Following feedback on the first draft of my governance tools proposals, I reproduce here my second draft for any further comments.

Local Government Study Group – second draft of proposals for governance tools

1.A new group-like abstraction called a “government” (query whether this is the best name; consider “state”) that anybody should be able to create for a fee (perhaps a higher fee than the group fees – maybe L$1,000?) should be encoded.

2.Each government should have a dataset accessible through a dialogue box a little like that for groups, including:
(a)the name of the government;
(b)a short description of the government type (e.g., “democracy” or “monarchy”);
(c)a graphic for a flag, emblem, coat of arms, or the like;
(d)a music URL for a national anthem;
(e)a large text box for a constitution;
(f)a smaller text box for a brief description of the aims and basic principles of the government;
(g)details as to the land and citizens; and
(h)details as to how the decision-making powers (see below) are distributed.

3.Any given parcel of land should be allied to either one specific government or no government. When it is allied to one specific government, the name of the government should appear in the “About>Land” box. When allied to no government, the word “anarchy” (or, perhaps, “ungoverned” or “none”) should appear in the “government” section thereof.

4.Any estate owner of an island or parcel of land in anarchy should be able to choose to place that land under the control of any given extant government.

5.If an entire mainland sim falls under the control of one government, the full set of estate tools available to private island owners should be available to that government.

6.The relationship between the government and landowner should be thought of in the same way as the relationship between a real-life government and people with freeholds of land in that state.

7.Governments should be able to set software-encoded rules on secession of land from those governments. Those rules should be either (1) allow always; or (2) allow only with consent of X persons, where X persons are public officials of the government.

8.Governments should not be able to change the rules on secession of any given piece of land from “allow always” to “allow only with consent” without the consent of the owner of that piece of land.

9.The buying and selling of existing parcels/sims should not by itself change the government to which they are allied.

10.All land should start as under the control of no government, and only be placed under the control of any given government by a specific landowner.

11.Linden Lab should not favour any given government over any other, nor give any given government powers that other governments cannot obtain.

12.There should be very prominent confirmation dialogues when for the joining of any given piece of land to any given government, explaining the consequences, and highlighting especially clearly if one is joining a non-scedeable government.

13. All abuse reports (save of certain types that Linden Lab wishes to reserve to itself, such as, for example, reports about password theft and about activities (such as the creation of self replicating objects) that might injuriously impact the whole grid or substantial parts of it) should be directed to governments, rather than to Linden Lab.

14.Abuse reports made through the menu would be directed towards the government on whose land the person making the report is currently standing. There should be a checkbox option to send the report to LL instead, requiring the user in such a case to specify which of the specific types of abuse that LL has decided it ought to retain control over reporting is being complained of.

15.There should be a new means of abuse reporting, by right-clicking an avatar and selecting “report abuse...” from the pie menu. This should give a third possible destination for an abuse report, that is any given government of which that avatar is a citizen. It should be possible to send the same abuse reports to multiple permissible destinations by selecting multiple checkboxes, i.e., reporting the same conduct to LL, the government on whose land the abuse occurred, and the suspect's home government.

16.Where the land on which the abuse report is made is ungoverned (“in anarchy”?), no abuse report except to LL (and only on the restricted grounds), or the avatar's own government(s), if any, should be possible.

17.The only exception should be on Governor Linden held land, where LL should continue to handle all general griefing abuse reports for the foreseeable future.

18.The powers of a given government should be able to vary depending on a dialogue box configuration by whatever person or group first forms the government. At minimum, all governments should be able to banish any non-citizen of that government from all land held under that government for an indefinite period. Additional configurable powers should include:
(a)the power to ban citizens from land in the jurisdiction of that government;
(b)the power to requisition land that is in the jurisdiction of that government, with or without banishing the landowner;
(c)the power to levy a tax on citizens of that government (which could be configured to be capped at a certain level per unit of land or per citizen, and configurable to be at different rates for different citizens/groups to give tax breaks for non-profit organisations, etc.);
(d)the power to give any given avatar negative reputation points that appear on that avatar's profile, but *only to citizens of that government*;
(e)the power to set automated banishments for exceeding a stipulated number of negative reputation points, either until manually revoked, or for a stipulated period;
(f)the power to enable people to become citizens, not just by owning an estate in the sim (or, in the case of a private island, being either the estate owner or a holder of a parcel), but by putting up a liquid escrow (explained below), and to foreclose on that liquid escrow; and
(g)the power to make treaties with other governments and join federations, confederations and commonwealths.

19.A liquid escrow is a system whereby an avatar enters into a software-encoded arrangement with a government to give it the power to fine that avatar up to a stipulated amount (whether all at once or incrementally), in return for citizenship of that government.

20.A government should be able to remove up to the amount stipulated in the liquid escrow from a citizen's or former citizen's Linden dollar balance without any the avatar whose balance it is having any further say in the matter.

21.Where an avatar leaves the jurisdiction of a government, configurable rules should stipulate whether the escrow is automatically forfeit, or, if it is not, the time period within which the government can still forfeit any of the escrow.

