[Editor's note: This is mostly a re-printing of one of the final chapters of a book, Living Mobile by Dave Jones, reproduced here with permission and somewhat edited for the purposes of the blog. The topic of mobile citizenship really deserves a book of its own, but for now we will have to make do with this. Enjoy.]
For those wishing to live mobile, there are definite limitations in legal and social matters because the traditional pattern of citizenship is one organized around static locales and specific residence locations. As detailed above in the Address section [of the book], there are some ways to work around this but they are less than ideal solutions for most people. The only lasting solution for this problem is to formally detach rights and duties of citizenship from local residency or designated location and enable truly mobile freedom in matters legal, financial, and social—to create a new organizational pattern for citizenship itself.
Citizenship
By citizenship I mean not just the status of national citizenship as an identified member of a given country, but also the regional and local affiliations that are tied to it. The USA, for example, will recognize its citizens as those people born within its territorial boundaries or otherwise naturalized, but will also designate and require that each citizen is a resident of one of the states or territories within the country. The states and territories, in turn, will identify their residents in terms of a specific address, a physical location of residence, which in its turn will be under the jurisdiction of local governance in the form of a county or municipality. Part of this has to do with the theoretical divided sovereignty in the US between the federal and state governments, but many other countries in the world organize themselves in the same manner. With regional and local governments having specific jurisdiction over their residents and every national citizen having a specific designated home location.
This traditionally has been how governments keep track of people and also how they manage funding for the various federal, state (or regional), and local services. Anyone who has an identifiable home address may automatically be categorized in terms of who they pay taxes to and how much and in what form. Also what services they are entitled to partake in. And to be fair this is how most people live at any one time—static lives organized around a specific home location. What I am advocating is not necessarily a complete overhaul of citizenship itself for every person (though that may be overdue as well), but instead something like adding a special category that recognizes the capacity for people living mobile to be good citizens.
Citizenship is often discussed in terms of rights—the rights of citizens that are awarded or recognized by the national government. Such as the American bill of rights, etc. However, the very concept of every citizen having rights itself entails that every citizen has duties. If I have a right to free speech, and you have a right to free speech, then reason dictates that we each also have a duty to respect the free speech right of the other. Likewise for every other person. If we all have the right to free speech then we all also have the duty to respect the right of free speech that others hold. Else that right will not be recognized and will be precluded. We often discuss these things in terms of the laws that are passed that may or may not abridge one of the rights of citizens and hold the government responsible for infringing on the rights of citizens, but such would actually be an action by the collection of citizens infringing on those rights. That is, representational government actions, public actions, are in legal fact the actions of the whole body of citizens. Governmental laws which infringe on a given right are in fact a failure by the citizenship to uphold the duty to respect that right.
So good citizenship is that which occurs when a citizen fulfills the duties of citizenship. Those duties themselves arise directly from the rights of citizenship. By extension of this, we may consider government taxes and services in the same manner. Such things are often very abstract and imperfect, but in simplified terms we pay taxes as a duty and partake in government services as our corresponding right. If our government is truly representational then we are in fact imposing these taxes on ourselves in order to endow ourselves with services. Ideally.
The different tiers of government then collect taxes and provide services in accordance with the span of their individual mandate. Which is organized territorially but with distinctions between the national and regional levels. So the national government collects income and other taxes from all citizens regardless of location and then provides global range services to those citizens in turn. State and local governments are generally restricted instead to operating within their own territorial borders, in terms of both taxation and services offered. And to a certain extent they are required to render services even to residents of other states and localities. A local fire department, for instance, will still respond to accidents on major highways even though none of the people involved may be one of the local residents that support that fire department with tax payments. There are many other possible examples of unsupported or shared service use. The operating assumption that makes this shared services system work is that everyone who partakes of state or local services in one area will at least have some home area in which they are contributing taxes. So everyone involved in a highway accident to which local services responded would still be paying taxes of some sort to support the local fire department near their place of residence. A rough balance is thus maintained.
Problem[s]
So the problem of mobile citizenship is two-fold. It is a problem for those living mobile that they are limited by requirements which mandate that they must have a home location, but it is also a problem for regional and local areas that those living mobile may not be contributing tax support in proportion to the services that they partake in. Detaching citizenship from residency upsets the balance that permits services to be rendered to non-locals who do not pay local taxes.
