"Worse still, monarchy, communism, democracy, and all the rest are inevitably controlled by a small number of concentrated interests. Thus, they all ultimately resolve to oligarchy. Wherever there is inescapable, involuntary authority, there will be abuse, tyranny, or worse." So very true. This is a great start Christopher. A vision for another way, a far better way than we have seen in our times. I am very much looking forward to further development of these ideas and principles. In particular I hope to see practical solutions to the problems of polities that fail to honor the right of exit. Such is briefly covered here.
" Note that our wording “prearranged by agreement or otherwise mutually recognized” allows for prior contractual arrangements, but it also stipulates the possibility of choosing a mutually acceptable arbitrator ad hoc, if no such prior arrangement had yet been made. This also guards against attempts to impose a judgment from a unilateral tribunal.
"The CRP is a set of top-level protocols, not a complete legal document. There are, of course, ways that bad actors can attempt to game any system, and these will have to be addressed in future agreements. Overall, however, replacing government courts with a private-law arbitration system solves a number of problems. And it is exactly the sort of solution we would expect to find in a just world."
I'd like to see examples of how the protection of this would be enforced in a competitive private market manner. Seems like it would make a great sci-fi novel ala F. Paul Wilson.
“In particular I hope to see practical solutions to the problems of polities that fail to honor the right of exit.” [ … ] “I'd like to see examples of how the protection of this would be enforced in a competitive private market manner. Seems like it would make a great sci-fi novel ala F. Paul Wilson.“
—From the fiction world, F. Paul Wilson was a bit of an influence, but the bigger fiction influence is Neal Stephenson. Indeed, the name is a bit of an homage to the “Common Economic Protocol” hinted at in “The Diamond Age.”
In that book, there was some sort of joint enforcement force. It was somehow involved with the CEP, and they did (SPOILER ALERT) play a role in the resolution of the plot. I would have to reread it to get the details.
We do not know how this is going to play out IRL. It’s hard to predict. What will signatories agree to? What circumstances will arise to which they must then adjust?
We just don’t know, and really, we don’t need to know every detail now. We just need to put one foot in front of the other, and then pass the task on to the next generation.
That may seem like a dodge, but it isn’t. Trying to plan and control everything is what got us into this mess. What we need to do is create frameworks based on fundamental principles and then let good people try to stay true to those principles.
As far as exit goes, that has always been one of the toughest questions. It has to be a requirement, but it’s really hard to enforce on bad actors.
Then again, look at what we have now. This is prison planet. There is no exit, other than to other involuntary regimes. They all require passports. Most of them have extradition. There is no recourse, other than to another agency of government, another government, or a body like the UN, which is run by governments.
We can hardly do worse than that. Here too, that is not a dodge; it’s just a fact. This is an imperfect world. If we create something powerful enough to FORCE exit rights on the bad actors, then we have created a world government, and we are trying to avoid that like the plague.
What we can (eventually) enforce is consent upon affiliation. They way we do that is by using force to prevent people from being captured and forced to join polities. That is clear cut, and protective force is thus entirely justified. But we may have to accept that someone might consent to be a part of something bad, or that it might go bad later and not let them out. The same problem exists now, with normal states, and the only recourse is negotiation or war.
Perhaps we can find a way to be better, but we definitely won’t be worse. Indeed, signatories to the CRP will be the kinds of polities and people who will want to allow exit. So that just leaves the bad actors, who wouldn’t sign anyway, and will exist whether there is a CRP or not. The hope is that we can slowly change the ethos of the species, to further and further isolate those who would violate consent and use violence upon others.
But of course, I am open to any ideas people have. We will need ideas, as will our descendants!
I appreciate your thoughtful reply Christopher. I suspect that there may arise voluntary solutions, the underground railroad during slavery times comes to mind, and the taking down of the Berlin Wall. People who value these principles and consensual based freedom will very likely feel motivated to support such efforts and contribute to them to fund those who will enjoy the excitement and adventure of rescuing people from such situations. Bad reputations of polities who violate such principles will find themselves shunned, shamed and hard put to get favorable trade and cultural exchange after being seen for what they are doing.
