The Micro-Licence System
Preventing Damages & Gamifying Education
In a Nutshell:
When we’re faced with misuse of liberties, intelligent channelling of behaviour works better than prohibition. For any item or activity that carries significant risk, an educational licensing system can empower and upskill individuals through a culture of micro-qualifications. This proposed component of the Ten-Tier System helps us to mitigate damages and risks while simultaneously enhancing education, responsibility, and maturity of citizens.
Main ideas behind the proposed system:
Education-Based Licensing: A system where individuals must complete short educational courses or pass tests before gaining access to potentially hazardous activities (e.g. alcohol, cigarettes, recreational substances).
Intelligent Barrier: This system serves as a low-entry barrier that is accessible and agreeable, yet ensures individuals are informed about the primary risks and responsibilities associated with the activity.
Staged Licensing: Access is not necessarily binary (yes or no; permitted or prohibited) but may vary in regulation based on factors like age, proficiency, and understanding, similar to how driving privileges are managed.
Mitigating Harm: The system aims to reduce harm by preventing uninformed or irresponsible use, encouraging informed decision-making and accountability.
Alternative to Prohibition: Rather than outright banning substances, the system offers a controlled, educational pathway to access, minimising the dangers of unregulated use and criminal association.
Democratic Calibration: In the Ten-Tier System, rules for licensing can be tuned and reassessed democratically by the citizenry, allowing for fair and transparent governance.
Promoting Self-Moderation: The system fosters a mature culture of learning and self-moderation, prioritising education and responsibility over authority-imposed regulation.
Cultural Decriminalisation: Through opening legislation and education to accommodate currently taboo activity, we can reduce criminality. Cultural response to damaging behaviour can begin to shift to rehabilitation instead of criminal conviction, taking a preventative approach to crime and abuse by fostering mental health and positive socialisation.
Like many other proposed ideas within the Ten-Tier System, this concept is designed to be implemented as part of a broader system change.
You can read more in the article ‘Drugs, Guns, and Fast Cars’, where we’ll see this system in action and explore society’s dark and dangerous habits.
The Micro-Licence System Briefly Explained
The proposal here is an educational cultural licensing system. By integrating education with culture and legislation, we can simultaneously foster an educated and skilled society while significantly mitigating the likelihood of avoidable accidents and substance abuse.
In theory, it would be simple, free, universally accessible, and easy for most citizens. There would be some necessary additions to the overall digital infrastructure, but the costs and inconveniences in the short run would pale in comparison to those from long-term irresponsible use and damages to a person’s life and greater society.
The simple idea is to implement and normalise micro-qualifications. When engaging in potentially problematic activities, short courses and theoretical tests help to provide greater assurance that responsibility and good health are factored components. On their own time, individuals can freely access information pertaining to each micro-qualification (e.g. a website or booklet where you can learn about the risks and damages of alcohol), and would only be required to come to an official location (or have a trusted authenticator) to pass a simple test. If the individual shows sufficient understanding of the activity in question (in this case, the effects of drinking alcohol), they would be provided a licence (digital and/or physical) that permits them to partake in that activity.
Like with driving or diving, there would be multiple types and levels of licence (degrees of expertise) for a particular activity, although of course the complexity of the qualification process would be proportional to the complexity and risk level of the activity in question.
While the original intention was primarily risk and damage reduction, there are multiple benefits to be gained from this implementation. For example, it encourages continuous learning and growth outside of school, builds maturity and accountability, and may feed back into an individual’s motivations and self-esteem. In the Ten-Tier System, it may also earn an individual a greater Competence Score (mentioned in the Contribution Index article), which could bring further benefits and privileges.
While different activities require different levels of proficiency that may go beyond just a simple micro-qualification, licence-like concepts help to equip people for everyday activities that they aren’t taught at home or through formal education.
It also has commercial and widespread application, future-proofing society for emerging technologies that could enter the public sphere, e.g. AI integration, gene editing, novel weaponry, particle accelerators, extra-dimensional technologies… It could also parallel a framework for industrial and commercial regulations that ensure ethical and responsible practices.
Our complex society has a wide spectrum of technologies and activities that can have significant consequences from misconduct or abuse, and even something that seems so banal like drinking a beer or a cup of coffee can multiply in complexity and damages in the long term. A digital or physical licensing programme is a simple way to reduce these negative outcomes by offering a low-level barrier to entry. And while I’m sure a great many people would initially see it as an inconvenience and bothersome if you simply want to get a harmless coffee (it wouldn’t necessarily need to apply to caffeine), for most licensable activities it may be only a short test done one time in life, or perhaps once a decade—and even with that small investment, we can reduce deaths, damages, and expenses. A day spent in training could save a lifetime of heartache.
This system could potentially include, but is not limited to:
Vehicles & heavy machinery;
Recreational or medicinal substances (e.g. alcohol, cannabis, nicotine products, certain medications and currently illegal ‘drugs’, and possibly caffeine products and other stimulants);
Purpose-made weaponry or self-defence items (e.g. firearms, swords, tasers, pepper spray, sports bows);
Home-made products for consumption, sale, or sharing (e.g. home-made alcohol or medicine).
Three Characteristics of Educated Licensing:
Gamification — Culturally gamifying society with micro-qualifications helps to encourage learning and upskilling in a way that is enjoyable. It empowers individuals by increasing their competence, awarding them for each achievement and giving them a morale boost that can create a chain reaction of self-development. Quick wins to level up!
Staggered Limitations — By having multiple levels of access for certain liberties, we can be expansive and accommodating with society’s riskier activities. Offering degrees of liberty on both the low and high levels means citizens can enjoy easily earned freedoms in a safe and controlled manner. Increased access, freedoms, and privileges could be proportional to higher degrees of knowledge, competence, and responsibility.
Earned Privilege — Motivating people to earn some luxuries and liberties society has on offer can help to reframe certain concepts as being earned through action, not deserved by birthright. When hazardous activities are being considered, this helps to maintain a healthy respect and reverence, and creates a healthy attitude for life in general.
This educational licensing system could be super powerful tool in transforming our culture. Through it, we could boast a mature and self-accountable society, broadly skilled and educated, and free on their own terms. But there’s so much to this conversation that is much more exciting. This has just been a quick dip to give you the basics of the idea, and I’d encourage you to read the full article ‘Drugs, Guns, and Fast Cars’. There, we’re going to go deeper, understanding society’s dark and dangerous side and considering our solutions.
You can read it here [link coming soon].
If you think this is a good idea, please share it around. If you have questions or ideas for improvement, don’t hesitate to share them in comments section.
Thanks for reading!