- The baseline society would consist of a universally-accepted rule: honor your commitments. No matter what society you would be a part of, if you cannot be trusted to honor your commitments, then you will not be trusted to enter into a contract with any particular tuath.
- The second level is the tuath, or contract society; once you sign a contract with your reputation provider, they will vouch for you in all your transactions. This is important, as these insurers can provide a person with an authority as is recognized today, and people are free to acknowledge or disregard a person based on who represents them.
- An alternative to the tuath is the social society. This consists of the personal acquaintances, friends, and family; the basic support structure one can fall back on if they are unable to contract with a tuath, due to possible previous reputation blunders, or if they are unwilling to contract with any available tuath, and do not want to start their own.
Baseline Society
The baseline society is just that: baseline. All societies need to follow the base rule in order to be compatible enough in order to interoperate. The base rule is simple: honor your commitments. If one cannot honor commitments, then nobody can trust the contracts they sign, and any relationships they have with family and friends would be likely strained to the point that even family wouldn't want to vouch for them.
Tuath is a Gaelic word that means "people." In this case, it refers to a government contracted by its "citizens," in other words, the members of a tuath are members because they explicitly signed to join the society. Tuaths include a special charter that identifies the basic principles upon which their laws are based. Tuaths are the bulk of the society's design; they allow a strong support behind their member through multiple services (these may be part of the premiums, or they may be a separate expense).
The social society is simply one's circle of friends and family. Where tuaths are for allowing strangers to live in peace with one another by minding contractual obligations, the social society exists through a separate set of links through personal interests and family connections. These can span multiple tuaths, as tuath contracts are personal, rather than group-based, so social society systems can be formed to settle conflicts within the social society instead of the tuath; these are usually more informal, but ultimately stronger due to the kinds of connections that are formed through the bonds of friendship and kinship.
If a person had broken enough contracts to be disqualified for tuath membership, and was unpleasant enough to be rejected by a social society, they may still have access to some services; tuaths do not require their members to only service other members, and some are willing to serve anyone if they choose to. Or, maybe the outsider decides to become a hermit, and live under their own power. It's possible for them to do so, and apparently they dislike humanity enough to reach that point to begin with, perhaps long enough for many of the tuaths' statutes of limitations to expire. Perhaps they may even be able to join with other outsiders for mutual protection, and then return to the society as a brand new tuath.
The baseline society is just that: baseline. All societies need to follow the base rule in order to be compatible enough in order to interoperate. The base rule is simple: honor your commitments. If one cannot honor commitments, then nobody can trust the contracts they sign, and any relationships they have with family and friends would be likely strained to the point that even family wouldn't want to vouch for them.
Tuath Society
Tuath is a Gaelic word that means "people." In this case, it refers to a government contracted by its "citizens," in other words, the members of a tuath are members because they explicitly signed to join the society. Tuaths include a special charter that identifies the basic principles upon which their laws are based. Tuaths are the bulk of the society's design; they allow a strong support behind their member through multiple services (these may be part of the premiums, or they may be a separate expense).
- Reputation Record: A reputation provider tracks the contracts and keeps a score of their client's record for easy access, while still ensuring their client's privacy. Reports of contract problems, breaking, etc. are reported to the insurer for recording. The score can also have an effect on the premiums the policyholder pays, so inherent in the system is a spur for good behavior.
- Reputation Insurance: Contracts can break from circumstances outside of anyone's control; an "Act of God" can result in losses resulting from an involuntarily-broken contract. Such problems, in addition to other incidents of an accidental or unavoidable nature can be insured against. Reputation insurance allows the damages from unavoidable situations (and some that may have been avoidable, except for human failure... the safety zone varies from tuath to tuath) to be paid. Then, in order to avoid higher premiums, the policyholder may opt to perform a service in order to compensate the damages caused by the broken contract, thereby nullifying any risk of the contract break being recorded.
- Arbitration Services: There are two forms of arbitration services; intra-tuath and inter-tuath. Intra-tuath arbitration is represented by the tuath they serve, and function as a court system for settling disputes between members of the same tuath. Inter-tuath arbitration have their own tuaths, thereby allowing them to arbitrate a disagreement between the members of two other tuaths, as well as disagreements among themselves. For the purpose of smooth dispute resolution, various tuaths will contract with each other to settle their disputes using specific inter-tuath arbitrators they both trust. This network allows disputes to be resolved even if the members are in conflicting tuaths.
- Advocate Services: When dealing with arbitration, a tuath member may want to have prorfessional representation, someone who is familiar with the practice of debating. Advocates in this system would not practice law, per se, but are professionally capable of recognizing rhetoric and fallacy in arguments; this would allow them to cut through rhetoric and lies to reach the truth of the matter, thereby ensuring that their clients and the tuath are fairly represented.
- Investigation Services: Like the arbitration services, the investigators are split between the intra- and inter-tuath levels, in order to ensure service unbiased by tuathic obligations. Their findings are free to be accepted or refused, so their integrity is of the highest value.
- Security Services: Finally, we focus on the base service of the tuath: the security services. These people work for one of a number of security firms, chartered to protect their clients from outside forces. They have contracts with other security companies to ensure that disputes between forces do not result in a shootout situation, costing valuable equipment and lives. In the case of an invasion, a large number of the security services have invasion contracts which allow them to cooperate with one another to protect the overall area they all service, and can call on reinforcements from other areas for additional cost.
Social Society
The social society is simply one's circle of friends and family. Where tuaths are for allowing strangers to live in peace with one another by minding contractual obligations, the social society exists through a separate set of links through personal interests and family connections. These can span multiple tuaths, as tuath contracts are personal, rather than group-based, so social society systems can be formed to settle conflicts within the social society instead of the tuath; these are usually more informal, but ultimately stronger due to the kinds of connections that are formed through the bonds of friendship and kinship.
Outsiders
If a person had broken enough contracts to be disqualified for tuath membership, and was unpleasant enough to be rejected by a social society, they may still have access to some services; tuaths do not require their members to only service other members, and some are willing to serve anyone if they choose to. Or, maybe the outsider decides to become a hermit, and live under their own power. It's possible for them to do so, and apparently they dislike humanity enough to reach that point to begin with, perhaps long enough for many of the tuaths' statutes of limitations to expire. Perhaps they may even be able to join with other outsiders for mutual protection, and then return to the society as a brand new tuath.
Conclusion
There you have it, a basic society designed around mutual consent, without the violent use of government force to ensure a peaceful and orderly society. Anarchy without chaos. And this is simply one solution from the mind of a simple wonk; there's no telling what other alternatives happen if the free market is opened to the world of competing, non-violent government services.
There you have it, a basic society designed around mutual consent, without the violent use of government force to ensure a peaceful and orderly society. Anarchy without chaos. And this is simply one solution from the mind of a simple wonk; there's no telling what other alternatives happen if the free market is opened to the world of competing, non-violent government services.