Really, it comes down to this: force should only be used in response to coercive force, not to preempt bad behavior. There are marginal cases, of course, like forcibly stopping a shooter who is about to start shooting up a park full of people. But in general, the principle is sound. How can we end the human practice of imposing ex ante force to control people's behavior?
With that in mind, we want to have something like the CRP without adding ex ante enforcement and control. It's a hard needle to thread, but it seems we should try that rather than starting out with a new version of the same old bag of tricks.
Yes, care must be taken to assure we don't continue the old impositions. My preference is always to err on the side of less force, more freedom. Inspire not conspire and impose.
Yes to your final questions, but for one glaring problem and then some serious exceptions that will inevitably arise.
The one glaring problem is that powerful people will use their power to get their way and nobody will be able to stop them. Any justice mechanism created will just become captured by the powerful so the powerful can be exempt from it. The transition from monarchies to democracies and aristocracies didn't happen because people finally realized they should fight for their rights. The transitions happened because the merchant class became more powerful than the monarchs, and created a system that benefited them most. If individual people could become more powerful than the merchant class or the government AND power were spread out so far that all individuals were as powerful as all other individuals, then the world you seek would naturally arise and the CRP could be implemented at that time. However individuals ARE becoming very powerful today, yet that power is NOT spread out at all. Thus arises the technoking era. Maybe we should focus on creating technology which can put all individuals on equal footing with the technokings?
Even if that all happened people will resort to the same tried and true tactics which game the system until we are right back to where we are. A partial list of such unhandled exceptions (which crash a program or result in *passing back to a main method* of state control) is below:
II. "It is coming straight for us!" (South Park reference)
III. "Policy updated as we learned." (Covid reference)
V. "You can leave but then you lose our nuclear shield/tax credits/disease cure/GMO seeds."
VII. "That's not what I signed."
VIII. "Their disinformation caused this radicalization," (war on terror reference) or "The children would have grown to become terrorists/avenge their parents," (actual things Trump and Netenyahu have said.
IX. "But they violated the CRP!"
Besides all that, how does one fix the foundational flaws of justice? It is impossible to correct violations before they occur, but too late to actually fix anything meaningfully after the fact.
II. "It is coming straight for us!" (South Park reference)
—Classic!
III. "Policy updated as we learned." (Covid reference)
—Evil. We must begin the process of rejecting their authority to do that. It may take generations, but it will not start unless we start it.
V. "You can leave but then you lose our nuclear shield/tax credits/disease cure/GMO seeds."
—Would the Amish care?
VII. "That's not what I signed."
—Private business already almost exclusively use private arbitration, and this is not a problem. There have been private-law societies that have lasted for centuries—longer than any state currently in existence. There are people out there who are too Pollyanna about humanity. But you, in this case, are being far too jaundiced.
No I suppose the Amish wouldn't care, and of course it is still better to be able to exit than to not. I just foresee the problem arising of protection rackets that create such extreme incentives not to leave. For example if it means near-certain death or very degraded life for anyone who leaves.
That’s why we do this slowly. We pass the task on to our children. We grow quietly. And then, in 100 years … who knows? Maybe there will be enough of us, with enough cohesion, wealth, and savvy, that we can more effectively advocate for our own self-determination.
There are lots of fronts to work on, though. This is one of them.
An example of what I was saying below, re: private interests benefitting from government.
I was consulting today with a qualified intermediary for a 1031 exchange, to avoid capital gains taxes on a property sale. In order to avoid a hefty tax, I would have to pay this intermediary $2,000. The IRS does nothing productive. This qualified intermediary does nothing productive. But they can both use the power of government to extract wealth from me. Yes, the intermediary is working “on my behalf,” but he is still benefiting from the violence done to me.
It’s not as sexy an example as GOVERNMENT FORCING US TO TAKE AND PAY FOR THE COVID VACCINE, THUS CREATING 200 NEW BILLIONAIRES. But it’s just one more example of how insidious it is.
Your objection—that power will always try to aggrandize itself—is understandable, but it does seem to send the message of “Why bother?” It rings of preemptive surrender, or of an impulse to reject all solutions for their lack of perfection. Either of those is damaging to the cause of human liberty.
