I heard something during the trucker protest in Canada along the lines of: “Most people here don’t want to live in a free society. A free society requires personal responsiblity. People here want to be managed. They want a ruling class.”

I heard something similar once from a journalist in Egypt who shared a taxi with a man smoking hashish. That man was a supporter of a fundamentalist Islamic government, and when told if he got his preferred government he wouldn’t be able to smoke the hashish anymore, he replied saying that was the point.


I’ve asked friends for feedback on wireheading city, and across the political spectrum there seems to be support for the idea.

I am a big fan of a free society. I very much enjoy my freedom, and accept that with freedom comes responsiblity. Aside from ridiculous laws, I am law abiding, not in debt, job creating, and hopefully most would agree a net positive in society. If you don’t do crime, have a job, and aren’t taking more from the government than you give, you are a net positive. There’s some subtlety around the edges, but mainly net positive = economically positive.

I’ll note this is also a simple answer to immigration. If you are net (economically) positive, we want you. If you are net negative, we don’t. While measurement may be a bit tricky, anyone who doesn’t agree to this basic framework is an idiot who wants to live in a poor country.


Now, a free society isn’t for everyone, but the key aspect is that you should be able to choose to opt in or out, but you can’t do both. You are either a citizen or not, and there ain’t no such thing as half way…

If you want a life provided to you by the government, I’m okay with paying for this. However, if you choose this life, I don’t want to see you, I don’t want you in my city, I don’t want you voting, I pay for you, but nothing more. I don’t want you influencing society any more than a foreigner. This is the only way that a free democratic society can continue to exist.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy–to be followed by a dictatorship.” - Alexander Fraser Tytler

(if it fails and we get a dictator, hopefully he will have studied economics and not ideological nonsense)


We currently have a two class society (two of my classes exist today), I propose we make it three.

  • Citizen – You participate in the economy. You have full freedom, but you must pay more to the government than you take.
  • Subject – You do not participate in the economy. You have all your needs paid for. Aside from living in a subject city, you have most personal freedom. You do not have political freedom.
  • Incarcerated – You do not participate in the economy. You have all your needs paid for. You have very limited freedom.

Both of the bottom two classes are a net negative on society, but subjects will cost less than the incarcerated, and people will choose it voluntarily. There should be a path back from subject to citizen also, similar to immigration.

We now get a choice. Do we want to embrace policies like this, or do we want our society to collapse to the point it no longer can? I’ve never seen a politician speak like this. I hope they figure it out before it’s too late.

Among prospective “subjects” and appropriately framed, I actually think this policy would be quite popular.