This chapter is the beginning of a shift in the structure and focus of this series. We are now leaving the realm of philosophy and engaging with politics and political theory more directly. So the utility of the narrative is going to dwindle if not become utterly redundant by being so literal. I’ll still use Wonderland and the town of UM as a canvas through which to paint my ideas, but your trip down the rabbit hole has come to a conclusion. To get us started today let’s pick up from where we left off in Wonderland, on the note of “good reason”.
This is the final explanation you hear from the princess in the palace, the secret to the prosperity of the city you have discovered. It sounds so simple which is what makes it such an elegant solution. The beautiful thing about royalism as a political philosophy is that it gives you carte blanche authority to do as you please in terms of conceptualizing practical policy. The only yardstick that can be used to measure what’s “good” is whatever works. This logical, solutions-oriented approach is much better than being tied down to foggy notions of limited government or other libertarian ideals. The financial incentive is enough to encourage efficient and effective structures. Like in all markets, competition drives results. The state’s earning power is what allows it to experiment and improve over time, all it needs is a good prince or princess at the helm. What this means is someone who is capable of making good decisions. But they do not necessarily need to be an authority on every subject, simply capable of delegating responsibility to those who are. So long as the goals of the realm are clear and concise, there’s no reason why even a child would be incapable of becoming a good ruler, or someone with no political knowledge whatsoever. Of course, it would be handy if they had a little guide laying out some guiding principles, which is exactly what a mirror for princes is for. So, where to start?
Part #1. Power and Protection
The classical liberal view is that the state functions as a protection agency, securing certain rights and liberties for its citizens. However this formulation represents only one part of the picture. What I tried to demonstrate last episode is that what the state is really about is power, not protection. For power is ultimately what comes out in the wash; the ability to protect is contingent upon the ability to exert control. In order for the state to provide protection successfully, it must have power first, power that can be exerted over the material world. And power isn’t some purely conceptual entity that exists independent of reality, there is a meaningful physical component that must be considered. Any notions of law or protection must be applied to people and property that take up space. Thus, the state requires a territory, a domain of sovereign authority over which it can exert control.
Anarchocapitalists insist that the state is not necessary, as individuals could simply hire competing protection agencies while operating out of a shared territory. But this proposition is nonsensical, for the desire for protection carries with it many corollaries which must also be considered. It’s not enough for you to be subjected to certain laws and rules you have agreed to, in order to have security you need to know that the other people you are interacting with are subject to the same system. You cannot cooperate with people if you are playing by different rules or governed by different authorities, there needs to be coherence within a community. The notion of competing protection agencies within a shared territory means that there would be no clear code of conduct regarding interactions between individuals. In order to have confidence in your protection agency, you need to be operating under the same system of power as your neighbour, otherwise at any moment they could start exerting power over you. Without a shared authority subjecting you to the same governing principles, no trust can develop.
Arguably, a dyed in the wool anarchocapitalist could embrace the notion of private protection agencies tomorrow simply by buying a team of black market security guards and doing as they please. Before the town of UM was founded, a merchant could hire mercenaries to protect his person and property… but a thief could just as easily hire thugs to steal them off of him. The only way to resolve this tension is by the construction of a secure enclosure, a “home free” where one is no longer at the mercy of any man who would seek to do him harm. That is what a state should be, a place where the only authority you are subject to is one you have chosen intentionally. Without complete control over a given territory, the promise of power is pure fantasy. So the first ingredient for any coherent political philosophy is a theory of land, which is what will will be talking about today.
Part #2. Dealing with Dragons
The first requirement of a successful state is absolute sovereignty over their territory. Securing the state against external threats is the first and foremost task of our prince or princess. To quote Yarvin, “lose the patch and the realm is worthless. Everything else, even profit, must come after security.” In order to achieve peace we must first have war. If one wants independence, they must be willing to fight for it. Every plot of land in a peaceful neighbourhood was once made by war, and one day may have to be defended by it. This requires power, which comes in the two forms previously discussed: direct force, such as a strong military, or indirect force, by financing protection through a strong alliance. These days the United States represents the former, while its northern neighbour Canada represents the latter. But how might a new nation spring up under such suffocating circumstances? Well first and foremost, the right to take up space must be asserted, not asked for.
