. When a majority feels its control to be slipping, it may empower a strongman to rig/modify the decision system to retain control, which may oscillate the society from vote-driven democracy into dictatorship for a while. (“We can control him” is the perpetual mantra of those who vote for or otherwise support that strongman.)
In order to sustainably establish a civilization design in which all belong equally, the decision system through which democracy is effected must (it is here suggested) be able to reliably filter all of the society's public-matter norms in accord with (an "approval → acceptance" version of) The Discourse Principle (D) of Jürgen Habermas.
(D) Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the acceptance of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.
Because the vote-casting decisions of each individual are made entirely privately/intrasubjectively (inside the individual's noggin), beyond the reach of practical discourse, voting does not and even cannot filter norms in accordance with this principle.
In the lab, some civilization designer teams will have no interest at all in establishing a society in which all belong equally, and so may choose to use voting to effect democracy. Teams that do care about "all belong equally" will need to come up with some other sort of decision system through which to effect democracy.
— Direct Democracy
A further problem of vote-driven direct democracy is that it scales badly.
If the civilization designer enables direct popular voting on proposals, that will enable the global public to directly make a few thousand (at most — ten decisions per day would yield 3,650 decisions per year) of the millions of public matter decisions that must be and are being made globally each year — a barest whiff of democracy.
And those few thousand matters will entirely occupy the available attention of the global public, so that all of the millions of affects-the-public decisions beyond those few thousand will be made "in the shadows".
— Representative Democracy
A further problem with vote-driven representative democracy is that it effectively defeats the core purpose of democracy — to share power equally amongst the entire population.
If the civilization designer enables vote-driven election of representatives (legislators, judges, presidents, etc.), that will concentrate the power to make various public matter decisions in the personal hands of those representatives, or in the hands of the legislatures, boards, committees on which they serve.
(The term "representative democracy" is actually a slick public relations move; more descriptive terms such as "electocracy" (rule by the elected) or "elected oligarchy" sound so much less appealing. The Founding Fathers were openly opposed to democracy — actually spreading power equally across the entire population. The term "representative democracy" has done a good job of covering this up.)
Other Existing Decision Systems
(In this context, public matter decisions are decisions that affect the public, which includes decisions that affect nature and/or future generations. It also includes decisions relevant to othering and belonging. The term does not refer to the corporate/government distinction that sees corporate matters as private, regardless of how world-changing they may be.)
In our current global mish-mash of civilization bits and pieces, there are myriad arrangements and systems through which public matter decisions are now being made, including these:
— Entrepreneurs
One view holds that every free market is a system of predation. Entrepreneurs are often among the apex predators. Their potential prey include buyers, workers, investors, market competitors, ecosystems, and future generations. The classic predatory aim is to personally obtain wealth and power by successfully setting up societal arrangements (mostly business plans) that "bring in" that bounty.
Entrepreneurs are arguably the primary beneficiaries of the belief that the "Invisible Hand" will magically arrange that their predations serve the common good, which makes it okay that they become rich and powerful by taking from others, and makes it okay that all of the public matter decisions that they make are made undemocratically.
Civilization designers that wish to render the entrepreneur role obsolete must design a top-level social system capable of making all of the decisions that entrepreneurs make, "better" than entrepreneurs make those decisions.
"Better" within the context of the Lab project will be measured first of all by the extent to which the virtual world civilization that uses the social system is more viable, sustainable, and attractive than civilizations that feature the entrepreneur role.
— Private Investors
The largest private investors (the multi-billionaires, the 0.1%) are also among the apex predators of free market systems. And, they are the ones who have sufficient wealth→power to potentially modify the overall designs of whatever civilizations they can reach, in whatever directions they prefer — which makes them very special indeed.
From the perspective of the core purpose of democracy, the existence of multi-billionaires is no less problematic than the existence of tyrants.
— Corporations
In our current blossoming global civilization, corporations make vastly more public matter decisions than do central governments or voting publics. And every single one of those decisions is made undemocratically.
(Decisions by central government legislators and regulators regarding these matters are arguably no more democratic than are decisions by corporations: only a few are permitted to participate in the decision process, or to even know that the decision is being made.)
