Counterpoint:
What about his prior exposure to in-game information from his membership in Gong? There is no realistic way for a person to 'leave behind' those details, so to speak. If he is allowed to switch teams, we all must be aware that he will be carrying with him, for better or for worse, the knowledge of Maps, Strategy, Relations, and other miscellany that he incorporated while on Gong.
To put this position in context, I'm writing from a pragmatic point of view that was arrived at when the first MTDG ruleset prevented refugees (from defeated teams) from relating anything they already knew to their new teammates. This rule struck me as unrealistic, unenforceable, and serving no greater purpose. I came to this position having witnessed, first-hand, the silly way in which a wrongly-received screenshot incident was handled. KISS sent MIA (my team) a screenshot before having researched Navigation, which the Ruleset specified was necessary for team to exchange screenshots. However, having seen the screenshot (it was a proposed border division, showing towns on both sides of the proposed border), there was no way any of us could honestly 'forget' the info it contained - placements of units, units strengths, city sizes, roads, etc. Obviously, none of us could separate out those details when talking about strategy. The rule was unrealistic: we all promptly erased the image, and copies of it, from our forum and from our computers, but the fact remained - we had seen something we 'shouldn't' have seen. You can't honestly forget that.
So let us all be aware: If RickFGS is allowed to switch teams, it is unrealistic that he will be playing without any awareness of things that Team Gong is currently aware of.
Once this discussion has been joined by representatives of the other teams (rather than only Councillors!), this should be put to a 48 or 72 hour vote, simple majority, anonymous, with secondary poll of which team the voter is on. If everyone on Team Gong votes against this, despite overwhelming numbers of other teams approving, then clearly it should not be allowed to happen as it will unfairly hurt Rick's current teammates.
A vote will also give us a census of how many players are still active.