We can make this world better. The first step is to know that that is possible, and not to give in preemptively.
“powerful people will use their power to get their way and nobody will be able to stop them.”
—That is the case now, surely.
Let’s unpack it…
Power attracts psychopaths. Power attracts people who want to get their way or to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others.
We know this. It is the case now, and it will be the case with any future systems. The world we would like to build will not reform human nature.
However, the world we would like to build (and that, admittedly, it will likely take a long time to build) offers several advantages.
Right now, the power hungry can indulge their crapulent power-hunger via political power. Political power, as it is currently constituted, is involuntary and inescapable. They have the power to use force against you, and you have no genuine recourse. They can tax you. They can fore you to fight for them. They can pass laws to protect themselves and hobble you. They can print money. You can complain, but you would just be complaining to one of their fellows. You can leave, and if they let you, the best you can hope for is to go to another version of the same thing.
The power-mad in the private sector similarly benefit from this government power. Grants, loans, special treatment, special protections. The ability to use government power to force us to buy their products — mostly indirectly through taxation, but the force is real nonetheless.
People in political power now, and their cronies in the private sector, can accumulate far, far more power and wealth than they would be able to in any sort of private arrangement. Private arrangements have competition. Private arrangements cannot keep you captive or extract wealth from you via the “legitimate” power of the state.
A jurisdictionally polycentric ecosystem will not be able to do any of those things. It will not be perfect, but it will be better.
I agree this system you propose is better. I also hope there is a way forward for liberty in my lifetime even in the absence of such a system. I think personal power through technology to even the playing field with technokings may be the best most productive way forward for individuals at this time.
The Amish have the birth rate right, but a population that has a high birth rate AND wealth/technology will have an easier time writing its own ticket.
“Besides all that, how does one fix the foundational flaws of justice? It is impossible to correct violations before they occur, but too late to actually fix anything meaningfully after the fact.“
Perhaps some wrongs can be rectified, but for things like murder the best thing we can do is stop the person from murdering again (put them in a cage until they are reformed which never happens, cage them forever, or kill them). There is no way to restore a dead person, or to restore the family and friends. So there is no actual justice for murder. Same goes for rape. Same goes for crimes that take too long to solve (justice delayed is justice denied). 9/11 is an example and covid is another. They are still holding trial for the person who allegedly masterminded 9/11 and it is 25 years later!
So anyways, the way I see it there is only justice if a crime is stopped before it happens (shoot the attacker), and of course that brings another set of problems (eg. he was just pulling out cash not a gun).
So the concept of justice seems very problematic to me. A world that agrees to keep tbe CRP will still be a world where enforcing it is problematic, for similar reasons.
I know this is beyond the point of your post but it is a thought I had.
They also take far more of your money than you would ever lose to thieves. What, are thieves going to steal $40,000 (or whatever number) from me? Every year of my adult life? No freaking way. Even without competing private protection agencies (who would reduce crime far more than government does), I STILL would be able to protect my property and not lose the million dollars (or whatever number’ that government takes over a working lifetime.
It’s a scam. It’s a racket. It’s a jobs program.
It produces nothing. It has none of the normal incentives of the market.
We could replace government with NOTHING AT ALL and we’d still be safer and wealthier.
Right now, no one protects you. They take your money. They come and draw a chalk line around you, and then they investigate after the fact. Then, assuming they find the perpetrator (which only happens half the time), they take your family’s money and force them to pay for your killer to be tried, convicted, and warehoused. They don’t have any real incentives to do a good job. They get your money either way. You cannot say no to them. (Now THAT’S a protection racket.)