Every person who visits a local area is utilizing local services. Wheeled living depends on the roads, built and maintained by tax money, even if those living on wheels do not actively engage with local or regional government. Local areas are also protected by the deterrent impact of law enforcement services regardless of whether police are actually engaged with. This argument is less clear for marine living but still real enough. Regions and locales work to preserve and maintain waterways and also any time that someone living marine touches the shore they are at least indirectly benefiting from local services. Living marine permits long but not indefinite periods away from shore.
But having a home location also imposes expenses and requirements well in excess of taxes and collective service support. Purchase or lease and maintenance of a physical residence is very costly—for many people this requires more than half of all income earned. Escaping these possibly unnecessary expenses is one of the primary reasons that people choose to live mobile in the first place.
Having to maintain such a residence also requires either occasional trips back home or the hiring of others to manage the residence, and possibly both. All of this would seem to be unnecessary for someone that wishes to live mobile instead and imposes a burden that is not warranted by the duties of citizenship alone.
Resolution
What I would like to see enacted to resolve this problem is a special category for mobile citizens. That is, an opt-in program that permits people to live without a permanent legal residence (domicile) but requires them to maintain a mail service and to contribute to a common tax support fund.
Somewhere to send official mail will be important to have. To some extent this could be replaced in time with electronic services but as yet some things must still be done with hard copy. Requiring that this be done through the Postal Service would help insure compliance with identity and verification checks and could also support a paid expansion of services for that financially troubled entity. Though nothing would stop those living mobile from also contracting a private mailbox service for their normal post. An official mail account could be expanded upon and possibly eventually replaced with an official online account for electronic post, also routed through the Postal Service.
A common fund to help support regional and local services seems like the most practical way for those living mobile to make real contributions to the public service providers that they are supported by. Though this method will still have its challenges. This could be a flat rate charge upon entering the special status bracket of mobile citizen and some small percentage of income earned thereafter. Or otherwise whichever tax method can be found to be most fair to all parties involved. Possibly with subsidies for needy cases.
In these ways all requirements in terms of the duties of citizenship can be met by mobile citizens. We can live mobile and still be good citizens. As yet with citizenship tied to domicile those living mobile have no set means to rationally contribute to local service providers. In consequence they often encounter rejection (and even forced settlement) by others who see them as freeloaders or degenerates. This characterization can become self-fulfilling over time, but that need not be the case. Those who cannot afford or choose not to engage in static housing can also be contributing members of society.
Given the organizational patterns of the United States, this might best be accomplished at the level of the individual states. And as such it need not involve a legal change for all or even most of the states themselves. A federal law altering the domicile requirements and mandating certain conditions and responsibilities for those states that wish to include this new category of citizenship would be sufficient. Those states that wish to change their own laws and actively welcome mobile citizens could then do so. Other states would be free to maintain more strict residency requirements. Those that opt in would be able to share in the common tax fund in accordance with the number of mobile citizens they acquire and those that opt out would be barred from use of that fund. With federal cooperation and in partnership with the Postal Service the mobile citizens would not even have to set foot in that state, as all verification and other requirements could be accomplished at common government facilities.
Alternatively, though this would require (much) more extensive changes in federal law, citizenship for mobile citizens could be detached from state of legal residence entirely and designated as federal citizenship without domicile. In this case there might need to be some tracking mechanism or marker to show that mobile citizens were partaking in local services at a given time in order to share out the common tax fund in a fair manner, but probably it would make more sense to just share out the fund equally between states and locales. Which would be much more respectful of privacy rights. Inevitably those places that are most frequented by mobile citizens will have their services utilized out of proportion to funds received, but tax and funding structures can be changed to compensate for this. Florida is a common vacation spot and is frequently inundated by non-residents, but funds many services primarily through sales and use taxes instead of through income taxes on state residents.
Other Concerns
There are other reasons for wanting to pin people down to permanent home locations, but I think most of these have to do with enforcement of legal and tax codes and possibly national defense matters. They do not derive from the duties of citizenship. As such there is no firm basis for imposing static living solutions on law abiding citizens. As time passes and the world becomes more interconnected electronically these concerns are also being met by various means that do not require a linked physical address. So finances and associated taxes are being tracked through the interlinked financial networks, for instance. It does not seem to be necessary now and will become less so over time to restrict people to permanent addresses for such reasons.
[Joseph Jones, ed., 12 July 2021]