1. radicals
for
rules
A Pragmatic
Vision
of Peaceful,

2. 4.2 Billion?
4.3 Billion?

3. Tribalism and Electoral Politics

4. Conversation Starter 1

5. Coercion
Persuasion

6. Coercion & Persuasion
• There are two primary means of social
change. We mix them by degrees.
Coercion Persuasion
When we talk to people, let’s find ways to get them to
confront which of these means they value – fundamentally.

7. Conversation Starter 2

8. Lakoff’s Mendacious Metaphor
• Left-liberal academic George Lakoff
once compared taxation to
membership dues to a club.
• Steven Pinker gave him hell for it.
(For good reason.)
• Don’t pay your taxes?
“Men with guns will put you in jail.”
• But what if things were different?
What if we accept the best of
Lakoff’s metaphor, upgrading
citizenship to Civil Association?

9. Conversation Starter 3

10. Voice & Exit
• What if we started thinking of “exiting” as a
right just as we think of free speech as a right?
• What if we could convince our progressive
and conservative friends that we can all have
our political cake and eat it too?

11. Why?
1. Democracy is overrated, irrational tribalism.
2. Our Constitutional is becoming meaningless.
3. Our Republic is being redefined by rent-seekers.
4. Tug-of-War politics is unsustainable.
5. New social “operating systems” are possible.
6. We can eat our politics and have it to.

12. How?

13. New
meta
Rules

14. What’s so great about rules?
1. Allow systems to flow.
2. Let more complex orders emerge.
3. Regularize behavior, predictability.
4. Don’t privilege a person or group.
5. Are not regulations, which restrict
flows, control behaviors or proscribe.
Some interesting people are picking up on this.

15. radicals for
rules

16. Mackey Strong
De Soto
Thiel Friedman Can’t remember his name.

17. The Original Radicals for Rules

18. Could you be a
Radical for Rules?

19. Radicals for Rules…
1. Think some rule-sets are better than others.
2. Not monolithic about human beings, political systems.
3. Okay with people and communities being different.
4. Think there’s value in experimentation.
5. Are comfortable with local failures; people are imperfect.
6. Think there’s value in competition among systems.
7. Committed to peaceful, voluntary association.
8. Committed to rule of law (versus rule of rulers).
9. Think there are too many problems with mere democracy—
even representative democracy.
10. Understand that institutions (rules) matter.

20. And then
there are
statists.

21. Definition of a Statist
a) One who believes that coercive
state power can and should be an
instrument of good, making the
world better than it would be
otherwise; and
b) Someone who believes that
governments should have enforced
monopolies over certain goods,
services and spheres of activity
within some territory.
Defined this way, a statist can fall
along a continuum.

22. Anarchy-Leviathan Continuum
States exist roughly on a coercion–persuasion
continuum (between leviathan and anarchy).
Leviathan ? Anarchy
Minimal State

23. Q’s for Your Statist Friends…
• Whatever your theory of the ideal state – suppose it’s the U.S.
in some progressive Utopia – Should I be allowed to leave in
order to live under the system of another country?
• If “no,” then we have to assume you believe justice requires a
single world government that makes all the rules according to
a single concept of justice. (Watch out Canada!)
• If your answer is “yes,” then what is it about territory that is so
magical? That is, by virtue of what, exactly, does my living in
some geography require my compliance with a single system
encompassing some bundle of goods and services enforced by
the state?
We’ll focus on those who say yes. No’s may be lost causes.

24. What if I like one of these better?
Singapore Sweden Switzerland
South Carolina Seattle

25. e.g: Singapore’s Health Care
• Healthcare takes up 2-3 percent of GDP.
• Full medical savings accounts (MSAs/HSAs)
• Large deductibles (even for major surgery)
• Health insurance is not coupled w/ one’s job
• The very poor receive assistance
• Affordable, top-quality care.
• One problem… It’s in Singapore.

