To implement an Internet-native system of law, checks and balances are paramount. A Constitution is the key pillar of those checks and balances.
I have started a process to present the community with a v1, working together with lawyers to ensure its quality.
As we go on with the task, I will be posting here key questions that we need to answer as a nation.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Nation3 should adhere to this declaration. However, there are a few points to be discussed:
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Startups, for one, might underpay early employees but give them stock options that might (but most possibly might not) be worth much more. Under this, they shouldn’t be doing that, and instead they could be sued for not paying employees property. I’d remove this and leave people to be free to decide where they want to work, and their conditions.
This thought is anchored in the Industrial Age. The market compensates those who provide value. Work per se is just a tool, and no one has the right to earn money for work. With the wording in this clause, I might as well start doing meaningless work 8 hours a day and then complain why my right isn’t being respected and money isn’t magically flowing to me.
Copyright is cancer and slowing down innovation all across the board. Maybe it makes sense to keep it, but make all works CC0 by default within Nation3, and of course not have any sort of patent system.
I interpret this a little differently: if two people have the same skillset / produce the same output, they should receive equal compensation, regardless of their gender, race, etc - which I 100% agree with. I think this refers to ‘equal work’ done for the same or similar organisation. Of course, in a free market each company is free to set their own compensation scheme - a large and well funded company might pay more salary but give less options, while an emerging startup might not be able to afford such high salaries, but be more generous on options / tokens. Which is completely ok - in a free market, individuals are also free to choose who they work for.
Generally, I think the items in the Declaration of Human Rights are more of guiding moral principles than clauses with legal definitions. So the main point that I take away from this one is that one shouldn’t discriminate and pay someone less or more because of their nationality, race, gender, religious beliefs, height, appearance, or whatever else is irrelevant to their work.
Again here, I think since it’s more of a moral guidance and less of a legal clause, common sense is important. Of course, if someone does meaningless work they came up with themselves, there’s nowhere they can or should exercise this right. However, I read this more as a call for non-exploitation of humans (which sadly still happens today in some parts of the world): if someone has provided work for you, they have the right to be compensated in a fair way.
Here I think I agree! In the internet age, I would also default to everything being open source with attribution, but then if anyone wants to limit the use of their art / invention / idea, they should probably have the right to do so? Nation3 at the state level should have as little as possible to do with this - perhaps just setting the default, but not take away the right to ‘own’ the invention etc. If the author deems someone infringed on their invention, they can always use the Court for it.