I think it’s very interesting that both the far left and far right are frustrated by the inability to escape the status quo and practice alternative political systems. The right wants to escape government tyranny and live off of the land, while the left wants to escape capitalist tyranny… and live off of the land. But you cannot simply return to the wild and live as hunter gatherers as humans have done for millennia, for all the necessary resources to create food and shelter are legally owned by other people. The critique that capitalism forces citizens into wage labour is a legitimate one when it becomes literally impossible for citizens to extricate themselves from the system. However as I mentioned last chapter, oppression is the default, a simple fact of life. Your rights are not entitlements, they must be fought for. What we do about this is where the real political theory comes into play. As I see it, there are three potential solutions…
The first is to overthrow the status quo and replace it with more desirable institutions. The preexisting state adopts a new regime and power carries over from the previous system. Whether done democratically or by force, this is the most difficult course of action as it requires popular support in order to be successful. Since we are interested in building political systems that can prevail with minimal support, I don’t view this outcome as being very likely, but it is a possibility.
The second solution is terra nova: to flee to some newly discovered and unoccupied space to try new systems unencumbered by external threats. This is what the discovery of America allowed for a few hundred years ago. But now that all the land on earth is known and spoken for, this would only be possible by exploring space or the sea. Settling in space—either on Mars or some autonomous space station—is clearly the most “far out” solution, but it benefits from the fact that if and when implemented it would be entirely independent. It might sound ridiculous at the moment, but a hundred years from now some off-planet human settlement doesn't seem entirely unlikely. The other option, constructing human settlements on the sea, also known as seasteading, seems slightly more plausible but presents its own list of challenges; the terrible cost of infrastructure as well as the extreme environmental vulnerabilities. But it is an option.
The final and most feasible solution in my view is the creation of a new power agency inside of a preexisting territory. Charter city-states, if you will. A charter city is a city wherein the governing system is defined by the city’s own charter document rather than the general law of the broader nation. Historical examples of such systems include cities like Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. Little pockets of autonomy nested inside of otherwise underdeveloped nations where political and technological innovation becomes possible. The beauty of the charter solution is that it allows for the opportunity of creativity and experimentation applied on a small scale, which can then be expanded upon and replicated if successful. The rapid development of the aforementioned cities has been instrumental in lifting millions of people out of poverty within only a few generations, and there is no reason why these same principles cannot be applied elsewhere. The truth is that communities suffer when they are controlled by bad rules—overregulation, taxation, and corrupt political systems all inhibit growth. But instead of fighting the uphill battle of trying to reform legacy institutions, it is much easier to simply start from scratch and influence by example. The right charter, or set of rules, will naturally attract builders, investors, and citizens who are interested in participating in or profiting off of better ways to live.
Of course, the charter city-state is reliant upon and vulnerable to the broader territory it is nested inside of. This tension could be appeased either through payments or armaments, each of which present their own problems. If the prince arranges an alliance, or to pay an annual price for protection, this could lead to exploitation as the surrounding country may be tempted to squeeze the state for more resources as their prosperity increases. This is why the town of UM surrounds itself with a great barrier to hide its wealth from the dragons. On the other hand, a city-state that arms itself to the teeth in order to be independent must bear the cost of financing a strong national defence, and no protections can be guaranteed in perpetuity. The threat of conquest is inevitable and inescapable. All a good prince can do is use his best judgement to determine which sort of arrangement has the best chance of protecting his citizens. It seems to me that in the beginning, any new city-state would have to rely upon alliances in order to survive, but after enough wealth amasses they may be able to finance a strong enough military to declare total autonomy. My main point is that the protection of the border is of highest interest to the populace, and a good prince will prioritize doing whatever he needs to in order to maintain it—lose the patch and the realm becomes worthless.
