The text below describes my alternative political system called “Equal Groups”. If you wish to get in touch or see my other work, click the "Faran Morgan" link, above. For previous versions of this system, click on "Archive". Happy reading!
Overview
Equal Groups is a political system in which everyone is kept equal in terms of power over people and the satisfaction of their wants. In this system people live and work in groups of about 100 people. The State is directly democratic and leaderless, with all its major decisions being taken by large numbers of randomly assigned citizens.
Equality
As just stated, under the Equal Groups system, every person is kept equal with every other person in terms of 2 quantities, Power and Satisfaction. Power is defined as the control someone has over things that matter in people’s lives, including things that happen in their own life. The other quantity, Satisfaction, is defined as the percentage of a person’s emotional wants that are satisfied at a given time ,(with greater wants counting for more than lesser ones). The scope of these equalisations extend to people’s personal lives, not just their jobs or official roles. So if, for example, someone has a lot of friends that they enjoy spending their free time with, this might be said to increase their Satisfaction, and probably their Power too, to the extent that their friends do what they tell them to do.
The reason I want to equalise people’s lives in this way is to eliminate hierarchy and competition. These both make humans act against one-another and put harmful people in charge, leading humanity to make terrible decisions, such as maintaining lethal poverty and developing dangerous future A.I.
The Groups
As already stated, society is ordered into Groups of around 100 people. Each Group is given some land to live and work on. This will include an appropriate number of houses and a work space usually related to one industry. Ideally all the land will be contiguous, but often the work space will have to be travelled to, for example in a minibus. All land and property will ultimately be owned by the state, but most of the time be controlled by Groups, and where Groups choose it, by individuals.
An individual is allowed to move from one Group to another as long as the Group they are joining has less than 120 people. Groups are not allowed to deny membership to those who wish to join or to give worse treatment to those who have joined more recently. To make them less appealing, Groups in sought-after locations would have to endure worse-quality houses, less land and/or lower incomes.
Inter-Group Working Limits
The State has a law which limits how much members of one Group work with those of another. The logic behind this law is to create tight-knit Groups without forcing households to split up to follow different careers or restricting children in their choice of activities.
Let me describe this law more precisely. Imagine a household living under the Equal Groups system. We define the household's Primary Hours as the greatest number of hours worked by an individual within that household. So if, for example, a household has 3 members, one working 40 hours a week, another working 30 hours a week and the third not working, the Primary Hours for that household would be 40 hours per week. The Primary Hours of a Group is equal to all the Primary Hours of the Group's constituent households added together. The Inter-Group Limit Law says that the number of hours a Group can work with other Groups is equal to the total number of hours worked by the Group minus its Primary Hours.
The simplest way for a Group to adhere to this rule is to compel one person in each household - the person who works the most hours a week - to only work with other members of the Group. However, the rule allows Groups to be more flexible than this. If for example there is a household who all want to work outside the Group, their hours can be 'covered' by another household doing all their work within the Group.
The work or studies of people aged below 18 won’t count towards these calculations. They can work outside the Group without limitation.
Why have Groups?
The reason for Groups in general is that they are probably naturally egalitarian. (Equality of income in hunter-gatherer groups is pretty high according to this data). Groups will be able to maintain equality between their members in an enlightened way, due to members knowing each other well and having mutual empathy. With equality of individuals being sorted out by the Groups, only equality between Groups needs to be regulated by the State, which then doesn’t require direct imposition on individuals.
Groups have other advantages too. Loneliness will be greatly reduced. Food and other products can be delivered to the Groups using reusable containers, reducing waste. Also a large proportion of commutes will be reduced to a 1 minute walk.
Regulation Of The Two Equalities
As mentioned at the start, the two equalities are maintained for individuals by the Groups, and maintained for Groups by a directly democratic State. Any individual who believes they have less Power and/or Satisfaction than their fellow Group members can take this complaint to the State. The State will investigate and if necessary enforce a plan to rectify the situation, such as transferring responsibilities or income to the individual making the complaint. Any Group that thinks it has a below average level (per capita) of either quantity can get transfers from other Groups by essentially the same process.
Structure of the State
The State is run by 2 sets of people, called Ruling Jurors and State Officials. Jurors do the job that politicians do in our current society, while Officials replace the civil service, lawyers, prisons, army (if there is one), police, banking, regulation of the two equalities and any other pivotal state function. Everyone must serve as a Juror for a total of one year in their lifetime. Officials serve for 2 years at a time, can do so multiple times and no individual is compelled to do this work. After Jurors or Officials finish their stint they may return to their previous jobs. They are paid for their efforts by the State, via their Groups. Officials are paid well enough that most people will request a 2 year stint at least once in their lifetime.
