Twitter takes the ideological stance that there are universal global values that the platform must defend. They they invoke science as the basis for their conclusion. The way they rationalize this position is to invoke safety as the basis for their regulatory framework. When their position loses coherence they invoke context from science as a way to sustain their framework.

Twitter takes the ideological stance that their exists universal global values that the platform must defend. They they invoke science as the basis for their defensive actions.

Universal Value + Science = Rule.

Of course we can make science say anything we need it to say as long as we ask the question properly.

The only way to argue against science is to discredit the science. It’s ideologically risky since you end up arguing against liberal enlightenment values which is a socially unpopular position or you need to spend years doing your own experiments to prove someone wrong.

The argument that Tim Pool made over and over again what that Twitter was totalitarian in their approach to regulation. By totalitarian I mean they excluded any possibility for error on their part or redemption on the part of the rule breaker.

Pius IX made a good attempt to reconcile the totalitarian nature of rationality with the possibility for revelation when he invoked the concept of Anathema. Anathema means that we think you’re wrong; maybe at some point in the future you may be proven right, but for now you’re a raging asshole so please go away. Anathema leaves room for error on both sides which creates an ideological defense against the totalitarianism of rationality and science.

The genius of Pius IX was to remind us that the only truth was God’s truth and we could never entirely know that truth so while we might have some very strong opinions we always needed to keep some space for future revelation. Essentially Pius IX says that science and rationality can show us the truth for now but not for all time. In the same way, theology shows us the the truth for now but only God knows the truth for all time. This rhetorical device protects us from the totalitarianism of liberal orthodoxy.

Then Vatican II tried to make everyone get along and dismantled the whole system.

Fools!

What Tim and Joe should have asked Jack for is a redemption path for Alex Jones. If you excommunicate Jones for all time, then how can you reconcile with him?

The only way to fight the pernicious ideology of liberal totalitarianism is with a process of reconciliation and redemption.

All sinners can be forgiven.

Only in a totalitarian regime does a sin become unforgivable. It’s a kind of paradox that in order to preserve our freedom we need a way to forgive the unforgivable.

Twitter, since it fails to forgive the unforgivable, will become more and more totalitarian until the whole thing purifies itself to the point of ideological irrelevance.

Liberalism, like all ideologies, without the tempering of forgiveness and redemption becomes totalitarian and consumes itself.

The other day Joe Rogan had Jack Dorsey on from Twitter. was originally published in projectgraceland on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The post war liberal world order has failed to deliver on the promise of American Dream

The post war liberal agenda told us that free trade and mass migration would lead to world peace. That globalists agenda led to an unelected elite who wrote the rules to benefit the top 20% while the bottom 80% saw their wages fall and their communities impoverished.

Corporations run by shareholder proxies held by fund managers seek profit restrained only by regulation. Social Culture ceases to be a regulatory force in society and instead is replaced with a profit seeking enterprise that subverts legal tradition.

In a max-profit seeking global homogenized culture, corporations pay high status humans to transmit the most profitable brand messages which are:

• Government oversight: Protect incumbents with regulatory monopoly
• Diversity: Wage suppression through increased immigration
• New Flavor-Same Product: Novelty through attribute differentiation
• Low-Maintenance: Disposability
• Efficiency: More Stuff For The Same Price
• Low Risk profits: Low interest loans for share buybacks and asset purchases that boost stock price

In a local culture, Families seek out the following societal elements which are expensive and don’t contribute to corporate profits:

• Good Schools that educate everyone: It’s cheaper to import new workers than to educate local ones.
• Safe Neighborhoods: Policing costs money and makes politically connected drug gangs and community organisers angry
• Affordable housing: Historical Society, property owners and developers keeps things nice and restrict new housing
• Healthcare: Cures are bad for long term profits.
• Public Transportation: Let’s the poor people move around.
• Family wages and dependable work: Too expensive — bad for profits
• Predictable low cost access to credit and savings options: Fees on Credit cards and asset management keep the financial industry afloat

The trade off is between the higher growth of a maxprofit culture and the lower growth of a local-social culture. That trade-off is understood through a shared transcendental understanding of meaning. A meaning that exists somewhere between an 80 hour work week that leads to fame and fortune and a work to play lifestyle of odd jobs and endless parties.

We’ve replaced the more traditional sources of transcendental meaning like religion and community with a corporate profit seeking message of consumer satisfaction. We have fallen so far that we no longer even engage in idolatry, but instead we just worship the tools that made the idol. Where once we delighted in culture, we now delight in code: a digital bonfire of vanities where the right user experience refines all beauty and knowledge into personal data, to be optimized for profit and efficiency.

We’ve made the future of liberal democracy dependent on shareholder capitalism. As the market forces of shareholder capitalism drive more and more people into the administrative bondage of high interest debt and poverty level wages. As we can see from this New York TImes graph, when we decouple the American Dream from liberal democracy and replace it with shareholder capitalism the majority of people no longer want to live in a democracy. We live in garbage time. The game is over but 18 minutes are left on the clock. The losing team put on a brave face and shouts encouraging words at each other but the spirit of victory has left the building.