I know at the moment starting a new system of government from scratch seems entirely unfeasible to some, but honestly I think we’re in the middle of a revolution that we haven’t noticed yet. Improvements in transportation and communication mean we are all now more connected than ever. Ideas and ideals can transcend all notions of national boundaries, cryptocurrencies free us from a reliance on legacy monetary authorities, and visionary individuals can now collaborate and come together to form unconventional alliances. To those who value merit and ability, merit and ability will always find a way. So long as people desire peace and prosperity, they shall persevere. That’s what makes them such timeless truths. The world is constantly reinventing itself. We get so caught up in our present moment we forget that all of this, our greatest nations and longest standing institutions, can rise and fall within the blink of an eye. The maps we study today aren’t going to be the same maps that exist one hundred years from now. The world is rife with opportunity, now more than ever, we just need the right entrepreneurs with the confidence and creativity to seize it. Of course, anyone today who is earnestly interested in venturing to create new political systems will suffer much scrutiny, but as the current regimes continue to crumble and fall any viable alternative will begin to look more and more feasible. It’s not clear how much longer the current liberal norms to which we have become accustomed will continue to survive under our current governments, and it is the principles which persevere, not the regimes which implement them. Where freedom goes the people will follow.
Part #3. Within the Walls
So, this is where things get interesting. Hopefully the need for a nation to have a territory is apparent to you by now, and the few means by which territory could be acquired have been made clear. Now the question comes as to what happens to the land contained within? Conventional libertarianism says that all land should be privately owned, but the private ownership of land has never made a lot of sense to me. This is because land possesses a unique quality which distinguishes it from other forms of private property. Land is a finite resource, and once owned is supposedly owned in perpetuity. This creates the obvious issue of a massive power imbalance when it comes to first-come, first-serve land ownership. The current system creates a lot of frustration due to the fact that certain people benefit disproportionately having inherited valuable land while providing nothing of value themselves. As Thomas Paine points out in his work, “Agrarian Justice”, man can progress from a natural to civilized state, but he cannot easily revert. Once agriculture has increased the size and density of a population, they cannot easily disperse again. Our planet now houses more people than ever, but the introduction of cultivation has also created the conditions for a new kind of poverty which did not exist before.
How did this happen? Well, I tend to like John Locke’s notion that one creates private property by mixing their labour with the land. If I’m a noble savage wandering the Sahara and I climb a steep hill to pick an apple from a tree, that apple is now mine since I put in the work to acquire it. If I find gold in a stream and take the time to discover the source and mine it, well, it’s mine. But the physical ground you walk upon is never part of the picture until you introduce cultivation. Clearly someone who takes the time to plant an apple orchard owns each tree, not just the apples he personally picked that day. Agriculture makes the relationship between the land and the labour so explicit that it becomes hard to disentangle one from the other. But it’s important to remember that the value added, and therefore the ownership earned, comes only from the improvement of the earth, not the earth itself. Nobody can own the earth because nobody made it. As human beings we all share a natural right to occupy it, but not to lay claim to any particular part of it in perpetuity. The only way you can designate a territory as your own is by establishing a clear border and protecting it, just as jungle cats have done for thousands of years. Put up a fence or a wall and maintain it, and the land contained within it is yours, but only for as long as you continue to occupy and defend it.
Given that the state as a power agency is required to secure land, the notion of private property becomes patently ridiculous. All ownership is contingent upon state authority. No conquering enemy is going to look at your mortgage and go, “oh, I didn’t realize you owned this house! My bad, I’ll just let you keep it.” Land is privately owned to the extent that the sovereign is the owner, because their authority is what makes possession of the territory feasible. But for the citizens of a royalist state, they own nothing. How could they? Their ownership is meaningless without the protection of the realm. Custody may be leased, but it can and should never exist in perpetuity. I think a lot of issues people identify with capitalism are actually the fault of land ownership, which creates unfair monopolies and an imbalance in power before the game has even begun. But this problem could be easily resolved by abolishing the concept of land ownership in perpetuity and replacing it with annual rents on the space you take up. This is an economic theory known as Georgism, and I have come up with three different ways in which it could be implemented.