Jurors and Officials may commute from their home to do their work. Their hours aren’t counted as time worked outside the Group with regard to Inter-Group Working Limits.
Economy
Each Group will receive an unconditional income from The State, which is enough to survive on, but not survive comfortably. On top of this each Group will be paid for dissatisfaction it chooses to incur, for example from work done (consistent with the rule of Equal Satisfaction). This payment also comes from The State. Groups are not allowed to get income from customers, other Groups or individuals. Although Groups will often take customers' money, for example if they run a shop, this money must be immediately surrendered to The State.
Groups and individuals can accumulate savings. The state will tax wealth, however, at increasing rates the larger this wealth gets. The tax will be applied at Group level. The rates will be such that most Groups will find holding, say, more than £50,000 per person, not worth doing.
Each Group may do all, some, or none of its consumption collectively. If it does all, it will be like a communist collective, with no individual money or income.
Which goods and services get made, and at what prices they get sold, will mostly be decided by the Groups providing and distributing them. However, The State may override any of these decisions if it wishes to. It is likely that most goods would be sold at the “clearing price” (the level at which goods leave the shelves at the same rate as the shelves are refilled). Goods can also be distributed without payment, for example loaned out by libraries, or given to individuals or Groups deemed likely to make use of them. However, payment must remain the norm or the incentive to work will become too weak.
Incentive to Work
It might reasonably be asked whether anyone will bother going to work under this system if one’s wants are satisfied equally whether one works or not. I admit that the normal way to get people to do something is to give them more satisfaction if they do it than if they don't. However, it seems likely to me that if there is no extra satisfaction for doing one thing versus another, people will do the thing that they think is the right thing to do. (Satisfaction, in my system, doesn’t include the satisfaction that comes from doing the right thing, only satisfaction of selfish wants). The regulation of the equality of Satisfaction of individuals is normally left in the hands of the Groups. If an individual does little work and lives on a generous unconditional income then members of that person’s Group will probably judge that the person’s wants are more satisfied not working than working. They will then either increase the person’s pay rate for work or reduce their unconditional income so that the satisfaction of non-working and working are equal. Then the desire to do the right thing should lead the person to do more work.
Note here that all Group members are doing in this case is enforcing the law of Equal Satisfaction. When they do this the incentive to work takes care of itself.
It might instead be claimed that even if people work under the Equal Groups system, they won’t work productively. However, I believe this argument also fails. Imagine a worker who spends 40 hours a week digging holes and filling them in again. This person's Group will assume that the reason they are doing this useless activity instead of digging holes for some purpose, is that they find the useless activity easier. It would be assumed that the worker doesn't like coordinating with others, following schedules, or something like this. In order to equalise Satisfaction the Group would therefore pay this worker less than if they spent the same amount of time digging holes for a purpose. When the worker switches to doing useful work the Group will know it has made the difference in pay between useful and useless work big enough.
Ruling Juries of a World State
As stated above, Ruling Jurors do the job that politicians do in our current society. There are 4 types of ruling jury. One type is called a Command Jury. Command Juries make any day-to-day decisions that need to be made. The other 3 types of ruling jury are called Proposal Juries, Comparison Juries and Approval Juries. These 3 types write and alter the laws, and are collectively called Lawmaking Juries.
Let us assume for simplicity’s sake that the whole world has gone over to the Equal Groups system and has formed a single World State. People are expected to serve as a Ruling Juror at World level if the World State calls them. Each person is randomly assigned to serve either in a Command Jury or Lawmaking Juries, with an equal chance of each. Anyone assigned to Command Jury work will serve for one year at a random point in their lives (from age 10 onward). If they are assigned to Lawmaking Juries they will do a stint of 4 months on each of the 3 types of Lawmaking Juries at random points in their lives (also from age 10 onward).
As I have already said, the 3 types of Lawmaking Jury are called Proposal Juries, Comparison Juries and Approval Juries. Proposal Juries propose changes to the law, Comparison Juries rate these proposals, and Approval Juries vote for or against the most promising proposals, to approve them into law or otherwise.
Each week a new Lawmaking Jury of each type begins its 4 month stint. Jurors of a given Lawmaking Jury are evenly distributed all over the world. These juries don't have to meet as a body, but jurors can assemble in gatherings of any size they want, or work alone. Jurors can do their own research and consult people outside the jury, including those with a high level of knowledge.
