Do We Negotiate with the Beast We're Trying to Escape?

Preliminary discussion of the legal-incremental approach (DN 2.6)

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 | 1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6

Chapter 2.6: WHAT
Relationship to the State, 4

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We now conclude with our final installment on the general framework landscape and the remaining subcategories depicted in our helpful chart:

Partially independent (legal/sub-jurisdictional)

Intentional communities’ internal self-governance often results in a de facto hands-off policy by police. If there is an obvious crime with a known victim, they can and do act, of course, but in the absence of that, local law enforcement frequently just leave these sorts of small communities to police their own. This is a desirable circumstance for any small polity wishing to live in a condition of greater independence from the state.

Sometimes, groups go beyond de facto independence, achieving small pieces of legal independence or special status. The Amish and Mennonites, for example, can be exempted from paying Social Security taxes, and in the landmark case Wisconsin vs. Yoder, they won the freedom to exempt themselves and their children from certain education requirements.

This brings us to one of the most promising recent developments in humanity’s¹ attempt to build a framework of free lands and free people…

Rather than attempting instantaneous secession or creating an autonomous zone and then hoping for a measure of de facto independence, some entrepreneurs and visionaries have begun negotiating with governments for a greater measure of independence within certain zones.

The most well-known and successful manifestations of this strategy thus far are charter cities and special economic zones (SEZs), and the Honduran variant of the SEZ called the ZEDE (Zone for Employment and Economic Development). This latter has seen two successful startup implementations: Próspera on Roatan Island, and Ciudad Morazán. Their goal: to create small polities in which people are able to live and conduct business with a greater measure of freedom from government meddling.

Unfortunately, a socialist (with the entirely un-ironic last name of Castro) took over in 2022 as Honduran president, and (also entirely unsurprisingly), she and her cadre are extremely hostile to the ZEDEs. For more than two years, they spouted hackneyed leftist calumnies about the ZEDEs (white racist exploitation of the workers, blah blah blah) and their crusade against them finally ended, just two weeks ago, in a ban on future ZEDEs. The founders of Próspera and Ciudad Morazán remain hopeful that their legally grandfathered status will be honored, but it is hard to say for sure in a world filled with jealous governments and even more jealous socialists.

On the other side of the coin, people can point to the small success story of the Freetown Christiana autonomous zone in Denmark, which has actually managed to gain a measure of recognition and special status from the Danish government.

All of this points up an obvious dilemma: why would we negotiate at all with entities whom we deem to be morally impermissible violators of natural rights? Entities from whose clutches we are trying to escape.

There is no easy answer to that question.

Violent secession is not really a viable option, for a host of reasons. So what do we do?

• Seek de facto independence and accept that it will not be the real thing?

• Operate in legal gray spaces and accept that we will always be at odds with existing governments?

• Take the Harry Browne route and try to be be as free as we can as individuals, accepting that the world around us may be forever at odds with that choice?

• Start internally self-governing and, wherever possible, deploy market-anarchic solutions in our own spaces?

• Follow the path of network states and decentralized autonomous organizations and start by trying to carve out a realm of freedom online?

• Look for legal loopholes in our respective countries—some way to use their own laws to remove ourselves from their jurisdictions?

• Become as self-sufficient and independent as we can in the given circumstances and wait for some black swan event to solve our government problem for us?

• Simply declare independence and then dare our respective governments to try to do something about it?

Do we focus on short-term wins? Or do we take an incremental approach, accepting that some of our goals will take years, or even generations, to realize?

How about some combination of all of these?

Given the monumental task before us—and before all those who seek a world of consent and freedom—it seems like any or all of these are viable possibilities.

I, for one, do not begrudge any direction that anyone wishes to try. 

We certainly cannot begrudge the founders of charter cities and special zones, for example, for attempting to negotiate with governments. Governments exist. Governments claim absolute authority, and however illegitimate that claim may be, they have the power to back it up with violence and an endless supply of printed money.

As such, their approach of negotiating with governments make some sense…

First, gain a toehold—a small pocket of whatever independence they can manage to acquire through negotiation. Then turn that toehold into a foothold by succeeding—by attracting customers, residents, investors, and admirers, and thus becoming enough of a presence, enough of a success story, that it is more difficult for governments to dislodge them. Then negotiate, from a position of greater strength, for more independence, and eventually reach the point where it is impossible for governments to dislodge them. At such time, they can simply declare independence and, short of going to war, there is not much that governments can do about it. 

Negotiated secession can work, and has worked in the past, so this legal-incremental approach is entirely reasonable.

It is tempting to reply here that governments are mafias. That the nonconsensual authority they impose, and the violence they use to impose it, are morally impermissible. It’s easy to say that, and then to just fold one’s arms and say that we should never negotiate. That we should not have to. And then to stand there doing nothing—righteous, but totally paralyzed.

It’s also easy to pretend that we’re just one election cycle away from that one great leader who will fix everything. It’s easy to spend another decade, another century, waiting for someone to solve our problems for us. Waiting to be led forward to a promised land that doesn’t exist, or backward to the patriotic mirage of a past that never really existed. This too is a state of paralysis.

Worse still, it is a state of delusion…

When faced with leftism’s actual record—the oppression, the population-scale murder, the abject failure everywhere it has been tried—leftists retreat into a comforting delusion: “That wasn’t real leftism.” It wasn’t done “the right way.” It wasn’t done “by the right people.” By acting like there’s some “ real” Constitution to get back to—that if we just vote a little harder, we can restore the constitutional republic we were supposed to have—we are saying the exact same thing that communists do.

I hate to break it to you, but this IS the real Constitution. The way every “civilized” nation on the planet behaved during the Covid scam—that IS the way governments are. Even the constitutional republican kind. It’s time to wake up and smell reality.

It’s also easy to get angry. It’s easy to scream that morally impermissible violations of our natural rights—our consent, our freedom, and sovereign self-determination—warrant protective force in response, and then to simply wait around until people get angry enough to join you in doing something about it…if you know what I mean.

The thought is emotionally satisfying, and on one level of analysis, our overlords deserve nothing less. But at the end of the day, that path leads to very bad places.

We can do better. We can be better. The pathway will not be easy, but with patience, commitment, and the right combination of approaches, we can blaze a trail toward greater independence for ourselves and our posterity.

Next, we begin discussing what such a path might actually look like…

1. To forestall any complaints….

I am aware that “humanity” and references to us “as a species” are collective terms, and that in general, we like to focus on individuals. It is entirely reasonable, however, to refer to some events and developments in their broader historical context (e.g., the general switch from monarchy to democracy that took place worldwide between the seventeenth century and the end of World War I). Such references not conflict with the philosophy of personalism/individualism that undergirds the principles of classical liberalism.