Preliminary Order of Operations for the Distributed Nation

It starts with you. (DN 2.9)

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

Chapter 2.9:
Order of Operations, 1

Our ultimate goal is a voluntary social order—one in which no one is subjected to any political arrangement to which he does not explicitly consent. Needless to say, realization of that goal is going to take time.

Fortunately, people are already hard at work in this space. Someday, thanks to the efforts of brave pioneers and early movers, it will be possible to live within a framework of free lands and free people.

Some are working on carving out spaces to which those seeking greater freedom can relocate. This is one very important front in this effort.

With the distributed nation, we are opening up a new front. We believe that you should not have to move if you do not wish to. You ought to be able to enjoy your freedom right where you are.

Among the people operating in the framework space, there is debate as to what the correct approach ought to be. We all want true self-determination and independence, but how to get there?

To some degree, the debate comes down to a question of order of operations…

Community first

Some contend that the way to go is to start with a tightly focused community with a shared set of principles or goals. That community can then collaborate to achieve greater degrees of independence.

In Balaji Srinivasan’s conception of a network state, for example, the community would work together to increase their membership and wealth, and eventually to crowdfund pieces of property. After reaching a sufficient level of size and clout, a network state may be able to declare sovereign independence, and even have that claim recognized (however begrudgingly) by existing traditional states.

In this conception, network states begin as pre-territorial, but they are also panarchic, in that it is possible for members of a network state to live anywhere and still be a part of their network community. Other than the private properties of individual members or any land that they have crowdfunded, they can be entirely jurisdictionally coterminous with any other panarchic entity.

Temporary autonomous zones are also community-first entities: they begin with a small group acting (with direction or spontaneously) toward a shared goal. Physical locations are entirely ephemeral for a TAZ.

Community + territory

Intentional communities may be said to begin with a community and a territory roughly simultaneously. They operate on a particular piece of property within the confines of an existing state, and then seek as much de facto independence as they can. In some cases, they may also seek legal recognition of their separate and unique status. Eventually, some may even decide that it is time to seek full independence.

Territory first

The goal of a free city run by a private company is to establish a desirable environment in a particular place and then attract people to that place. This is also largely the case for the founders of charter cities and special economic zones. 

Using negotiation or an incremental approach, a charter city may one day become a free city, a special economic zone may become a micronation, and so on. Private-law jurisdictions—along the lines suggested by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, or any other type—might follow a similar path.

People first (no territory)

It is possible for a population of people to be geographically dispersed and yet share a common identity or some other cohering factor. Such dispersed populations include diasporas, stateless peoples, and modern tribes such as the aforementioned Canadian truckers and American bikers.

Such groups may have neighborhoods in which they are concentrated (or even areas of “turf,” in the case of some types of modern tribes). And of course the individuals themselves have their own properties. But as a group, dispersed populations do not have a fixed or official territory. (If they did, they would no longer qualify as dispersed.)

Some individuals may not wish to join any polity, and they may not feel like they share any important identity or cohering factors with any distributed population. They may simply want to go their own way.

Needless to say, the framework should, and does, allow for this. People must be free to eschew any such allegiances or associations and simply engage in anarchocapitalism: contracting with private agencies for security, justice, infrastructure, and related services. Here too, such individuals have their own property and dwellings, but these are not part of any larger territory. Instead, they living in a panarchic condition in which their service providers are jurisdictionally coterminous.

(Of course, anarchocapitalist solutions can also be used within polities, by members of distributed populations, etc.)

Some people may even wish to live in the middle of nowhere, in a condition of anarcho-primitivism. This too will be possible in a proper framework.

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People, Principles, and Property

A distributed nation has its own unique approach, ethos, and order of operations.

People

The members of a distributed nation qualify as a dispersed population: geographically dispersed individuals connected by some cohering factor.

But before there can be a PEOPLE, there must be the PERSON.

The distributed nation begins with you. An individual human being.

The distributed nation will never, Ever, EVER start with a phrase like “we the people” and then work backward to the individual as some sort of a sub-unit of a collective.

Togetherness and community are wonderful. Coherence, common cause, and shared principles are essential. The distributed nation needs these things. The distributed nation will have these things.

But in this world of oppression and force, it is our rights as individual humans that are at stake. That is the ground we must first and always defend.

And thus, that is our first cohering factor: the sovereignty of each person as a unique and irreplaceable being.

Principles

Members of a distributed nation can live anywhere. City or country. House or hut. Studio apartment or sprawling ranch. Anywhere in the world.

Members of a distributed nation can be anyone from any ethnicity, class, or culture. Religious or atheist. Rich or poor. Every shade of skin in the beautiful human palette.

So, without accidents of geography or accidents of birth, what do we have as a cohering factor?

Principles.

Not a complex belief system that alienates as many as it attracts. Just the simple, clean, universal principles of natural law, and the small number of moral rules that emanate therefrom.

Property

Survival is impossible without property. In order for your food, your tools, and your shelter to be useful to you, they must be yours.

The record of anti-propertarian ideologies is abysmal. Without property, you are destitute, or a slave, or both. In order for you to be free, where you are, your property must be yours—fully and allodially, with no superior landlord.

The distributed nation does not wait to crowdfund communal properties or purchase territorial enclaves. The distributed nation has property from the outset—your property.

But the distributed nation does NOT claim your property as its own. Rather, the ethos of the distributed nation is that your property is fully, totally, allodially yours, under the absolute rules of natural law.

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There you have it. Those are the basic characteristics of the distributed nation, as seen through the lens of our unique order of operations: people, principles, and property—all from the get-go.

And now, since pictures can bring things to life, I ask you not only to think about this, but to imagine it.

Imagine a nation based on an idea rather than an on ethnicity or an artificial boundary drawn by the vicissitudes of history.

Imagine following principles instead of a powerful leader.

Imagine a nation of free people who choose to be together.

Imagine a nation that does not claim your property as its own, but rather defends your right to own it, and to be free upon it.

Imagine a nation that does not require you to pledge allegiance to it, but rather pledges its allegiance to you. To the things you value.

Imagine a nation whose goal is to set you free.

The distributed nation will not have one single territory for statists to besiege.

There will be no single leader to silence.

We will be everywhere.

Imagine that.

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