Transterritory

Overview

A Transterritory is a constitutional element of the multi-layer representative structure and has a its own government directly elected by all of the citizens in the Transterritory.
Within the structure of Variable Law, States may elect to promote aspects of law and some service responsibilities to Transterritories. So every Transterritory has a constitutional responsibility to uphold the constitution and to provide the BASE services that are promoted to it by the majority of its constituencies.

The Transterritory operates at a level above where most 20th century societies have organized themselves, with the exception of some of the largest countries in the world which are effectively Transterritories already such as China, USA, Russia and India. The European Union is an attempt to create a Transterritorial structure but lacks many of the fundamental qualities of a single, directly elected assembly governing aspects of law that have been specifically promoted to it because it maintains a regionally focused power structure designed to maintain the influence of each geographic constituency. The U.N. has done work to define ‘regions’ of the world that gives a sketch of roughly how Transterritories could be composed around the world.
The primary functions of Transterritories will likely be the creation of standards and the regulation of the monetary system.

Minimum Requirements

Along the with the right to create laws comes the responsibility to administrate the infrastructure necessary to support the government of the Transterritory. There are aspects of governance that a Transterritory cannot promote or relinquish, because to do so would abdicate the core responsibilities of being a Transterritory.
To this extent, an inability to manage and administrate these aspects of government, precludes a group from forming a legal Transterritory and having its own government:

• elections
• government assembly
• legal services to codify, police and prosecute the law
• BASE services as promoted to the Transterritory by constituent States
• Information network connectivity
• Transport integration
• Monetary & financial control of currency

Responsibilities

Elections

By definition a Transterritory has its own government and so it must necessarily be able to run elections for representatives.
Elections must be held using the LIFE PR system which requires that the Transterritory is able to validate its constituents’ identity and provide a suitably accessible method for them to cast their votes. Transterritory governments must be re-elected every six years.

Representative Assembly

The elected representatives meet in assembly to review matters before them and make laws.
The Transterritory must provide facilities for the representatives to meet, and for there to be public scrutiny and a premanent record of the proceedings and voting.
The size of the assembly is determined by the size of the Transterritory’s population, but can not be less sufficient than to accommodate seven representatives, assembly reporters and a public gallery.

The remuneration for representatives should be approximately 8 times the median earnings of their constituents, such that the best candidates are attracted to public service and so that they can devote themselves full-time to the execution of their responsibilities.

Variable Law

The principle of Variable Law allows for a Transterritory to retain unto itself aspects of law promoted to it by the States it contains, and, in practice, it is likely that some aspects of law will be further promoted by Transterritories for governance at the World level.
Transterritories, like any other layer, that decide to retain, or retrieve, any apsect of law, have a concombinant responsibility to adjudicate any alledged transgressions thereof. This requires that the Transterritory have the personnel and infrastructure necessary to police and prosecute the law. Transterritories will have to fund these services, and the others outlined below, out of their BASE tax distributions and any local taxes levied.

Separation & Unification

The constituent States of a Transterritory are voluntary members of the Transterritory and linked by geographic proximity. States can elect to change their affiliation between Transterritories, so long as they have geographic continuity with a State in the other Transterritory. The citizens of a Region joining an established Transterritory automatically inherit the Variable Law status and Transterritorial affiliation of their new Transterritory.
Transterritories do not have the right to accept or reject a State’s election to affiliate with them.
The States of a Transterritory can elect to divide into multiple Transterritories – effectively allowing secession. In such an event, each new Transterritory initially inherits the same Variable Law status and Transterritorial affiliation as its origin Transterritory.
Material fixed assets, and directly associated debt obligations, are assigned to the new Transterritories based on the geographical boundries of the new Transterritories. Other financial assets and debts are proportionally assigned to the new Transterritories based on the portion of the previous population they encompass.

Transterritory Management

In support of the constitutional responsibilities of the Transterritory there are various practical management duties necessary to the functioning of the Transterritory.
The organization of the adminstrative and management functions resembles a standard management structure in which departmental managers of each of the functions below report to, and serve at the discretion of, the representative assembly.

In addition to the functional Service departments below, there are various general management reponsibilities that will most likely be executed by a general manager.

Finances

A Transterritory must be able to manage its finances and keep accurate, public records thereof.
This could involve management of the collection and expenditure of sales or income taxes, and BASE distributions for the provisioning of public services (see below). Over time it will be preferable to move tax collection up to Transterritories in order to broaden the reach of common standards of life.
A Transterritory Finance Manager should report regularly to the Transterritory Assembly on the state of the public finances.

Sales, Corporate & Income Taxes

Transterritories that collect taxes based on sales or income must provide their own mechanisms for their collection.

Service Financing

Transterritories receive disbursements of tax revenues to cover the costs of provisioning the BASE services that have been promoted to them. The receipts of the Transterritory are proportional to the services that have been promoted to them.

Environment

One of the primary responsibilities of every Transterritory is to manage their environment, and their impact on it, to create a sustainable living space.
There are two primary elements that each Transterritory must manage:

• energy
• water

Energy

It is in the self interest of every Transterritory to become as energy self sufficient as possible, with the lowest environmental impact. The objective of every Transterritory should be to become entirely self sufficient without the use of stored carbon energy sources, such as coal, gas and oil.
Transterritories that can increase their efficiency and develop their own renewable generation capacity will be best able to serve their constituents by funnelling funds into their Transterritorial infrastructure, that would otherwise have been spent on energy.