But first, I want to talk a little bit about the relationship between government and infrastructure. In our current political systems, these ideas are always explicitly entangled—the government builds the roads, bridges and sidewalks, and provides us with plumbing and electricity. However these services generally suck, especially in Canada. Our cities are generally ugly and crumbling and there is no good incentive as to why anyone should be invested in fixing them. This is the problem with monopolies: without competition and skin in the game, quality tends to decrease over time, rather than improve. The so-called “capitalist hellscape” of endless concrete parking lots and big box stores is a byproduct not of capitalism, as its critics would have you believe, but rather political systems which have little incentive to offer you any alternative. Money talks. If I could pay to live in a gated community with cobblestone streets and gardens and cafes with not a gas station or fast food joint in sight, I would in a heartbeat. And there would be no shortage of developers jumping at the chance to make such fantasies a reality. The problem lies not in a lack of desire or creativity, but the legal inhibitions which prevent such innovations from taking place.
In fact, lots of the unsightliness we experience in our day to day lives is a direct consequence of government regulations. Our cities are built for cars. Drivers, specifically. But cars have only been around for what, a hundred years? And they’re not going to stick around in their current form much longer—not if they don’t have to, at least. Right now there are rules requiring a certain amount of parking spaces per person in a building, forcing developers to construct parking lots and steering us away from alternative transit solutions. Similarly, the reason we don’t have tall townhouses like in Europe, which give streets a wonderful intimacy and take up space much more efficiently, is because building codes require an elevator be installed after 3 floors. Sizing standards written into regulations prevent people from easily constructing smaller, more affordable homes. Big box stores are taxed preferentially to retail ones… I could go on and on. My point is that it’s important to have enough flexibility in your system that it can evolve over time as technology develops. The current codes of conduct are constraining us more than they need to.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that little critique out of the way, let’s talk about option number one. I’m calling this a pilot or pinpoint city-state. In this model, the sovereign, prince, president, CEO, whatever you want to call him, is building a city. The state and infrastructure are bundled together explicitly. I think Elon Musk would be a great candidate for constructing a city like this. He’s got his autonomous vehicles, hyperloop tunnels and solar panel technology already fully developed. He just needs a few dozen square miles and a few hundred million dollars, which I’m sure would be easily collected from investors once they’re sold on the city of the future. For fun, let me paint you a picture; first of all, we’re abolishing roads. Autonomous vehicles are going to be the norm in the next few decades anyways and no one really likes car accidents. Instead, we are reviving the old European charm of public walkways with the occasional cyclist or commuter pod gliding by unperturbed passersby. Imagine living in a world where all six lanes of traffic, every stop sign and cross walk and parking lot, is replaced by public paths amidst gardens and greenery. Our souls suffer in the concrete jungle and it doesn't have to be this way.
As a developer, president Musk would charge an annual fee for citizens to enjoy the protection and pleasantries of the city. He could introduce aesthetic regulations, if they were so desired, banning billboards and boisterous neon signs and anything else deemed unsightly. Like in Singapore, there could be harsh penalties for littering and vandalism, keeping the city clean and citizens respectful of their surroundings. They could still buy houses or rent apartments, but instead of paying the price of the property including the cost of the land it is built upon, this would be paid for separately as an annual fee. Landlords too, would have to pay the same price, thus eliminating the rent-seeking and power imbalance that comes from our current system. The state is the ultimate landlord, acting as a custodian, managing allocation, zoning, and distribution. The money collected as rent would go towards the protection and maintenance of the city, and every citizen pays in proportion to the territory that they occupy.
The second option for land management and distribution abides by more classical homesteading principles. I call this the target approach. Imagine an empty and unoccupied territory, like a hidden mountain valley, or a barren patch of the Nevada desert. Then imagine that some power authority sets up shop in the centre, offering protection to those who would seek to settle the surrounding area. The state starts as a hub of power which allows a community to naturally emerge around it on a first come, first serve basis. Complexity theory tells us that these systems will self organize quite naturally, like how Burning Man is constructed and torn down again each year while developing consistent characteristics and districts. I call this a target system because the rules and regulations imposed by the state could vary depending upon proximity to the central authority. A more gentrified and tightly controlled downtown may occupy the centre while the outskirts act more like the wild west, further from rules and regulation and available at a lower price. Walls wouldn’t even be necessary to begin with, but some sort of self defence must inevitably emerge in to engage with external threats. Once the need to territorialize occurs, and firm boundaries must be negotiated, the available land will suddenly become constrained. At this point it would become logical to instate a Georgist land tax based on the quality and quantity of space occupied by the residents. So the ultimate outcome remains the same but is achieved through a bottom up rather than top down approach, and with a much lower startup cost.
