POLYSTATE

A Thought Experiment in Distributed Government

By Zach Weinersmith
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Weinersmith, Zach
Polystate: A Thought Experiment in Distributed Government

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 CONTENTS
FOREWARD

BOOK1
Terms and Conditions
What is a Geostate?
Approximate Anthrostates
Why the Polystate Requires Modern and Future Technology
Potential Benefits of a Polystate

BOOK 2
Caveats and Backpedaling
Crime and Punishment
Children in a Polystate
Commerce
Co-Existence with Geostates
Discriminatory Systems
Healthcare
Privacy and Censorship
Public Property and/or Private Property
Tax Evasion/Manipulation
Ungoverned People
War

BOOK 3
Bureaucracy Explosion
Constrains on Social Security via Age Sorting
De-Integration of Society
Ethical Co-Existence
Mob Rule
Sacred Locations
Safety/Weapon Carrying
Startup Costs
Transition

EPILOGUE
 FOREWORD

In this book, I wish to explain a concept of governance I call “anthrostate.”

In simple terms, an anthrostate is a virtual state whose laws apply only to
individuals, not to geographic areas. I am not a proponent of this idea or a
detractor. I’m just a nerd with a thought experiment and a lot of time on his
hands.
Much of science fiction has to do with the fact that what is possible often
becomes typical. In this way, science fiction often smooths the introduction
of new technologies by exploring their meaning, ethics, sanguine visions,
and dystopian possibilities in advance of their existence. Speculative science
fiction has in this way both entertained and aided civilization. H.G. Wells’
The World Set Free did not prevent nuclear war (nor did it accurately predict
the nature of such weapons), but it nevertheless helped develop an ethical
stance toward the dark days to come. Indeed, through the influence it had
on Leo Szilard, Wells’ book helped both to create and subdue atomic war-
fare. George Orwell’s 1984 has not entirely prevented the rise of powerful
state surveillance apparatuses, but it has given us an understanding of their
danger and a four-numeral code by which to signify our worst fears.
Wells was writing in the age of the rise of science in warfare. Orwell was
writing in the age of the rise of psychology in warfare and governance. It
seems to me we are now in an era of discretization of experience. Thanks to
advances in computing and manufacturing, variety and personalization of
experience are everywhere. In a certain sense, the greatest of modern luxu-
ries is choice — one’s options for food, entertainment, field of endeavor, and
even mate choice seem to grow year by year. As 3D printing becomes more
commonplace, it may be the case that almost every aspect of life is personal-
ized in the same way Internet search and social media are today.1
In other words, the trend of history is toward more individual choice and
personalization of life experience. Clever software and cheap computing has
made this trend exponential. Perhaps then it is only a matter of time before

1 The author is well aware that he is, by and large, talking about the wealthiest
portion of living humans. However, as global affluence increases and the Internet becomes
completely ubiquitous, this paragraph should hold true for more and more people.
people begin to wonder why they can’t personalize their government too.
That is the subject of “Polystate.”
I hope you will think of this book as a sort of “poli sci fi” work explor-
ing a conception of government, largely in the abstract. For all that it may
get wrong, it is educated speculation, and it is made in the recognition that
anthrostates may well be a possibility in the near future and are therefore
worth considering in the present.
BOOK 1
The Anthrostate
Chapter 1: Terms and Conditions

Before I go forward, I wish to introduce three terms I have made up. My

friends know I have a profound loathing for jargon. However, just as the
Second Law of Thermodynamics technically permits occasional decrease in
systemic entropy, now and then jargon can be used to increase clarity. I hope
this is one of those rare times.
The three words I wish to introduce are “anthrostate,” “geostate,” and
“polystate.”
The first word is the major concept in this book. I define it thus: A set of
laws and institutions that govern the behavior of individuals, but which do
not govern a behavior within geographic borders. For example, suppose you
subscribed to a fascist anthrostate. That would mean the rules of that fascist
state apply to you, but may not apply to your neighbors. Perhaps your neigh-
bors are citizens of a syndicalist geostate or a social democracy.
This is opposed to the typical notion of statehood, which is the applica-
tion of laws over the individuals who claim citizenship within a geographic
area. In order to set the typical notion of statehood in juxtaposition to the
anthrostate, the second term I introduce is “geostate.” When I say “geostate,”
you should think of a typical nation, such as France, Japan, or Mexico.
The third term I wish to introduce is “polystate.” The polystate is simply
the collection of anthrostates in a hypothetical human society. I believe that
in any system of anthrostates it will be necessary to have certain overarching
laws, which will be embodied in the polystate.

Chapter 2: What is a Geostate?

If you stop and think about it, a geostate is a strange entity. What exactly is
an American? Is an American someone who lives inside a region bounded
by certain latitudinal meridians? Is an American someone who obeys most
of the laws of a certain geographic region, whether or not she is inside that
region currently? Is an American someone who subscribes to a civic religion
or speaks with a certain accent, or has a certain cultural vocabulary?
The strange thing is that an American is all of those things. So, the geo-
state called America is a superposition of many institutions — legal, cultur-
al, geographic, and so forth. Why should it be thus? Why should we suppose
that a person who likes hot dogs, is familiar with a two-party electoral sys-
tem, and believes Abraham Lincoln was a great man is necessarily someone
who should live in a temperate climate in the Western hemisphere? Many
cultural qualities of a society may be determined by arbitrary facts of ge-
ography. For example, it should not surprise us to learn that rules of social
engagement differ between polar and equatorial societies. This is not to deny
that history and culture and the choices of individuals matter, but rather to
assert that many of the “essential” qualities of nationhood are not, in the
long run, meaningful ones.
More importantly, laws of nations change drastically over time. The struc-
ture of the modern Japanese state would not be recognizable to a medieval
Japanese person. Slavery is considered antithetical to Americanness, yet it
existed for nearly the first century of that nation. A Russian man who lived
from 1900 to 2000 would have seen his state go from a monarchy to hopeful
communism to a dictatorship to a nominal democracy, and yet might well
consider himself “Russian” all the time.
In a sense, the experience of the state recapitulates the experience of the
individual. I am not the person I was at age 10 — a fact I deduce from the
lack of Star Wars posters on my wall. I am not the person I was at 20. In fact,
I suspect I would not get along with those people particularly well. The state
is not so different — America is America because it hasn’t stopped being
America. The laws have changed dramatically, as has the religious makeup,
the ethnic makeup, the population size, the urban-rural distribution, the
geographic borders, and the cultural hallmarks. That is, a geostate contin-
ues to be itself only so long as there is not a discrete moment at which the
people governed by it choose for it to change, usually at great cost of blood,
treasure, and order.
All this is to say simply that geostates are not entities pre-ordained by
the human condition. They should not be taken as inevitable. We should
especially consider the extent to which technology influences the meaning
of geography. As technology changes, the meaning of locality changes. Sea-
sonal produce is now year-round. Dispersed families can now see each other
regularly. Even economic externalities may in time be rendered harmless by
technology. As Gordon Tullock wrote in “What Should Government Do,”
externalities that tend to be geographic in area such as pollution may simply
be mitigated by new developments.1 Indeed, development of society per se
may help minimize such costs by limiting locality. In the year 1800, a New
Yorker might have little desire to be taxed for a road in San Francisco. The
price of that road is a cost to him with no direct benefit. The more inter-
connected society becomes, especially in terms of transportation speed and
globalized commerce, the more palpable the effect of a crumbling California
road becomes to a New Yorker, or perhaps even a Londoner or Parisian.
Another externality cited by Tullock is the natural monopoly. A natural
monopoly is, in short, when a service or good is provided most efficiently by
a single provider. Tullock’s claim is that a natural monopoly will (naturally)
be run in an inefficient manner. If this is the case, government intervention
may well be warranted. However, what if we consider the government of a
geostate as having a natural monopoly over coercion? Does this produce an
efficient outcome? Laws applied to diverse people necessarily contain inef-
ficiencies. This is not necessarily a problem. Consider for example the case
of drunk-driving laws. It may be the case that there are certain individuals
who drive perfectly well at an illegal level of blood alcohol content. The law
is unfair toward them compared with individuals who are more typical in
their alcohol impairment.2 Nevertheless, we consider it a good law because
this externality is small when compared to the benefit.
But, suppose we reversed the situation. Suppose the blood alcohol limit
were set below a level where 95% of people could drive safely. In that case,
the law might or might not be efficient, depending on the danger posed by
the weak-livered 5%.
1 To give a counterpoint, Enrico Moretti has convincingly argued in The New
Geography of Jobs that locality has persisted in importance even in the age of the Inter-
net because of the value of shared information between local networks of experts. It will
remain to be seen if this effect persists as the Internet matures. I admit, as a cartoonist, I
have been very surprised by the number of cartoonists who live and work in Brooklyn,
Portland, and San Francisco, even though their incomes are not geographically deter-
mined. Considering the cost-of-living difference between Brooklyn and, say, Birmingham,
this location choice is something like cutting one’s disposable income by two-thirds.
Moretti might suggest this has to do with these networks, though no doubt status and
personal predilection are very important. Nevertheless, to the extent that face-to-face
meetups remain important, technology may eventually overcome location. There is no
reason in principle that the time taken by the trip from Los Angeles to Paris could not be
reduced to the time of a car commute in 2013 from the suburbs to the city.
2 Note, this is true even though the hyper-tolerant individuals receive a positive
externality, as they are protected from other people’s drunk driving. After all, both groups
are protected, but only the hypo-tolerant individuals are protected from themselves.
 If the cost of bargaining and lawmaking were not very high, the optimum
outcome might be a law that that applies slightly differently to each person.
This is only feasible with technology, but more on that later. Setting aside the
normative question of whether it is desirable to have one law apply differ-
ently to individuals, a DUI law that scaled with tolerance and driving ability
might be most efficient for all people.
Changing the laws (be they written down or just understood) under
which you operate has always been difficult. In the modern world, you ba-
sically have two options — change location or change the laws in your geo-
state. The former is difficult, and the latter is practically impossible for most
people.
It is not possible in a more or less uncorrupt geostate that I should have
a different set of taxes and services than my neighbor3. This is true even if
each of us would voluntarily choose different systems. I cannot, for exam-
ple, say “Well, this year I wish to pay less in taxes, so please don’t have the
police protect me.” In the geostate, I exist in the same set of laws as other
full-fledged citizens.
This is not inevitably the case, but it is certainly convenient. A massive
bureaucracy would be required to have many overlapping varieties of law.
As we shall see, this is a potential problem in a polystate, but it is not insur-
mountable.

Chapter 3: Approximate Anthrostates

Any system in which free association is allowed will possess something akin
to anthrostates.
For example, if you are a citizen of Mexico, you abide by Mexican law. If
you are a Mexican citizen, you are likely also to be Catholic. Thus, you obey a
certain set of rules in addition to the geostate rules. If you decide you dislike

3 It is fair to note that a rich person may effectively buy himself a different set of
tax laws and services, but at least nominally the same tax system applies to every citizen,
whose fortunes may wax and wane. It could also be noted that most Western or Western-
ized states nowadays have progressive tax systems and welfare systems that apply differ-
ently to different people. Although this is true, the same set of laws still applies to every-
one. That is, a millionaire who goes broke is entitled to welfare, just as a poor person who
becomes rich is still obligated to pay more.
the rules of Catholicism, you are free to switch to a different set of rules, or
no rules at all, so long as you still obey geostate law. However, your obeisance
to the local church is not a matter of legal obligation. If you break your vow
not to play video games during lent, there may be some social comeuppance,
but the church has no legal ability to forcefully coerce you to obey.
Similarly, an individual in a geostate may belong to many types of organi-
zations. For example, if you are the leader of a Boy Scout troop, you are obli-
gated to go to the woods, wear shorts, and sport a yellow neckerchief. How-
ever, these rules are not made binding with force. They are no more laws,
and therefore no more anthrostatist, than the rule that if you don’t do your
share of housework your spouse will make you aware of your deficiency.
It might also be argued that confederated systems (i.e., those in which
internal states are granted a great amount of autonomy) are a sort of an-
throstate. At this moment on 6/10/2013, I am sitting outside a library in Tus-
caloosa, Alabama. I have no doubt that if I were to begin selling marijuana to
passersby, I would quickly be arrested and jailed. If I were in Washington or
Colorado, the use of the same substance would, within certain limits, cause
me no trouble. In that sense, it could be argued that confederated systems
offer something like a polystate. However, they are necessarily geostates be-
cause they cast their laws geographically. And, all of the states within a larger
nation must obey a large set of federal laws, and must subordinate much of
their ability to use force on citizens. To the extent that these internal states
can use force, that force is circumscribed by the federal state.
It could also be argued that a polystate of anthrostates is not different in a
meaningful way from a minarchic4 or anarchic5 geostate. However, in both
philosophical and practical terms, it would be quite different. For example,
a minarchic geostate would still claim national boundaries. If a fascistic geo-
state were to invade a minarchy, the minarchy would find itself in a state of
war. In a polystate, the fascist and minarchist anthrostates inside it would be
coextensive, and the very idea of “invasion” would be nonsensical.
To give another example — in a geostate of minimal laws, suppose Alice
picks the pocket of Betsy. In a minarchy with a public court system, Betsy
may seek legal remedy. In a minarchy with no public court system, we may
suppose Alice would have to use private means to achieve arbitration. On
the other hand, in a polystate, the picked pocket would be an issue between
4 I use this term to mean a minimal state that has property rights.
5 Unless otherwise modified, by “anarchy” I mean a complete lack of state, includ-
ing a lack of property rights.
Alice’s and Betsy’s states that would have to be mutually arbitrated. If they
were under the same anthrostate, anthrostate law (or lack thereof) would
abide. If they were under different anthrostates in a single polystate, legal
action would have to proceed in a manner somewhat akin to what geostates
do with international police matters.
It may be noted that international police matters are not highly devel-
oped, but it is conceivable this would change in a polystate. The bureaucratic
issues will be discussed more later.
It might also be argued that a polystate is in some way a form of syndical-
ism6. However, anthrostates, being diverse entities, are not syndicates. Even
if they were, many (if not most) would allow non-syndicalist behavior, such
as money and private property.
Simply stated — although there are modern systems that approximate
a polystate, there are fundamental ways in which they differ, which lead to
the probability that the construction of polystate society would be different
from geostate society.