We have sacrificed the transcendent idea of the American Dream on an altar of technocratic efficiency. In these burnt offerings, molten analog of all creation, we have digitized the American Dream into a consumer experience that drives shareholder profits. Civilisation ends when they subjugate unprofitable citizens, for no slave will die to protect the Republic.

If we fail to liberate the American Dream from technical bondage and restore it to transcendent glory, then America ceases to be an indispensable force for good among the nations. For without the promise of freedom no hero’s blood is spilled, no citizen is raised to glory, and soldiers claim only treasure as their reward.

This project seeks to preserve the Republic and protect the transcendental nature of the American Dream.

Restore The Transcendence of The American National Dream

In 1990, the average high school graduate made $66,000 in 2019 dollars. Today the average high school graduate makes $35,000. That’s a 40% drop in wages for over 60% of America. If current trends continue in 2025 the average high school wage will fall below the poverty line for the average American family. When more than half the families in the country either live in poverty or can never afford to start a family the promise of the American Dream is over. Today’s America is a corporatist system which if it remains a democracy will flip eventually turn into a socialist system. We have 5 years to either restore promise of the American Dream. If we fail we need to prepare for a rapid transition to an authoritarian form of corporatist socialism we see in places like China or Russia with a strong possibility of insurrectionist attempt to replace the constitution with a new form of government

If we allow market forces to determine ideal immigration levels in America then immigration will continue until American wages are completely equilibrated with the rest of the world’s wages. These forces will reduce around 80% of the American workforce to constantly falling wages as the pressure from young highly mobile workers willing to accept subsistence wages in order to send home money to feed their extended families drives low skill wages ever downward.

In order to remain a Republic and restore the transcendence of the American Dream the governing class must keep the promise of a middle class life for high school graduates who marry, have children and show up to a job and do the work asked of them. A split shift of 28 hours a week at $15 per hour is a form of administrative slavery where debts and circumstance force people into a life of financial servitude to lenders and landlords. An immigrant worker, desperate to support a family in a far off kleptocracy, will be grateful for a couple of decades of administrative slavery in exchange for an opportunity for his children to escape the misery of his homeland and for some extra food and shelter for his extended family in the country of his birth.

However the American citizenry has no interest in a life of poverty and subjugation and will eventually chose popular revolution over shareholder capitalism.

There are three competing political offerings on offer. The Trump Populist Republicans are engaged in a half hearted attempt to restore the American Dream without too much disruption to economic growth. The reformist Democrats want a Western European style socialist system with a less dynamic economy, more social programs and predictable employment. The wealthy corporate urban centrists are fighting a rearguard action where they maximize their profits as their captive media propagandists decry any opposition to the Liberal world order as either racist, fascist, or communist.

The American people will chose to restore the transcendence of the American Dream before they chose socialism or corporatism. The challenge is to effect a restoration of the promise of America while we preserve the high-growth prosperity and global supremacy of the American Empire.

The Three American Political Choices

The American Dream

• Finish High school, find a job, wait until you get married to have kids, stay married and you’ll live a happy middle class life.

The Socialist Option:

• The state will take care of you if you can get to America. You deserve the same rights and privileges as any American. We’re all the same and we all deserve the same things. We all have the right to live the life we want.

The Neo-Liberal Option:

• The game is rigged so get your share as fast as you can because there isn’t enough for everyone. Fight like hell and don’t be a loser. Earn a living through connections and hard work — Fuck ’em if they can’t keep up.

So what’s the easiest, fastest and least disruptive way to restore the spiritual promise of the American National Dream?

Localism Can Restore Transcendence to the American Dream

Write a set of policy prescriptions and design a product that supports Local Capitalism. Nationalism leads to centralized authoritarian government, whereas voluntary localism promotes competition between the regions and forces regions to compete in order to retain talent and economic activity while they also promote flourishing and prosperity.

Local Capitalism: Deploy capital to achieve economic growth, environmental beauty and human flourishing.

Too often we use the idea of delayed gratification to trade our desire for beauty and happiness for temporary short term efficiency. While short term solutions are great when it comes to curing a raging infection they too often create as many problems as they solve.

When capitalism is transparently regulated at a local level, the local social culture can balance the profit seeking impulses of shareholder capitalism with the social needs of the community. Local capitalism, seeks to make everyone a shareholder rather than try and restrain the shareholder class from their predatory behavior. Once we all become citizen shareholders we can manage corporations that meet the needs of everyone. Polycentric governance uses traditional regulatory methods to manage common resources.

Over the coming weeks I intend to expand on the following list of policy proposals.

• Everyone owns shares in America Inc.
• Apply the regulatory principles of polycentric governance
• Dramatically Expand public markets to all business in America Inc.
• Clearly articulate the promise of the American Dream. (finish HS, get married, have kids, buy a house, have a great middle class life)

Establish regulatory standards for access to American markets.

