Currently nation states are promoting the idea of a nation – a birthright, hereditary life-long property of humans, categorizing them into “us” and “them” on a pretty arbitrary basis. It is clear how this idea allows survival and growth of the state, it is less clear why is it good for the humans, as the division is a constant source of tension, neglect, cold and hot wars. We have mostly abandoned the usage of the state institution for church empowerment, why do we continue using it for nationalization? Do we really need the state to tell us our identity, belonging, culture and history? It seems very natural for the state to immortalize tribalism, but we have abandoned (or at least try to) many other natural tendencies – patriarchy, slavery, colonialization and land conquers. Yet we justify rejection of work immigrants basing on their origin of birth, at the same time giving extensive social support to “our” convicted criminals.
We follow a three millenia old commandment of “your city poor first”. However if we shift this paradigm, foreign poors can become your wealthy and your poors – not yours anymore. It does not mean abolishiment of social safety nets, but healthy adults knowingly leading destructive lifestyles should not be taking a place of a prospective contributing sosciety member. Imagine a true immigrant state, where the citizenship criteria is merit, and the purpose is well being – as many human beings as possible to live the best possible, the most furfiling lives. A state with a clear quantative success measure of quality adjusted life years (QALY). On the one hand, the state has to provide enough services for it’s citizens to keep them happy and willing to contribute, and on the other to provide as much as possible charity to foreigners. A wining strategy would be then the growth of the contributing base by contributing immigrants influx, thus the QALY state has an insentive of nurturing prospective contributing citizens – providing education and integration schemes.
The balance between the citizens prosperity and the global QALY mission is crucial. For example, depriving children, eldery and ill from citizenship may allocate resources to increase the global QALY, but it will scare away citizens, that require the state to provide security and stability, eventually reducing the sponsorship base and sabotaging the mission. Another example is unemployment subsidies – the state is interested in fluid job market in order to have a strong economy with resources for the mission, thus unemployed citizens should be given governmental support in an amount which might excess the costs of buying QALY for the global poor. Perhaps the citizens will not agree with me, and insist on citizenship for life for all – convicted criminals, chronic homeless, drug addicts, everybody – more than one QALY state can exist, with different sets of rules. Maybe you can earn automatic life-long citizenship for your children but not your grandchildren, the fine knobs will have to be adjusted. Apparently, there is much (maybe too much) flexibility in interpretation of the optimal way for the QALY, allowing to avoid some traps that may increase QALY on expense of some other core values.
Clear state mission statement allows to escape some of the traps modern nation states find themselves in. One such trap is poverty immortalization throughout generations of subcultures living out of social support, unable to increase personal productivity due to religion, cultural taboo, racism, criminal environment etc. It seems unfair, immoral, to abandon these enclaves, depriving people of their citizenship. And yet, would not it be more moral to give their citizenship to others, able and willing to integrate into the productive part of society? Once the point of view is humanistic and global rather than nationalistic and local, the answer is clear. As a side effect, the mere dry out of the ghetto swamps will prevent the individuals of getting sucked there. Another trap nation often fall to is the inability to justify participation in global causes. If nation is first then climate change can only be second. For a QALY state, climate change is first, and the benefit of the citizens is a utility for the first. It goes without saying, that a QALY state avoids yet another embarrassing trap the nation states continue to fall into, the one of historical justification to wars.
On the practical side, I envision layers of integration of a prospective citizen (or disintegration of a failing one). The bottom layer is more of a refugee camp or prison, with not much more than food and shelter and strict regime. Then there are layers where you are allowed to visit the state for work but only in specific hours and places, with constant digital monitoring. Then living in the community but under inspection of a social worker/officer. Then permanent resident without voting rights. Full citizenship with voting right is given only to contributing members, that give more to the society than they receive back in terms of taxes or governmental jobs. Unlike the Chinese social score or the US credit score, the highest possible score is not so hard to keep for a citizen – stay out of crime, work or study for a substantial part of your life and you are good.
Strong democracies with large immigration programs are already not very far away from a QALY state, yet the national sentiments are always luring around the corner, wasting the civil energy in vain. Another big difference is the resources that a modern democracy invests in sustaining the failing citizens, that could be diverted to immigrants.