Chapter 4: Why the Polystate Requires Modern and Future Technology

Right now you can’t buy a paperback book in any size you like. It is orders
of magnitude cheaper, both at the level of the printer and distributor, to give
everyone the size of book. Companies that are being very generous (or, more
likely, squeezing money from collectors) will sometimes print as many as a
half-dozen varieties, but rarely more. If books in physical form persist into
the future, it is possible this situation will change thanks to developments
in robotics and manufacturing. As robotics and additive manufacturing de-
velop, we can expect to see inexpensive ubiquitous customizability in all as-
pects of life, from simple products to the size and shape of our homes to the
genetics of our children.
It is conceivable that governments could go much the same way. In the
past and in the present, the idea of tailoring the experience of every individ-
ual to his taxes, healthcare laws, social services, and so on would be unthink-
able. Government bureaucracy is large enough without having to provide
this massive service. But suppose that in at some point, computer AI is good
6 I use syndicalism to refer to the system outlined in the book Anarcho-Syndical-
ism: Theory and Practice by Rudolph Rocker. A rough sketch of the idea is “the replace-
ment of the state and of state economic systems by trade union cooperatives.”
enough that “computer assistants” actually assist the user in a meaningful
way? Suppose that more and more delivery of goods and services can be
done on the spot by individuals, thanks to better technology. In this case,
it is possible that government could be extremely tailored to the individual.
This would open up the possibility of a polystate in the real world.
It seems to me the two great barriers to a polystate are distance and bu-
reaucratic complexity.
Much of the solution to distance has already been achieved. With the cre-
ation of the Internet, you can instantly file your taxes whether you’re living
at home, afloat on the ocean, or in space. One suspects the taxman would do
a better job of locating you in space than the man with the check from Social
Security, and yet the provision of services too has been greatly simplified in
the age of the Internet. In the Victorian era, bicycles were spoken of as “anni-
hilating distance.” People and data now travel quite a bit faster and, as noted
earlier, have not yet reached theoretical maxima. Speed is the exchange rate
between distance and time, and the exchange rate is getting more and more
favorable.
The bureaucratic complexity problem is more profound and probably
awaits more developments in technological areas of computing, printing,
and rapid delivery of goods. Better AI and higher computer speeds would be
needed for many things in a polystate. There are many examples of why this
should be but let us consider one that is emblematic: If there are far more
states, and those states are coextensive, legal arbitrations would be complex.
In fact, the number of possible inter-anthrostate dealings rises exponentially
with the addition of each new anthrostate. For a polystate to function effi-
ciently, the legal complexity of inter-anthrostate arbitration would have to
be extremely streamlined. Even mildly improved AI would greatly facilitate
this.
Commerce too would be very complex, and for similar reasons. If people
of various systems are commingled in an environment where many gov-
ernments may have many forms of tariff or embargoes and such, it would
be necessary to have a system by which to readily calculate transactions. A
polystate would likely increase the complexity of business and legal trans-
action. In a world with only 200 or so geostates, most commerce is not in-
terstate and even if it were, geometry tells us that the number of possible
two-state transactions is given by n(n-1)/2.7 Consider then the situation of
10,000 anthrostates!
It may turn out that, for a variety of reasons, the interactions would be
less complex in practice. I can imagine a few ways in which there might be a
second term in the equation that would lower the total. For example, many
systems could agree to common rules for a range of common legal matters.
Much like many different devices can use the same charger, there could be
some standardization between many legal systems. It’s even conceivable that
there could be a taxonomy of anthrostate types so that although 1,000,000
interactions are possible, only 10 or 20 interaction types happen in practice.
Additionally, a polystate rule could be made simply to limit the number
of states to a manageable amount. But, it seems likely that whatever rules
were put in place, the result would be too burdensome to exist without a
large bureaucracy or some sort of computational way to arbitrate these
many interactions.
Advanced printing might also simplify bureaucracy. Consider a world
in which medical diagnosis can be done by computer and in which drugs
can be printed. These two technologies would make the provision of almost
any state healthcare system very simple. If the materials of which the drugs
are made could be transported rapidly, no human beings would be required
at all. The citizenry would have only to decide how much money to invest
in the healthcare system. This is, of course, science fiction. However, some
or all of it may be available in the next 50 years, and the provision of major
services at a distance would eliminate the need for an incredible amount of
bureaucracy.
In his 1860 essay, “Panarchie,” which is the closest notion I’ve found to the
polystate idea, Paul Emile de Puydt brings up some of the issues contained
in this book. In his notion, people go to a local register and sign up for a
type of government. Many of the major problems he cites could potential-
ly be navigated with more modern computing technology. For example, he
proposes that the existence of only 10-20 government options would make
for difficulty. But, in my opinion, it is likely (and grows more likely as pop-
ulation increases) that although there might be 10-20 major governments,
7 That is, for 200 anthrostates, there are 19,900 possible interactions. To a good
approximation, if you square the number of anthrostates, you get the number of possible
interactions. Thus, the number of interactions becomes unwieldy very quickly. That said,
as my computer scientist friend, Dr. Alex Roederer, notes, “the fact that this is quadratic
means to me the growth in complexity is manageable.”
there would also be many different varieties with small variations. The his-
tory of religion is proof that the interpretation of seemingly small facts can
be the difference between unity and schism.
It seems to me that what we have here is a problem of databasing technol-
ogy and the meaning of locality. The first problem might be solved already.
Locality has not yet become meaningless — indeed, in the age of the Inter-
net, locality may have ironically become more important thanks to the extra
information generated by dense population — but if the speed of travel were
ever increased by an order of magnitude, this might change.
I should probably take care and not say too much more on the topic of
future technology. As the saying goes, “Predict the future? It’s hard enough
predicting the past.” One need only look at any prognostication older than
50 years to see that predictions tend to only be right for the same reason that
a thousand arrows shot will result in a few bullseyes.
That said, I do think it tenable to state that technology will increase choice
and abundance to the point where a polystate is an economic and clerical
possibility. But, we probably aren’t there yet.

Chapter 5: Potential Benefits of a Polystate

Here, I will only attempt to lay out some obvious benefits to the idea of the
polystate. As you read, you may find yourself noting that some of these ben-
efits are double-edged (and that the other edge may have fire and poison on
it), but I will attempt to address those problems later in the book.
The most obvious benefit to living in a system of anthrostates is the level
of choice. If you are a child born in a geostate that is fascistic, you will grow
up in fascism with no choice but to stay or take great risk to escape. This is
the mere result of physical reality. Borders can be guarded, governments
tend to have better weapons than civilians, and most people are not willing
to engage in any behavior that carries even a small risk of death.
In a polystate of anthrostates, change of government would be available
readily. If you were born into a fascist anthrostate and dislike the elements of
that government, you would be free to leave once you reach an appropriate
age.
It should be noted that the reverse of this scenario is also true, distasteful
though it might seem at first glance. If you are born in a social democracy,
but decide you would rather be the property of a charismatic law-giver, you
would be free to join the hypothetical cult-fascism anthrostate. Perhaps you
find your personality more suited to a radical form of government than the
fairly narrow spectrum of governments available today.
Indeed, one of the benefits of free non-geographic choice is that geostate
forms that have historically been problematic might prove possible as an-
throstates. In many nominally Communist8 geostates, collective farming has
been imposed with the apparently inevitable result that those farms work
less efficiently. It may be that the failure of collectivization has not got to do
with the individual so much as the aggregate. If 95% of people work poorly
in a collectivized environment, any random collectivized farm will perform
poorly. But it may be the case that 5% of people would excel in such an envi-
ronment. By allowing individuals free, available, inexpensive choice of gov-
ernment, generally unpopular forms of existence might prove to be benign
or even beneficial to the unusual individuals who choose them.
A related benefit might be to reduce internal bureaucratic complexity by
creating homogenized groups. This would be at the expense of the creation
of complex external bureaucracies, but it is worth noting. Consider a nation
made entirely of clones of me compared to a nation made of random indi-
viduals.
Most people take it for granted that it would be undesirable to have a cen-
tralized government decide what sort of bread everyone gets. There are sev-
eral reasons for this. One is that there would probably be a high bargaining
cost (either in a bureaucracy or in a voting system) devoted to determining
what bread would be allotted in what amount. Perhaps more importantly, a
central board is likely to not know that I prefer sourdough to wheat. As Ber-
trand Russell wrote in The Proposed Roads to Freedom9, “On every matter
that arises, [the people in the Official Caste] know far more than the general
public about all the definite facts involved; the one thing they do not know is
‘where the shoe pinches.’ “ The central planning board poses two large costs
— one at the level of bureaucracy and/or bargaining, and another at the level
of the ill-served consumer.
8 I say “nominally” here because it is open to debate whether a true Communist
society has ever existed.

