The Promise of Competitive Governance
We are gaining mastery of information. That has been the big trend of the last half-century. Measuring and modeling the world around us gets easier with time. This is important for everything. It is clearly beneficial in giving people a better ability to make wise choices. With this trend, as well as globalization, one sector after another becomes more competitive and better for the consumer. This has happened for manufactured goods in general.
For example, the market for TV’s works really well. They keep getting better and cheaper. They’re all pretty good. You can get a pretty good one pretty cheap. You can compare them online and in stores. You’ll always be happy with the outcome. It’s just a painless, pleasant experience. It’s a thick market with excellent transparency.
We need a better market for governance services. Why? They govern our lives. They constrain our lives, for better or worse. What’s wrong with the governance market today? There is a lack of transparency. It’s hard to compare options. There is a lack of choice. It is hard and expensive to switch.
In a way, the governance market is already getting more competitive. States compete to attract digital nomads. NomadList maintains a dashboard of the top digital nomad destinations, sortable by a variety of metrics from climate to safety. There is now a transparent, competitive market for digital nomad destinations, which tend to be in middle-income countries in subropical and tropical climates.
It would be a big step to have a more competitive market for longer-term living, for permanent residency. It’s early days for this kind of thing. There have been rich people moving to tax havens for decades already. There have been some crypto people moving to Puerto Rico recently to take advantage of attractive tax laws, as well as the idyllic tropical island environment. At least some techies have left the Bay Area in the last few years with the rise of remote work. San Francisco could find itself in budgetary trouble partly due to some high earners leaving.
Complacent incumbents like the city of San Francisco and the state of California could find themselves experiencing more competition as work becomes more distributed and could be forced to reform. This would ultimately make life better for everyone as competition to provide good governance services increased.