26. Public Goods?
Back to the question….
By virtue of what, exactly, does my living in some
geography require my compliance with a single
system encompassing some bundle of goods and
services provided or enforced by the state?
Some will say “public goods.”
But they’re using an ambiguous term, that means –
vaguely - benefits that accrue to a majority of people
– maybe helping to solve collective action problems.
So perhaps not “public goods” in the strictest sense.

27. Real Public Goods
Rivalrous – Means if I use it, others can’t.
Excludable – It’s possible to keep others from using it.
Non-Excludable
Excludable (Impossible to keep others using)
Rivalrous
Private Goods Common-pool
Food, clothes, healthcare Fish stocks, games, lake, air
Non-Rivalrous Club Goods Public Goods?
(If I use, others still can) Satellite TV, golf courses Defense?

28. So not public goods, maybe public
benefit. How about
“territorial
goods?”

29. Territorial Goods & Services
• Let’s be charitable about the
idea of public benefit –
particularly solving collective
action problems.
• Let’s focus on the benefits that
can accrue to people by virtue
of their living somewhere, i.e.
within some geography.
• Then, we’ll contrast these
benefits with another type.

30. Territorial Goods & Services
1. Transportation and Roads
2. Defense & Security
3. Police, Fire, and Emergency services
4. Justice (Criminal, Tort, and Titling)
5. Public Utilities (Water and Sewer)
6. Penal, Psychiatric, Public Health
7. Parks and Aesthetics
8. Nuisance Court or Zoning
9. Environment and Waste Disposal
10. Identification and Immigration

31. Non-Territorial Systems of Goods
• Non-territorial goods make up almost everything else
(healthcare, iPhones, etc.)
• These are good and services for which there really
isn’t a compelling case for either a) solving collective
action problems, b) a practical need for local access,
or c) perceived need for management by a
jurisdictional authority.
• Even if you think people are “entitled” to some of
these goods, I think we can agree they are not really
linked to territory, nor enjoyed (necessarily) by virtue
of living somewhere.

32. The Question
And that brings us back to an important question:
• If you’re okay with my leaving the US to becoming a citizen of
Sweden, or leaving California to move to TX, why shouldn’t you
be okay with my right of exit from any non-territorial system?
• OR - If there is nothing intrinsically territorial about a system
that provides goods and services in a certain way, why ought I
not simply be allowed to “exit” that system in the same way I
leave California?
If you can’t show us the magic, it’s Territorial
Chauvinism

33. Radical Proposals
• Let’s divorce the systems (i.e. separate
territorial- from non-territorial systems.)
• Let’s make most changes by adopting three
fairly straightforward MACRORULES.
• Let’s put an end to all this tug-o’-war national
politics.

34. On Civil Associations &
Territories

35. First, political parties have to die.
They can be replaced with
Civil Associations

36. Civil Associations: Macrorule 1
Right of Exit
Anyone may exit a Civil Association at
any time as long as he or she has honored his
or her end of any membership agreement.

37. “What form of government would you desire? “
Paul Emile de Puydt (1860)
“Quite freely you would answer, monarchy, or democracy,
[Democratic, Republican, Socialist, Libertarian] or any other. […]
[W}hatever your reply, your answer would be entered in a
register arranged for this purpose; and once registered, unless
you withdrew your declaration, observing due legal form and
process, you would thereby become either a royal subject or
citizen of the republic. Thereafter you would in no way be
involved with anyone else’s government — no more than a
Prussian subject is with Belgian authorities. You would obey your
own leaders, your own laws, and your own regulations.”

38. What is a Civil Association?
“It is simply a matter of declaration before
one‘s local political commission, for one to
move from republic to monarchy…or even
to Mr. Proudhon’s anarchy – without even
the necessity of removing one‘s dressing
gown or slippers.”
Imagine :
You join a system with a set of rules,
not a party. When systems compete,
you win.

39. Civil Associations…
• Are a non-territorial form of association.
• Can include or exclude people.
• Allocate non-territorial goods/services in any way they
choose (including collectively).
• Members must abide by terms of membership – including
dues (taxes).
• Let you put your money where your political mouth is.
• Give strong incentives for people to be civically engaged.
• Compete with one another for members.
• Work according to persuasion (contract), not coercion.