The problem is that the CRP, as written, leaves several predictable ways for coercion to creep back in, even though the whole point of the protocol is to prevent coercion. A system can call itself “voluntary” while quietly recreating the same abuses the CRP is meant to eliminate. The most common failure modes are well-known: a polity can hide the real terms of joining, it can make leaving practically impossible without ever using overt force, and it can redefine who counts as a “person” so that some people simply fall outside the protections the CRP assumes. These are the classic ways that voluntary systems collapse back into involuntary ones. A workable solution is to add three structural safeguards that close these loopholes in simple, understandable terms. First, require informed consent for entry: people must know exactly what they are agreeing to before joining any polity, so no group can lure members in with half-truths or hidden obligations. Second, forbid coercive externalities: a polity cannot punish people indirectly—by blocking travel, cutting off trade, or surrounding them with hostile territory—in order to make exit meaningless in practice. Third, require reciprocal recognition of personhood: every signatory must treat every human being as a rights-bearing individual for CRP purposes, so no group can declare that certain people “don’t count” and therefore can be coerced. These additions don’t change the spirit of the CRP; they simply make sure the CRP works the way it is supposed to work, even when human nature and political incentives push in the opposite direction.
The second and third objections are addressed in VI and III, respectively. Do you not think those are adequate? (I have already had long back-and-forths about this with AI; I would like to hear your human thoughts on the subject.)
The first objection is intriguing. We discuss this in some detail in the exegesis and the previous installments. What if a polity does not want to offer affiliation? We ought not include any language that seems to indicate that they are required to do so. Is your sole focus on the "informed" part? IOW, if they choose to offer affiliation, make the terms clear so that the person can make an informed choice?
Chris, please don’t take my comment as implying that your replies in III or VI were inadequate. I didn’t have those sections memorized when I wrote my comment, which was based on structural patterns I noticed rather than a detailed recollection of what you’d previously addressed. My comment wasn’t meant as a critique of your treatment—just an observation about the general failure modes I’ve seen in other voluntary-system proposals. My memory is fallible, and if anything I say overlaps with ground you’ve already covered, please disregard it. I’m happy to clarify anything if it’s useful.
On the first point: yes, my focus was entirely on the “informed” part. I agree that no polity should be required to offer affiliation. My concern was only that, if they do offer it, the terms should be clear enough that consent can’t be manufactured through ambiguity or hidden obligations. That was the only sense in which I meant “informed consent.” If the material in III and VI closes the other loopholes, that’s good news.
A minimal clause could simply say that if a polity chooses to offer affiliation, it must disclose the full terms in clear, non‑misleading form so that a reasonable agent can understand the obligations, rights, and conditions before consenting. That keeps the focus strictly on the “informed” part, avoids implying that any polity is required to offer affiliation, and closes the ambiguity/hidden‑obligation loophole without adding anything substantive to the CRP itself. A more compact version would be: “Affiliation, when offered, must be based on clear and non‑misleading disclosure of all material terms.”
The clause is so minimal and so structurally modest that almost no plausible signatory should balk at it. It doesn’t impose any obligation to offer affiliation, it doesn’t prescribe any substantive terms, and it doesn’t create any new rights for outsiders. All it does is require that if a polity voluntarily chooses to extend an offer, the offer cannot be deceptive. That’s a baseline condition for any consent-based system, and it’s already implicit in the CRP. Making it explicit simply closes the one loophole that would allow manufactured consent through ambiguity or hidden obligations.
The only parties who might object are those who want the freedom to smuggle in obligations under vague language, which is precisely the behavior the clause is meant to rule out. Anyone who is acting in good faith, and who actually wants affiliation to be voluntary rather than engineered, should have no principled reason to resist it.
LW objects to use of money and free market policing as detrimental to a free society. I don't think CRP would preclude them and at least encourage them as logically required for freedom and prosperity. So there is clearly categorical differences between CRT and your Common Law flavor of ideal society. It is not reinventing but clarifying a particular vision of free society.
Yes, exactly. It's apples and oranges. The CRP is meta-jurisdictional. It is attempting to allow polities to coexist whether they are for-profit micronations, monarchies, or the common law/jury trial polities like Calvin (and likely many of us) would prefer.
Thank you for understanding that and for offering this clarification.
"Worse still, monarchy, communism, democracy, and all the rest are inevitably controlled by a small number of concentrated interests. Thus, they all ultimately resolve to oligarchy. Wherever there is inescapable, involuntary authority, there will be abuse, tyranny, or worse." So very true. This is a great start Christopher. A vision for another way, a far better way than we have seen in our times. I am very much looking forward to further development of these ideas and principles. In particular I hope to see practical solutions to the problems of polities that fail to honor the right of exit. Such is briefly covered here.