9 It would perhaps be more prudent to cite something Hayek said here, but I wish
to make it clear that the polystate idea is not to my mind aligned with any particular polit-
ical ideology. The cited book by Russell advocates Guild Socialism.
 However, in the hypothetical state where everyone is a Zach Weinersmith
clone, the shoe pinches in the same place on every foot. This reduces both
the bargaining cost (due to easily achieved consensus) and the externality of
painful footwear. This example is of course absurd, but one can easily imag-
ine the spectrum. If people are highly assortative in their choice of govern-
ment, internal costs of organization may be substantially reduced.
The second major benefit, which is the natural offspring of this free choice,
is that citizens have a great deal of recourse against their government.
In America, it has become a cliche that, prior to the potential election of a
president of a certain party, wealthy celebrities threaten to emigrate. Celeb-
rities are not typically a good group to look to for data, but they are relevant
here in that they presumably have the means to leave the country readily,
much more so than the typical American. When the election happens, few
leave. There are several reasons why this might be the case, but I suspect the
main reason is that it’s difficult to leave one’s country, even if one has the
means. In addition to bureaucratic inertia, one must leave behind a world of
friends and relatives, of people with similar cultural heritage, and of people
with the same accent and language(s).
One’s options for a nation to flee to are also limited in their diversity. The
wealthiest countries (on a per capita basis) have many differences, but almost
without exception they are representative governments with mixed econo-
mies. Thus, change of geostate does not necessarily imply a great change in
experience of governance.
In a polystate, where change of anthrostate is available on a regular basis,
leaving a country would be a simple affair. Therefore, punishing one’s leaders
is a simple affair. Consequently, leaders of a government would have more
need to please their constituents. In a geostate, once you are the prime min-
ister of a nation of about 100,000,000 people, you are very likely to end your
term as the prime minister of a nation of about 100,000,000 people. That is,
your “customer” base cannot change significantly. This is true even under
low-quality and generally disliked governance. For example, the population
of North Korea has increased every year since the end of the Korean War.
One suspects this is despite the fairly tepid immigration numbers. In fact,
it may surprise the reader to learn that the ratio of North Koreans to South
Koreans has actually increased over time. There are perfectly scrutable so-
ciological reasons for this, which I will not go into here, but for our purposes
the salient fact is that Kim Jong-un has more citizens in his country than his
father had.
It is hard to imagine he would have this larger population if any of his
citizens could have freely switched to any other government. Indeed, if the
polystate system were in any way reflective (as it might well be) of the rise
and fall of social networks, it is conceivable that an anthrostate might expe-
rience the loss of the majority of its citizens in a matter of years if it made
enough serious missteps.
It could be argued that there may be a difference between good gover-
nance and governance which pleases one’s constituency. This is to some ex-
tent a normative or even aesthetic question. But, regardless of the philoso-
phy of good government, there is an extent to which good governance must
have to do with what voluntary citizens decide is good. If most of the people
are happy most of the time, as time goes on we might consider the gover-
nance to be reasonably “good” regardless of philosophical considerations.
If an anthrostate is run by corrupt buffoons, but its voluntary citizens are
happy with their performance, what business is it to an outsider to critique?
If citizens are given free choice of government and ready ability to switch,
it is likely that the various available governments will conform to the wants
of the people. A counterargument might be “What if most of the people
like the government, but the government is racist?” That is fair enough, but
at least in an anthrostate, those who do not support racism in government
could leave the racists to their own devices. Whether this would make the
average human life better is a hard question to answer. The issue of distaste-
ful governments is discussed in more depth later.
Another great benefit of the polystate would be the difficulty in warmak-
ing. I conceive two reasons for this difficulty. The first problem would be
the aforementioned availability of options. In democratic geostates, citizens
rarely can stomach a war for more than a few years. However, wars can be
maintained in the face of public opposition so long as the part of govern-
ment that prosecutes wars does not have a change of opinions and/or oc-
cupants. If every war presented the possibility of a massive loss of citizenry,
and therefore wealth and prestige, even a modern-day Napoleon would be
reluctant to fight.10
A less obvious reason for the difficulty of anthrostatic war would be the
10 It should be noted that this effect could create problems. Removing all pacifists
from a society no doubt would change the nature of that society immeasurably, while
equally and oppositely affecting those systems to which the emigrants flee. Such effects are
hard to predict, so I will leave them to the reader’s imagination.
semi-random geographic distribution of citizens. In geostatic war, the nature
of fighting is generally “this is my side and that’s your side, pal.” Polystates
contain no recognized borders. Thus, in order to prosecute war, two factions
in a polystate would either have to fight door-to-door, careful not to injure
members of powerful third parties, or they would have to agree to combat at
a certain place and time at a suitable location.
Clausewitz wrote that the goal of war was to disarm the enemy’s ability
to make war. This is no doubt easier to accomplish against a centralized foe
than a distributed one, as the modern experience of guerilla defense shows.
If both attacker and defender are distributed, the difficulty grows larger still.
Perhaps more importantly, Oscar Wilde wrote “As long as war is regarded
as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vul-
gar, it will cease to be popular.” That is to say, war has always been hell, but
historically many pretty girls have been attracted to a man who just got back
from hell. To the extent that war in a polystate would be more piecemeal,
more absurd, more local to one’s own interest, and more likely to produce
civilian casualties, war might be made more vulgar than ever.
One last polystate benefit worth noting, though a bit speculative, is the
ease of territorial expansion. If you were to look at an animation of nations
of the world from the dawn of humanity, it would look like a few springs of
parti-colored liquid, branching out and filling the world, forming a heterog-
enous mixture in perpetual swirl, which suddenly settles into a more or less
rigid state right around 1945. Most modern people have greatly benefitted
from the fact that territorial disputes, with a few small and frequently very
stupid exceptions, have stopped. But, it may be the case that in the next few
centuries, humanity sends colonists to other worlds. For any student of his-
tory, this may be a source of concern.
A Moon Treaty was proposed in 1979, but has not been ratified by any
nation with the ability to reach the moon. Currently, this is a non-issue.
Suppose helium-3 becomes a valuable fuel — how many claimants then will
assert mineral rights to the moon? The only likely resolution to conflicting
claims between geostates would be military in nature — either through di-
rect action or the threat of it.
In a polystate system, humanity would be more or less homogenized and
therefore capable of a sort of amoebic expansion. Territorial claims would
have to be settled at the level of individual property owners. Although this
might still favor wealthy or technologically advanced anthrostates, anyone
in another anthrostate would be able to join those societies. Although terri-
torial expansion would not be a simple matter, it might be less likely to result
in great wars.
 BOOK 2
A Hypothetical Polystate
and its Consequences
Chapter 1: Caveats and Backpedaling

Now that you’ve got the general idea (I hope), you may be wondering how it
would work in particular. To that end, Book 2 will be a thought experiment
in a hypothetical polystate.
I am not a macroeconomist, so my ability to make speculative predictions
about complex systems is limited. The notion of a polystate is in many prac-
tical aspects so different from historical systems that how it would work in
practice is probably impossible to predict. So, here I wish only to attempt to
find ways in which systems could work.
To that end, the chapters that follow will each address a particular issue
that may have general application. No section is definitive or exhaustive.
Rather, it is my hope that individually they may serve as topics for thought
and discussion, and as a whole they will help make the complexities of this
thought experiment more visceral for the reader.
Anyone who has ever designed a rule for children knows that human be-
ings do not behave the way the lawgiver would like them to behave — they
behave pragmatically according to their values and incentives. Therefore, I
have done my best to find ways in which pragmatic self-interested people
would behave in this imaginary system.

Statement of Hypothetical Polystate:

The hypothetical polystate I am laying out will have a minimal set of rules.
This is partially done for simplicity but also done because a more minimal
polystate will more prominently display the differences between a polystate
system and the geostate system.
It is conceivable that other systems could work. A polystate with no rules
is possible, but perhaps problematic. Many polystates with lots of rules are
also possible, but are less useful for the purpose of this book. I am not trying
to design the best polystate or even a good polystate. I merely want to design
a polystate that will serve as a good substrate for discussion.
With that in mind, here are the rules for my polystate, which I will call
WS-1, for Weinersmith 1. Each rule will be stated and then elaborated.

1) No anthrostate may assert law as a geostate.

Rule one states simply that within the polystate, there can be no geostates.
That is, no state can claim territory. This is important because it seems likely
that if the assertion of geostate power were allowed, the most powerful an-
throstates would claim land, and very quickly the world would be geostates.

2) Individuals select their government once a year on their birthday.

Rule two is simply the protocol for change of government. The choice of one
year intervals may beg for some explanation. Here it is:
Conceivably, a more elegant polystate rule would be “Individuals select
government any time.” The problem with that has to do with issues such as
tax collection. There will be more on this later, but it merits brief discussion
here. If a society wishes to collect, for example, income tax, any individual
who wanted to avoid tax could simply switch systems. It is conceivable that
multiple systems could ally to prevent this, but it’s also conceivable “tax ha-
ven” anthrostates would develop. This would still happen under the “one
year” rule, but I believe that requiring polystate citizens to choose govern-
ments one year at a time would allow a number of measures that would mit-
igate the problem. Two years might be better, or 6 months might be better,
and I fully recognize that 365 days is entirely arbitrary.
It might also be asked why the changeover is a year from birth, as opposed
to January 1 for everyone. I believe overlapping changes of regime would be
good for stability. Having everyone change government at the same second
would be, in a very real sense, a global revolution. As I said before, it’s above
my pay grade to determine the specific results of such a complex system, but
it may be prudent to assume that anything of that magnitude in such a small
time could be a source of danger and political intrigue. Randomly stagger-
ing the changeover time allows for the global revolution to be more fluid.
The possibility of coercive governments looms large here. This is also
true for geostates, so an anthrostate isn’t necessarily worse. Additionally, the
anthrostate might very well be better if there were powerful governments
known to protect their new citizens. That is, suppose you were in a govern-
ment that threatened you and your family, you could potentially declare all
of the threatened people to be refugees of some other government. In that
condition, the carrying out of the threat might pose an international danger
to the coercive region.
 This could also provide a backdoor to constant switching. However, that
too could be resolved at the inter-anthrostate level. If a refugee comes to
your anthrostate for reasons of asylum, it’s a much different matter from a
refugee coming for tax evasion.

3) Any government violating rule 1 shall have its government status revoked.
Its members will have 24 hours to decide a new government.

This rule simply deals with the punishment for behaving like a geostate. Rule
3 serves two purposes: (1) It creates a simple system for reassignment. (2) It
hopefully makes the idea of forming a geostate taboo and distasteful in the
long run.
The question as to how rule three could be enforced is a hard one. If it
were a cultural norm that geostate formation were taboo, there would be no
need for additional law. However, if that were not the case, there would have
to be some additional law for use of force against the violators.
It may seem like a stretch to assume that geostate formation would be-
come a taboo. However, in a purely polystate environment, the formation
of a geostate would pose a substantial economic loss to all other members.
It’d be something akin to a single nation claiming the entirety of the moon
today. In addition, it is entirely possible that in a significantly Heterogeneous
polystate, the claimed geostate would violate the private property rights of
many individuals. So, it is not inconceivable that geostate formation would
be considered unjust.

***

These are the only rules for the WS-1 anthrostates.

I have some concern that the minimal nature of the above rules will be
seen as a sort of backdoor to minarchy. It is decidedly not.
A polystate is not simply a minimal state built on free association. In all
states, geo or anthro, the power of force and coercion is vested in some au-
thority. This is generally the defining difference between a free association
and state authority. Your local chess club may demand you pay monthly
dues, but they cannot compel that payment without invoking some state
authority. Even a free association with the implements of force (e.g., guns,
explosives, etc.) cannot use that force on fellow citizens without the author-
ity of the geostate.
In WS-1, power of force would be distributed among many overlap-
ping groups. That is, unlike the free associations inside a minarchy, in the
polystate each free association would be granted the power of force to use as
it sees fit. This is the essence (and perhaps the paradox) of the polystate —
coercive free association.
In the polystate, power of coercion would be distributed, but it would not
be absent. It is in fact conceivable that within a real polystate, the aggregate
individual1 would experience less freedom than the aggregate individual in a
system of geostates. It seems to me probable that in a polystate, the selection
of anthrostates would follow a sort of bell curve of population on the axis
between minarchy and monarchy.
Now then with all that in mind, I will try to suggest how WS-1 might
work in a number of circumstances. Before you dive in, let me offer this
disclaimer: Government necessarily touches on just about every aspect of
life. Some people may find the bare mention of several topics to follow to be
offensive. I can’t ask for you not to be affronted, but I do request that you go
into the following discussions with an open mind; my goal here is in some
sense to undermine many assumptions of political order, and so necessarily
I will have to violate a few taboos. Unless explicitly stated, nothing below is
meant to endorse any particular system of ethics, justice, or governance.

Chapter 2: Crime and Punishment

First, let’s deal with the problem of crime. Several potential hurdles for the
polystate present themselves — (1) the bureaucracy needed for these many
overlapping systems, (2) different understandings as to what constitutes
crime (3) crimes having to do with self-expression, such as public indecency,
pornography, forbidden information, etc.
The bureaucracy issue has been and will be discussed in the context of
several other issues, so I don’t wish to belabor it too much here. It seems
to me that this issue is in essence similar to the issues of international law
1 By “aggregate individual” I mean something like “the average person.” That is, in
a polystate where 9/10 of people are social democrats, 1/20 are monarchists, and 1/20 are
libertarians, the aggregate individual is a social democrat. To put it another way — if there
were some metric by which you could score the prominence of a state in the life of the
individual, the aggregate individual would have the average score.
among geostates, only it is likely to present itself more often. In addition,
whereas modern international law is sometimes made arbitrary by the exi-
gencies of powerful nations, “international” law among anthrostates would
have to be enforced at least with as much justness as a typical geostate. In
other words, some system of rapid and generally agreeable arbitration would
be necessary.
This would be especially important for petty crimes. For most Western
states, murder trials are already quite complicated, as befits their gravity. No
doubt the same would be true within a polystate. That is, if inter-anthrostate
murder trials were drawn-out affairs, they would at least be no worse than
the current state of things. However, the case of smaller crimes, such as graf-
fiti for example, could be problematic. If, in an ideal system, the care of due
process scales with severity of crime, petty crime should be arbitrated quick-
ly. Petty crime between whole nations could pose a problem. Now and then,
in the modern geostate system, an American will commit a small crime in
Singapore, such as spitting out gum on a sidewalk. To an American, this is
at worst poor taste, but is certainly not a crime. In Singapore, the crime is
worthy of corporal punishment. Because of the disparity, an action whose
resolution is swift in either country (for better or worse) becomes a matter
of great discussion.
For a functioning polystate, this could not be the case. It seems to me there
would be several possible solutions to this problem. One possibility would
be that the larger anthrostates either make their criminal codes similar to
one another or come to some agreement about the most common occur-
rences. The main problem here is that it would create an onerous burden on
smaller states for all small criminal proceedings. Another possibility would
be the creation of some kind of non-national court system with the express
purpose of squaring the laws of various anthrostates with one another.
Getting to the issue of different sets of laws, it is unfortunately inevitable
that various groups understand the notion of justice in various ways. In-
deed, in a polystate, some might recognize no such thing as justice. It may
be an unavoidable flaw in the idea of WS-1 that it cannot deal readily with
legal matters between nations with very different legal frameworks. If one
society has a constitution and another has a capricious dictator, no modern
Solomon would be able to create justice between two parties. In general, if
one society uses legal precedence as a guide, while another uses the whims
of an autocrat, there is little hope that law is predictable for the citizens in
either society. It may be that a more realistic polystate would have to have
some sort of higher judiciary built in.
The one possible defense I can think of is this: Suppose we consider the
worst possible scenario — a democracy overlaps with a group of insane fas-
cists. The dictator of the fascists tells his people that if they attack the dem-
ocrats, they will face no punishment from him, and he will defend them
in arbitration. It seems to me that the only resolution to this sort of thing
is some sort of war between anthrostates. And, whereas it is likely that lib-
eral democracies will be larger and more affluent, those nations will likely
win. Thus, over time, justice (in the sense of equal application of law for the
citizens of a state) should prevail. This does not obviate the possibility of
something like a Nazi government, in which a modern, large, technologi-
cally advanced nation is also a fascist dictatorship. However, it is not clear
that a polystate would handle this situation worse than geostates do now.
In addition, the difficulty of maintaining consensus over a long war is high.
There will be more on this in the chapter on war.
Crimes having to do with self-expression would also present difficulty.
A geostate for nudists is not a problem for either the nudists within or the
non-nudists without. A nudist anthrostate may well be a problem for the
Muslim theocracy next door. This too would be difficult to resolve. There are
several similar issues which may carry greater gravity than seeing a naked
lady walking down the street — public consensual violence, public display of
censored information, public drug use, and so forth. It is conceivable some
of these issues could be ameliorated by the use of private property law, but
this presents its own problems, to be discussed later.
There may not be a perfect resolution to this issue at the moment. How-
ever, as I mentioned earlier, a polystate cannot function in practice with-
out technology. Crimes of self-expression may be resolvable through some
technological system not yet available. For example, suppose system A for-
bids men to see naked women, while system B forbids its members to wear
clothes. Conceivably, in a technologically advanced polystate, the onus of
sheltering one’s eyes could be put on system A. For example, the system A
people could have an advanced software-based set of blinders that would
obscure the offending body parts. As I am not a theologian, I can’t speak to
the ethical difference between real and virtual niqab. But, it does seem to
me that if the eyes of the viewer and the free expression of the viewee can
be protected, in principle the problem can be resolved. I would have some
concern over the idea of entire generations raised without the ability to see
offensive material, but that is a problem of the strange intersection of ethics
and technology in any system, polystate, geostate, or otherwise.