• No Administrative slavery
• American environmental standards
• Extend the American dream to all the corners of the earth
• American health and safety standard
• Apply tariffs on all goods that do not meet American Regulatory standards.

Foster cultural practices that support innovation

• High standards for education
• Reward innovators and entrepreneurs
• Regulations must drive healthy growth and beautiful prosperity

A Local Labor Union as talent agent

• Negotiate a track towards middle class wages for all work
• Exchange job security for wage security
• Act as a talent agent not an employment agency

National military service for all who want to work

• Anyone who wants to work and can’t find a job can join the military and help bring peace and prosperity to the world.

Restrict Immigration

• Focus on skills and productivity
• eVerifiy for all employment

Education

• National/State certifications for all college — exit exam or keep going until you learn something
• National/State interoperability for certifications for trades, professions and specialties
• National common core standards for high school and publish scores for all test takers
• Debt forgiveness for people who don’t pass the national standards tests

Health Insurance

• Functional medicine
• Catastrophic insurance
• Healthy choices

Taxes and Tariffs

• Tax labor visas
• Tax outsourcing
• Tax immigration
• Tax remittances

Environment

• Make your neighbourhood beautiful
• Support local shops and services
• Understand the supply chain
• Make sustainable choices

Monetary Diversity

• Anyone can securitize their assets on a blockchain and create money called asset drawing rights (ADR) through membership in a mutual guarantee society (MSG).
• Show ownership and depreciation if asset is physical like a car
• Mutual Guarantee Societies confirm ownership and guarantees
• Mutual Guarantee Societies issues token based on asset
• Token floats against asset drawing rights
• Token can be exchanged for USD or whatever when converted to asset drawing rights and sold to a safe asset buyer
• Token acts as a price to show how well run our Mutual Guarantee Society is in comparison to other Mutual Guarantee Societies.
• The total amount of asset drawing rights make or burn depending on how all the Mutual Guarantee Societies are run
• If asset drawing rights target inflation is ZERO ADR always beats any other currency with an inflation rate greater than zero.

Fiscal Competition

• Competing voluntary regulatory authorities
• Streamline Bankruptcy
• Offer an easy exit for citizens with repayment option for reentry

Local Freedom was originally published in projectgraceland on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article proposes a new framework for national governments called the distributed autonomous nation (DAN).*

The invention of blockchains gave rise to the distributed autonomous organization (DAO) and the distributed autonomous corporation (DAC). DAO/C’s entered the lexicon in the past few years as the idea of an organization that could be governed by voting, radical transparency and clear rules open to all participants. Since currency is stored on the blockchain and contracts have explicit rules defined by code in advance, transaction costs are reduced to the processing power required to register the transaction on the blockchain. If an organization can exist on a blockchain then by extension so too can a nation.

The state has three functions. The first is to define membership, the second is to define territory and the third is to provide for a means of decision-making that is both effective, fair, and reasonable. New members may be acquired through procreation and immigration and new territory may be acquired through acquisition and annexation. Existing members enjoy limited and defined rights of membership, an ability to express themselves, and a territory that must be defended. Therefore it’s logical to conclude that in order to be a state one must possess the means of defining, registering, and negotiating the rights and responsibilities of membership and the limits and defense of existing territory.

The first function of a state which is to define the rights and responsibilities of its citizens is best expressed through a constitution governing a blockchain. While many libertarian minded people will imagine the U.S. Constitution as a sort of starting point for future constitutions of distributed autonomous nations, others with a more Marxist or utilitarian approach to the project of building a society might create an entirely different constitution where resources are shared and liberties belong to the collective and not the individual. The objective is for different groups of people to be able to organize themselves according to different principles so long as they are explicit and well ordered in their approach to whatever governing system they choose. The principal objective of any distributed autonomous nation is to restrict as much as possible any member of any society’s ability to collect rents without adding value or to create regulations in order to protect revenues. Common sense suggests that the libertarian framework lends itself best to any distributed autonomous nation however is not beyond the realm of the imagination to envisage very different and much more communitarian approach to shared existence in a distributed autonomous nation very much like an Israeli kibbutz, the Syrian People’s Protection Units or some other social project devoted to shared resources and mutual interdependence.

The second function of the state is to define and defend its territory. While the geographic definition of the territory of the state can be easily inscribed on a blockchain, the defense of that territory is a much more complicated operation to undertake in the context of a distributed autonomous nation. In a world of highly destructive nuclear weapons it seems unwise to write a smart contract that under the right set of circumstances would destroy most life on the planet. The actual policing of the border, the collection of any import or export duties, and most conventional small-scale military style operations would be fairly straightforward to code as smart contracts on a blockchain and could be subcontracted to an agency and monitored by third-party.

