Comment by athrowaway3z

You wish to take up a specific space, and with the right to use it come obligations.

There was no tax or toll to consider.

People naturally self-assembled under the idea that if you benefited, then you had to contribute. The calculation was: how much land did you have, how valuable was it, how much benefit you'd get from some waterworks (it wasnt just dikes but also rerouting rivers etc). Obligations were denominated in labor.

My point is not that this was some perfect idyllic corruption-free scheme - it wasn't - but it was very transparent.

All you should need for a stable system is for the majority of interests to align. One addition you can add is to have the labor be turned against individuals/groups that decide to unalign - i.e. instead of trashing space debris your next labor is to de-orbit a satellite if 1 company decides to try their luck at tyranny over cooperation.

Things hinge on a shared understanding that its always possible to go back to the salted earth solution.