Proposal Juries
At the end of their 4 months, anyone serving in a Proposal Jury can propose a change to world laws. Anyone who doesn’t wish to submit a proposal of their own may “second” a proposal of someone else in their Jury. A proposal may have any number of seconders.
Categorization of Proposals
At the end of each week every Lawmaking Juror is given 3 proposals from the Proposal Jury that has just finished its stint. The juror must simply identify the proposal of the 3 that they think is the odd-one-out topic-wise. From this, all proposals end up in a big list with proposals on similar topics following one-another.
Comparison Juries
This list is passed to the Comparison Jury that is just beginning its stint. Each Comparison Juror is given one proposal on the list and expected to rank it compared to proposals next to it on the list, between 5 and 50 of them (the juror decides how many to compare with). Adjacent proposals from the list are given to jurors living near one-another. Neighbouring jurors may also get identical proposals, as there are less proposals than jurors of each type. At the end of their time each juror submits their ranked list. From these lists a best proposal is determined.
Approval Juries
This best proposal is passed on to the Approval Jury just starting its stint. At the end of their 4 months each Approval Juror submits a simple Yes or No to this proposal. A majority of those that vote decides whether the proposal is passed into law or rejected.
Number of proposals at one time
The process just described takes a year. Every week a new such process begins. At any one time there are 52 different Lawmaking Juries running, 17 or 18 of each type. If we assume half of the proposals that reach Approval Juries pass, then the law will be changed 26 times a year, which is roughly the number of Acts of Parliament passed each year in the UK.
Command Juries
As stated above, Command Juries deal with any day-to-day decisions that The State might make. There are Command Juries at 5 different admin levels. Each admin region (except the lowest one) contains many regions of the level below. The following table shows the number of people in each of the 5 levels and the number in the Command Juries of each of these regions. The numbers in this table don’t have to be adhered to exactly, for example a 4th level region might have as many as 50 million people, and a 3rd level region might have as many as 600 million. These numbers are just the minimums.
Equal Groups is a political system in which everyone is kept equal in terms of power over people and the satisfaction of their wants. In this system people live and work in groups of about 100 people. The State is directly democratic and leaderless, with all its major decisions being taken by large numbers of randomly assigned citizens.
Equality
As just stated, under the Equal Groups system, every person is kept equal with every other person in terms of 2 quantities, Power and Satisfaction. Power is defined as the control someone has over things that matter in people’s lives, including things that happen in their own life. The other quantity, Satisfaction, is defined as the percentage of a person’s emotional wants that are satisfied at a given time ,(with greater wants counting for more than lesser ones). The scope of these equalisations extend to people’s personal lives, not just their jobs or official roles. So if, for example, someone has a lot of friends that they enjoy spending their free time with, this might be said to increase their Satisfaction, and probably their Power too, to the extent that their friends do what they tell them to do.
The reason I want to equalise people’s lives in this way is to eliminate hierarchy and competition. These both make humans act against one-another and put harmful people in charge, leading humanity to make terrible decisions, such as maintaining lethal poverty and developing dangerous future A.I.
The Groups
As already stated, society is ordered into Groups of around 100 people. Each Group is given some land to live and work on. This will include an appropriate number of houses and a work space usually related to one industry. Ideally all the land will be contiguous, but often the work space will have to be travelled to, for example in a minibus. All land and property will ultimately be owned by the state, but most of the time be controlled by Groups, and where Groups choose it, by individuals.
An individual is allowed to move from one Group to another as long as the Group they are joining has less than 120 people. Groups are not allowed to deny membership to those who wish to join or to give worse treatment to those who have joined more recently. To make them less appealing, Groups in sought-after locations would have to endure worse-quality houses, less land and/or lower incomes.
Inter-Group Working Limits
The State has a law which limits how much members of one Group work with those of another. The logic behind this law is to create tight-knit Groups without forcing households to split up to follow different careers or restricting children in their choice of activities.
Let me describe this law more precisely. Imagine a household living under the Equal Groups system. We define the household's Primary Hours as the greatest number of hours worked by an individual within that household. So if, for example, a household has 3 members, one working 40 hours a week, another working 30 hours a week and the third not working, the Primary Hours for that household would be 40 hours per week. The Primary Hours of a Group is equal to all the Primary Hours of the Group's constituent households added together. The Inter-Group Limit Law says that the number of hours a Group can work with other Groups is equal to the total number of hours worked by the Group minus its Primary Hours.