22.When an escrow is forfeit from an avatar with a Linden dollar balance of an amount less than the amount forfeit, the Linden dollar balance should display on that avatar's account as a negative amount. Any money paid into that avatar's account should go straight to paying off the rest of the escrow forfeit until the account is fully settled.

23.With taxes, each time that a tax payment is due (there should probably be a maximum frequency of a week), the citizen should be presented with a dialogue box, giving the citizen a choice of either paying the tax, or relinquishing citizenship, although a citizen should be able to set it such that the tax is paid automatically, although that should be reversible at any time).

24.Whether or not a government has any of the above stipulated additional powers should, once initially set, not be able to be changed without the individual consent of all landowning citizens or, if the government was initially so configured, all citizens, whether landowning or not.

25.It should be possible to set up a government and configure it in a sandbox state, without allowing anybody to join as citizens, until it is ready. In that state, any decision should be able to be undone by the person who founded it.

26.Each government should have a set of configurable offices of state (such as “king” or “prime minister” or “treasurer” or “policeman” or “member of parliament”), each with configurable (and preferably scriptable) subsets of the government's power.

27.It should also be possible to have citizen-wide elections at specified intervals. The voting system should be scriptable, but, for those who cannot script, a number of popular voting models should be built ready-made into the system.

28. For example, it should be possible to set up a government so that the text in the “Constitution” dialogue box can be changed to a specified alternative wording only if a certain proportion of people who hold a certain configured rank vote in favour of it. Another example: it should be configurable so that people can only be banished if a certain proportion of set of people (a jury) stipulated by a holder of a particular public office (a court administrator) vote in a particular way on a specified question put to them by another stipulated office holder (a judge). Simpler, more despotic systems, should be possible, too.

29.It should be possible to restrict scripted functions (such as holding office or voting) to avatars that have been verified (perhaps by a third party identity verification agency) as being unique, and not an alternate account of any other verified avatar.

30.There should be a number of pre-configured systems of government available for those who do not have the skills to script one from scratch, and it should be possible to trade government configurations.

31.Governments that have the power to enter treaties should be able to do so so as to share powers on banishments, forfeiture of liquid escrows and negative reputation points, giving each government the power to banish citizens and/or non-citizens from the area controlled by both governments, give negative reputation points that are visible to citizens of both governments, etc. The exercise of such powers should be configurable in the same way as the other powers, so that it can be set up so that (for example) a referendum is required before such a thing is entered into.

32.It should be possible to have nested hierarchical structures of governments (i.e., permitting one or more governments to be members of other governments) to permit federal and related structures. Secession rules should be the same as with landowners to governments. The power to enter into federations etc. should work in the same way as the power to enter into treaties. When a government becomes a member of another government, there should be a configurable set of options as to which of the two levels of government have what power in relation to the citizens/land of the joining government. Once agreed upon by those who have been configured to have the power to do so in both the joining and joined governments, that should not be able to be changed (aside from unilateral secession, if permitted) without authority of all those who have the power to make decisions of that sort in both levels of government.

33.Governments should be able to have their own Linden dollar accounts. All taxes and forfeitures of liquid escrows should be paid into this account. Dealing with the account should be possible only in accordance with the configured powers to do so, as with all other configured powers.

34.Where any piece of land under government control has no owner (which is the state in which it will be if it is effectively a public space owned by the government), any tier due on that land should be payable out of the government treasury. A failure to pay the tier should have the same effect as regards a government as it now does as regards any private landowner: the land should return to Governor Linden control, and be automatically seceded.

35.Where any landowner in the government fails to pay tier, however, the land should not return to Governor Linden control unless the government itself subsequently fails to pay tier.

36.A government should be able to abandon any land not owned by any citizen at any time.

37.If any government ceases to exist, all its owned land should revert to an ungoverned state, and all its unowned land to Governor Linden.
38.An avatar should be able to be a citizen of any number of governments.

39.It should be possible for objects to be owned by governments in the same way as they can currently be owned by groups.

40.Lists of and statistics about governments should be available on the SecondLife website.

41.Any citizen of any government should be able to send a ping to that government.

42.A government should be able to be configured as to which avatars are authorised to respond to pings.

43.A ping should cause a dialogue box to appear for avatars who are so authorised, explaining that a ping has been sent, and enquiring as to whether they still wish the government to continue to operate. The message should have three options: “yes”, “no”, and “ignore”.

44.If “ignore” is selected, the dialogue box should go away, but anybody duly authorised should be able to make the choice later by going to the general government dialogue.

45.If anybody responds “no”, or no response at all is received within 30 days, the government should become inactive, resetting to the sandbox state, losing all citizens, and reverting all land to ungoverned (if owned) or Governor Linden (if not owned by anything other than the government).

46.Governments should be configurable such that some avatars can be authorised to answer “yes” or “ignore”, but not “no” to a ping.

47.Once one ping has been sent, it should not be possible to send another ping to that same government until 14 days have elapsed after somebody acknowledged it with a “yes” response.