" Note that our wording “prearranged by agreement or otherwise mutually recognized” allows for prior contractual arrangements, but it also stipulates the possibility of choosing a mutually acceptable arbitrator ad hoc, if no such prior arrangement had yet been made. This also guards against attempts to impose a judgment from a unilateral tribunal.
"The CRP is a set of top-level protocols, not a complete legal document. There are, of course, ways that bad actors can attempt to game any system, and these will have to be addressed in future agreements. Overall, however, replacing government courts with a private-law arbitration system solves a number of problems. And it is exactly the sort of solution we would expect to find in a just world."
I'd like to see examples of how the protection of this would be enforced in a competitive private market manner. Seems like it would make a great sci-fi novel ala F. Paul Wilson.
“In particular I hope to see practical solutions to the problems of polities that fail to honor the right of exit.” [ … ] “I'd like to see examples of how the protection of this would be enforced in a competitive private market manner. Seems like it would make a great sci-fi novel ala F. Paul Wilson.“
—From the fiction world, F. Paul Wilson was a bit of an influence, but the bigger fiction influence is Neal Stephenson. Indeed, the name is a bit of an homage to the “Common Economic Protocol” hinted at in “The Diamond Age.”
In that book, there was some sort of joint enforcement force. It was somehow involved with the CEP, and they did (SPOILER ALERT) play a role in the resolution of the plot. I would have to reread it to get the details.
We do not know how this is going to play out IRL. It’s hard to predict. What will signatories agree to? What circumstances will arise to which they must then adjust?
We just don’t know, and really, we don’t need to know every detail now. We just need to put one foot in front of the other, and then pass the task on to the next generation.
That may seem like a dodge, but it isn’t. Trying to plan and control everything is what got us into this mess. What we need to do is create frameworks based on fundamental principles and then let good people try to stay true to those principles.
As far as exit goes, that has always been one of the toughest questions. It has to be a requirement, but it’s really hard to enforce on bad actors.
Then again, look at what we have now. This is prison planet. There is no exit, other than to other involuntary regimes. They all require passports. Most of them have extradition. There is no recourse, other than to another agency of government, another government, or a body like the UN, which is run by governments.
We can hardly do worse than that. Here too, that is not a dodge; it’s just a fact. This is an imperfect world. If we create something powerful enough to FORCE exit rights on the bad actors, then we have created a world government, and we are trying to avoid that like the plague.
What we can (eventually) enforce is consent upon affiliation. They way we do that is by using force to prevent people from being captured and forced to join polities. That is clear cut, and protective force is thus entirely justified. But we may have to accept that someone might consent to be a part of something bad, or that it might go bad later and not let them out. The same problem exists now, with normal states, and the only recourse is negotiation or war.
Perhaps we can find a way to be better, but we definitely won’t be worse. Indeed, signatories to the CRP will be the kinds of polities and people who will want to allow exit. So that just leaves the bad actors, who wouldn’t sign anyway, and will exist whether there is a CRP or not. The hope is that we can slowly change the ethos of the species, to further and further isolate those who would violate consent and use violence upon others.
But of course, I am open to any ideas people have. We will need ideas, as will our descendants!
I appreciate your thoughtful reply Christopher. I suspect that there may arise voluntary solutions, the underground railroad during slavery times comes to mind, and the taking down of the Berlin Wall. People who value these principles and consensual based freedom will very likely feel motivated to support such efforts and contribute to them to fund those who will enjoy the excitement and adventure of rescuing people from such situations. Bad reputations of polities who violate such principles will find themselves shunned, shamed and hard put to get favorable trade and cultural exchange after being seen for what they are doing.
Yeah, those are all good ideas and mechanisms.
Really, it comes down to this: force should only be used in response to coercive force, not to preempt bad behavior. There are marginal cases, of course, like forcibly stopping a shooter who is about to start shooting up a park full of people. But in general, the principle is sound. How can we end the human practice of imposing ex ante force to control people's behavior?