The third solution is a combination of the previous two. We’ll call this a map or mixed system, which would work best for governing large swaths of land or transforming preexisting territories into royalist ones. This model is intended for states that contain both city centres as well as undeveloped land. The first step is to sell the cities to private companies, turning the management of their infrastructure into competing subscription services, with different rules and regulations imposed depending upon the management and the desires of their customers. The laws of the state itself would remain consistent throughout, but different people could live under different conditions which cater to their own moral or aesthetic sensibilities. Essentially, I’m proposing an added subdivision of patches within the patch, which sounds redundant until you realize that some patches may be much bigger than others. We must have a sovereign that is powerful, but how that power should be applied depends upon the desires of the individual. These needs will change over time. Many young people would rather live somewhere cheap with more diversity and uncertainty, but may prefer to transition into something more secure as they grow older and want to raise a family. The mixed model allows for multiple options to coexist simultaneously while being protected by the same power authority.
In the future I think we are doing to see a shift towards the decentralization of cities. The industrial revolution brought us together, but the technological revolution will tease us apart again. The consequences of COVID are already starting to show us this. The internet allows for information, goods, and services to be easily transported thousands of miles in the blink of an eye. There is no more need to congregate when we are no longer working in factories, and business meetings can be conducted from the comfort of our own homes. I believe cities will either become global entities, such as New York, London, or Paris, where tens of millions of people collect and pass through every day, or they will revert to more rural, small scale operations in communities of a few thousand. Places with a population of around a million will quickly become obsolete as they only provide the stresses of big city life without any of the added benefits. I know I would much rather live in a well cared for community of a few thousand people surrounded by open country than a moderately sized city, which only increases feelings of alienation and isolation.
If you think of cities as small, well managed towns rather than sprawling metropolises, the mixed model begins to make more sense. A few of these communities could be dotted within a given territory, each offering different services when it comes to infrastructure, rules, and regulation. The free spaces in between would still afford you the basic protection of the state, but with none of these additional costs or benefits. The advantage of an arrangement like this is that it would allow for a sort of meta-libertarianism. People could live however they see fit, voluntarily imposing rules upon themselves or stripping them away depending upon their current values and goals. The sovereign is paid to enforce these standards and charges the populace accordingly. There is nothing inherently wrong with authority, what the sovereign supplies is certainty. Power, when used properly, is a promise, nothing more or less.
The benefit of conceptualizing the sovereign as a custodian of the land is the fact that this gives the prince free reign to run things however he likes. Normally contentious libertarian issues, such as environmental protections and stipulations, are no longer a problem when it is the sovereign's responsibility to care for their territory in any way they see fit. The creation of national parks, or the imposition of carbon taxes, would therefore be both profitable and desirable. Laws could be implemented that require logging operations or commercial fishing to operate at a replacement level. Precious oils and minerals taken from the earth could be taxed accordingly, as it is the state’s authority which allows such resources to be extracted in the first place. The protection of wildlife and animal welfare would also be subject to sovereign authority, all aspects of the natural would would ultimately be under their jurisdiction. If the health of the environment is the responsibility of the state, it is in their vested interest to protect and conserve the land as best as possible.
Part #4. What Else to Explore
So, this chapter was my attempt at presenting a comprehensive theory of land. Explaining first why the state and land must go hand in hand, then presenting the possible means by which new territory can be established and protected, and finally potential methods for allocation and distribution within the new nation’s limits. So now what? Now that a territory has been established, what comes next? The answer is security. Once you have peace, you need protection, and that means police. The next chapter of Wonderland will be about re-envisioning the role of protection and police within our communities. I think we can all agree that the current institutions intended to provide us with freedom and security often make us feel even more oppressed and unsafe. I want to talk about why that is and what we can do about it.
Continue to Part 8: Protection & Police
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1.7 On Land