Yes, It Is Possible to Live Side by Side Without Any Overlords

Imagine that. (DN 2.3)

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

Chapter 2.3: Relationship to the State, 1

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We have now established the basic idea of our framework as a condition in which people are free to enjoy their right to

• Establish new polities and communities, and to

  • Offer membership therein according to mutually acceptable terms, and

  • Freely exit therefrom (so long as contractual obligations have been satisfied);

• Secede from nonconsensual impositions of governance; and

• Remain free in one’s property (with no superior landlord) and voluntarily contract for governance services on mutually acceptable terms.

We laid the moral groundwork for this concept in chapter 1, and we will be fleshing out the practical considerations as we move forward from here. For now, our task is to continue illuminating the general landscape—the type of polities and communities that can form, are forming, and will form in future within this framework.

This, in turn, requires that we continue exploring the subcategories represented by the colored horizontal sections in our chart:

Future

In many ways, the world was freer in the past. There were new frontiers. There was more competition. Global powers did not yet exist. People still enjoyed some freedom to experiment.

As a result, there have been a few partial implementations of our ideas throughout history. The Hanseatic League employed a private-law system for several centuries during the Middle Ages and Brehon Ireland did it for more than a thousand years, beginning in the Bronze Age.

Today, however, the rise of the modern state (which we can fix roughly in the year 1800) has placed new hurdles in our path.

This first of these, as discussed above, is that there is little unclaimed territory left in the world. Nearly everything has been explored and claimed by one powerful state or another.

Finding and colonizing new frontiers involves great expense (seasteading) or technologies that do not exist yet (space colonies, terraforming, etc.). As such, these types of efforts, as well as the beautiful arcologies envisioned by futurists and so-called “green anarchists,” lie a bit further out into our future.

A quiet renaissance is underway. As we speak, numerous efforts are coalescing and seeking new ways to build a future of freedom and independence. But the fruits of most of these efforts will not ripen for some time to come.

We are just beginning this journey.

Fully independent

Obviously the gold standard for any evolution towards HumanGovernance 3.0 is to achieve full independence from the involuntary state.

The most common manifestation of this—the one with which we are most familiar—is a polity with a defined physical territory. This describes existing states, of course, but it can also be applied to future territorial polities in our framework scenario.

These might be free private cities (city states run by for-profit companies, cooperatives, or other private entities); private-law jurisdictions; or other sorts of micronations. Many intentional communities, communes, and other self-governing polities will also wish, when it becomes possible, to enjoy full sovereignty in their own physical domain.

Unfortunately, once a traditional state holds a particular piece of territory—with its resources, human capital, and the prestige that comes with increased size—it rarely wants to give it up. Full territorial sovereignty is thus extremely difficult to achieve, especially if one expects to achieve it quickly. It generally requires some form of direct secession:

Most successful secessions (including America’s break from Great Britain) have had to be violent secessions in which the seceding party defend and press their claim of independence through force of arms. Peaceful and negotiated secession are far less common, but they do happen (e.g., Iceland’s separation from Denmark a century ago).

Attempts to form territorial polities as part of a larger framework of free lands and free people will run into many of the same challenges as traditional states have in their own attempts at secession. For the foreseeable future, such efforts will likely benefit from taking a more incremental approach, as we will cover in more detail later in this work.

(Note: bloody revolutions are extremely problematic, for reasons we will also be discussing at some length.)

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Our explorations have now led us to another crossroads requiring clarifications of a few concepts and definitions of two important terms: inarchy and panarchy.

If we consider our framework to be one in which the human right of consent in governance is respected, some people within such a framework will naturally create polities and communities that are territorially exclusive—that is, occupying a particular physical property with defined borders.

For this category, we can coin the term inarchy, using the prefix in– (in, within), meaning a particular entity in a particular territory. “Enarchy” would have been preferable because the [en] prefix is Greek rather than Latin, and thus more linguistically consistent with the Greek [pan]. However, when pronounced aloud, “enarchy” is difficult to distinguish from “anarchy.” Thus, we will use the Latin version [in].

Today, however, we have also come to understand that communities do not have to be geographically fixed. It is also possible for multiple polities to coexist within the same area.

This concept, called panarchy, was developed in the 19th century by Paul Emile de Puydt and later expanded by Gustave de Molinari. The idea is simple: Instead of governments claiming a monopoly over a given territory, governments (or providers of government-like services) can coexist within a given region and compete for citizen-customers.

The classic analogy is churches in America. No one church controls an area. There might be five or six or more different denominations nearby, all coexisting, and each with different members. The members also coexist in the given area—a Lutheran living next door to a Catholic living next door to a Buddhist, and so on.

This arrangement is panarchic. The salient feature of any panarchy is the jurisdictionally coterminous nature of the entities in question. The jurisdiction of each is entirely coextensive with all the others, as opposed to any one entity holding a monopoly.

De Puydt chose the prefix pan- (all, every), denoting an area in which all the entities coexist and compete for members, and all the people are free to choose from among them.

In his monograph Panarchie, de Puydt appears to be referring specifically to jurisdictionally coterminous governance providers. You choose Government A, your next-door neighbor chooses Government B, and so forth. But the real innovation of the panarchy concept is the jurisdictionally coterminous nature of the entities, not the type of entities.

De Puydt’s most powerful point is that you ought to be able to stay right where you are and choose. Choose your allegiances and associations. Choose the services to which you subscribe. Choose how you live. You should not have to move to a particular location in order to enjoy your human right of consent. You should be able to be free wherever you are.

This notion will be central to the concept of our distributed nation.

Panarchy, then, is a condition in which no single entity can claim to be a superior landlord over a whole region and its people. Jurisdictionally coterminous entities may all operate in the area, but none may claim monopoly sovereignty over the rest.

Thus, market anarchism (a.k.a. anarchocapitalism) is also panarchic, in that it is private agencies who are operating in a state of jurisdictionally coterminous coexistence.

Ultimately, what panarchy seeks to protect and enshrine is personhood and property:

• Your right of consent (rooted in your existence as an individual human person) should be respected, which means you should not be subjected to involuntary governance.

• You should not have to move from your home in order to enjoy that respect. You should be able to be sovereign on your own property, with no one claiming to be your overlord.

In addition to market anarchism and jurisdictionally coterminous governance providers, panarchy covers a variety of other phenomena within the framework, which we will cover presently.

And our concept of the distributed nation will take and combine the best aspects from several of these.

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