Hypothetical - Moon Station Government

nick012000

You are now in control of a habitat on the moon. It has no ties to any government; its creation was funded by a wealthy philanthropist who just wants people to emigrate from Earth. The cost of doing so is within the reach of a middle-class family if they sell their home; you can therefore expect a decent number of immigrants.

What sort of government do you establish? How do you go about ruling so that your new settlement on the moon will survive and thrive?

It sounds like the sum of UOPs is constantly inflating, possibly by a large (but perhaps nearly constant?) amount. This might or might not be a problem, but it seems to me to at least be a barrier. I don't know enough about economic modeling, especially for this particular case, to decide whether spending UOPs on bids negates this or not. It seems like it would, but I can't justify that.

Also, selfish agents won't willingly pay their underlings much relative to how much they earn. I imagine that the UOP distribution will be similar to the income distribution for a corporation in the absence of a minimum wage, although I expect actual income and UOP income to have an interplay that allows one to mitigate the other. Again, this might not be a problem, at least if you think that people at the top really matter all that much more.

If UOPs are a currency, how are exchanges regulated? Can one write them into a will to be inherited? Can one purchase them with regular money? Can one give them to another politician in order to negotiate a policy? Can one donate them to another politician in order to see him or her elected? What about demanding that donation be a loan, perhaps with interest?

If you regulate all these things away, I wonder if you can still call it a currency. Still, it could be effective. As long as voters are 1) well informed and 2) vote, I could see this being more effective than current democratic systems.

It sounds like the sum of UOPs is constantly inflating, possibly by a large (but perhaps nearly constant?) amount. This might or might not be a problem, but it seems to me to at least be a barrier. I don't know enough about economic modeling, especially for this particular case, to decide whether spending UOPs on bids negates this or not. It seems like it would, but I can't justify that.

It depends how competitive the voting is. Lets say we have two people Jim and Bob. The average amounts of UOPs you can get from being in charge is 5000, let say they bot... (read more)