Good piece! I didn‘t know the greek root, interesting.
Refreshing to hear said out loud that one can only truly own something that one is also capable defending as its never articulated in MSM. It’s also obviously true which we can observe in russian aggression.
I‘m aligned with Svetski‘s view of anarchy as waiting to be being filled.
I did write a review of Bushido of Bitcoin (in Medium) and although there are details to disagree with, I‘m overall more aligned with his philosophy than most modern writers.
The problem with states as they exist today isn't taxation or the use of authority per se, it's the illegitimate nature of their existence as rooted in outdated historical events instead of ongoing contracts (I'm just paraphrasing Rothbard and Hoppe so I'm sure you know this argument already). Taxation or some equivalent is probably necessary in any society past a certain small scale, but it's a form of slavery to be forced to pay taxes to fund agendas that you have no control over by a government that you never consented to be governed by (unless you are an immigrant I suppose). If people are to exist under government authority they should personally consent to being ruled by that government and choose what their tax money funds. In practice I am not certain what the exact mechanism should be for implementing contractual governance, but there would have to be a few key elements that are missing from "Westphalian" governments:
1. The ability to revoke your citizenship from any government instantly upon reaching the age of majority, no ifs, ands or buts. As a stateless citizen you would presumably revoke privileges bestowed on you by a government but also have greater freedom until you applied for citizenship somewhere else. An exception could be if you have committed a crime and need to face punishment.
2. The ability to negotiate contracts with your government. For instance some people want to spend their tax money funding trans hormone therapy, other people want to spend it on developing new weapons systems for national defense. As it is we are forced to engage in lawfare against citizens with different agendas so they can't use our money to fund things we don't want, this way the priorities of the government would be directly determined by the aggregate of what individuals were willing to fund.
3. The ability to pick and choose services from different governments. As you mentioned it's impractical for every person to be responsible for their own personal defense, having militaries and people specialized for combat is more practical and scalable. However, a system with a monopoly on violence that you are forced to fund and support (at worst being conscripted by it) is inherently exploitative and prone to corruption. Instead there needs to be defense contractors that you can choose between, even if helping to fund the defense of a polity is conditional to being a citizen people should be able to vote with their wallets for how they want to be defended. The same is true for other essential services like police, criminal justice, healthcare, and so forth.
4. The ability for citizens within a polity to negotiate the buying and selling of land to different polities. As it is it is incredibly difficult for borders to change peacefully, and since all the land on Earth is settled there is no frontier to colonize. want a new government to colonize. To fix this problem secession would have to be an unconditional right on any level (ie a province could vote to secede from a state but a town could also vote to stay under the original government). You could also organize with any number of other people to buy land from your own government or a different government through whatever mechanisms were decided upon by its citizenry, and then you and whoever you coordinated with would be able to establish a new government on the territory you bought. Needless to say borders would be much messier than before but would much more directly correspond to actual groups of people living within their territory.
5. Expanded methods for citizens to pursue their personal or economic interests in a limited fashion without it impacting the rest of society in unnecessary ways. An example would be Elon Musk trying to import H1Bs to work in his companies, clearly that it in his perceived economic interests but detrimental to ordinary American citizens who do not want to live with and economically compete with foreigners. From a libertarian perspective companies should be able to hire whoever they want but individuals should also be able to choose who they live around, the problem is that states force a single standard of citizenship on everyone within their borders. Instead businesses should be treated as semi-sovereign entities which can hire people from other polities without those people gaining any of the rights of American citizens or even being able to work in America outside of their contract with Elon Musk. If I am not mistaken the UAE already has a system somewhat similar to this, which liberals inaccurately portray as slavery. Similarly, if a certain behavior has a limited externality range its permissibility should be determined on the scale at which it actually affects people. For instance, if certain people want to be nude in public and can get their town to vote to allow public nudity, there is no reason higher levels of government should have any say in that decision. That is to say, almost all law should be decentralized and delegated to the smallest possible level of authority. The more centralized legislation is the more incentive there is for people with outlier behavioral preferences Io subvert the rest of society.
I'm sure there are other issues as well but these are the main things that come to mind.
An elaborate comment that I needed to read thru twice to even begin to understand the scope of it. Thank you, learn something new. I don’t feel qualified to comment other this…
The problem with states (or countries) from my small perspective is outdated politics. US-politics is bipolar and thus deadlocked and now with trump in the mix its also toxic. Russia is a tyranny so there politics in a sense doesn’t even exist, its all theatre played by the elite for the narod. European politics is not much better as they use 200 year old collaboration methods. On top of all this comes indovidual level political corruption and personal immaturity/ego/greed etc. Unless we fix politics, states can never truly work. This is why I am a political agnostic (or maybe even atheist).
I think you're confusing a highest value with an absolute value (and political values with all values). Freedom is (or should be) the highest political value but that doesn't mean it always outweighs all other values.
Good piece! I didn‘t know the greek root, interesting.
Refreshing to hear said out loud that one can only truly own something that one is also capable defending as its never articulated in MSM. It’s also obviously true which we can observe in russian aggression.
I‘m aligned with Svetski‘s view of anarchy as waiting to be being filled.