With that in mind, we want to have something like the CRP without adding ex ante enforcement and control. It's a hard needle to thread, but it seems we should try that rather than starting out with a new version of the same old bag of tricks.
Yes, care must be taken to assure we don't continue the old impositions. My preference is always to err on the side of less force, more freedom. Inspire not conspire and impose.
Yes to your final questions, but for one glaring problem and then some serious exceptions that will inevitably arise.
The one glaring problem is that powerful people will use their power to get their way and nobody will be able to stop them. Any justice mechanism created will just become captured by the powerful so the powerful can be exempt from it. The transition from monarchies to democracies and aristocracies didn't happen because people finally realized they should fight for their rights. The transitions happened because the merchant class became more powerful than the monarchs, and created a system that benefited them most. If individual people could become more powerful than the merchant class or the government AND power were spread out so far that all individuals were as powerful as all other individuals, then the world you seek would naturally arise and the CRP could be implemented at that time. However individuals ARE becoming very powerful today, yet that power is NOT spread out at all. Thus arises the technoking era. Maybe we should focus on creating technology which can put all individuals on equal footing with the technokings?
Even if that all happened people will resort to the same tried and true tactics which game the system until we are right back to where we are. A partial list of such unhandled exceptions (which crash a program or result in *passing back to a main method* of state control) is below:
II. "It is coming straight for us!" (South Park reference)
III. "Policy updated as we learned." (Covid reference)
V. "You can leave but then you lose our nuclear shield/tax credits/disease cure/GMO seeds."
VII. "That's not what I signed."
VIII. "Their disinformation caused this radicalization," (war on terror reference) or "The children would have grown to become terrorists/avenge their parents," (actual things Trump and Netenyahu have said.
IX. "But they violated the CRP!"
Besides all that, how does one fix the foundational flaws of justice? It is impossible to correct violations before they occur, but too late to actually fix anything meaningfully after the fact.
II. "It is coming straight for us!" (South Park reference)
—Classic!
III. "Policy updated as we learned." (Covid reference)
—Evil. We must begin the process of rejecting their authority to do that. It may take generations, but it will not start unless we start it.
V. "You can leave but then you lose our nuclear shield/tax credits/disease cure/GMO seeds."
—Would the Amish care?
VII. "That's not what I signed."
—Private business already almost exclusively use private arbitration, and this is not a problem. There have been private-law societies that have lasted for centuries—longer than any state currently in existence. There are people out there who are too Pollyanna about humanity. But you, in this case, are being far too jaundiced.
No I suppose the Amish wouldn't care, and of course it is still better to be able to exit than to not. I just foresee the problem arising of protection rackets that create such extreme incentives not to leave. For example if it means near-certain death or very degraded life for anyone who leaves.
That’s why we do this slowly. We pass the task on to our children. We grow quietly. And then, in 100 years … who knows? Maybe there will be enough of us, with enough cohesion, wealth, and savvy, that we can more effectively advocate for our own self-determination.
There are lots of fronts to work on, though. This is one of them.
An example of what I was saying below, re: private interests benefitting from government.
I was consulting today with a qualified intermediary for a 1031 exchange, to avoid capital gains taxes on a property sale. In order to avoid a hefty tax, I would have to pay this intermediary $2,000. The IRS does nothing productive. This qualified intermediary does nothing productive. But they can both use the power of government to extract wealth from me. Yes, the intermediary is working “on my behalf,” but he is still benefiting from the violence done to me.
It’s not as sexy an example as GOVERNMENT FORCING US TO TAKE AND PAY FOR THE COVID VACCINE, THUS CREATING 200 NEW BILLIONAIRES. But it’s just one more example of how insidious it is.
Your objection—that power will always try to aggrandize itself—is understandable, but it does seem to send the message of “Why bother?” It rings of preemptive surrender, or of an impulse to reject all solutions for their lack of perfection. Either of those is damaging to the cause of human liberty.
We can make this world better. The first step is to know that that is possible, and not to give in preemptively.
“powerful people will use their power to get their way and nobody will be able to stop them.”
—That is the case now, surely.
Let’s unpack it…
Power attracts psychopaths. Power attracts people who want to get their way or to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others.
