Spending Time in A Hypothetical City

For the average person moving to our shiny new city (or really old but under proper management), the most probable initial living arrangement would be to rent. One would be presented with all manner of renting possible, and I suspect we'd see a fair number of arrangements that would basically provide a hotel type environment. We don't know whether or not the newcomer has the capacity to plan ahead, but the proprietor of any sort of establishment of this sort certainly does; he would have been replaced long ago if he did not. So, there are various needs the customer needs; he needs proper nutrition, decent sleep, and a very powerful wake up call. The newcomer may not be able to plan ahead (though he may) but he may very well be the sort of person who can show up and do good work somewhere, so it stands to reason he'd be able to get the 'planning ahead' part of things as a service for the right price.

There are little things that corporations never quite get because the people who have to deal with the problem never quite 'own' the situation. Will any modern hotel get right of florescent lights, and red-shift the lighting spectrum at night to encourage good sleep? Will one corporations undertake to stop the other corporations from fattening up the unthinking masses with processed foods? When you really own the establishment, all those extra lbs on your customers actually begin to mean something; in a corporation the employee might think vaguely about the insurance handling it. I'm not saying Aunt Eugenia's boarding house is ever going to be absolutely perfect, but Eugenia's stake in her client's well-being and good behavior is a lot higher. She might even enact strict rules about, say, unmarried visitors of the opposite sex. These sorts of rules can seem unpleasant, but are often the sort of rules that help even the least reflective in our society begin to consider the future, and perhaps improving themselves enough to escape Aunt Eugenia.

But we must assume the newcomer has a bit more sense than that, because we want to explore a bit more of the city. We would also see property owners extremely well disposed to the business of buying and selling. Cities basically exist for buying and selling, despite what the art and society crowd may tell you. Cities usually sit where two or more main trade routes meet. Kill the market, and you'll kill the city. Indeed, much of what is considered urban, or inner-city unpleasantness does not represent an illness of a city, but an illness of a people alienated from the market. Anyway, our newcomer may well move into running some sort of business.

Eventually, he may want to buy in; actually own property in the city. Here, ideally, the only barrier to entry is the price of whatever property he buys. The deed is both title and stock in the city corporation and there are voting rights attached, but he is unlikely to ever vote personally- most of the votes are cast by proxy. Now, it is vitally important that the political class doesn't get to sneak in here by acting in proxy for actual owners; no, this is an all-owner gig, for we are trying to reward people who are planning ahead, not people who can con other people, so those that dominate the board quite rightly ought to be very old, semi-retireed landowners who have proven they know a thing or two about bequeathing some solid assets to their grandchildren.

There are a few catches to this story. Landowners could collude to keep others out, or take advantage of businessmen who certainly own a lot of things but don't necessarily own land. Big landowners could take advantage of small ones, etc... This is why a king, mayor, judge, or CEO (whatever his title is is much less material than his incentives) needs to exist. Landowners will have disputes, and while the corporate body may be able to determine what grand and wonderful things they shall do together (and how they will pay for it), determining justice is a different matter entirely. Despite having practically no voice, vote, or any of the annoyingly political gunk currently available to us now, in this city, the people are wanted. A person in this executive position must take a long view, and preferable derive income from the sorts of sources which encourage the long view; it is my view that homesteading the title system, and seeing his own rights to such income as contingent upon the property rights of others would help.