@atossaaraxia passage from the @NewAmerica Fifth Draft newsletter, on the need for more creativity in bottom-up experiments with “extraterritorial spaces”—really looking forward to her new book, The Hidden Globe.
All this lashing out will not get us any closer to economic security or a habitable planet. But the frustration is boiling over, and when we feel most powerless, it is a kind of relief to exert what little power we have left. And there is not really any alternative but to lean on the nation-state nowadays..t There are organizations like the United Nations, but it is just made up of nation-states. There are the governments of local jurisdictions, but they are really just parts of nation-states. There are corporations and NGOs, whose power can dwarf that of nation-states, but they are mostly out for themselves, and they do not even make a pretense of being democratic. And their existence depends on legal recognition by a nation-state.
nation-state could offload some of its governance burdens to other kinds of jurisdictions, other concurrent layers of governance that are more tailored and accountable in their domains..The borders on the map are generally rounded, rather than sharp and precise. This kind of map can help us begin to imagine how governance can look in a world where politics is not reducible solely to nation-states.
would still be.. (as we have proven over and over) same song.. rounding the corners not enough
Today, such cross-border jurisdictions rarely have teeth, because only the nation-state has real enforcement power. Nation-states hold claim over all habitable land on Earth. Property rights and organizational structures depend on nation-states’ willingness to enforce their provisions. Political possibilities are reducible to what is politically possible for nation-states to do or advocate for.
*Sometimes it takes a flashy technology to shake us out of old habits..t In addition to their usefulness for scammers, charlatans, and aspiring plutocrats, **the advent of blockchains presents a fresh opportunity to establish jurisdictions. Because a blockchain contract can enforce its own rules computationally, it can operate at least somewhat independently of territorial laws and enforcement agencies. ***Users can co-govern a blockchain from anywhere in the world — even without disclosing their geographic locations. Blockchains also produce digital tokens that people regard as valuable, which means participants have a stake in the system: something to gain and something to lose. For better or worse, blockchain jurisdictions are already in the making, and so is the struggle over what they will become.
I have been around crypto long enough to have seen several cycles of libertarian fantasies for replacing nation-states with tokens and markets.
we need to start questioning/realizing that cycles ness is a red flag we’re not doing something diff..
New jurisdictions must not simply place public goods in private hands; the overlapping jurisdictions *should offer more rights and protections than we have now, not fewer. But they **can also be more creative in their designs than governments are, picking from among a diverse palette of mechanisms to identify what is most appropriate to their particular domains. Some jurisdictions might be small, while others might represent everyone on earth, regardless of their territorial locations. New jurisdictions should offer opportunities to experiment with the possibilities of democracy, as well as the choice to create another alternative when one fails to be accountable. ***The repertoire of democracy should be explored beyond elections and representatives, toward models that are less coercive and that ****enable people to participate in diverse ways.
A municipalist jurisdiction, for instance, might be a council made up of city governments, operating according to a model of “rough consensus” similar to the evolution of Internet protocols. Meanwhile, a language standards body might make decisions through a reputation system, where highly regarded users of the language — the poets, the elders, the comedians — make its future rules. Social media users might decide on policies and enforcement through randomly selected juries, whose members are paid to take time to understand the complexities of an issue before deciding on it. People around the world might opt in to an income tax that redistributes funds directly to those with less. *Early experiments will set the tone for later ones, so it is important from the start to design systems that set a high bar — ensuring that those who abuse power will lose it, and those who need to leave a jurisdiction can do so safely. In addition to collective decision-making, democracy depends on a basic framework of rights.
*if: abuse/lose power; decision making; rights; et al.. same song
If people have opportunities to be part of more kinds of jurisdictions, they can put less stock in any one jurisdiction. They can keep identifying most with their nation-states, which can then focus on being great at governing their particular territory, or they can exchange that layer for other ones. The ethnonationalist fantasy has less to offer if the nation is no longer the only hope for change. A constellation of new jurisdictions is globalist, but it is also localist and more.
In a world of new jurisdictions, nation-states would need to relinquish some of the power they now claim. Just as the infamous U.S. law known as Section 230 gave social media platforms free rein to moderate content, governments can enable new jurisdictions to govern themselves as they see fit. *In exchange, perhaps, the new jurisdictions should be expected to demonstrate that they are democratically accountable to their citizens. Over time, new kinds of jurisdictions may become important enough to people’s lives that the permission of nation-states no longer seems necessary. Our primary identities may someday have less to do with accidents of birth and more to do with the jurisdictions we choose.
New layers of global governance are forming whether we like it or not, but how we build the new jurisdictions matters. People experimenting with practices and tools of self-governance today have the opportunity to show the nation-state what Zack Morris realizes over and over: You don’t have to do everything yourself.
be you. 