We know this. It is the case now, and it will be the case with any future systems. The world we would like to build will not reform human nature.
However, the world we would like to build (and that, admittedly, it will likely take a long time to build) offers several advantages.
Right now, the power hungry can indulge their crapulent power-hunger via political power. Political power, as it is currently constituted, is involuntary and inescapable. They have the power to use force against you, and you have no genuine recourse. They can tax you. They can fore you to fight for them. They can pass laws to protect themselves and hobble you. They can print money. You can complain, but you would just be complaining to one of their fellows. You can leave, and if they let you, the best you can hope for is to go to another version of the same thing.
The power-mad in the private sector similarly benefit from this government power. Grants, loans, special treatment, special protections. The ability to use government power to force us to buy their products — mostly indirectly through taxation, but the force is real nonetheless.
People in political power now, and their cronies in the private sector, can accumulate far, far more power and wealth than they would be able to in any sort of private arrangement. Private arrangements have competition. Private arrangements cannot keep you captive or extract wealth from you via the “legitimate” power of the state.
A jurisdictionally polycentric ecosystem will not be able to do any of those things. It will not be perfect, but it will be better.
I agree this system you propose is better. I also hope there is a way forward for liberty in my lifetime even in the absence of such a system. I think personal power through technology to even the playing field with technokings may be the best most productive way forward for individuals at this time.
The tech front is definitely an important one!
The Amish have the birth rate right, but a population that has a high birth rate AND wealth/technology will have an easier time writing its own ticket.
“Besides all that, how does one fix the foundational flaws of justice? It is impossible to correct violations before they occur, but too late to actually fix anything meaningfully after the fact.“
—What do you mean?
Perhaps some wrongs can be rectified, but for things like murder the best thing we can do is stop the person from murdering again (put them in a cage until they are reformed which never happens, cage them forever, or kill them). There is no way to restore a dead person, or to restore the family and friends. So there is no actual justice for murder. Same goes for rape. Same goes for crimes that take too long to solve (justice delayed is justice denied). 9/11 is an example and covid is another. They are still holding trial for the person who allegedly masterminded 9/11 and it is 25 years later!
So anyways, the way I see it there is only justice if a crime is stopped before it happens (shoot the attacker), and of course that brings another set of problems (eg. he was just pulling out cash not a gun).
So the concept of justice seems very problematic to me. A world that agrees to keep tbe CRP will still be a world where enforcing it is problematic, for similar reasons.
I know this is beyond the point of your post but it is a thought I had.
They also take far more of your money than you would ever lose to thieves. What, are thieves going to steal $40,000 (or whatever number) from me? Every year of my adult life? No freaking way. Even without competing private protection agencies (who would reduce crime far more than government does), I STILL would be able to protect my property and not lose the million dollars (or whatever number’ that government takes over a working lifetime.
It’s a scam. It’s a racket. It’s a jobs program.
It produces nothing. It has none of the normal incentives of the market.
We could replace government with NOTHING AT ALL and we’d still be safer and wealthier.
It is a good thought to have.
Here is one way to think of it…
Right now, no one protects you. They take your money. They come and draw a chalk line around you, and then they investigate after the fact. Then, assuming they find the perpetrator (which only happens half the time), they take your family’s money and force them to pay for your killer to be tried, convicted, and warehoused. They don’t have any real incentives to do a good job. They get your money either way. You cannot say no to them. (Now THAT’S a protection racket.)
The problem is that the CRP, as written, leaves several predictable ways for coercion to creep back in, even though the whole point of the protocol is to prevent coercion. A system can call itself “voluntary” while quietly recreating the same abuses the CRP is meant to eliminate. The most common failure modes are well-known: a polity can hide the real terms of joining, it can make leaving practically impossible without ever using overt force, and it can redefine who counts as a “person” so that some people simply fall outside the protections the CRP assumes. These are the classic ways that voluntary systems collapse back into involuntary ones. A workable solution is to add three structural safeguards that close these loopholes in simple, understandable terms. First, require informed consent for entry: people must know exactly what they are agreeing to before joining any polity, so no group can lure members in with half-truths or hidden obligations. Second, forbid coercive externalities: a polity cannot punish people indirectly—by blocking travel, cutting off trade, or surrounding them with hostile territory—in order to make exit meaningless in practice. Third, require reciprocal recognition of personhood: every signatory must treat every human being as a rights-bearing individual for CRP purposes, so no group can declare that certain people “don’t count” and therefore can be coerced. These additions don’t change the spirit of the CRP; they simply make sure the CRP works the way it is supposed to work, even when human nature and political incentives push in the opposite direction.