***

As noted above, the resolution of crime may be problematic, at least in my

fairly minimal polystate conception. That said, if it could be worked out,
there might be great benefits. In a system where each individual selects a
government, rates of violence might be lower. To give just one example,
in the USA, drug offenders are significantly more likely than other crimi-
nals to have committed their crimes in pursuit of money. That is, there is a
large number of crimes that are not committed for passion or otherwise in
a state of madness. In a polystate system, it is very likely that there would
be anthrostates that allow free markets for drugs that are illegal in other
anthrostates. This would both lower the price of illegal drugs (mitigating
the need for violent crime in anthrostates that disallow usage) and provide
frameworks that cater to the needs and desires of their users.
It might then be noted that in a polystate, prohibition is essentially im-
possible without draconian enforcement laws and panoptic surveillance.
That is, even if your anthrostate disallows marijuana, your neighbor who
lives in the Rastafarian anthrostate has got you covered in case of emergen-
cy. I can only say in defense of the difficulty of prohibition of substances and
information that it seems to me to be a feature and not a flaw of the system.
Those citizens who wish not to be exposed to such information are at liberty
to do their best to avoid it.

Chapter 3: Children in a Polystate

It seems to me that there are two major questions regarding children within
a polystate. The first is what government a child exists under, and the second
is whether an anthrostate can have laws regarding children that are anathe-
ma to members of other anthrostates.
Although the laws of WS-1 do not explicitly deal with children, it is likely
that every anthrostate would have rules regarding children. Suppose Marie
is a member of a social democracy. She has just given birth to a daughter,
Irene. Her anthrostate has rules that say what she can do to that child and
what she cannot do. Those rules state the child’s age of consent, and the
procedure for that child’s emancipation. As these conditions are built-in as-
pects of human life (perhaps even animal life), it is likely that all anthrostates
would have provisions regarding them. To the extent that they will differ,
they are no different than geostates. Where an anthrostate has problems
(e.g., age of consent’s arbitrariness), so too does a geostate have problems.
Let’s start with custody issues. To get at the general idea, I will start with
a simple and therefore somewhat absurd example. It might be asked, “What
if another state lays claim to my child?” That is, what if there is some state
of madmen who declare a law that “All children born belong to us.” Let’s call
this state Kidnappocracy. Assuming the unlikely notion that Kidnappocracy
is able to attract membership, the result would be a competing claim between
the parents of the child and the Kidnappocrats. I think it can be fairly said
that this is also similar to the condition of geostates. That is, in the modern
world, suppose there was a geostate called Kidnapistan. Kidnapistan may
claim rights to my child. However, I and the force of my government would
back my claim to the child and not recognize the need for arbitration in the
matter. Additionally, should Kidnapistan attempt to take my child, my gov-
ernment would respond with force to protect its citizens.
It is likely then that the major difference would be that in a geostate sys-
tem, Kidnapistan would be blocked by a border, whereas in a polystate the
Kidnappocrats would be overlapping with everyone else. I think it can rea-
sonably be supposed that communities would make effort to keep out Kid-
nappocrats either by the use of trespassing law, embargo of sales to Kidnap-
pocrats, or even declaration of war.
The above situation is purposefully somewhat absurd. The point I wish
to make is that a dispute over claims of a child would be a matter between
governments, arbitrated in much the same way as such claims are made now.
We can also consider a less extreme but more complex case — competing
claims to custody between typical anthrostates. For example, suppose one
person belongs to a Catholic theocracy in which divorce is illegal, and an-
other belongs to a secular government in which divorce is allowed. Custody
arbitration would be doubly complex because beyond the normal questions
regarding divorce, at the end of the proceeding, one government would rec-
ognize the divorce and one would not! We can imagine similar situations for
a system of patrilineal claim disputing against a system of matrilineal claim.
 Complexity aside, I suspect this too is more or less the same as the geo-
state system. It is already the case that divorce procedure can be arbitrated
between dual citizens. A polystate system would be no different, except that
it would probably have more intra-government cases to deal with. That said,
one suspects that in a polystate there would be an onus on parents to agree
on a system together, or at the very least to select an anthrostate for the child.
That is, noting that divorce and custody would be complex in a polystate is
merely to note that divorce and custody questions would exist in a polystate.
There is an extent to which it might be far more complex in the polystate.
However, this may only seem to be the case because of its rarity. It is con-
ceivable that in a polystate system, the marriage rules could be worked out
in greater detail and rigor than they are today.
The second question I raised was about the level of control over one’s
child. Suppose, for example, one anthrostate sets age of consent at 14, and
another sets age of consent at 18. Then, suppose a member of each group
has sex with the other, and that each member is at the age of consent of the
other government.
That is, suppose an 18-year-old from a government with 14 as age of con-
sent has sex with a 14-year-old from a government that sets age of consent
at 18. The result is that the 18-year-old has not violated his/her own an-
throstate’s law, but HAS violated law in the other anthrostate. Likewise, the
14-year-old has violated his/her own anthrostate’s law, but HAS NOT violat-
ed the other anthrostate. To understand how this mess might unravel, let us
consider the equivalent geostate cases.
In one case, we can imagine an 18-year-old American female (age of con-
sent 18) goes to Papua New Guinea (age of male consent, 14) and has sex
with the 14-year-old boy. In that case, distasteful though it may be, neither
the American nor the New Guinean has violated the law of the land in which
the act was committed.
In the second case, we can imagine a 14-year-old New Guinean goes to
America and has sex with an 18-year-old female. In that case, equally dis-
tasteful, the American has violated law and is at risk of punishment. The
14-year-old would be a victim in America and would of course receive no
punishment of a legal nature.
The polystate would be similar, with important differences. In order to
understand them, we must understand the purposes of consent law. It seems
to me that the main purpose of consent law is to protect those who are con-
sidered unable to offer consent. That is, to state the obvious, consent laws do
not exist to protect 40-year-olds from 14-year-olds.
Therefore, we can say that in our two hypothetical anthrostates, no per-
son considered by his government to require protection would have gone
unprotected. In that sense, one could argue that no wrong was committed,
at least from a legal perspective. Again, it may seem distasteful to an Amer-
ican reader, but the alternative view is that consent is constantly violated in
Papua New Guinea. The reader may well consider this true, but I suspect the
reader does not believe that the United States would be, for example, within
its rights to invade another country in order to increase the age of consent.
In addition, it should perhaps be considered that there is a difference be-
tween individuals raised in societies with different ages of consent. Presum-
ably, age of consent is selected to reflect biological fact. But the opposite
may in some way be at work. In the United States, the age of 18 is fetishized,
even though it has no biological meaning. But for an arbitrary choice, the
age vested with so much sexual intrigue could have been 17 or 24 or 19.25.
Within reason, the age selected by society may in some way determine the
preparedness of the individual to give consent at that age.
It might be elucidatory to consider a system with no age basis at all. Imag-
ine a technocratic society in which individuals are given psychological ex-
ams to determine their ability to give consent. This framework would put
forward some situations which almost all modern people would find ab-
horrent: (a) a very young individual being able to consent to sex, and (b) an
older individual of sound mind being unable to give consent.
Once again, it’s worth first considering how things would play out in a
similar situation in geostates. In modern-day Yemen, age of consent is de-
termined by puberty2. On this basis, it is conceivable that a child as young as
nine could be considered to be capable of consent. Although I suspect every
single Westerner reading this finds the idea repulsive, they may not find it
to be grounds for legal or military action against Yemen. In fact, in all like-
lihood, I suspect few readers were aware. More importantly, they probably
would not demand imprisonment or death for a Westerner who becomes a
Yemeni citizen and makes use of those consent laws. Although that West-
erner would likely be shunned by society, and perhaps even banned from
return, the fact that such is possible has apparently not stopped the largely

2 The law is a bit more complicated, but the simplified case will suffice for this
discussion.
peaceful coexistence of Yemen and the rest of the world.3 In fact, the major
Yemeni conflicts since unification in 1990 have been internal ones.
That said, we can consider instances where differences might lead to con-
flict. It may in fact be a virtue of the polystate that it makes repugnant behav-
ior more local and therefore subject to scrutiny.
Let us suppose that government A finds the consent laws of government
B so revolting that they cannot stand idly by. In that case, it is likely that
government A would either take military action against government B, or
simply seize the children of government B by force. What would be the re-
sult of this?
I suspect that if government B were engaging in repugnant practices, it
would have few allies in its struggle. If it were engaging in more or less agree-
able practices, it would have many allies in its struggle. It is of course possi-
ble that a good government should be beaten by a wicked government, but
this would hardly be a problem unique to the polystate.
Indeed, it should be noted that the historical tendency of humanity
has been to increase age of consent over time. In order for us to declare a
polystate system equivalent or superior to a geostate system, we must only
find the polystate no worse than the system of geostates. It may well be the
case that in the polystate, age of consent would have risen faster, since the
commingling of many people could produce a general progression toward
the mean. A judgmental neighbor may well have a more profound effect
than a judgmental foreign government.
Thus, by and large, the case of anthro and geostates would be similar, and
the anthrostates would have the arguable benefit of more locally confronting
citizens with the behavior of others. If there is an ideal age of consent (or sys-
tem for consent determination), it could spread more rapidly in a polystate.
If there is no ideal age of consent, and in fact age of consent is more a matter
of local culture, the polystate would allow for more individual choice. That
said, the overlapping of these legal systems might result in more conflict,
especially when anthrostates are first established.
The major inferiority of anthrostates here would be to make arbitration
more complicated. It is likely that a polystate system would result in more
interstate legal matters. This is discussed in more detail in other chapters.