I did write a review of Bushido of Bitcoin (in Medium) and although there are details to disagree with, I‘m overall more aligned with his philosophy than most modern writers.
Thankyou Mr Crypto.
I appreciate the medium review also. I’ll have to check that out.
I look forward to exploring the territorial imperative further in the next book.
Also going to write some thought experiments in the coming essays about what *could* replace current, outdated, broken politics
The problem with states as they exist today isn't taxation or the use of authority per se, it's the illegitimate nature of their existence as rooted in outdated historical events instead of ongoing contracts (I'm just paraphrasing Rothbard and Hoppe so I'm sure you know this argument already). Taxation or some equivalent is probably necessary in any society past a certain small scale, but it's a form of slavery to be forced to pay taxes to fund agendas that you have no control over by a government that you never consented to be governed by (unless you are an immigrant I suppose). If people are to exist under government authority they should personally consent to being ruled by that government and choose what their tax money funds. In practice I am not certain what the exact mechanism should be for implementing contractual governance, but there would have to be a few key elements that are missing from "Westphalian" governments:
1. The ability to revoke your citizenship from any government instantly upon reaching the age of majority, no ifs, ands or buts. As a stateless citizen you would presumably revoke privileges bestowed on you by a government but also have greater freedom until you applied for citizenship somewhere else. An exception could be if you have committed a crime and need to face punishment.
2. The ability to negotiate contracts with your government. For instance some people want to spend their tax money funding trans hormone therapy, other people want to spend it on developing new weapons systems for national defense. As it is we are forced to engage in lawfare against citizens with different agendas so they can't use our money to fund things we don't want, this way the priorities of the government would be directly determined by the aggregate of what individuals were willing to fund.
3. The ability to pick and choose services from different governments. As you mentioned it's impractical for every person to be responsible for their own personal defense, having militaries and people specialized for combat is more practical and scalable. However, a system with a monopoly on violence that you are forced to fund and support (at worst being conscripted by it) is inherently exploitative and prone to corruption. Instead there needs to be defense contractors that you can choose between, even if helping to fund the defense of a polity is conditional to being a citizen people should be able to vote with their wallets for how they want to be defended. The same is true for other essential services like police, criminal justice, healthcare, and so forth.
4. The ability for citizens within a polity to negotiate the buying and selling of land to different polities. As it is it is incredibly difficult for borders to change peacefully, and since all the land on Earth is settled there is no frontier to colonize. want a new government to colonize. To fix this problem secession would have to be an unconditional right on any level (ie a province could vote to secede from a state but a town could also vote to stay under the original government). You could also organize with any number of other people to buy land from your own government or a different government through whatever mechanisms were decided upon by its citizenry, and then you and whoever you coordinated with would be able to establish a new government on the territory you bought. Needless to say borders would be much messier than before but would much more directly correspond to actual groups of people living within their territory.
5. Expanded methods for citizens to pursue their personal or economic interests in a limited fashion without it impacting the rest of society in unnecessary ways. An example would be Elon Musk trying to import H1Bs to work in his companies, clearly that it in his perceived economic interests but detrimental to ordinary American citizens who do not want to live with and economically compete with foreigners. From a libertarian perspective companies should be able to hire whoever they want but individuals should also be able to choose who they live around, the problem is that states force a single standard of citizenship on everyone within their borders. Instead businesses should be treated as semi-sovereign entities which can hire people from other polities without those people gaining any of the rights of American citizens or even being able to work in America outside of their contract with Elon Musk. If I am not mistaken the UAE already has a system somewhat similar to this, which liberals inaccurately portray as slavery. Similarly, if a certain behavior has a limited externality range its permissibility should be determined on the scale at which it actually affects people. For instance, if certain people want to be nude in public and can get their town to vote to allow public nudity, there is no reason higher levels of government should have any say in that decision. That is to say, almost all law should be decentralized and delegated to the smallest possible level of authority. The more centralized legislation is the more incentive there is for people with outlier behavioral preferences Io subvert the rest of society.
I'm sure there are other issues as well but these are the main things that come to mind.
An elaborate comment that I needed to read thru twice to even begin to understand the scope of it. Thank you, learn something new. I don’t feel qualified to comment other this…
The problem with states (or countries) from my small perspective is outdated politics. US-politics is bipolar and thus deadlocked and now with trump in the mix its also toxic. Russia is a tyranny so there politics in a sense doesn’t even exist, its all theatre played by the elite for the narod. European politics is not much better as they use 200 year old collaboration methods. On top of all this comes indovidual level political corruption and personal immaturity/ego/greed etc. Unless we fix politics, states can never truly work. This is why I am a political agnostic (or maybe even atheist).
It’s an excellent comment. One I agree with in large part. I’ll be weaving those ideas into the next essays in the series
I think you're confusing a highest value with an absolute value (and political values with all values). Freedom is (or should be) the highest political value but that doesn't mean it always outweighs all other values.
Freedom maximalism sounds to me like an absolute value - which is why I reject it.
I don't reject freedom as such, though I prefer the framing of autonomy as I explained in the first article.
Also to your second statement, I think we're mostly in alignment. I'm just more interested in what's practical