The largest corporations are, again, among the apex predators of our free market systems, and have enough wealth→power to potentially modify civilization designs.
Conflicts of Interest
The three primary conflicts of interest that operate against the public good within our existing public matter decision systems are:
Any civilization design that manages to neutralize or eliminate those three influences will be more able to keep public matter decision-making pointed at the public good.
All three of those conflicts of interest can be eliminated through civilization design choices. Then the questions would be whether the resulting design was viable and sustainable, and how many would want to live in the civilization.
In the Lab, versions of civilizations can be created and experimentally studied in which such conflicts of interest do not exist.
New Decision Systems
An option now newly available to civilization designers is to design new kinds of decision systems that more effectively and efficiently harness the vast potentials of our new technologies, in service of world peace, personal freedom, and egalitarian democracy.
At least one candidate civilization design already exists that attempts to harness these potentials.
In the Isonomea design, the Blinap decision system is used to make all public matter decisions, globally.
Blinap can reliably filter norms in accord with the Discourse Principle of Habermas, and (together with other features of the Isonomea design) effectively eliminates the three conflicts of interest discussed above as influences on public matter decision making.
(Eliminating those three factors as influences will then allow and enable influences such as those possible through successfully bridging to have central significance, rather than minorly marginal significance as is the case in our existing social systems.)
In the Lab, new designs such as Isonomea can be tested to see whether they might be able to give us a real world in which all belong equally, and all can thrive.
(The Isonomea design will be discussed further in side-links as we go along, as an example of newly existing possibilities.)
Bhorgs Competing Or Teams Collaborating?
One of the most ubiquitous and consequential social system design patterns in the world today is that of the "big hierarchical organization" ("bhorg") that features obedience-style collaboration internally and, externally, competition with other bhorgs. Corporations, unions, political parties, central governments manifest this pattern.
The newly arrived possibility of instantiating a decision system (such as Blinap) that is capable of making all of the public matter decisions that all of the bhorgs of the world now make, through an egalitarian-style collaborative process that sets up no "us/them" competitive divisions among its members, raises experimental/empirical questions that have never before been anything other than moot.
The Isonomea design has no bhorgs, competing. Instead, it has only teams, collaborating.
In the Lab, we can test and compare such radically different systems, harmlessly.
Counting Decisions
(This will be quick, dirty, back-of-napkin, lazy.)
We will be counting decisions that affect the public, and that could be made democratically but are not.
There are said to be around 350 million businesses worldwide. We will assume (without evidence) that each makes two affects-the-public decisions per week, yielding 100 decisions per year (round numbers), for a total of 35 billion decisions per year across the businesses of the world, that could be made democratically (through a system such as Blinap), but are not.
Next we look at really rich people. The current global population is around 8 billion. We take 0.1% of that to be 8 million (the really rich). Each of those we assume (without evidence) makes two affects-the-public decisions per week, yielding 100 per year again, for a total of 800 million decisions per year across all really rich people.
Next we look at central governments. We will say that there are around 200 nations in the world, each with 100 nested jurisdictions, that each make 100 affects-the-public decisions per week, yielding 5000 per year per jurisdiction, yielding a total of 100 million decisions per year across jurisdictions.
(Example: Del Rio, Texas is a nested jurisdiction (city) that makes affects-the-public decisions undemocratically, by its mayor, its city council, its bureaucrats, its courts, and so on. All of these decisions could be made democratically, through a system such as Blinap.)
Finally, we try to estimate the global total number of affects-the-public decisions that are actually being made democratically across our current systems.
As of 2024, the Referendum Database contains information on 3,000 referendums at the national level and 15,000 referendums at the subnational level in over 200 countries and territories worldwide since 1791.
So, not very many democratic decisions, compared to the numbers of decisions being made by businesses, rich people, and central governments.
And also not much democratic influence through any other means: Gilens & Page.
Co-Creation
— Defining Co-Creation
(It is here suggested that) a decision system should be said to enable co-creation only if it satisfies both of these two conditions:
— Blinap & Co-Creation
Blinap satisfies both of these conditions.
