Equal Groups 2022
Overview
Equal Groups is a system under which society is divided into groups of between 50 and 100 people. Those in one Group must have their homes adjacent to one-another.
Each Group has a limit on how many hours its members are allowed to work with members of other Groups. This limit is set at 5 hours multiplied by the number of members in the Group. The limit doesn't have to be distributed equally among members.
Each Group is forced to be equal with each other Group in terms of Political Power (per capita) and Preference Satisfaction. A level is chosen, for each of these two quantities, that no Group is allowed to deviate from.
Political Power (which from here on I will simply refer to as “Power”) is defined as the control a Group has over things that matter in people’s lives, including things that happen within their Group. The other quantity, Preference Satisfaction (hereafter “Satisfaction”) is defined as the percentage of Group members’ emotional wants that are satisfied at a given time (with more major wants counting for more percentage points than lesser ones).
Some Groups will work as part of an agency called Equality Regulation, which maintains the equality of Power and Satisfaction between Groups (and sometimes within Groups, see below). If a Group is found to be above the standard level in terms of Political Power it will be forced to yield powers to other Groups. If it is found to be above the standard level in terms of Satisfaction it will have its pay reduced. A Group that is too satisfying will usually be detectable from the fact that its membership increases over time, though Equality Regulation will also have the power to inspect and interview Group members.
People are not allowed, individually or collectively, to treat those in another Group in a way that is likely to leave one individual in that Group with greater Power or Satisfaction than another. Three examples of such forbidden activities are as follows:
- If a person asks to be served by a particular person in the Group, if the Group is, say, running a shop.
- If society runs a qualification system in which individuals who provide a certain service must have passed a certain exam etc.
- If society runs a private property system governing land and property within a Group.
An individual is allowed to move from one Group to another as long as the Group they are joining has less than 100 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.
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. Groups will often take customers' money, for example if they run a shop, but this money must be immediately surrendered to the state.
Groups can have savings and property such as yachts and jewellery. The state will tax Groups' wealth, however, at increasing rates the larger this wealth gets. The rates will be such that most Groups will find holding, say, more than £100,000 per person, not worth doing.
Each Group decides for itself how to distribute its money and resources to people within it, as well as jobs, powers etc. However, If an Equality Regulation enquiry finds that the Group is not highly egalitarian internally in both power and satisfaction, orders designed to rectify this situation will be issued to the Group. Such an enquiry can be launched at the behest of a single member. (The behaviour of small hunter-gatherer tribes such as the !Kung in Africa suggests that Groups won’t need such state interference to make them egalitarian, although this is not guaranteed, as hunter-gatherer circumstances are very different from that of Groups, for example Groups will not be so kin-related or geographically distant from other Groups.)
A 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.
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.
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).
What is good about the Equal Groups system?
The two greatest enemies of the world are, in my opinion, hierarchy and competition. They make humans act against one-another and put harmful people in charge.
It seems likely that in the coming decades we will reach the point at which computers outsmart humans. Having humans acting against one-another with harmful people in charge at that point will put us all in great peril.
Aside from this future scenario, hierarchy and competition cause huge amounts of needless suffering at the present time, including poverty and the disrespectful treatment and economic exploitation of employees and tenants.
By eliminating most hierarchy and competition, Equal Groups will make these causes of suffering a thing of the past, and minimize the risk of dangerous artificial intelligence.
Why divide people into groups?
I believe that a group of humans will be highly egalitarian, as long as members know each other well and they don't have pressure from outside to do otherwise. In groups above a certain size it would be impossible for people to know one another and therefore would likely fall into inequality. On the other hand a group below a certain size might be boring and less productive. I think between 50 and 100 members is a good happy medium.
So equality between Groups needs to be imposed by the state, while equality within Groups doesn't need to be imposed. This is the main reason for the Groups.
Groups can also manage equality in a more intelligent and well informed way than our current welfare state because they will know their members personally. For example they will be able to spot a malingerer or figure out what incentives might work for a particular individual.
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 most commutes will be reduced to a 1 minute walk.
Lawmaking/Government Overview
Let’s imagine, for the sake of simplicity, that the whole world is living under the Equal Groups system. The world would be one sovereign state, and also be divided into “substates” that make certain decisions. A substate’s population can be anything above 1,000 people.