3 American drone strikes notwithstanding.

Chapter 4: Commerce

Commerce, like legal arbitration, would likely pose difficulty for a polystate
for similar reasons. It seems to me that there are two major areas that would
pose the greatest potential difficulty — the running of businesses and the
use of currency.
Suppose there exists a business called Bob’s Bakery. Bob’s Bakery wish-
es to have three employees. As Bob is looking through applicants, he finds
three good ones. Two (A and B) are from minarchic governments, and the
third ( C ) is from a highly socialized government. A and B are willing to
work for 5 dollars an hour. C’s government refuses to allow its people to
work for less than 10 dollars an hour. Does this pose a dilemma?
It seems to me that it shouldn’t. There are a number of ways situations like
this could be resolved, and given the nature of the polystate, it is likely that
many different techniques would be employed. Let’s consider a few.
One possible solution would be for Bob to simply employ all three. Al-
though this might pose a problem for the morale of A and B, there would
certainly be no legal difficulty. The morale question would have to do with
the nature of governments. For example, suppose A’s government tops off
her wage to $15 so long as she’s working. She might not care what Bob pays.
Another solution would be for C’s government (the highly socialized one)
to insist only that employers in its system pay a certain minimum wage. That
is, workers are not obligated to demand a certain wage for their labor. That
would free (or oblige, depending on your perspective) the citizens of C’s
government to take lower-wage jobs. This might well pose a social dilemma
by putting a “race to the bottom” on wages. In other words, it might well be
the case that the lowest possible wage would effectively be set by those an-
throstates which have no minimum wage.
In fact, the situation could conceivably be even more dire. Suppose there
existed a fascistic state, whose leader insists that his workers only ever charge
$1 an hour for labor. By this means, the powerful fascist might keep his citi-
zens in check, undercut other economies, and still accrue some wealth. This
is possible, but it must be hoped that in a voluntary state, very few people
would be willing to live in this condition. In the first place, it would be de-
grading to the desire for autonomy most humans possess. In the second,
pragmatically there could perhaps even be competition among fascisms.
That is, your fascism forces you to work for the Dear Leader at a rate of $1/
hour, while my fascism forces me to work for The Fuhrer at $1.50/hour plus
medical. So, conceivably there would not be so much a race to the bottom as
a race to equilibrium. Indeed, there are many current geostates or states in
confederated geostates which lack minimum wage, but which nevertheless
have workers who are, on average, paid as well as in comparable states. And,
in those states which do have minimum wage, it is rarely more than a small
percentage of working people who earn only that much.
In addition, more socialized systems may produce higher-quality employ-
ees than non-socialized systems. That is, if the government of C expends a
great deal of its citizens’ money on its citizens’ education and health, for ex-
ample, and those expenditures result in an economically higher-quality citi-
zen, it is to be expected that Bob’s Bakery should want to pay C more money
than A or B. C may very well have more training or aptitude by virtue of the
superiority of his system. Thus, it may even be the case that, rather than a
race to the bottom or a race to equilibrium, there would be many races to
many equilibria.
Let us consider a more extreme case that may generate complexity. Sup-
pose there exists a store called Karl’s Knishes. Karl is a member of a com-
munal government that does not recognize private property. He is thus only
the manager of the business, not the owner. Into that store walks Adam, who
as it happens is a member of a government whose economy is laissez-faire
capitalist. Karl’s government expressly forbids selling of goods to Adam’s
government. This presents two problems for Karl — first, he must verify the
governments of all buyers before he can sell; second, he may be seriously
limited in his selection of buyers.
The selection problem is a problem for the business alone, so it is not of
interest. The issue of determining the anthrostatic origin of all customers is
a bit harder. But, I don’t believe it would be any harder than many issues that
are already easily handled in modern geostates. For example, if I wish to buy
a new computer, I will be obligated to provide some form of identification,
unless I pay in cash. Short of getting a large wad of bills and going to a com-
puter store with a sack of cash, I have to show information about my state
of origin. So, the ID problem would pose no new issues for what I assume
would be the typical anthrostate.
Admittedly, this could be problematic for ultra-minarchic systems. Sup-
pose, for example, in WS-1 60% of governments require sellers to identify
buyers’ governments before selling. This would put a great onus on min-
imal systems to yet still have some form of identification, even though it
goes against their principles. In other words, no anthrostate is necessarily
an island, and the capacity to have one’s own anthrostate have a very high
degree of autonomy might exist in tension with the capacity for someone
else’s anthrostate to provide a strong central government. How this would
play out in reality is hard to predict. However, it should be noted that even a
system of minimal government could still avail itself of internal or external
third-party verification services. Indeed, political libertarians often note the
capacity of non-governmental organizations to take the place of regulatory
systems. Much like the hypothetical socialized government earlier, a minar-
chist system in a polystate would be obligated to put its framework where its
mouth is, so to speak.
Thus, it seems to me that the major issues for inter-anthrostate commerce
would be the management of legal codes and the potential for the laws (or
lack thereof) of one anthrostate to bind the laws (or lack thereof) of anoth-
er anthrostate. The former issue could potentially be aided by technology,
much of which already exists. The latter would be a fact of the matter in the
system, hopefully mitigated in some ways suggested in this book. In addi-
tion, it is not clear that the issue of interplay between governments would be
completely different from that of a confederated geostate. There are locations
in the United States where by standing just so, one half of your body will be
worthy of $6.25/hour while the other will be worthy of $7.00/hour. This, like
many things political, is technically absurd but pragmatically unfraught.
The existence of separate governments for humans necessarily results in
some absurdities. We are not individually so different as the different gov-
ernments we have tried. But, it is not clear that these absurdities are always
a problem, nor is it clear that a polystate will produce more of them than a
collection of geostates.
The matter of the use of currency is, I think, a much simpler problem to
resolve. It is merely a matter of technology and infrastructure, in essence
the same as the aforementioned problem of bureaucracy. In the unlikely
event that each of 10,000 anthrostates decided to have its own currency, all
transactions could be handled through a simple currency market, with the
arguable downside that physical money would probably be extremely cum-
bersome for consumers and businesses.
This sort of general currency market might well have some benefits. For
example, hyperinflation is a notoriously hard phenomenon to stop once it
begins. In a system of overlapping states, it might be much easier to simply
jump ship to a stable currency. Provided that the hyperinflation isn’t system-
ic, this would be of great use to small anthrostates. In addition, individuals
could choose various anthrostates based on their macroeconomic views.
This may be a good end unto itself, but it also means that there could be
more experimentation to see what works well in monetary and fiscal policy.
In reality, I suspect in a polystate there would be a rapid convergence
on a small number of reserve currencies that would be used for simplicity
and perceived stability. It’s even possible that currencies used by many states
could acquire a sort of independence from their anthrostate of origin. This
would provide the added benefit of stability in a system where government
sizes might regularly change. In the modern world, the dollar is the reserve
currency because people perceive the US as very stable. If every system were
somewhat unstable4, it would be useful to have the dollar still available after
a system schisms.
It might be suggested that the need for currency per se imposes limits on
the forms of anthrostate available. Suppose a group wishes to live in a soci-
ety that doesn’t use money at all. I will admit, outside of a universe in which
energy is essentially free, it is hard for me to imagine a truly money-free
society. At the very least, nominally moneyless societies still engage in barter
and social exchange. However, supposing it is possible, I think we must first
note that a potential moneyless anthrostate wouldn’t be in a substantially dif-
ferent position from a potential moneyless geostate. A money-free geostate
would only be able to acquire trade goods through barter. Just so, members
of money-free anthrostates would be obliged to use resources rather than
cash if they wished to trade with other anthrostates. It is likely that a money-
less anthrostate citizen would be surrounded by money-using citizens, and
this fact might be said to constrain one’s ability to truly exist in a moneyless
society. The status of that citizen is not really different from the status of any
geostate that tries its hand at moneylessness. So, if there are constraints to
moneylessness, they aren’t limited to the polystate framework.
Additionally, it is conceivable that with a more complex market system,
barter could simply be rolled into transactions such that it becomes indis-
tinguishable from money. Though this might be difficult at the individual
level (“Ma’am, how many bushels of corn would it cost for 3 cappuccinos?”),
it might work perfectly well at the level of society. Many proposed money-
4 Suppose, for example, the USA had been an anthrostate at the height of the Viet-
nam War.
less societies sensibly make property communal. For example, some flavors
of anarcho-syndicalism propose that trade syndicates determine how much
of their goods go to the people in society. We can imagine a collectivized
farming anthrostate might exchange corn for metal, then distribute it ac-
cordingly. So, although barter might be inefficient at the level of individual
purchases, moneyless anthrostates could get around this by bartering at the
level of anthrostates and then distributing to citizens.

Chapter 5: Co-Existence with Geostates

Could a polystate co-exist alongside a geostate? In principle, it’s clear that

this is possible. In practice, there might be some complications. For example,
what is the status of a traveler from a geostate into an anthrostate? Is immigra-
tion possible? What about illegal immigration? How would polystate-geo-
state war work? Unlike a geostate, a polystate cannot on principle have a
standing army or border guards. But, by virtue of its many anthrostates, it
may in fact have many standing armies and many border guards.
The number of particular possibilities for this kind of interaction is too
large to go through thoroughly. So, I want to consider a few particular cases
that should give the reader a sense of how geostate-polystate interactions
might occur.
First, let us look at the status of a traveler from geo to anthro. The geo-
stater would be something like a person today traveling abroad, with the
exception that he would not abide by the rules of two countries. Other than
the minimal rules of WS-1, the traveler would be abiding only by the laws
of his geostate. That is to say, assuming she was not in violation of the three
laws of the polystate, she would be more or less the same as a member of an
anthrostate modeled on and connected to her home geostate.
I do not see why this would pose a problem. The polystate is already the
overlapping of many governments. The addition of a geostate government to
the mix wouldn’t necessarily pose a problem. One interesting result would
be that the border between polystate and geostate would be more like a di-
ode than an insulator. Whereas a geostater might readily enter the polystate,
the reverse would not necessarily be true. In addition, the geostater will
maintain her own laws in the polystate, while the polystater would become
like a geostater abroad in a foreign geostate.
 It might be asked what would happen in the case of an international inci-
dent. For example, suppose a citizen of hypothetical geostate Bombsylvania
enters WS-1 and detonates a bomb inside a city. Many WS-1 members are
killed as a result. Suppose for now that the bomber is a citizen of Bombsyl-
vania, but not a state actor. That is, he is a terrorist.
What must be and what would be the response of WS-1? I believe that
WS-1 per se would not have a response, as its own rules do not permit this.
However, when the bomb went off, it took away blood and treasure from in-
dividual anthrostates. Therefore, those anthrostates — if it is in their interest
— would likely seek redress from the state of Bombsylvania. Anthrostates,
much like individual people, could act separately or as a group. I think it is
likely that both situations would arise. That is, the hypothetical international
incident would not be terribly different from the result of a bomber attack-
ing a crowded metropolitan city, which is likely to contain tourists from
many geostates.
In fact, it could well be the case that such events would be more unlikely
in a polystate. Acts of terror, even by insane people, are politically motivated.
If you are a terrorist wishing to make a violent political statement, it might
be much easier against a geostate. After all, a bomb in a geostate probably
kills and terrorizes only the members of that state. A bomb in a polystate
may kill and terrorize the members of many different groups, neutralizing
or even going counter to the intended political result. The more random
and overlapping the anthrostates, the more difficult precision bomb strikes
would become.
If it turns out that ideologies tend to be reflected geographically, even in
the absence of formal geostates, it would mitigate the anti-terror value of
overlapping governments. It is not clear how geography and ideology would
turn out in a polystate, especially if we are talking about a world of extreme
rapid transit. However, it’s worth noting that in the modern geostate world,
cities are the typical targets of terrorists. Cities are also where the most di-
versity (in terms of ethnicity, place of birth, religion, etc.) is found. So, it’s
possible the best terrorist targets (in terms of population) would be the worst
terrorist targets (in terms of heterogeneity of anthrostates).
If our hypothetical terrorists were opposed to polystates per se, having a
variety of anthrostates would afford no protection.
Let us suppose now that the bomber was in fact a paid state actor. That
is, a member of Bombsylvania was employed by his state to blow up a WS-1
city. Would the polystate be in exceptional danger by virtue of its complex-
ity?
Very possibly. Perhaps a more direct question would be whether coalition
armies perform better or worse in the prosecution of war. What would likely
happen in a polystate under attack is that many of the anthrostates would be
compelled onto a war footing. In a sense, it could be said that the response
would be akin to the response of the US and EU in the case of China in-
vading Europe. A host of treaties would come into effect as the nations of
the West organized for war. Large economically powerful geostates would
take the lead in the organization and prosecution of the war, with smaller
states less obligated. That is to say, it seems possible that the response of the
polystate would be more or less the same as the response of a geostate alli-
ance to the attack of one of its members.
That said, I suspect that all things being equal (population, wealth, tech-
nology, etc.), you’d be better off placing your wager on a geostate victory.
Combined allied forces probably do not function as well as forces of a single
large state. If you could ask Generals Montgomery and Patton if the overall
prosecution of World War II was made more efficient by the existence of his
counterpart, you would at least find them to be in agreement on the answer.
In addition, the required level of organization within a polystate coalition
would probably be higher due to the great number of anthrostates, possibly
with great variation in command structure. This might well simply waste
resources in a way a geostate would not. Politics and war are not happy bed-
fellows. Friendly fire within an army is tragic; friendly fire between allies is
an incident.
With this in mind, a polystate’s best hope might be to have all things NOT
be equal. It is a matter of historical fact that different governments produce
different results in terms of wealth, human capital, and technology. It is not
always the most militarized (in terms of percent GDP spent on war) or most
organized society that has the most money or the best machinery. In due
time, the variety of the polystates might economically and technologically
make up for the organizational problems it poses. Whether this is the case is
too complex to determine without experiment.
Let’s consider a different incitement to war — territorial dispute. Suppose
a geostate claims a corner of WS-1. As WS-1 does not claim any territo-
ry, and by definition its anthrostates cannot claim territory, how could the
members of the polystate respond?
 Much like the bombing hypothetical, although the action of territorial
claim does not affect the territory of any nation (since no anthrostate claims
any geography), it does affect the private property of individuals5 who are
members of anthrostates. On this basis, the response would be much the
same as the bombing situation.
Let us consider one more case of interest — illegal immigration. One of
the interesting results of a polystate is that illegal immigration is not really
possible. An individual within the territory of the polystate would have only
to find an anthrostate to accept him. Having accomplished this, he would be
allowed to switch to any other system at the appropriate time. Potential is-
sues arising once membership is attained will be explored later. But, whereas
the polystate doesn’t have a border so much as a diode, the idea of an illegal
border crossing is moot. In addition, some of the concerns having to do with
illegal immigration (cost, culture, etc.) might be ameliorated by the nature
of the polystate.
In the case of cost, only those nations wishing to bear the cost they per-
ceive of immigration would be willing to accept the immigrant. Thus, for
example, no individual would be made to unwillingly pay for the healthcare
of an immigrant.
Concerns of culture or race issues6 could also be helped by the polystate.
Consider for example an influx of redheads from a neighboring geostate.
There might well be WS-1 anthrostate members who don’t wish their race
corrupted by the pernicious blood of a thousand gingers. Although by WS-1
law, these anti-redhead states could not ban red-haired members from
claiming membership, they could make life for redheads unbearable enough
that none would wish to join. That is, those anthrostates wishing to maintain
some self-perception of cultural or racial homogeneity would be able to do
so. It is my suspicion that they would do so to the detriment of their ability
to maintain high or high-quality citizenship, but nevertheless those people
would perhaps be pacified.
A trickier issue would be the nature of border surveillance. One of the
major modern concerns over “open borders” is whether terrorists can easily