A blockchain is already the most effective way to defend a territory against invasion as it renders the citizens of that territory un-taxable since the coin of the blockchain belong only to the voting members of the blockchain. Private keys could be extracted at gunpoint however those transactions would be reversed by the arbitrators. A large scale operation that threatened thousands of members of a distributed autonomous nation with misery or death in order to extract their private keys would certainly warrant a substantial and destructive military response. An explicit triggering of a massive nuclear attack once a certain threshold of private keys being used to transfer wealth was reached would be an effective defense against the forced surrendering of private keys. The distributed autonomous nation would destroyed itself and its attacker in the event of a successful invasion through a coordinated nuclear response explicitly defined so as to deter any attacker. Since the attacker would know exactly at which point mutually assured destruction would occur there would be no point in launching an attack. While it seems counterintuitive that a structure designed to promote liberty and secure peace would need nuclear weapons in order to survive, arming such a structure with the ability to destroy both itself and its attacker paradoxically gives that structure the greatest chance of survival.

When we explicitly define the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons we make the world a much safer and more predictable place. If Thomas Hobbes was right and we need the Leviathan of nuclear destruction to prevent the war of all against all, then is it not better to define the moment and condition of our end, rather than leave it to chance and fate?

In order for the members of a distributed autonomous nation operating a blockchain to express themselves in a ways that reduce suffering and increase knowledge there must be a way to delegate much of the business of governing to a congress of elected officers devoted to an increase in the prosperity of the syndicates they represent. It’s just not practical for every member to vote on every issue since the knowledge and effort required to make a useful decision would quickly overwhelm everyone and the project would collapse due to the mental exhaustion of the participants. Since the ownership of the territory is divided among the members of the territory it stands to reason that the members desire to preserve the value of their investment. The members can access their investment through mutual guarantee syndicates and can delegate the decision-making to leader of the syndicate called the Syndic. When we limit the size of a syndicate to a few hundred people we preserve the spiritual nature of the relationship between the membership and prevent the nature of the relationship from being subjected to the pure transactional nature of a marketplace. For example, in a small group if someone falls on hard times or becomes ill their friends are happy to support that person until such time as they are able to care for themselves again. In a larger group the transactional forces of the market takeover and we feel no obligation to care for somebody we don’t know beyond a vague notion that somebody ought to do something about the problem.

The distributed autonomous nation operating via a network of syndicates on a blockchain works towards the Rawlsian goal of distributive justice, avoids the Hobbesian fate of war of all against all and the provides for the Augustinian vision of a spiritual connection between members so as to prevent the dignity of the human condition being subjected to the transactional forces of the market.

*The distributed autonomous nation acronym (DAN) is in no way connected to Dan Larimer, the creator of the EOS blockchain, who is an all around great guy.

The Distributed Autonomous Nation was originally published in projectgraceland on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With apologies to Winston Churchill, fractional banking is the worst system except for all the rest.

Some historical exceptions to the supremacy of fractional banking are the mutual guarantee syndicates that provided the financial backing for the Venetian and Genoese merchants, the New Bedford Whaling syndicates and the Dutch Raiffeisen Banks, to name a few examples.

The main challenge with a mutual guarantee syndicates is paradoxically also its main attraction. Because the risk is shared by all the members of the syndicate, the interest rate on any loans is naturally quite low. The reason the rate is low is because the principle of loss aversion leads to a reduced likelihood of borrowers being able to get loans for bad ideas or purchases they can’t afford. Essentially, if a deadbeat, but much loved friend, wants to borrow a thousand bucks to go to Vegas were probably going to say no.

In theory, fractional banking is better that a mutual guarantee system since in fractional banking pretty much anyone can get a loan whenever they want. The problem is that sometimes people should not be borrowing money!

In a fractional banking system borrowers can run up significant debts while they consume more than they earn since the high interest rates allows the lender to recoup their costs when a few borrowers end up defaulting on their loans. As well, in a fractional banking system, the lenders can share risk with each other when they securitize and resell the debt, as well as use the implicit guarantee of the public trust to take risks far beyond their ability to suffer the short term consequences of those risks.

As long as private lenders in a fractional banking system have the ability to shift bad debt from their balance sheet onto the balance sheet of the public trust then private lenders will always remain solvent. That’s what the Fed did in 2008 when they purchased all the bad debt from the banks. They bailed out the banks.

While the system of fractional banking has led to economic growth it also creates a cycle of boom and bust due to the implicit public guarantees that leads to outsized risk-taking. Think of the Fed as that line of cocaine that lets you keep doing tequila shots at 2am and that magic hangover cure that puts a smile on your face at brunch the next day.

The Federal Reserve, as stewards of the public trust, can keep interest rates below growth rates which allows the Fed acting on behalf of the public trust to absorb the huge losses sustained by private lenders in the fractional banking system.

If interest rates rise along with growth rates then people with money in the bank end up earning more money because the interest rates rise as the economy grows. If interest rates are kept low, then the money that might otherwise have gone to investors and savers ends up disappearing into the public trust. When this money disappears into the public trust it can be used to absorb losses from the fractional banking system without the public trust having to publicly account for those losses. Effectively when interest rates are kept below growth rates, the massive difference in economic potential can be used to absorb bad debts from the fractional banking system without having to ever pay back that debt. It’s magic!