The simplest way for a Group to adhere to this rule is to compel one person in each household - the person who works the most hours a week - to only work with other members of the Group. However, the rule allows Groups to be more flexible than this. If for example there is a household who all want to work outside the Group, their hours can be 'covered' by another household doing all their work within the Group.
The work or studies of people aged below 18 won’t count towards these calculations. They can work outside the Group without limitation.
Why have Groups?
The reason for Groups in general is that they are probably naturally egalitarian. (Equality of income in hunter-gatherer groups is pretty high according to this data). Groups will be able to maintain equality between their members in an enlightened way, due to members knowing each other well and having mutual empathy. With equality of individuals being sorted out by the Groups, only equality between Groups needs to be regulated by the State, which then doesn’t require direct imposition on individuals.
Groups have other advantages too. Loneliness will be greatly reduced. Food and other products can be delivered to the Groups using reusable containers, reducing waste. Also a large proportion of commutes will be reduced to a 1 minute walk.
Regulation Of The Two Equalities
As mentioned at the start, the two equalities are maintained for individuals by the Groups, and maintained for Groups by a directly democratic State. Any individual who believes they have less Power and/or Satisfaction than their fellow Group members can take this complaint to the State. The State will investigate and if necessary enforce a plan to rectify the situation, such as transferring responsibilities or income to the individual making the complaint. Any Group that thinks it has a below average level (per capita) of either quantity can get transfers from other Groups by essentially the same process.
Structure of the State
The State is run by 2 sets of people, called Ruling Jurors and State Officials. Jurors do the job that politicians do in our current society, while Officials replace the civil service, lawyers, prisons, army (if there is one), police, banking, regulation of the two equalities and any other pivotal state function. Everyone must serve as a Juror for a total of one year in their lifetime. Officials serve for 2 years at a time, can do so multiple times and no individual is compelled to do this work. After Jurors or Officials finish their stint they may return to their previous jobs. They are paid for their efforts by the State, via their Groups. Officials are paid well enough that most people will request a 2 year stint at least once in their lifetime.
Jurors and Officials may commute from their home to do their work. Their hours aren’t counted as time worked outside the Group with regard to Inter-Group Working Limits.
Economy
Each Group will receive an unconditional income from The State, which is enough to survive on, but not survive comfortably. On top of this each Group will be paid for dissatisfaction it chooses to incur, for example from work done (consistent with the rule of Equal Satisfaction). This payment also comes from The State. Groups are not allowed to get income from customers, other Groups or individuals. Although Groups will often take customers' money, for example if they run a shop, this money must be immediately surrendered to The State.
Groups and individuals can accumulate savings. The state will tax wealth, however, at increasing rates the larger this wealth gets. The tax will be applied at Group level. The rates will be such that most Groups will find holding, say, more than £50,000 per person, not worth doing.
Each Group may do all, some, or none of its consumption collectively. If it does all, it will be like a communist collective, with no individual money or income.
Which goods and services get made, and at what prices they get sold, will mostly be decided by the Groups providing and distributing them. However, The State may override any of these decisions if it wishes to. It is likely that most goods would be sold at the “clearing price” (the level at which goods leave the shelves at the same rate as the shelves are refilled). Goods can also be distributed without payment, for example loaned out by libraries, or given to individuals or Groups deemed likely to make use of them. However, payment must remain the norm or the incentive to work will become too weak.
Incentive to Work
It might reasonably be asked whether anyone will bother going to work under this system if one’s wants are satisfied equally whether one works or not. I admit that the normal way to get people to do something is to give them more satisfaction if they do it than if they don't. However, it seems likely to me that if there is no extra satisfaction for doing one thing versus another, people will do the thing that they think is the right thing to do. (Satisfaction, in my system, doesn’t include the satisfaction that comes from doing the right thing, only satisfaction of selfish wants). The regulation of the equality of Satisfaction of individuals is normally left in the hands of the Groups. If an individual does little work and lives on a generous unconditional income then members of that person’s Group will probably judge that the person’s wants are more satisfied not working than working. They will then either increase the person’s pay rate for work or reduce their unconditional income so that the satisfaction of non-working and working are equal. Then the desire to do the right thing should lead the person to do more work.
Note here that all Group members are doing in this case is enforcing the law of Equal Satisfaction. When they do this the incentive to work takes care of itself.