First Condition: Our new technologies make it feasible to extend the Power to Propose equally to all members of the polity. Proposals are collected interactively by software through the Internet. The marginal cost-to-society of collecting one more proposal in this way can approach zero at global scale.
Moreover, the quality of the software wizard interaction (both its effectiveness and its efficiency) can be improved over time without limit. The wizard can, for example, become increasingly accurate in predicting whether a proposal as it stands will pass if submitted, and can warn the proposer before submission (so that only proposals likely to pass will be submitted), and can interactively work with the proposing team to help with making improvements before submission.
Second Condition: The always-available-to-any-member option to object to any proposal (including to any objection) instantiates a form of practical discourse that cannot be avoided.
— Voting & Co-Creation
First Condition: Satisfying the first condition runs into the problem that voting scales badly. Billions of people voting on each of billions of proposals is not feasible in practice, which means either that the power to propose must be drastically restricted, or quorum requirements for each proposal must lowered to untenable levels.
(If the living wage cost of voters' time is $15/hour, and each of 8 billion voters spend 1 minute voting on a ballot item, the cost-to-society of that decision is $2 billion. And, the quality of the decision will be what one minute of study produces.)
Second Condition: The (personal/intrasubjective) act of deciding how one will vote is beyond the reach of practical discourse. Any and all contact with others regarding the matter can be avoided. Which means, no voting system can satisfy the second condition.
— Autocracy & Co-Creation
When any single person (President, billionaire, CEO) is empowered to autocratically make the final decisions regarding proposals in any domain, that means that the autocrat is free to ignore any proposal (effectively removing the Power to Propose from everyone else with respect to that domain), and it means that the decisions made by the autocrat are beyond the reach of practical discourse — he independently casts the single vote that matters. No autocratic system can satisfy either condition for co-creation.
Social Classes Or Classless?
For the civilization designer, in the Lab, whether to have social classes or not is a design choice to be made.
The budding global civilization we have now arguably does have social classes.
Isonomea is one example of a civilization design that does not have social classes.
Nations And Jurisdictions
The land of our real world is currently divided into nations, with each nation internally having further subdivisions into provinces, counties, townships and such.
In the Lab, there will be a virtual world that attempts to precisely model our real world. It correspondingly will have its land divided into the nations that we have now.
In addition, there may be any number of other virtual worlds that model other variations on the theme of "world divided into nations, with nested jurisdictions".
And, there may be still other virtual worlds upon which are modeled civilization designs that have no nations, and no nested jurisdictions. (The Isonomea design has neither nations nor nested jurisdictions.)
Nations are inherently exclusive, and inherently in zero-sum competition with other nations. (America First!) Nested jurisdictions further this pattern in fractal fashion. (It is here hypothesized that) the existence of nations and of nested jurisdictions preclude having a global society in which all belong equally. This hypothesis can be tested in the Lab.
Dimensions of Personal Freedom
Different individuals may have profoundly differing views regarding personal freedom.
In the Lab, there may be any number of virtual world models, each expressing a different view.
The sections below will introduce a few of the dimensions along which views may differ, and discuss points on those dimensions that might be adopted.
The "Free Rider" Problem
If, as part of setting up a civilization model, a team elects to formulate a formal social contract, and in that contract specifies that each member of the society will have full autonomy with respect to all personal matter decisions, the contract must then specify which matters are personal.
One view that might be adopted is that personal matters are those that "primarily" affect these:
This view can then be interpreted to entail that each member has a liberty right to personally direct personal time, focus, and effort, and a corresponding claim right to freely receive from society the necessities (food, shelter, health care) that are sufficient to enable that liberty right.
(This would effectively render all members of the society "independently wealthy" — not bound to "work for a living". Each would be free to pursue personal interests that did not tax public resources or abrogate the corresponding freedoms of others. Each would be free to choose to do nothing, or to do anything — such as meditating, or making music, or writing, or caring for loved ones — that did not cost society more than doing nothing would.)
For a civilization model that elects to define and prioritize personal freedom in this way, the first and main question is empirical: can it be arranged that enough members freely choose to do all the essential work that needs to be done, just because society needs it and for whatever positive incentives may be offered? Can the Free Rider Problem be solved without compulsion?