Both the World State and Substates would be governed by Direct Democracy. Ordinary people would perform all the tasks that Politicians perform in a Representative Democracy. Let us first look at how the World State would operate, then look at the Substates.
World State
Every 30 years a given Group will do a 15 week stint as part of the World Government. This means that at any given time 1% of Groups will be doing their stint. When they are working as the World Government Groups will be paid and won’t be expected to do their normal work.
There are 4 types of World Governing Group. Their names are Proposal Groups, Comparison Groups, Approval Groups and Command Groups. At any given point in time a random ¼ of World Governing Groups will be acting as each of these 4 types. Proposal Groups propose changes to the law, Comparison Groups rate these proposals, and Approval Groups vote for or against the most promising proposals, to approve them into law or otherwise. Command Groups deal with the day-to-day decisions affecting the world.
World laws also 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.
Let's discuss the process of making world laws in more detail:
Proposal Groups
At the end of their 15 weeks anyone serving in a Proposal Group 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 Group. A proposal may have any number of seconders. During their time, those in a Proposal Group may do their own research and consult experts outside the group. Each proposal will specify whether it is intended to be a compulsory or optional law.
Proposal Groups also do another job during their 15 weeks: they categorize the proposals that have just been submitted by other Groups. For a certain amount of their time they read lists of these submissions, randomly put into groups of 3 proposals. For each group of 3 proposals they must simply identify the one proposal 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 Groups
The list just mentioned is passed to the Comparison Groups. Each Comparison Group is randomly assigned 2 portions of the list to look at, representing 5 times the output of the average Proposal Group. (If each Proposal Group produces 40 proposals on average, then each of the 2 portions would be of 100 proposals). At the end of their time each person serving on a Comparison Group ranks all the 200-ish proposals they have been given according to how much they would like them to get adopted. From this ranking, a best proposal is produced. As with Proposal Groups, those serving can do their own research and consult experts outside the Group.
Approval Groups
Approval Groups also serve for 15 weeks, during which they look at the most successful proposal coming out of the Comparison Group process. At the end of their time each person serving in an Approval Group submits a simple Yes or No to the proposal. As with the other groups, those serving can do their own research and consult experts outside the Group.
Each week a 1/15th of Proposal, Comparison and Approval Groups start/end their time, so each week a proposal may be approved or otherwise.
That concludes my description of world lawmaking. Let us now look at the structure of Command Groups which deal with the day-to-day decisions of society.
Command Groups
There are Command Groups at 5 different admin levels. The lowest (most local) administrative divisions are of 300,000 people; the highest is of the whole world. Each admin level has 13 times the number of people as the level below it. Various statistics for all the admin levels are collected in the following table:
Substates
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.
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 Group 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, utilizing a further 1% of people, and running parallel to it. For Substates smaller than this a different system will be used, that I call “WeRule”. Under WeRule each Group chooses if and when they want to serve as part of the government. To avoid decisions being skewed towards the type of Group that might be more likely to serve, votes will be weighted towards those who are underrepresented. So if Groups 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.
Incentives to work
One criticism that might be leveled at the Equal Groups system is that it leaves citizens with little incentive to work. The guaranteed equality of Power and Satisfaction between Groups, it might be contended, would lead to each Group to freeload on the work of others, drastically reducing overall output. I don’t think this criticism succeeds, however, as there would be no benefit to a Group from shirking. If a Group chooses the Satisfaction of not working it will be penalized with the removal of Satisfaction that comes with a higher income. With either option, working or not working, leading to the same amount of Satisfaction, I think that a sense of moral duty would swing Groups towards working.
If my answer here is accepted, the criticism might shift to saying that people would work, but they wouldn’t work efficiently. It’s true that Groups that lie on beds of nails would get as much income as those who do something useful, but I don’t think this would lead Groups to lie on beds of nails. People prefer their sacrifices to be for something useful.
These answers are, however, somewhat speculative. The system has never been tried, and until it is, it will be impossible to be sure how much working or shirking would occur.
Education
As stated above, qualification systems are banned in the Equal Groups system. However, people of all ages can still learn things they want to learn. Most learning 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 typically run for somewhere between an hour per week and a day per week.
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.