For example, in the past 10 years growth rates of averaged around 2% while interest rates have averaged around 1% which creates a 1% per year implied discretionary fund for the public trust to use to absorb the bad debts of the fractional banking system. In real money this represents around $2 trillion dollars that might otherwise have gone to depositors that is been used by the Federal Reserve acting on behalf of the public trust to absorb bad debt within the fractional banking system. Currently the Federal Reserve carries around $4.5 trillion on its balance sheet so this number might suggest that interest rates will have to lag growth rates until the $4.5 dollars of bad debt has been consumed. In reality, $4.5 dollars of total debt in an economy that does just under $20 trillion a year isn’t that high a number. It’s like owing $25,000 when you make $100,000 a year. You can pay it off over time and it’s annoying but not that big a deal.

The more important issue at stake is that this $4.5 trillion dollars might otherwise have gone to citizens who could have saved it for their retirement or invested it in businesses in their communities, education for their children, or improvements to their homes. Instead of creating growth in the economy, this $4.5 trillion dollars is being used to absorb the negative consequences of some very risky financial schemes that made a few people very very rich. Now unfortunately we had no choice back in 2008 since allowing the fractional banking system fail would have destroyed our economy along with it and reduced all of our wealth by much more than the $4.5 trillion dollars sitting on the Fed’s balance sheet today. Much as we all hated the idea of bankers getting a bail-out, the alternative could have been burning cities and civil war.

Now that the worst of the crash is far behind us, the time has come to think hard about whether the fractional reserve banking system is really the most appropriate system for our economy. The choice is fairly stark. If we would like to continue letting people spend more than we earn so they can take luxury vacations, buy big-screen TVs and the latest products from Apple then the fractional reserve banking system is absolutely the right choice for our economy. It allows smart people to take huge risks lending money to disorganised morons with no impulse control who can’t afford to pay it back without an enormous amount of suffering, then shifts the majority of that risk onto the public trust so that in the event of a crash the system can absorb most of that bad debt. The people who pay to absorb that bad debt are those who live within their means since the money they saved grows at a much slower rate in order to provide the cushion that absorbs all that bad debt.

It’s like the old saying goes: “we’ve seen the enemy and he is us.”

In all likelihood this fractional reserve banking system backed by the implicit guarantee of the public trust and managed by the Federal Reserve can continue on somewhat indefinitely. All we have to do is agree as a culture that the wise and the prudent are responsible for the bad decisions of around 10% of the population that are idiots. The banking system takes a fee to manage the transfer of wealth from the 90% of us who live within our means to the 10% of us who don’t. This fee gets paid to the bankers regardless since when the crash comes most of the bill for the crash is paid for by the public trust, not the bankers because we need the bankers to keep the system going. The bankers know that they will get bailed out and price that certainty into their business models. In many ways it’s unfair to blame the banker when the real flaw is in our culture. If someone can walk into a Best Buy and purchase a $1000 TV set on credit at 20% interest, make a few payments then when times get tough stop paying for the television set, why should we be surprised when the bill for that TV ends up on the desk of the public trust? The lessons of the past hundred years have clearly shown us that the bankers don’t pay when the shits the fan - we do! Well..actually, to be fair, the bankers pay a little but the public pays almost all of the bill.

If as a society we are content to allow 10% of us to live far beyond our means then we must also as a society be content when that bill lands on our doorstep. Sure the bankers actually do the work and get a fee for their trouble but it’s the rest of us who are the real twits for allowing the business of lending money to people who can’t afford to pay it back to continue unchecked. It’s like arresting the hooker for prostitution when the real guilty party is the john who goes home and gives his wife an STD! The hooker is just filling a market demand. If we really wanted to get rid of prostitution then we need to go after the clients. Same thing with banking. A good libertarian doesn’t use the state to punish the sellers for the poor choices of the buyers. We educate, shame or exclude the buyers from our communities. We believe that everyone should be free to make bad choices and that we’re not required to be responsible for the consequences of bad choices made by others. Negative externalities and unintended consequences be damned!

A mutual guarantee syndicate banking system shifts risk from the public trust to a smaller more local group that knows and has confidence in the borrower. Now, if the borrower fails to repay his loan, the consequences of that default are immediately felt at a local and personal level. Instead of a random consumer buying a random television said he can’t afford, it’s our friend Richard who convinced us he had the ability to repay us when he really didn’t. In order for Richard to buy that television set he can’t afford, he is forced to lie and abuse the trust of his friends, neighbors, and community. It is much harder to lie to your friends and refuse to pay them back, than to exaggerate on a form that will be read by somebody you’ll never meet and not pay a company you’ll never have to deal with again.

If we returned the 4.5 trillion dollars sitting on the Fed's balance sheet to the wise and prudent members of the public, then we as a people could afford to pay for things like health insurance and education for the 10% of the population that for whatever reason can’t quite get their act together. That’s what charity is for. We all make mistakes and we need each other to help out from time to time. Let’s not rely on the banks and the government but rather rely on each other when times get rough. When we help each other it’s less expensive and makes for a far better society.

