Well heeled people already do pretty much as they please. Own a house in one state, travel as you see fit in your RV or whatever.

It's only a serious hardship for poor people.

Maybe it’s better to think of local government as a Proof of Stake system. Where you Stake the value of land+house as collateral (using an address) to access trust based services like voting, banking, etc. such that everyone is clear that you can pay the annual fees or penalties (if ever applicable) for that local government / bank.

Sadly that does mean poor people who can’t stake capital or spend capital on rent in an area get left out of the system.

What would a system look like that didn’t use Proof of Stake as collateral to get people access to trust based systems?

I live in a town with tons and tons of students. They live here for a few years and move on.

I’m glad they avoid voting. They’d just vote for high taxes, which they wouldn’t have to pay for very long.

The city has a good system for dealing with political activism by students: there are a ton of unpaid committees with actual power - but exercising the power requires jumping throwing hoops to make sure it’s used well.

In practice this means students can get lots of influence, if they’re willing to put in the time and effort.

That seems like a good system to me.

It also makes me very cynical about voting in general. The fact that someone is willing to wait in line for 20 minutes and check a piece of paper says little about their ideas.

Spending 20 hours a week - evening and weekends - to research and write reports shows you care.

Proof of Time frankly is really just Proof of Stake with a different monetize-able asset.

Not to say the time isn’t worth it, or doesn’t need to be put in. I just don’t feel like it’s substantially different (for the purpose of this conversation) to buying a house in the area. ie. The homeless can’t spend time on committees.

The Committee on Homelessness requires that some of its members currently be homeless, and other members be formerly homeless.

Even absent owning a house or otherwise having a permanent address in a given state, well heeled people probably have a stable/trusted relative or friend who can serve as a nominal permanent address and place to receive official mail. I did this for someone for a few years.

A PO Box costs ~$100/yr.

Doesn’t work. Usually banks, for example, won’t accept a PO box as a residential address. They need to know where you actually live.

There are private services that make it look like a real street address. The top hit when I just googled it was $9.99 a month, so pretty affordable.

Banks and some other entities have databases of these services. Some will not accept these addresses. They will let you use them for mail, but they will also require a physical address and proof that you live there. But others will not. It depends on which mailing service you use and which bank, etc. This is my personal experience.

Recently, when I (in Australia) opened a US investment account, the US firm I was using wanted to see a utility bill to prove I actually lived at my home address. I ended up sending them a copy of my water bill, which they accepted.

However, if a person owns multiple residences, all that proves is that you own that residence, not that you actually live there at all. At least in my jurisdiction, landlords receive and pay water bills (and the tenant has to reimburse the landlord the usage portion of the bill), so a water bill could even be from an investment property one is renting out.

With electronic billing, you can have a billing address that doesn't actually get a bill sent to it. So if you have something that doesn't require the actual physical address (like a cell phone), you can use that as your utility bill, and no mail actually shows up.

That's why cell phones bill aren't accepted as utility bills, for many cases. Electric, water, sewer -- these things have a physical connection, and that's what they want to see.

You need a physical address for many things.

Or alternatively, have a relative who will let you use their address? That seems a lot cheaper.

A hard case is combination of not having money and not having family.

Homeless people frequently are homeless in part because they don't have any relatives they are on good terms with. Most of the world blames the homeless person and chalks it up to their presumed bad behavior but it's not unusual for them to be fleeing an abusive situation.

Yes, I should have said "not having family they're on good terms with."

This of course is a particular peculiarity with the US, having such varying state taxes.

It is actually very common in federal systems to have state/province-level taxation, driver's licensing, etc. I don't think the US is particularly peculiar here at all. Canadian provinces also have individual GST and income tax rates.

In some ways, I'd say Australia is actually more peculiar than the US, in that the Australian states have significantly more limited taxation powers than American states or Canadian provinces do – here, the federal government banned state income tax and state sales taxes (GST/VAT), forcing uniform national tax rates and collection for both. However, Australian states still retain the power to levy some other taxes independently, such as land taxes and payroll taxes.

There’s other weirdness too. CDLs are different between states. Oregon used to issue lots of shady licenses to undocumented and on the run type people.