5 This is true even for states (in fact, especially for states) that disallow private
property. Community-owned buildings, for example, might be part of the territorial dis-
pute.
6 Just to be perfectly clear — the author personally doesn’t see these as serious
issues. However, many people do, and the author is (he’s told) fallible. Also, note that the
author is a redhead, which information will shortly be useful.
enter the country. Whether this is a real or imagined issue7 is beside the
point. Does the polystate prevent the policing of borders? Not necessarily.
Although polystate citizens can’t really restrict the movement of people, it is
conceivable that certain anthrostates might form alliances to monitor peo-
ple who enter the polystate from other geostates. If those entering claim no
geostate origin or anthrostate selection, they would not have a legal right
to not be surveilled. If they are geostate citizens, the nature of the geostate
might determine what sort of surveillance they are subjected to. If they join
an anthrostate, they are subject to the laws of that anthrostate, which has
a vested interest in protecting itself from terrorism and from international
incidents involving its citizens. Thus, although the polystate might not have
the ability to police its borders as heavily as a geostate, such caution is by no
means prohibited.
Although geostate-polystate interactions would be odd, they would
not be unimaginably so. Many instances of geostate-polystate interactions
would be akin to, if not identical to, interactions between a geostate and an
alliance of other geostates. The case of immigrants to a polystate as opposed
to a geostate would be somewhat different, but it is not clear whether on the
whole the difference is good or bad.

Chapter 6: Discriminatory Systems

For the purpose of this chapter, by “discriminatory systems” I mean essen-

tially this: anthrostates which either disallow certain members for distaste-
ful8 reasons (gender, race, orientation, etc.) or systems which create internal
citizenship classes for distasteful reasons.
It is a fact that in a polystate such ugly systems would exist. However, I do
not think the existence of ugliness makes the overall system bad any more
than the existence of Hustler magazine makes freedom of the press bad. Any
time freedom is allowed it will be abused. This is not a flaw in freedom (else
police states might be more desirable) but a flaw in humanity.
It must always be borne in mind that the polystate is at its core voluntary.
This fact makes for very different results for oppressed individuals. Thus, sit-
7 One notes the frequency with which so-called terrorists are in the victimized
country legally.
8 I will reuse this word regularly. If you think it not sufficiently strong, let me add
“repulsive,” “repugnant” and “antisocial” to its meaning.
uations that seem at first to be horrible, may be less so. This is a rather taboo
topic, but I believe it really poses no problem for a polystate beyond those
problems that exist in all geostates.
So, to start off, I want to give several scenarios and how they might not be
so bad as they first seem.
As discussed earlier, one of the problems of geostates is that they are sticky.
It is hard, for reasons financial, cultural, emotional, perhaps even metaphys-
ical, to leave one’s homeland. It is also at times illegal to leave one nation or
illegal to enter another. And, all that is assuming there is a friendly nation
nearby. In a polystate, the situation is much less dire. If you find yourself a
redhead in an anthrostate suddenly overtaken by an anti-ginger faction, at
most you will have to wait one year to switch. Presumably, in this situation,
there would be anthrostates that would provide sanctuary in the interim.
It is conceivable that if a system changed rapidly enough, our oppressed
redheads might find themselves in a more dire situation. But, at the very
least, this seems no worse than it is with geostates, and would be significant-
ly harder to do from the perspective of the anti-ginger government.
Suppose another system: A technocracy. In this system, castes are cre-
ated based on some IQ metric. By this means, there are quite literally first,
second, third, and fourth-class citizens. Is this a problem? Clearly, we would
consider it a problem in a geostate. In addition to the difficulty of finding
agreed-upon metrics, most modern societies agree that at least in principle
“equality of opportunity” is desirable. A caste system of any kind may stand
in the way of that.
However, it seems to me that the existence of these caste societies would
pose no serious problem in a polystate. Personally, I am dubious that such
a system would work well, but in that case it’d be my right not to join such
a society. Indeed, if you were to meet someone of the lowest rank in such a
society who hadn’t yet switched out, you could assume that he had no prob-
lem being a bottom-rung caste member. Although you might find his life an
unhappy one, it is at least voluntary. Voluntary unhappiness seems to me to
be a reasonably good descriptor of most people, so I don’t see it as a partic-
ular problem for the polystate.
Let’s suppose an even uglier system. Suppose there was a system that al-
lowed slavery. The WS-1 rules would not prohibit this development. Is that
a problem? I believe it is not, for two main reasons.
The first reason is that there can never be true slavery in WS-1, in that the
so-called slaves would be there by consent. They would have to recognize
the system and declare themselves a part of it. That is, if there were slavery,
it would have to be non-coercive to some extent.9 Thus, whatever “slavery”
existed in WS-1 would not be slavery in the usual sense of the word.
In the history of American slavery, stories abound of supposedly “well-be-
haved” slaves who would suddenly run away, to the surprise of their masters.
It is not a surprise to anyone now. If people were willing to become crimi-
nals, pursued by the state, subject to vigilante justice in order to escape slav-
ery, how much more likely would they be to escape if they could do so with
the click of a button? Even if people were willing to enter into these con-
tracts, WS-1 effectively limits formally legal slavery engagements to 1 year.10
In addition, it seems to me very likely that if there nevertheless were slave
anthrostates, most governments would consider slaves to be refugees, much
as modern geostates do. That is, the easy availability of “migration” in the
polystate would constrain the possibility of slavery. Between the voluntary
nature of the system and the overlapping of societies, hyper-discriminatory
systems would be hard to enforce on those who dislike them.
It could well be noted that this is all fine and good for adults, but might
pose a problem for children. These leads me to the second reason I believe
allowing “slavery” systems is acceptable. If there really were anthrostates that
exercised forms of slavery that were of questionable consent, it is likely that
other anthrostates and organizations would stop it by force. That is, the exis-
tence of a polystate by no means obliges you to ignore that your neighbor is
behaving heinously. In fact, in a polystate, such behavior would be harder to
ignore than it is for current geostates. Overlapping anthrostates would have
to countenance horrible acts in a way separate geostates often do not. The
sufferer on television simply does not provoke the emotional response of the
sufferer next door.
Similar arguments could be made regarding, for example, a system that
explicitly finds women inferior. One suspects such a system would, it goes
without saying, have trouble attracting many women. Many polls of mod-
ern geostates that ask men and women about anti-woman laws regularly
9 I’m told that in BDSM culture, such relationships already exist and are highly
formalized. Although I would personally never desire to participate in such a system,
whereas it is entirely consensual it seems to be no business of mine. That said, no doubt
there are many who believe such systems are necessarily criminal. Issues such as these are
discussed in the chapter on crime and punishment.
10 This is not to say it is an optimal system. A great deal of lasting harm can be done
in a year (or a day for that matter), but it is still superior to slavery on a permanent basis.
find that men and women hold divergent opinions11. That is, if the choice of
home “country” were wide open, sexist societies would have a lot of trouble
holding on to women. Nevertheless, it would likely be the case that societies
that affront the Western liberal mindset would exist. That such societies are
(especially in their extreme form) distasteful, I take for granted. But, most
would agree that so long as the women involved are behaving voluntarily,
nothing unjust is occurring.
Much like with the consent rules for children, it might be noted that indi-
viduals could be “brainwashed” into living in distasteful societies. This may
well be true, but it’s certainly no worse than in geostate situations. In fact, it
might be better — at least in a polystate, it would be readily possible to see
how other people live.
One other possibility that might be noted is a situation in which some
group is not accepted by any anthrostate. That, is, suppose that redheads
are so generally despised that no group will accept them. I think this situa-
tion somewhat unlikely, but I do believe the polystate system would handle
it better than a geostate. In the first place, a Red-Headed League could be
formed in which redheads abide their own rules. But, more importantly, any
system which cleansed itself of redheads would be at risk of losing a fairly
large portion of its population, both of redheads and ginger-sympathizers.
That is, governments that can very easily lose their citizens might be less
inclined to alienate even small groups.
It might be argued that this assumes governments behave rationally. In-
deed, the Nazi government’s alienation of many of the greatest scientists in
history provides evidence that some societies are perfectly capable of act-
ing against their economic self-interest. That said, in the case of those great
scientists, the nature of the polystate would have at least made it easier for
them to escape, and would make the creation of a centralized persecution
apparatus much more difficult.
Thus, I think that although the polystate system would allow discrim-
inatory systems, this would be ameliorated by the voluntary nature of the
system, and by the economic and social disincentivization against discrim-
ination. In addition, if someone chooses to persist as a low-caste citizen in
a society, despite having the frequent option to leave, it at least seems to me
that the ethics of the system cannot be assailed on either utilitarian or con-
sent-based ethical grounds.
11 http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-soci-
ety-women-in-society.aspx#views
Chapter 7: Healthcare

Healthcare is a fairly specific issue, but it has great political importance in

our time. So, perhaps it merits its own brief discussion.
In particular, healthcare is a good way to explore a potentially serious
free rider problem. No doubt, in a polystate, there would be many different
levels of social safety net. Suppose you have one anthrostate that provides a
high level of completely socialized healthcare and another anthrostate that is
a minimal government. Assuming hyper-rational actors, the most prudent
choice in life might be to stay in the minimal government (or at least, in a
lower taxing government) until you start to feel sick. On average, in WS-1,
you’ll only have to wait 6 months before switching anthrostates. Since most
diseases don’t kill you that quickly, you’d be best paying low taxes until sick,
then switching and soaking up healthcare rewards once you’re ill. By this
means, it might be argued that governmental provision of healthcare would
be prohibitively expensive.
My speculation is that there are a few ways this issue could be solved.
First, people of conscience might exist. I don’t wish to have this book be
too science-fictional, but it is possible such individuals walk the Earth. If
they do exist, you might simply expect them to pay into a system and take
their fair share out later. There is no welfare state that does not assume some
shenanigans will occur — the question is the size of the cost. If the vast
majority of people are fairly honest, or too busy to invest the effort it would
take to cheat, the few who attempt to game the system may not matter much.
Second, anthrostates could enact laws insisting that benefits only go to
long-term citizens, or to citizens who’ve paid in a certain amount.
Third, there could very well arise “soup kitchen” anthrostates that orga-
nize around the principle of helping the poor. For example, it is conceivable
that there could be a Christian or Fabian anthrostate that structures itself
such that all people are given welfare no matter what their condition, or
at what cost to well-off citizens. I think this proposition is both probable
and very interesting in its potential consequences as time grows large. In a
polystate system, citizen loyalty would be a very prized commodity. For this
reason, in the long term, a state that does the most to help the tired, poor,
huddled masses might well rise to prominence.
Chapter 8: Privacy and Censorship

