Nope, I’m totally not. You’re making one of those assumption-type-things, and you know what happens then! 
Most people just want to live decent lives and when given actual options they’re not going to trap their wives and kids in somewhere horrible just because it’s ‘holy’. I already allowed for the fact that a large number of people would stay, but most people don’t like living in what is essentially a walled low-resource prison camp, not when given an alternative that involves them living fruitful, productive lives where they’re treated with dignity and respect and have control over their own lives.
The solution I’m proposing isn’t just for Palestinians, it’s for everyone, and it uses existing legal structures that are extremely resilient, well tested, and don’t require any revolution that’s never going to happen, nor does it require some magical enlightenment before it works. It operates off of a system of psychological lures.
In a very readers-digesty nutshell, the idea is to combine existing proof of concepts.
-Valve, which demonstrates the effectiveness and profitability of ‘choose your own squad’ and ‘choose your own project’ structures combined with ethical hiring, even in a very standards-dependent environment.
- Mondragon, the world’s largest worker co-operative
- Monkeyspheres (i.e. Dunbar’s Number), the single biggest reason why society doesn’t work.
- Motivation, and the science and evidence therof.
- The fact that only a tiny fraction of actual person-hours worked actually contributes to anything anybody wants done.
- Citizen’s United, and in general the abusive power that’s given to corporations.
- Exploitable rules, and the people who exploit them
- The fact that a democracy of choice has significant advantages over one that’s stuck with everybody born in the same geographic region (i.e. national governments)
- The fact that a large collection of government-and-economies of choice has signifigant advantages over that.
Add in a number of other factors (there are of course a lot with any whole life solution, but we’re far past that point where there were more solutions than problems) and you have a seed…for a powerful collection of governments within a single multinational corporation, one that uses employment as a supplement to citizenship and doesn’t need people who cant’ adhere to a very basic ethical standard, one that can protect the people within, ‘hire’ people from practically anywhere, and completely turn the tables on the mess we’re in.
It’s good enough to work here in the U.S. and power through a number of corporate efficiencies while expanding (particularly in Health Care, a field I strongly wish to emphasize down the road) and it’s positively dangerous in the hands of orphans, refugees, and other people who aren’t raised to expect some payment for every good thing they do. And we even have a technology to add that allows us to pull in all those people and provide them with a very high standard of living without having a negative environmental impact, the Wearable Holodeck.
Nobody’s come close to poking a hole in it in over a year (though some have provided some excellent ideas that have helped!) and now it’s just a matter of getting it put together in a way that people with influence, power, and/or platforms can digest so they can run with it. I’m more a troubleshooter myself and am more the sort who gives up on explaining things and prototypes them, if this wasn’t too big for me to do on my own it would have already happened, because once it has legs there’s nothing that can stop it.
No fighting, no drama, just a peaceful step into a better life as easily as one would take a job at Wal-Mart. Sure, making a Co-Opernation is a bit unusual and radical, but these are serious problems and there’s no good reason for all these people to be struggling and dying, is there?
I figure @doctorow, @frauenfelder, @xeni, and the rest don’t read these forums, but I for one am kind of hoping to kick it off here, since we address a whole bunch of their passions and have actual, practical solutions rather than just some feel-good pipe dream.