It’s not that hard to improve the banking system and to make the banking system work for everyone. We just have to agree to only buy things we can afford, invest money wisely and with the advice and consent of those we know and trust, and share with those who are truly in need and not with those who merely need a vacation.

A Libertarian Banking System was originally published in projectgraceland on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Most social scientists approach problems from an authoritarian perspective. They imagine a perfect future and then they indulge themselves in the fantasy that if only they could make the right rules and enforce them, then this perfect future would emerge. Sadly this approach has lead us straight into the mud of Auschwitz.

There are three paramount problems to consider for anyone who imagines themselves to be an architect of human betterment. First, how to avoid war. Second, how to redistribute wealth fairly. And third, how to include everybody in our common society.

WAR

Most problems can be solved through war. If two people disagree and one person kills the other, the disagreement ends. Murder is a very effective way to conclude a discussion to one’s own satisfaction. Of course one war leads to another and pretty soon there’s really no point in discussing anything anymore since everyone’s busy slaughtering each other. The past hundred years or so have shown us that war is wasteful and costly. From the fields of Europe, to the jungles of Asia, to the sands of Arabia, we’ve learned that war solves very little at a very high cost. Wilfred Owen, and Horace before him, talked about the old lie “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland). War is very easy for old men to start and very costly for young men to fight.

The libertarian approach to war is akin to the Powell Doctrine used in the first Iraq war. Only attack in response to aggression, exhaust all other options first, clearly define the objective, stick to that objective, prosecute the war with overwhelming force, as well as with broad public and international support. In order to apply the Powell doctrine one must maintain a credibly competent and massively destructive military. Somewhat paradoxically, in order to never go to war, one must appear ready to go to war at any moment.

While it is comforting to imagine that a unitary executive with power to engage in military action will protect us, the reality is otherwise. The president that can go to war without congressional approval will only be tempted to entangle us in conflicts that have no resolution. Congress and the people must have the final say on war.

When we engage in war the goal must be clear: conquer our enemy and forever remove the threat of future warfare from that enemy again. It is only with the threat of complete destruction that those who seek to do us harm will be deterred.

REDISTRIBUTION

The Pareto distribution shows us that wealth is created on a power curve with the returns being unequally shared between participants. If we take the example of popular music we can see that people like Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga make millions of dollars, while thousands of singers languish in obscurity unable to support themselves through their art.

This problem is as old as time and can be seen across most evolutionary systems. It’s even in the Bible:

For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

— Matthew 25:29, RSV.

For libertarians the question is how to redistribute wealth across the population without without seizing and destroying private property, infringing on people’s liberty, and taking life.

The answer for a socialist authoritarian is easy. Taxation seizes private property under threat of prison and redistributes that property to others. The process of taxation is extraordinarily wasteful and more often than not leads to the further destruction of private property and the imposition of violence on those who disagree with the prevailing authority.

A libertarian approach to redistribution is through investment and charity. When we lend money to others either without interest or at a very low interest rates we encourage them to invest in their future through property acquisition, education, or some form of entrepreneurship. For those unable to borrow for investment purposes because of disability or circumstance, private charity provides for their maintenance. When we respect property, life, and liberty we encourage human dignity and flourishing. The libertarian objective is to help every person maximize their potential and their dignity through a combination of investment and charity that respects life, liberty, and property.

INCLUSION

One of the most vexing problems of modern society is what to do with the bottom quintile of the population that for a variety of reasons is unable to participate in the economy. Either through mental or physical disability or because of misfortune or circumstance around 20% of people do not participate meaningfully in society. This exclusion makes them poor, sad, and lonely and leads to unnecessary suffering and early death.

A libertarian approach to social inclusion creates jobs and roles for people regardless of their ability. For example many employment laws today prohibit engaging someone without respecting rules and regulations around minimum wage, union membership, or workplace requirements. These rules prevent many people from having part-time engagements where they could participate to the extent they were able in ways that work for them and those who employ them. The current layer of licensing and regulatory requirements exclude the weakest and least able in our society from participating meaningfully in the economy.

In a culture that values life, liberty, and property, human dignity matters more than rules and regulations. When we allow individuals to freely engage with and contract with other individuals in the context of a culture of human dignity and flourishing, we create opportunities for inclusion for every member in our society. Inevitably there will be abuses and we must be vigilant and protect the weak and vulnerable from those who seek to do them harm. However, the good that comes from increased participation in society far outweighs evil that is today created by the rules and regulations that condemn a fifth of society to administratively enforced exclusion and early death.

THE MISSION

In order to increase human flourishing and dignity we must continually focus on the three eternal challenges: avoid war, redistribute wealth in a way that seems fair to everybody, and meaningfully include the weak and the vulnerable in our society.

