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?

I'm definitely interested in how you plan to try it out.

The biggest problem that I see is the potential for

Rich person buys UOPS.
Spends UOPS to get office (for him or a flunky).
Uses powers of the office to get richer (but lose potential UOPS).
Repeat as necessary.

The rich get richer, and the powerful gain more power; we require a lot of protections against this pattern in our own governments, which still work poorly. It seems like with a fungible currency, this pattern is that much more dangerous.

I hope it would be moderately self-regulating. Whether sufficiently self-regulating I'm not sure.

Lets say Fred sells his UOPs for money, and becomes known as such, other politicians might decide to not work with him, as he is hurting their ability to make UOPs by introducing bad elements into the market. Collusion is a problem in this situation again though.

I'll briefly sketch out my latest slightly more complex thoughts. It was designed to avoid the free rider problem. If you had multiple politicians getting UOP directly one may not bother to allocate the... (read more)