The second and third objections are addressed in VI and III, respectively. Do you not think those are adequate? (I have already had long back-and-forths about this with AI; I would like to hear your human thoughts on the subject.)
The first objection is intriguing. We discuss this in some detail in the exegesis and the previous installments. What if a polity does not want to offer affiliation? We ought not include any language that seems to indicate that they are required to do so. Is your sole focus on the "informed" part? IOW, if they choose to offer affiliation, make the terms clear so that the person can make an informed choice?
Chris, please don’t take my comment as implying that your replies in III or VI were inadequate. I didn’t have those sections memorized when I wrote my comment, which was based on structural patterns I noticed rather than a detailed recollection of what you’d previously addressed. My comment wasn’t meant as a critique of your treatment—just an observation about the general failure modes I’ve seen in other voluntary-system proposals. My memory is fallible, and if anything I say overlaps with ground you’ve already covered, please disregard it. I’m happy to clarify anything if it’s useful.
On the first point: yes, my focus was entirely on the “informed” part. I agree that no polity should be required to offer affiliation. My concern was only that, if they do offer it, the terms should be clear enough that consent can’t be manufactured through ambiguity or hidden obligations. That was the only sense in which I meant “informed consent.” If the material in III and VI closes the other loopholes, that’s good news.
Thank you, no worries at all.
So let’s focus on the informed consent thing. Do you have any ideas for such a clause/section?
A minimal clause could simply say that if a polity chooses to offer affiliation, it must disclose the full terms in clear, non‑misleading form so that a reasonable agent can understand the obligations, rights, and conditions before consenting. That keeps the focus strictly on the “informed” part, avoids implying that any polity is required to offer affiliation, and closes the ambiguity/hidden‑obligation loophole without adding anything substantive to the CRP itself. A more compact version would be: “Affiliation, when offered, must be based on clear and non‑misleading disclosure of all material terms.”
That is decent wording for such a clause. Can you envision any problems with it—will any potential signatories balk because of it?
The clause is so minimal and so structurally modest that almost no plausible signatory should balk at it. It doesn’t impose any obligation to offer affiliation, it doesn’t prescribe any substantive terms, and it doesn’t create any new rights for outsiders. All it does is require that if a polity voluntarily chooses to extend an offer, the offer cannot be deceptive. That’s a baseline condition for any consent-based system, and it’s already implicit in the CRP. Making it explicit simply closes the one loophole that would allow manufactured consent through ambiguity or hidden obligations.
The only parties who might object are those who want the freedom to smuggle in obligations under vague language, which is precisely the behavior the clause is meant to rule out. Anyone who is acting in good faith, and who actually wants affiliation to be voluntary rather than engineered, should have no principled reason to resist it.
Everything that you advocate for already exists within the the common law!
You and your followers need to read this to alleviate all the unnecessary confusion and trying to reinvent the wheel.
https://www.commonlawconstitution.org/resources/a-critique-of-hans-hermann-hoppe-private-law-societies?c=analysis
LW objects to use of money and free market policing as detrimental to a free society. I don't think CRP would preclude them and at least encourage them as logically required for freedom and prosperity. So there is clearly categorical differences between CRT and your Common Law flavor of ideal society. It is not reinventing but clarifying a particular vision of free society.
Yes, exactly. It's apples and oranges. The CRP is meta-jurisdictional. It is attempting to allow polities to coexist whether they are for-profit micronations, monarchies, or the common law/jury trial polities like Calvin (and likely many of us) would prefer.
Thank you for understanding that and for offering this clarification.
I do not have followers. I have colleagues with whom I discuss important ideas.