Let us take for granted that WS-1 will have an Internet. I think there are two
questions that might arise — (1) is it possible for all members to be secure
with their information? and (2) with free societies overlapping with con-
trolled societies, is a controlled society possible?
The first question is, of course, a question for geostates as well. As I write
this chapter, the United States may be about to enter a diplomatic argument
with the EU over whether the American NSA wiretapped European offices.
That said, the issues of the polystate may be somewhat different. For exam-
ple, suppose I wish to send a message to Sally. The message is routed through
property owned by Adolf (for example, a mail truck or an email server). Sal-
ly and I are staunch libertarians who think the message is inviolable. Adolf is
a totalitarian who feels it is the duty of his state to open the message. In this
situation, how is the mail treated?
In a geostate system, you must simply accept that if your mail goes through
a questionable geostate, questionable things may happen to it. In a polystate
of significant complexity, it is conceivable that there would be no efficient
way to route messages without at some point dealing with these problemat-
ic anthrostates. In fact, for this to be true, we need not assume totalitarian
states run by people named Adolf. Many nominally liberal Western nations
not only practice surveillance of citizens, but keep secret the level of surveil-
lance. It is likely that a similar situation would exist in a polystate.
One possible result would be that the polystate would produce an-
throstates that are more liberal and transparent. A conceit of this book is that
a polystate system puts more onus on the state to obey the will of its citizens.
It’s possible, if perhaps a bit naive, to suppose that the various anthrostates
would be more transparent with citizens if those citizens can easily immi-
grate. If you are British, you must accept the compromise between liberty
and security that your representatives (who admittedly embody the will of
the people to some extent) have struck. In a polystate, it might be the case
that some percentage of citizens agree to be scrutinized harder for reasons
of security, while others wish none at all, and most wish to be in the middle.
In such a situation, it’s conceivable that mail transmission could be
achieved by inter-anthrostate agreements. That is, liberty-minded countries
could make an effort to work together to provide message transmission ser-
vices. Those less concerned with these issues could willingly forego these
rights. By this means, my letter to Sally would not ever have to fall into the
hands of an Adolf. In addition, non-state mail-carriers could develop to suit
these needs by privacy guarantees. These carriers could be much like UPS,
FedEx, Ontrac, and others, with the addition that they wouldn’t exist inside
geostates, and therefore wouldn’t be subject to any single government.
This framework’s virtues may raise a problem for those who are securi-
ty-minded: If a government can only wiretap the people who accede to wire-
tapping, it won’t do much good against terrorism in the polystate at large. It
would be very tempting for a security-minded anthrostate to cast a broader
net. Those concerned most with liberty might be willing to accept a larger
death toll from terrorism than those most concerned with security. Howev-
er, a terrorist’s bomb doesn’t ask for one’s political affiliations.
I’m not entirely sure how this problem could be resolved. That said, the
speculation I’ve expressed throughout this book is that the majority of an-
throstates (by membership) would be liberal republics. Given the recent
history of such republics, I consider it likely that the vast majority of an-
throstates would allow some sort of snooping on mail. It could be argued
that potential terrorists would necessarily not be part of the major govern-
ments, but then this is a problem for geostates as well. And, not incidentally,
many of the most infamous terrorists were members of some large geostate
at the time of their most heinous crimes.
To take the argument from the other side, this framework may cause
problems for the liberty-minded. After all, it’s never oneself who needs sur-
veilling. It’s always the other person. If the major anthrostates are anything
like today’s geostates, they will be interested in spying on foreign govern-
ments. By this means, perhaps everyone will be surveilled. By virtue of the
fact that a polystate setup makes it far harder to cordon off geography, it
may be that nobody who chooses to interface with the rest of the world is
safe from snooping. It is not entirely clear to me that, in practice, this would
end up substantially different from modern geostates. However, it is almost
certainly the case that there is an extent to which the level of surveillance
over a citizen is tied to that citizen’s geostate of residence. In a polystate, the
overlapping of systems might result in a more surveilled society than any
that exists in the world today.
This may be unresolvable. The only defense I can think of here is this: If
we accept that we are in a panopticon, the remaining issue is how the pan-
opticon uses its data. That is, assuming I didn’t mind a camera in my home12,
the issue becomes how widespread the video feed becomes. In a polystate,
there is a market for governments. So, between two surveillance states, I may
well pick the one that’s more responsible with its data.
That said, recent events lead me to be more convinced that privacy vio-
lations are not a highly researched issue for most people. If the citizens of
the biggest anthrostates don’t in general care about privacy issues, then the
market of governments won’t result in more privacy.
The second issue I raised was whether the nature of the polystate con-
strains the existence of more policed states. That is, if the Chinese and Amer-
ican Internet overlap, what use is it for China to censor material?
To answer this, one must consider why those censorship laws exist. There
is no law forcing me to eat candy bars. There doesn’t need to be. Censorship
laws exist because people want to see things that other people do not wish
them to see. If you are a citizen of China and wish to see images of Tian-
anmen during the student protests, your best options are to do something
illegal or to emigrate. In a polystate system, you would probably have better
choices — you could switch to an uncensored system entirely, or you could
even switch to a version of your China-style system that has less censor-
ship. That is, if the censorship laws of the China-style system were unpopu-
lar, people would just leave. The residual group of people still in the system
would necessarily be people who feel that they should be restricted in their
media options.
So, although the overlapping of societies might restrict the ability to cen-
sor information, it would not necessarily constrain censorship. It would only
constrain voluntary membership in censored-media societies, and the range
of behaviors of those members in a generally uncensored society.

Chapter 9: Public Property and/or Private Property

I believe public property might pose a difficulty for polystates. At the very
least, the system would have to be substantially different from the geostate
system. I am not certain it would be different in a desirable way, but here I
will speculate as to how it might work.
First, let me deal with the trivial case of whether an anthrostate could,
12 This seems more a danger to society than to myself.
within itself, have a system of public property. This would of course be possi-
ble. In common usage, “public” property means something more like “prop-
erty of the state.” To a good approximation, public land can be thought of
as private property of the nation, public property within the nation. So too
would it work in WS-1. Anthrostates having public property would be the
same as corporate entities owning property in modern-day geostates. There
might well be some practical differences in how this works (for example,
McDonald’s doesn’t have an army, so far as I know), but the system per se
poses no contradictions.
A more difficult case would be public parks. Most people believe that
it is good to have wildlife preserves. We rightfully believe that if Yosemite
were auctioned off, much if not most of it would go to people who would
not preserve it in its pristine form. It might be argued that if people really
wanted wildlife preserves they’d be willing to pony up the money. However,
a well-developed sense of ethics and a well-developed stock portfolio are not
always tightly correlated.
Suppose we assume that the existence of state-owned wildlife preserves
is an intrinsic good. If so, I think we have to assume that this is one way in
which a polystate system contains an intrinsic bad quality. Although I think
it is very likely that wildlife preserves would exist in a polystate (I am certain
there would be many anthrostates devoted to environmentalism), it is likely
they would not be able to buy as much property as might be desirable.
There is a reasonably good economic defense of this — that public lands
may cost more than they benefit the public, especially when the aggregate
citizen (myself included, if I’m being honest) would often rather go to Dis-
ney World than to Yosemite. Considering what benefit might be had to the
lower and middle classes by opening up cheap land, it could be argued that
the preservation of certain beautiful ecosystems is not a good economic
move purely in dollar terms. Perhaps this is so, but then again, if a majority
of people thought the works of Monet would make good kindling, the paint-
ings would still merit protection. Microeconomics-style analysis is unsuited
to this task, in my opinion, largely because there is probably not a good way
to determine a value or dollar figure for natural areas on which individuals
place literally infinite value.
Still, I will say this in defense of the way WS-1 might handle wildlife pre-
serves — it is perhaps good to make citizens at some point put their money
where their mouths are. It may be that part of why I don’t believe the auc-
tioning of Yosemite would end well is because citizens do not expect, based
on their life experiences, to have to lay out personal money to preserve cer-
tain lands. In addition, we shouldn’t necessarily think of the simple case of
the auctioning of Yosemite. If only 3-5% of societies were pro-environmen-
tal, they might well make it the business of a century to acquire as much land
as possible. By this means, it’s conceivable that over a long time scale, the
polystate might even have more public land than a typical geostate does to-
day. Unfortunately, this is an “as time goes to infinity” solution to a problem
that is in many cases short-term. There might be more wildlife preserves as
time goes to infinity, but there might be a lot less wildlife, too.
Another difficulty might be roads. These, however, I think could be han-
dled amicably. It may surprise the reader to learn that private highways exist
in many countries, from the USA to France to Japan. In a polystate, an an-
throstate could act as a corporation to accomplish roadbuilding, or corpora-
tions within and between anthrostates could create highways. The polystate
might, however, pose a few complications. For example, if one anthrostate
has drivers always on the right side of the road and another has drivers al-
ways on the left, there would be an increase in accidents. I think it likely that
this would not long be a problem. USB cords work in thousands of devices
without a governmental authority insisting on it. But, even if we suppose
an extreme case — say, an anthrostate theocracy that insists that the only
ethical way to drive is on the left side of the road — it is likely that other an-
throstates or private owners would not link roads with those people.
Other potential differences, such as speed limits or road construction
standards, could also be resolved amicably by similar means. To the extent
that roads would have differences, that information could be made public.
And, as someone who has taken long road trips in the American Southwest,
I can say that on I-10 alone there is considerable quality variation in high-
ways within a single country. Dr. Roederer tells me I-95 provides sizeable
variation even within the state of Virginia.
In addition, non-standardization might open the option for a bit more
variety in roads. In the modern world, roads are standardized based on the
width of two cart-pulling animals established millennia ago. In the future as
cars become more autonomous, multiple road widths, or technology-em-
bedded roads, might become the norm. In that case, there may be a benefit
to a lack of top-down standardization.
One other problem might be tolls. In a polystate, a person driving long
distance might encounter toll roads taking many different currencies. The
answer to this problem has already been discussed in the larger chapter on
currency.
It might be asked at this point what the nature of private property is with-
out an overarching state regulating it. That is, suppose Alice and Bob both
claim the same land and are from different anthrostates. How is this to be
resolved? I believe this question has to some extent been answered in other
sections by the notion that an anthrostate will have the force to defend the
property rights of its constituents. The general problem of complex arbitra-
tion has already been mentioned. However, one additional question worth
noting is the potential abuse of property within the anthrostate in order to
generate geostates.
That is, suppose anthrostate A claims a thin ring of land that is 100 miles
in radius and then disallows movement through the ring as “trespassing.”
This would cause serious problems for the other citizens trapped inside the
ring, and restrict resource usage by anthrostates outside the ring. How is this
to be resolved?
One possibility would be to simply add a polystate rule against enclosure;
a good rule might be something like “no property of one anthrostate can be
used to impede the motion of other anthrostates.” This rule would require
some interpretation, but could be workable.
Another possibility would be that, in practice, it would simply not be
desirable to form these sorts of rings. In a polystate, trapping of one an-
throstate’s citizens would likely be an inducement to war or diplomatic sanc-
tion. Assuming a decent amount of overlap of anthrostate populations, the
ring maneuver is something like the terrorist’s bomb discussed earlier. That
is, it is not an advisable action at the level of a government because the vic-
tims of the action may be from many anthrostates. Encircling a large area of
land might very well entrap dozens if not hundreds of citizens of different
countries. It’d be something akin to trying to take over the UN.
It is also possible that in a polystate there would be normative opposition
to internal geostates, which an encirclement might be seen to represent. The
impedance of movement in a large region would be something like cast-
ing law over geography rather than over people. In a long-term polystate,
this might well become a taboo. That is, the culture that would develop in a
polystate might render this problem moot.13
One other factor worth noting is that the ability to switch governments
yearly might make the whole idea of encirclement pointless — or at least
rather silly. If I find myself encircled by anthrostate A on November 1, I have
only to wait 60 days to join anthrostate A. At that point, I proceed across
the circle and out into the wide world, and 365 days later I can switch anew.
425 days is a long time to wait, but it is practically an instant in bureaucratic
time. This necessarily fails if anthrostate A doesn’t, for example, allow citi-
zens to leave their homes. It’s not clear to me why anyone would join such a
state, but supposing a few do it is still unlikely they would be able to impose
their odd rules against a powerful state. In that case, our encircled citizen
could escape by joining a large state (perhaps a large belligerent state), which
would quickly secure his freedom by some means.
Lastly, on the note of public property, it’s probably worth discussing the
ultimate in public properties — air and sea. In more abstract terms, what I
want to get at are externalities and common goods.
For externalities, in particular I want to talk about airborne pollution.
There are many externalities, but the logic of how pollution-limiting might
work should apply generally. So, let’s consider two cases where airborne pol-
lution might be a problem — one extreme, the other more likely.
The extreme case would be a rogue government. Let’s imagine a govern-
ment created by evil Ebenezer Scrooge types, called PU (Polluters United).
PU has 1 citizen, who exists to allow PU to exist, but contains the private
property and operations of 10,000 corporations. PU emits half of the car-
bon dioxide in the entire polystate. They won’t change because they aren’t
compelled to internally, and who in the world would start a war with them
over externalities? In addition, despite having 1 citizen, PU commands a
great deal of financial power with which it can hire security. This is, I think,
a worst-case scenario that might occur to many readers.
I would say first of all that such a group should be fairly easy to embargo,
if there is political will on the part of other nations. In the case of a rogue
government as extreme as PU, I think such an embargo is likely. That is,
although the polystate permits coal plants, it would be within the power of
13 This may be wishful thinking, but I felt I should mention it since my original
idea for this book was a work of fiction in which the above maneuver is the setting. That
is, a group in a worldwide polystate attempts a geostate. The plot (perhaps someone who’s
better at long stories can take it up) was that a rogue group cleverly homogenized the
population of an area and then declared a geostate.
the various anthrostates to economically isolate them and the people who
work with them.
The reader might well note that this assumes many governments will
behave ethically, and that assuming a large group will behave ethically is
not very prudent. However, I don’t believe the above depends on ethical
behavior. Rather, the embargo would result from the polluted air being un-
desirable. In a polystate, it’s entirely possible that the PU factories would
be somewhat distributed among the citizens of other nations. That is, as in
WS-1, people would be confronted with the behavior of other nations. Only
a concern for its people’s interest, or the regard of their constituency, would
be needed to impel a politician to cut ties with PU.
Let’s consider the more likely and potentially more problematic case of a
large powerful anthrostate unwilling to agree to an externality-limiting ar-
rangement. For example, suppose there is an anthrostate that contains 10%
of the polystate population, and which refuses to sign a CFC-limiting ac-
cord. If they produce enough CFCs, the arrangement will be moot even if
every single other anthrostate signs on. I don’t know that there’s a good solu-
tion to this, however the situation is very similar to the geostate situation.
Consider the response of the US and Canada to the Kyoto Protocol. In fact,
it’s conceivable that in the particular case of the Kyoto Protocol, in which (if
you believe the surveys) the majority of North Americans wanted the agree-
ment ratified, the polystate system would’ve done more to limit emissions by
giving citizens more choices.
One more case to consider is that of simpler externalities. Suppose, for
example, PU also dumps mercury into a lake that is partially the property of
non-PU people or entities. In that case, what you have is essentially a crime
perpetrated by one anthrostate upon another, which could be resolved as
discussed previously in the chapter on crime.
The last area I want to consider on the topic of public property is common
resources. Let’s consider the example of whaling rights. In the modern geo-
state system, whaling rights are fairly strictly constrained, with most nations
voluntarily limiting the number and type of whales their citizens can hunt,
if not banning whaling altogether. The situation might be a bit different for
a polystate in that a polystate can’t make a geographic ban, as for example
exists currently on Southern Ocean whaling.
However, I believe in practice it would end up about the same. One way
this might work would be to claim the whales as property of an anthrostate
or common property of a number of anthrostates. That is, if three quarters
of all polystate citizens want a moratorium on hunting these species, their
nations could simply assert ownership of the whales. If a pro-whaling an-
throstate were to kill such an animal, it would be an international crime.
In other words, if many powerful anthrostates wish to protect common
resources, they could simply become the protectors of those resources by
demonstrating that the violation of those resources would result in an inter-
national incident, which could result in serious sanctions of some sort.