(Continuing advances in our technologies, particularly in the field of Artificial Intelligence, make this very much a living question. Shall we continue to compel people to work even when there is not enough work that actually needs to be done?)
Fairness And Free Riding
Another objection that can be raised against free riding (in addition to the empirical objection that a society that does not compel members to work might not be viable or sustainable) is that it is not fair that some should benefit without contributing. (The "Welfare Queen" meme expresses this directly.)
This objection directly pits a particular notion of fairness against a particular notion of personal freedom.
Some virtual world teams may prioritize this notion of fairness above the corresponding personal freedom, in which case the societal arrangements of those civilization models will limit personal freedom accordingly, in the interests of fairness.
Other teams may accept free riding as a valid, available, and supported choice, for everyone. (There are many ways to live a life that do not involve serving the global economy. Jesus, Siddhartha Gautama, Socrates, Mozart provide examples.) Extending the freedom to everyone (universalizing it) removes the unfairness.
Safety Nets Or Solid Floor?
Each civilization designer team will be faced with the choice whether to establish a solid floor of support for its members (which will effectively remove financial precarity as a compulsive force in the society), or try to solve the Free Rider Problem by leaving financial precarity in place, with safety nets to catch only those who for one reason or another cannot be forced to work.
In the Lab, teams will be able to explore and compare the costs and benefits of various versions of these two alternatives.
Paternalism And Personal Freedom
As here defined, paternalism manifests as arrangements or actions that limit a person's or group's liberty or autonomy and is intended to promote their own good.
It directly opposes personal freedom (defined as having full autonomy specifically with respect to all matters that "primarily" affect one's own time, focus, effort, and physical body).
This is another dimension along which there may be major differences among virtual world models. Some models may prioritize paternalism, others may prioritize personal freedom even when it leads to foreseeable and bad outcomes.
Compulsory schooling (whether compelled by police action or by the prospect of future financial precarity) is one of the clearest examples of "paternalism prioritized" in our current societies.
Communities And Personal Freedom
A choice that each civilization designer team will face is whether to allow and enable communities to coerce their members. Some civilization designers may choose yes; others may choose no.
For those who choose no coercion, enforcing and supporting (with a claim right) these two civilization-level rules might be used to effect that:
Ownership And Personal Freedom
In the Lab, the civilization designer team can choose what can be personally/privately owned, and what will remain publicly owned on the virtual world, or will remain not owned at all.
The reach of the personal freedom to own is most definitely a dimension along which views will differ.
There may be virtual worlds on which the view will be that public ownership should be reduced to a size small enough to drown in a bathtub.
And then there may be other worlds that feature no personal/private ownership at all, beyond full ownership of personal time, focus, effort, and physical body.
For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is... With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. — Oscar Wilde
Othering And Personal Freedom
If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude. — Stokely Carmichael
When capitalism is ascendant as the primary source of power in a society (as it was in Stokely Carmichael's milieu), capitalism is available to empower "othering" attitudes.
When, instead, other power sources are ascendant, they will be available to empower whatever othering attitudes may exist among those empowered.
For example, in China, capitalism is being eclipsed by dictatorship, backed by a panopticon-style police state. Correspondingly, the Uyghurs in China are being victimized by attitudes of individuals empowered by that police state, not by individuals empowered by capitalism.
Whatever the sources of power may be in a particular society, the hypothesis is that the solid solution to othering will always be to arrange (through social system design choices) that those with othering attitudes will not have direct enduring personal Power Over Other People, and will not have direct enduring personal control of affects-the-public resources.
The solution to othering (in a society that prioritizes personal freedom) will not be to try to change bad attitudes to good attitudes. Attempting to do that violates personal freedom, and in any case is too extravagantly difficult to achieve reliably in practice to be counted on as a solution.
Rather than investing focus, effort and other scarce resources in trying to change attitudes, the investment must (in order to actually solve the problem of othering) be directed at reliably disempowering those with othering attitudes, through choosing societal arrangements that do not empower.
This hypothesis can be tested in the Lab.
What Next?
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