40. great
Now, we need a
inversion.
Power needs to be pushed down,
so we can keep an eye on it.

41. Territories: Macrorule 2
Principle of Subsidiarity
State functions, if any, should be handled at
the most local feasible level.

42. Jefferson - 1821
“It is not by the consolidation or
concentration of powers, but by their
distribution that good government is
effected. Were not this great country
already divided into States, that division
must be made that each might do for itself
what concerns itself directly and what it can
so much better do than a distant authority.
Every state again is divided into counties,
each to take care of what lies within its local
bounds; each county again into townships
or wards, to manage minuter details; and
every ward into farms, to be governed each
by its individual proprietor…”

43. Why go local?
• Accountability is easier.
• Democracy is less irrational by degrees.
• It’s much easier to vote with your feet.
• You get more experimentation and therefore more
chances of replicable success.
• People with local knowledge carry out tasks better.
• Screw-ups are less titanic/widespread.
• Subsidiarity tracks with information processing.
• Resources stay closer to home.

44. A Presumption of Liberty

45. Core: Macrorule Number 3
In Randy Barnett’s term, a presumption of liberty should
animate a new Constitutional Order.
As long as they do not violate the rights of others (as defined by the
common law of property, contract and tort), persons are presumed to be
"immune" from interference by government. This presumption means
that citizens may challenge any government action that restricts their
otherwise rightful conduct, and the burden is on the government to show
that its action is within its proper powers or scope.
At the national level, the government would bear the burden of showing
that its acts were both "necessary and proper" to accomplish an
enumerated function, rather than, as now, forcing the citizen to prove
why it is he or she should be left alone. At the state level, the burden
would fall upon state government to show that legislation infringing the
liberty of its citizens was a necessary exercise of its 'police power'—that is,
the state's power to protect the rights of its citizens. As long as they do
not violate the rights of others (as defined by the common law of
property, contract and tort), persons are presumed to be "immune" from
interference by government.

46. The 3 Macrorules
1. Right of Exit
2. Subsidiarity
3. Liberty

47. Enter: Panarchy
• We’re suggesting something here that is simple but profound.
• If each one of us – progressive, libertarian, conservative or liberal – were
willing to give up territorial chauvinism, we could each have almost any
system we wanted, within reason.
• None of us gets the system we want now. You might get the temporary
high of your chosen candidate winning. But that high is contingent on
factors completely beyond your control. Panarchy changes things.
• In the status quo, our ideals - whatever they are - will always be muddied
by compromise, corruption and horse-trading. That is the nature of a
representative democracy with territorial monopolies.
• Your party affiliations may satisfy something tribal in you, but
implementation never satisfies your deeper ideals – that is, the beauty,
elegance and pragmatism of your chosen system.

48. A New Territorial Order
Federal – National defense, supreme justice, national roadways
State – Conflict resolution between municipalities, interstate roads, etc.
Jefferson’s Ward Republics
Municipal – All other territorial goods

49. What’s so great about
Panarchy?

50. Synthesis
Panarchy
Individualism Communitarianism

51. Organic Unity
• Balances diverse perspectives, but
keeps people unified under a basic
framework.
• Reduces “friction” among people,
creating a far less polarized society.
• Ex uno plures and e pluribus unum

52. What would the world look like?
• Government continues to exist, but radically
localized. (Polycentric law prevails)
• “Territorial goods” might be privatized eventually.
• Could be an intermediate stage to peaceful anarchy.
• Politics becomes a truly local phenomenon.
• Virtually any political system is possible as long as
people don’t exit and the system remains solvent.
• Persuasion becomes the primary instrument of social
change. Use of coercive power is, at least, checked.
• Competition among systems replaces most king-of-
the-mountain or tug-of-war politics.
• True self-determination and self-gov’t is realized.

53. Prime Virtues
• Private Morality/Conscience
• Toleration
• Veneration of Macrorules