Water

An adequate supply of clean water is necessary for life and it is a key responsibility for every Transterritory to plan for and secure this.
Necessarily, water management is defined by the catchment basin, watersheds and aquifers of the geography that the Transterritory occupies. In many cases this will require States, Regions and Communities to form water management authorities that cross constituency boundries, and Transterritories can assist in the development and coordination of these authorities.

Monetary Policy

Currency is the vital lubricant of trade. Its stablity and endurance is critical to economic systems as a basic foundation that is outside the moral value systems and opinions of people or societies.
Ideally we should all be able to use a single currency. Today the societies with the broadest reach of a single currency, like the USA and the Euro Zone, enjoy the benefits of flexible and fluid markets where “value” can be confidently understood across geographies, cultures and time zones.
Trust is the commodity that underpins the value of a currency. In the pre-capitalist era the linkage of currencies directly to a precious metal was the only way to acheive the required confidence. In a capitalist market system, trust comes from confidence in the montary management of the currency, including the regulation of the banking system. This means managing the currency dispassionately and that means that an independant, non-political authority is charged with the sole purpose of protecting the stablity and endurance of the value of the currency.
The only reasons not to adopt a broad reach currency are trust and control. If you do not trust the monetary management authority of the currency and you think you can do a better job, you will not allow your society to become dependent on that currency for the lifeblood of your ecomony. If you want to be able to control your own currency for any other reason than not trusting the authorities of a broader reach currency, it is most likely because you wish to hold in reserve the right to pollute your currency to cover for economic mistakes.

Currency Comptrollers

Given the value to all of a broad reach, stable currency Transterritories have the responsibility to create a monetary management system governed by an independant, non-political, expert authority charged with the sole purpose of protecting the stablity and endurance of the value of the currency. Traditionally these have been called ‘central banks’ because it is through their management and regulation of the banking system that they exercised their responsibilities, we propose that they be named ‘Currency Comptrollers’ to emphasize their roles.

As societies adopt the Standards of LIFE, an early consideration has to be their Transterritorial affiliation and in many cases this will be an obvious choice. Coordinating the adoption of a single currency across the Transterritory requires the establishment of Currency Comptroller authority that can advertise its independance and expertise, and that may have to start before the CRS layers will be willing to make the commitment.

Services

The provision of promoted BASE services to all Transterritory constituents is a mandated constitutional responsibility of every Transterritory. There are bound to be variations in the nature of the services, the extent to which they are delivered through promotion of the responsibility to higher layers, and the priorities of different Transterritories.

Each of the following services will most likely require management that reports to the assembly, and staff to provision and maintain the services and facilities.

Shelter

Transterritories are likely to have only emergency relief responsibilities. A Transterritory should probably have temporary shelter capacity for a sixth of their population. Disaster planning and analysis will allow Transterritories to determine the appropriate extent of the facilities they maintain.

Sustenance

Transterritories are likely to be involved simply in assisting States with the distribution of food stuffs and planning for emergency relief, in line with the situations described in Shelter above.

Healthcare

The primary responsibility of Transterritories for Healthcare services will be to support the efforts of lower layers to provide preventitive services. Transterritories can also provide specialized services to support States in the event of large scale epidemics.

Transport

Efficient provision of many BASE services in a Transterritory, as well as the health of the local economy as a whole, will require the availability of public mass transport systems. Any transport network needs to integrate in a coordinated manner with the transport infrastructure of the wider area in order to provide meaningful services.
The primary focus for Transterritories will be on creating the basic standards governing transport systems and providing interconnecting transport services between States.
While flying is very unlikely to be a part of the BASE Transport service anywhere, the very nature of aviation means that it will likely be an appropriate Transterritory responsibilty to set the standards for and manage.

Education & Research

The most advanced and specialized research will often be promoted to Transterritories.
There is much research to be done to find solutions for society’s challenges in many areas such as sustainable energy production, water management and efficiency at every level. As these efforts have urgency, critical consequences and require significant resources they demand the pooling of resources and talent across as wide a population as practical and coordination of efforts in different locales.

Information

The ability of residents to access information will be key to the vitality of the economic activity of the Transterritory, the health of the society and the democratic involvement of all.
Reliable, secure connectivity between all contituencies and onwards to higher layers, at the fastest speeds possible, has to be the objective of every Transterritory. The Transterritory has a key role to play in the deployment of a secure, resilient network infrastructure that provides the entire population with access to secure data stores.

Access

The Transterritory’s main responsibility will be providing interconnectivity between public access networks across State boundries.

SPEx

To enable a vibrant micro economy the Transterritory needs to provide support, guidance and basic technology infrastructure for a Transterritory Services & Products Exchange (T.SPEx). This exchange provides a consolidated marketplace using Inter-SPEx to connect the S.SPEx systems and allow anyone to publish the services or products they are willing to provide across the Transterritory, whether for monetary compensation or not.
Where States do not have the ability to provide their own SPEx, they can promote this to the Transterritory, and the Transterritory will provide centrally serviced but locally specific SPEx systems for each Community within the States.
The Inter-SPEx network links the T.SPEx to the W.SPEx worldwide exchange for micro services and products.
It is vital to the sustainable health and prosperity of every Transterritory that every effort be made to foster and support micro economic activity. While all of the BASE services indirectly support that goal, Information services are the catalyst that ignites the flame.

Legal Services

Transterritories must provide the required Legal Services to their constituents.
Most likely Transterritories will be the holders of aspects of law related to macro financial management. Transterritories will need incarceration facilities for the criminals deemed to be an ongoing threat to society in those aspects of law that have been promoted to them.