It might instead be claimed that even if people work under the Equal Groups system, they won’t work productively. However, I believe this argument also fails. Imagine a worker who spends 40 hours a week digging holes and filling them in again. This person's Group will assume that the reason they are doing this useless activity instead of digging holes for some purpose, is that they find the useless activity easier. It would be assumed that the worker doesn't like coordinating with others, following schedules, or something like this. In order to equalise Satisfaction the Group would therefore pay this worker less than if they spent the same amount of time digging holes for a purpose. When the worker switches to doing useful work the Group will know it has made the difference in pay between useful and useless work big enough.
Ruling Juries of a World State
As stated above, Ruling Jurors do the job that politicians do in our current society. There are 4 types of ruling jury. One type is called a Command Jury. Command Juries make any day-to-day decisions that need to be made. The other 3 types of ruling jury are called Proposal Juries, Comparison Juries and Approval Juries. These 3 types write and alter the laws, and are collectively called Lawmaking Juries.
Let us assume for simplicity’s sake that the whole world has gone over to the Equal Groups system and has formed a single World State. People are expected to serve as a Ruling Juror at World level if the World State calls them. Each person is randomly assigned to serve either in a Command Jury or Lawmaking Juries, with an equal chance of each. Anyone assigned to Command Jury work will serve for one year at a random point in their lives (from age 10 onward). If they are assigned to Lawmaking Juries they will do a stint of 4 months on each of the 3 types of Lawmaking Juries at random points in their lives (also from age 10 onward).
As I have already said, the 3 types of Lawmaking Jury are called Proposal Juries, Comparison Juries and Approval Juries. Proposal Juries propose changes to the law, Comparison Juries rate these proposals, and Approval Juries vote for or against the most promising proposals, to approve them into law or otherwise.
Each week a new Lawmaking Jury of each type begins its 4 month stint. Jurors of a given Lawmaking Jury are evenly distributed all over the world. These juries don't have to meet as a body, but jurors can assemble in gatherings of any size they want, or work alone. Jurors can do their own research and consult people outside the jury, including those with a high level of knowledge.
Proposal Juries
At the end of their 4 months, anyone serving in a Proposal Jury can propose a change to world laws. Anyone who doesn’t wish to submit a proposal of their own may “second” a proposal of someone else in their Jury. A proposal may have any number of seconders.
Categorization of Proposals
At the end of each week every Lawmaking Juror is given 3 proposals from the Proposal Jury that has just finished its stint. The juror must simply identify the proposal of the 3 that they think is the odd-one-out topic-wise. From this, all proposals end up in a big list with proposals on similar topics following one-another.
Comparison Juries
This list is passed to the Comparison Jury that is just beginning its stint. Each Comparison Juror is given one proposal on the list and expected to rank it compared to proposals next to it on the list, between 5 and 50 of them (the juror decides how many to compare with). Adjacent proposals from the list are given to jurors living near one-another. Neighbouring jurors may also get identical proposals, as there are less proposals than jurors of each type. At the end of their time each juror submits their ranked list. From these lists a best proposal is determined.
Approval Juries
This best proposal is passed on to the Approval Jury just starting its stint. At the end of their 4 months each Approval Juror submits a simple Yes or No to this proposal. A majority of those that vote decides whether the proposal is passed into law or rejected.
Number of proposals at one time
The process just described takes a year. Every week a new such process begins. At any one time there are 52 different Lawmaking Juries running, 17 or 18 of each type. If we assume half of the proposals that reach Approval Juries pass, then the law will be changed 26 times a year, which is roughly the number of Acts of Parliament passed each year in the UK.
Command Juries
As stated above, Command Juries deal with any day-to-day decisions that The State might make. There are Command Juries at 5 different admin levels. Each admin region (except the lowest one) contains many regions of the level below. The following table shows the number of people in each of the 5 levels and the number in the Command Juries of each of these regions. The numbers in this table don’t have to be adhered to exactly, for example a 4th level region might have as many as 50 million people, and a 3rd level region might have as many as 600 million. These numbers are just the minimums.
Substates
In addition to the local democracy just described, citizens of a particular geographic region can create their own semi-independent polity called a Substate, which can opt out of some laws.
World laws come in 2 types: Compulsory Laws and Optional Laws. Compulsory Laws apply to everyone in the world; Optional Laws only apply if one’s Substate has decided to adopt them. Substates cannot freely write laws of their own, just accept or otherwise Optional Laws set at world level, while obeying all Compulsory Laws that the world sets.
All proposals that Proposal Juries make must be specified as being Compulsory or Optional laws.
Substate Decision-Making
If a particular Substate has a population greater than 100,000 it will take the place of one of the administrative levels in the Command Jury table above. If the Substate’s population is lower than this it will become an extra, 6th level.
