No One Ever Asked for Our Consent

So why should we pretend they did? (DN 2.20)

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 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10 I 2.11 | 2.12 | 2.13 | 2.14 | 2.15 | 2.16 | 2.17 | 2.XX | 2.18 | 2.19 | 2.20

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Chapter 2.20
Wrapping up Chapter 2: Nomenclature and Definitions

Chapter 1 of this book is titled Why. As the name indicates, its purpose is to make the case for why we need a change. Why we need to do more than just tinker on the margins of the status quo. Why we need to evolve.

We are now drawing near the close of Chapter 2: What. The purpose here has been to offer a vision of what that evolution might look like.

That evolution is already underway. Efforts are popping up across the landscape of Earth, each deploying its own variant of a single goal: to set human beings free. Our purpose here has been to describe our particular pathway to that goal. In our upcoming chapters—Where, Who, How, and When—we will flesh out the details. This has just been an overview.

To round out our overview, we will now return to a few final basics.

Nomenclature

It is important, for example, that we are clear on why we will choose to call ourselves part of a “distributed nation.” Specifically why that is a good and accurate name for what it is.

As we have discussed, it all began a few years ago with a work of fiction by Neal Stephenson, which included an oblique reference to an entity called the “First Distributed Republic.” In the panarchic near-future world Stephenson had created, this was one of many “phyles” of people who could live anywhere, but who were nonetheless united with their fellows based on some shared principle, identity, or goal.¹

It was this vision that first set my mind alight, thought it wasn’t until last year that, with inspiration from a variety of sources, I began sketching out the concept with a greater degree of specificity. Naturally, when casting about for a name, my mind returned to that original muse.

As we know, the first principle of our new nation is consent. It is a lack of consent that we are trying to escape, and it is an absolute respect of consent that we are seeking to enshrine. Any properly consensual polity cannot be called a “republic” because republics are not properly consensual. Thus, there was no possibility of any homage to the “republic” part of Stephenson’s “First Distributed Republic.”

“Distributed,” however, is spot on. As we discussed at length earlier in this chapter, that is the perfect word to describe a dispersed population united by some cohering factor.

So, a distributed…what? State? Nation? Some obscure or made-up word?

Ultimately, I rejected “distributed state” because the word “state” has such a direct and negative association with the modern manifestation of involuntary governance: the nation state. Obviously I could have rejected “nation” on similar grounds. However, the Latin root—natio (birth), from nasci (to be born)—presents an opportunity to reclaim and re-task the word…

You are born with inalienable natural rights as an ineluctable consequence of your very existence.² The foundational ethos of a distributed nation (or any consensual polity) is based on precisely these rights. Thus, we can look at the etymology of “nation” differently: instead of a nation being a place where one is born, or the locus of a particular racial group, a nation can be a phenomenon that enshrines and protects the rights you enjoy as a fact of your birth.

Seen in this light, the word nation carries a good feeling—one of unity and natural justice.

I then toyed with other adjectives. Membership nation. Chosen nation. Noncontiguous nation. Private voluntary distributed membership nation. All of these captured an aspect of the concept, but none had the simple ring of distributed nation. So there we go.

Definitions

Earlier in this chapter, we identified a concept we are calling (in partial homage to Robert Nozick) the framework: a condition in which people are free

• to establish polities—on their own property or in unclaimed spaces—that best suit their vision for a good life;

• to offer membership therein to others, upon mutually acceptable terms;

• to join such polities, and to exit them freely so long as any contractual obligations are fulfilled.

We explored the landscape of concepts and efforts seeking to establish, expand, and live within such a framework, and carefully added the concept of the distributed nation to that list.

The distributed nation shares some overlapping characteristics with several other concepts, but it is sufficiently distinct as to warrant status as a discrete category. It represents a dispersed population united into a panarchic nation. Its people can take advantage of market-anarchic systems and/or form local intentional communities. It is decentralized, and will seek autonomy in both virtual and physical spaces.

In generic terms, we can define a distributed nation as

A geographically dispersed population of individuals who choose to unite into a single polity, cohering around a set of principles, shared mission, common identity, form of governance, or any other unifying factor(s).

A distributed nation is designed to thrive in a condition of voluntary order (anarchy, in the libertarian sense of the word). However, distributed nations can be formed at any time and then establish independence and legitimacy in stages, through progressive implementation of a planned series of steps.

A distributed nation can thus arise even in a world dominated by involuntary governments, and then work peacefully and gradually towards its own independence. In keeping with first principles, any such national should also work in peaceful cooperation with others in pursuit of a more general condition of freedom and consent for everyone.

The specific distributed nation we are envisioning and designing herein will do all of these things. We will pursue, and work with others in pursuit of, the creation and expansion of a framework condition for the whole world. But we will not wait for perfection. We can start anytime, and then proceed incrementally towards our objectives.

And so we’re starting now.

Our primary cohering factor is a passionate shared commitment to the principles of natural law and the moral instructions that emanate therefrom. We also recognize that those instructions cannot truly be followed unless people are sovereign in their physical spaces and have allodial title to their physical property (which is the subject of deeper exploration in our next chapter).

Thus, we can describe our distributed nation as a

A worldwide archipelago of sovereign people, in sovereign spaces, united into a nation based on a shared commitment to the fundamental, universal, inviolable principles of natural law.

In The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan suggests that all startup societies should have a single “commandment”:

Every new startup society needs to have a moral premise at its core, one that its founding nation subscribes to, one that…a more powerful state can’t delete, one that justifies its existence as a righteous yet peaceful protest against the powers that be.

By analyzing the brute premises of natural law, we have been able to derive a single fundamental commandment:

No person may be subjected to any transaction, initiation of coercive force, or imposition of authority to which he does not provide voluntary, informed, explicit, transparent, and revokable consent.

But we can also state this more colloquially…

No one ever asked for our consent. Governments simply lie and say we consented to their rule, when we clearly did not. And then they proceed to violate our rights, each and every day. Our moral premise, our commandment, is that this should never happen to anyone.

And so we’re done. KYFHO.

But we cannot just be against things; we must also stand for something.

And we do. We stand for each other.

Our core principles are not just negative injunctions. They also lie at the heart of everything good in life. They are the source of peace and prosperity. They create space for togetherness and love.

Critics charge that our ideas produce atomization, but nothing could be further from the truth. We are not simply looking to build bunkers of resistance to tyranny. Our goal is better communities. There is no togetherness quite like that of free, sovereign beings choosing to be together.

No forced collectivism. No urge use the ballot to clobber the other guy’s team before they do the same to you. Just real people in real communities.

More connection. More joy.

More human.

1. “Phyle” from Greek phylē, tribe

2. Note: Your childhood is a period during which you are not capable of enjoying full communion those rights and require your parents’ help and their temporary, conditional proxy authority.