The most effective way to meet these challenges is to protect life, liberty, and property within a culture that values human dignity and flourishing. The socialist authoritarian seeks to regulate our freedoms in order to protect us from our choices. However, in their misguided pursuit of a utopian dream they have condemned millions of us to prison, slavery, and death. The great story of humanity is the triumph of freedom over slavery. It is up to us to continue to tell that story in our time in a way that makes it come true for more and more of us every day.

Three Challenges For Libertarians was originally published in projectgraceland on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The founders of the American Republic thought that divided government would produce the best results for a free people. They knew that there was no right answer to life’s questions. In order to create life, liberty, and happiness the best way forward was a diversity of power and opinion creating the laws under which we would live.

Since then, we have been drifting rapidly away from the vision of the Founders. A massive federal bureaucracy controls much of our lives. Rules are now made by unelected bureaucrats in Washington. Let’s use pizza as a metaphor to understand why divided government leads to human flourishing and why an all-powerful federal bureaucracy crushes innovation and diversity.

Let’s imagine all the different kinds of pizza that we can buy today. We have the big national chains like Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s and Sbarro’s who each have their particular style and taste. We have the dollar pizza joint where the entrepreneur toils in front of a hot oven to make pizza the way he believes it best. We have the frozen pizza in the supermarket like Digiorno’s, Tombstone and Tony’s. We have regional styles of pizza like the famous cheese slice from New York City or deep dish pizza from Chicago. We have gourmet pizza like California Pizza Kitchen or Wolfgang Puck. We have high-end restaurants that make their own unique kind of pizza like Marta in New York. We have homemade pizza where men and women all across the country create pizza in their kitchen. On the Internet there are thousands of recipes and videos where it seems that almost everybody has a idea about what constitutes the perfect pizza. It’s endless….

Now let’s imagine if the only way you could eat pizza was if the federal government provided it. We all know what government cafeteria pizza looks like. It’s bland, tasteless, and nutritionally dubious. In our hearts we all know that government pizza would probably be very much like government cafeteria pizza. Terrible!

So what if we approached legislation like we approach pizza and created a menu of options where people could choose what works best for them in whatever particular circumstance they found themselves.

For things like police, fire, and military would probably pick something like a national chain. We’d want a standardized, and efficient approach to security and safety, kind of like we’ve come to expect from places like Pizza Hut and Domino’s. It’s not the cheapest option available but neither is it the most expensive. It’s predictable and gets the job done.

For education we probably want something like the corner pizza shop. People in different communities learn differently and individuals all learn at different speeds. With a diversity of choices in how and what to learn, each of us would be able to maximize our abilities as cost effectively as possible.

Healthcare is probably most like supermarket pizza. We want it available everywhere. We want it standardized with best practices, easy to get at, and delivered at a low cost. When something goes wrong with us we want the latest and greatest technology at the lowest possible price to make us healthy again as fast as possible.

Infrastructure is probably more like regional pizza variations. Today New York City works best with the subway and Chicago works best with an elevated train. Each area chooses and develops the infrastructure that works best in that community and creates the environmental regulations around how to develop in a way that balances harmony with nature and human flourishing and efficiency.

Social security is like gourmet pizza. Let everybody choose what works best for them and their plans for later life. Some people like simple thin crust pizza with no toppings and others might want a deep dish pie with everything on it. Let people plan for their financial futures in the same way. Rather than force everybody to contribute to a national fund that is now insolvent, we would create incentives to save as well as provide insurance for those whose life choices have left them destitute.

Private charity and community assistance is like homemade pizza. Those who feel, for religious or social reasons, compelled to help the disorganized and unfortunate can create whatever organization they feel best serves the needs of those in the community who have fallen on hard times or are in otherwise need of some assistance.

If we approach government like we do pizza everyone can get what they want. Rather than have a massive and unaccountable bureaucracy wasting billions of dollars while they deliver services that either don’t work well or aren’t much wanted, we would have a patchwork of national, regional, and local organizations all competing to deliver exactly the right service, for the best price, at exactly the right time, to those who want it.

Right now we have to move to a new town or state or country to get a different government. What if all we had to do was walk a few steps to a different store, click a few times to a different website, or phone a different organization to switch governments. Then we’d get exactly what we want and need just like we do today with pizza.

A national blockchain lets us change governments like we buy pizza. We can get what we want, anytime we want, without having to move, and for any reason we want. Now that’s freedom!

A Republic of Pizza was originally published in projectgraceland on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The total population of these 130 countries is in the billions. Right now our solutions to these failed states is to send money to groups trying to alleviate the most glaring and horrifying examples of human suffering as well as to create a refugee welcoming system within our own countries to help individuals who otherwise would be dead.

These Band-Aid solutions of foreign aid and refugee resettlement help a tiny fraction of the billions who are suffering right now, put tremendous social strain on the communities in more developed countries and exacerbate identity politics. When you force people to choose between their genuine desire to help someone clearly in need, and their equally genuine desire to live in communities free of violence and chaos, the only people who benefit are the marxist merchants of social justice who extract rents in exchange for temporary peace.

The only way forward is to solve the governance problems in these failed and failing states and alleviate the human suffering in those failing countries.