If a Substate’s population is over a million, its lawmaking system will be similar to the world’s, running parallel to it. For Substates smaller than this a different system will be used, that I call “We Rule”. Under We Rule each person chooses if and when they want to serve as part of the government, as with State Officials, described above. To avoid decisions being skewed towards the type of person who might be more likely to serve, votes will be weighted towards those who are underrepresented. So if people that serve tend to be left-wing then right-wingers will get greater voting power in their decisions. Likewise if they tend to be male, or young or intelligent etc.
Substate Borders
Anyone may propose a change to Substate borders. If 5% of the people who will change Substates under the proposal sign a petition, it goes to a referendum of the whole population of this area. A straight majority of those who vote will put the change into effect. A person is said to change Substates if either most of their fellow Substate citizens cease to be so after the change, or if after the change most of their fellow Substate citizens are people who weren’t fellow citizens before the change.
Education
Most Education would take place within one’s Group. Each Group would probably have a few people dedicated to minding and educating children. Older kids would be able to apprentice at the main occupation of the Group. Also most Groups might offer work experience to children and adults from other Groups. These might run anywhere from an hour per week to full time.
As stated above, Inter-Group Working Limits won’t apply to children. I believe that children should be free to pursue the activities that most interest them.
Transition to Equal Groups
The transition to Equal Groups would require most people to move houses, to be adjacent to people working in the same industry. The moves could all take place in one week, using temporarily commandeered vans, as furniture could be left with their properties in the first instance.
Equal Groups can be rolled out across the world within 5 years. Once the process is complete, every adult human would have the right to move to any Group across the world. The reason for the 5 year process is to manufacture mobile homes for those living in inadequate housing in many of the poor parts of the world. Without equalizing housing in this way, large numbers in the poor areas might immediately migrate to the rich areas, destabilizing the system. Over a longer time-frame permanent high quality homes can be built for everyone.
In addition to the local democracy just described, citizens of a particular geographic region can create their own semi-independent polity called a Substate, which can opt out of some laws.
World laws come in 2 types: Compulsory Laws and Optional Laws. Compulsory Laws apply to everyone in the world; Optional Laws only apply if one’s Substate has decided to adopt them. Substates cannot freely write laws of their own, just accept or otherwise Optional Laws set at world level, while obeying all Compulsory Laws that the world sets.
All proposals that Proposal Juries make must be specified as being Compulsory or Optional laws.
Substate Decision-Making
If a particular Substate has a population greater than 100,000 it will take the place of one of the administrative levels in the Command Jury table above. If the Substate’s population is lower than this it will become an extra, 6th level.
If a Substate’s population is over a million, its lawmaking system will be similar to the world’s, running parallel to it. For Substates smaller than this a different system will be used, that I call “We Rule”. Under We Rule each person chooses if and when they want to serve as part of the government, as with State Officials, described above. To avoid decisions being skewed towards the type of person who might be more likely to serve, votes will be weighted towards those who are underrepresented. So if people that serve tend to be left-wing then right-wingers will get greater voting power in their decisions. Likewise if they tend to be male, or young or intelligent etc.
Substate Borders
Anyone may propose a change to Substate borders. If 5% of the people who will change Substates under the proposal sign a petition, it goes to a referendum of the whole population of this area. A straight majority of those who vote will put the change into effect. A person is said to change Substates if either most of their fellow Substate citizens cease to be so after the change, or if after the change most of their fellow Substate citizens are people who weren’t fellow citizens before the change.
Education
Most Education would take place within one’s Group. Each Group would probably have a few people dedicated to minding and educating children. Older kids would be able to apprentice at the main occupation of the Group. Also most Groups might offer work experience to children and adults from other Groups. These might run anywhere from an hour per week to full time.
As stated above, Inter-Group Working Limits won’t apply to children. I believe that children should be free to pursue the activities that most interest them.
Transition to Equal Groups
The transition to Equal Groups would require most people to move houses, to be adjacent to people working in the same industry. The moves could all take place in one week, using temporarily commandeered vans, as furniture could be left with their properties in the first instance.
Equal Groups can be rolled out across the world within 5 years. Once the process is complete, every adult human would have the right to move to any Group across the world. The reason for the 5 year process is to manufacture mobile homes for those living in inadequate housing in many of the poor parts of the world. Without equalizing housing in this way, large numbers in the poor areas might immediately migrate to the rich areas, destabilizing the system. Over a longer time-frame permanent high quality homes can be built for everyone.