Countries like Haiti and Venezuela are clearly incapable of governing themselves without plunging the majority of their population into starvation and early death. It stands to reason that these countries need to be governed in a way that assures basic security and stability for their citizens. To be in favor of not killing people is a morally unambiguous position.

Outsourced government is not new. Many towns and municipalities in developed countries recognize that all too often communities fall into incompetence and corruption when local officials are held insufficiently accountable by their communities. One way these communities have solved the problem of incompetent and corrupt government is to outsource the functions of government to an organization with a track record of success. This outsourcing has resulted in a dramatic improvement in government as well as lower taxes for people in the community.

Critics suggest that local issues can only be addressed by local people. However, when faced with starvation and death we can confidently conclude that the absence of a local opinion on library management is the least of our worries!

If government outsourcing works for towns and counties there is no reason it shouldn’t work for developing countries. A group of experienced administrators from countries like Canada, France, Japan, and Australia can just as easily and responsively administer an education or healthcare bureaucracy in Haiti as they can in their home country. Rather than give money to corrupt local officials who have no idea what they’re doing, we can secure the consent of the local population to outsource the function of government to a collection of administrators with a proven track record of success.

The tool that allows us to outsourcing administration in a way that is compatible with democracy and liberty is the national blockchain. The national blockchain lets citizens of failed states register their identity and choose their destiny in a way that’s consistent with principles of freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech.

The national blockchain permits citizens of failed states to freely express their opinions on how government services should be delivered in the various communities of their country. Citizen journalists are free to lobby, criticize and educate people as to why different services are important for different communities and how those service ought to be delivered. A national blockchain also allows citizens to organize themselves into groups in any way they see fit, as well as express themselves and their beliefs in any way they want.

We do not have enough money, time and room in our countries for the more than four billion people who are in desperate need of our help. The only way to stop the human misery and suffering is to offer good government to those who want it. When we export competent administrative talent in the form of outsourced administration to failed states we provide peace, order and good government for those who need it most.

We Must Solve The Problem Of Failed States was originally published in projectgraceland on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The initial set of proposed agreements into which members of a national blockchain may voluntarily enter make up one of the most important pieces of Project Graceland.

I reached out to a few libertarian think tanks to ask if they had anything lying around that might serve as a basis for a new libertarian state. All I got back were short emails in the negative.

WTF? Rothbard’s been dead for more than 20 years…you’ve been sitting around having conferences and making videos and no one said hmmm…let’s make a bloody plan!

I get it…you pick an outrageous statist action and then you suggest how much better everything would be if we were all Libertarians. Then 5 of you go off into a corner and argue for the next 20 years about the tiny little details. It’s like if I suggested a new way to build a city then spent 20 years debating the color of the throw pillows in the dog catcher’s office.

This absence of any concrete planning for a libertarian future leads me to conclude that libertarians are really into being oppressed and maybe even secretly kind of like it! Libertarianism may just be a regulatory bondage and intellectual sadomasochism exercise where they sit around and fantasize about suffering under the domineering state.

If you look at the people who actually made any plans they’ve all been dead for more than a hundred years. Mises and Rothbard made a living endlessly pointing out the evils of the big bad state without ever doing much about it. It’s almost like they was a deep state plants designed to keep any actual revolutionary busy fighting about technical details while the vast military industrial complex carried on unmolested.

The Seasteading people have kind of made a plan but they seem really hung up on making everything efficient. It’s like they’re all really busy doing pomodoros and having their virtual assistants schedule appointments for their dogs. They’re getting-things-done-itarians with no values other than achieving inbox-zero and finding inner calm.

Liberland has a long winding constitution but they want a direct democracy. So everyone will have to pay attention to everything and eventually the whole business goes tits-up because who the heck wants to spend their days reading policy papers about road safety regulations. Not ME!

So it seems like we’ll have to start from scratch which is kind of pain in the ass. Thanks Libertarians for all your great work for the past 300 years pointing out every flaw in the system and not bothering to come up with a better plan. You’re just like a neurotic vegan PETA supporting girlfriend who won’t shut up about leather shoes. I promise not to hate you for caring too much.

Jefferson, Paine, Locke and Co. has made a good start then we totally dropped the ball! Jackson kind of made another attempt at liberty but then Lincoln put a stop to that! We never really tried again and then Grant used the army to whip everyone into shape and Wilson and the progressives put everyone on the payroll of an ever increasing federal state. Once era of world wars arrived we all signed up to forever serve the great engine of government and endlessly tinker with her levers and gears while we collected rents for our troubles.

So it’s back to the founders and the old Constitution to create the smart contacts for the new crypto-libertarian republic. Negative liberty and enumeration of powers with that missing piece: A voluntarist clause. No member of a national blockchain shall be subject to any smart contract provided they infringe neither life, nor liberty nor property.

The only rule in a Crypto-Libertarian Republic: The right to be left alone shall not be infringed!

What Does a Crypto-Libertarian Constitution look like? was originally published in projectgraceland on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.