Chapter 10: Tax Evasion/Manipulation

In WS-1, I stipulate a one-year changeover period under most circumstanc-

es. This is a relatively short time period, which might impose some problems
for the collection of taxes. Specifically, three problems occur to me — (1)
Tax evasion by changing anthrostates before collection can occur, (2) An-
throstatic tax havens, and (3) difficulty of collection of sales tax.
In the first case, let’s imagine Bob who hates paying taxes. Bob, however,
does not wish to live under a low-tax anthrostate, as he enjoys getting state
services. So, Bob comes up with a bright idea — skip paying taxes this year,
then before he gets in legal trouble, switch to a similar anthrostate to which
he does not owe taxes.
I think the solution for the Bob problem here is pretty easy. Anthrostates
could simply create laws that limit people’s ability to game the system. For
example, services could be made contingent on previous payments. This
might hurt poor people who are often the object of government services,
so the contingency could be tied to income. That is, everyone gets the same
service in exchange for a certain percent of income. Similar anthrostates
could also gather together to enforce each other’s tax rules. Based on his
behavior, Bob may only wish to live in certain types of anthrostates. Those
anthrostates could simply agree that tax cheats will be punished within a
multi-anthrostate system.
Let’s now suppose Bob has exhausted most of the anthrostates he likes, so
he comes up with a new scheme. He’ll use as many services as he can, then at
the end of the year he’ll switch to a minarchist state with low or no taxes, and
which will not punish Bob for back taxes he owes to another country. In this
situation, Bob may well “win,” but he does so at a very high price. He must
spend the rest of his days in a government he dislikes, and which perhaps
his friends don’t esteem highly, all in exchange for a few years of discounted
government services. Simply put — assuming people care what system they
exist in, the price of cheating could be easily made high enough to limit bad
behavior.
It’s conceivable that this effect could benefit the polystate overall. Consid-
er that people who consistently cheat could get washed out of systems that
are hurt most by cheating, into systems which are hurt least by cheating. It
may be the case that few citizens want to live in a libertarian paradise, but
it is also the case that there is probably not much money to be made in de-
frauding a minimal government.
Let’s consider the second problem I raised — tax havens. For example,
suppose our tax cheat Bob sets up an independent state — Bobtopia. He has
his friend, Lawless Frank, be the only citizen of Bobtopia. Although Bob is
a member of a social democracy, he has his income routed into an account
in Bobtopia. Bobtopia has no taxes, but has its currency pegged to the so-
cial democracy of which Bob is a citizen. Thus, Bob gets the services of his
anthrostate, but because he has no income, he pays no taxes. Depending
on how heavy his taxes are, he might be able to offer a substantial bonus to
Lawless Frank.
This situation is more or less isomorphic to the modern geostate world,
at least for wealthy people who can offshore their accounts in the Cayman
Islands. In addition, at least in this hypothetical, Bob’s money is probably not
very safe in Bobtopia, as Boptopia has no resources with which to make Bob
whole if his money is stolen.
Let’s then consider the more likely case of a professional tax haven an-
throstate. Suppose Bob creates an anthrostate called BobCorp. BobCorp has
only one citizen — Bob. BobCorp employs hundreds of digital security ex-
perts and only deals in digital money. BobCorp has a small fee for holding
onto money, but otherwise has no taxes. How are regular anthrostates to
protect themselves?
I believe once again this is similar to geostates. There will probably always
be small states willing to act as tax havens for wealthy individuals in return
for a small fee. The potential downside of the polystate is that, due to its
overlapping state nature, it might be easy for everyone to have a tax haven.
Currently, tax havens are the province of the rich who have enough money
and wherewithal to get them. But, imagine if BobCorp had an ATM on ev-
ery block. Why wouldn’t everyone use it?
This may pose a problem in the form of a constraint on taxes in an-
throstates, but I don’t believe so. In fact, it would at least have the silver lin-
ing of making tax evasion rather democratic. That is, if everyone can avoid
taxes very easily, including people who are not politically connected, an-
throstates would be forced to confront the issue. This could be done in ways
mentioned earlier, such as embargo laws. It could also be accomplished by
having all taxes occur at the point of service. At the moment, this would
probably mean a flat tax, but it is conceivable in a sufficiently advanced (and
financially surveilled) society, progressive or regressive tax schemes could
be accomplished at the point of service. Anthrostates could also come up
with more rigorous accounting methods requiring their citizens to turn over
all of their banking records, and taxing their overall income and wealth,
rather than merely that wealth contained in their own system.
It is worth noting that not all human beings are Bob. Although I don’t
like what taxes do to my bank account, I do like many of the services they
fund. It is entirely possible that in a polystate, due to my free choice of gov-
ernments I would be happy about the majority of the uses of my tax dollars.
This might make me unlikely to cheat on my taxes, even if it were a ready
possibility.
Lastly, let’s consider consumption and sales taxes. That is, let’s consider
taxes at the point of sale. Suppose for example that Bob creates a right-lib-
ertarian anthrostate called Bob’s Gulch, which has a flat consumption tax on
all goods. In Bob’s Gulch, Bob creates a chain of stores called Bob-Mart. He
believes his right-libertarian anthrostate will result in his having the lowest
prices. Meanwhile, Alice lives in Inc-A, which is a state that has no taxes
other than a very high income tax on individuals. She opens a chain called
Alkea.
Because Inc-A has no consumption tax, whereas Bob’s Gulch does, Alkea
is consistently able to charge lower prices at the point of sale, even though
Alkea is in a more taxed anthrostate. In other words, the polystate might cre-
ate a system in which the ability to have a point-of-service tax is constrained
by the nature of competition. This constraint is potentially bad because it
doesn’t clearly benefit anyone, and at the same time it limits anthrostate va-
riety.
In practice I believe it wouldn’t pose a problem, at least in the long
term. Why? Because in the long-term, the citizens of Inc-A get really really
screwed. They pay a high income tax to make up for the lack of a sales tax.
The citizens of Bob’s Gulch pay no income tax, and then get Alkea products
without paying a sales tax.
In a sense, the question of consumption tax might become very similar to
the question of tariffs in geostates. When a nation raises a tariff on a good, it
is essentially protecting one group of people (those who work with the good
or in related areas) at the expense of another group (everyone else). For ex-
ample, if China wishes to sell cheap tires to Americans, a high tariff on tires
protects tire people, but removes the benefit to everyone else of cheap tires.
In the case of Inc-A, their corporations might get a benefit at the point of
sale, but that benefit would be to the detriment of their citizens. Similarly,
Bob’s Gulch has a system that benefits their citizens, but potentially harms
their corporations. Therefore, it seems to me that at equilibrium you’d ex-
pect most states to employ a number of kinds of taxes to limit these sorts of
problems.
In addition, it should be noted that sales tax is not the only factor in the
mind of a consumer. For example, many people would not want to buy food
from a company in an anthrostate with few or no food safety standards. It
is probable that discussions on the relation of consumption behavior and
consumption tax cannot be reduced merely to the sticker price. Just as I trust
Toyota more than Ford to make a quality car, I might trust the food made
by companies in an eco-democracy over the food made by companies in a
fascism.

Chapter 11: Ungoverned People

The polystate allows for the existence of entirely ungoverned people. I do not
believe this poses any problem beyond normal forms of lawless behavior.
First, it should be noted that very few people wish to live a lawless exis-
tence. As I write, there are a number of nations (or at least, war zones with
agreed-upon borders) that effectively have no law. One suspects the immi-
gration rate is rather low.
That said, the polystate system might be a bit more amenable to law-
less individuals than a lawless geostate. For example, if you exist in no an-
throstate, you may still be able to use the money, services, and protection of
some anthrostates around you. But, you probably would also be barred from
many opportunities for commerce or employment.
Especially when you consider that a polystate would probably contain a
variety of ultra-minimal governments, the option to be utterly lawless would
not be very appealing to many people.
In fact, even if you were a sociopath bent on murder and with no regard
for law or common decency, it seems unlikely you’d want to be lawless. If
lawlessness is the exception to the rule, it is probable that such people would
be held in suspicion. Suppose, for example, anthrostate NoMu has only one
law (no murder) and yet a person still chooses to not exist in any anthrostate.
Additionally, having no government effectively means you have no le-
gal protection. As discussed previously, crimes between anthrostates would
require (at least) two parties to arbitration. If a person from anthrostate A
commits a crime against a lawless individual, who is to say that anthrostate
A cannot force the lawless individual to obey the law of anthrostate A? The
lawless individual has no protection against any system. It should be consid-
ered that because the polystate permits all forms of government, anthrostate
A could be a government that allows corporal punishment or execution for
minor crimes.
In a certain sense, lawless individuals already exist in geostates. In a num-
ber of voluntary14 victimless crimes (e.g., prostitution, drug dealing, loan
sharking) in many Western geostates, a class of lawless individuals are cre-
ated. That is, a loan shark can’t call the police to get his money back. He can
rely on social codes, or simply on the fear he instills in clients, but he cannot
bring the power of the state against people who break agreements with him.
At least in the matter of his business, the loan shark is lawless, as is the pros-
titute whose client won’t pay and the dealer who was shot while dealing.
It may be debated whether these lawless individuals pose a serious prob-
lem to society as a whole. However, they do exist, and so this may be a case
where in some sense the geo and anthro systems are the same. In addition,
for reasons stated above, total lawlessness might well be less common in a
polystate system.

14 I say “voluntary” with the understanding that almost nothing is purely voluntary,
in the sense that social and economic circumstances can compel individuals to behavior
they find undesirable. I mean voluntary only in the sense that both parties to a transaction
can walk away from it if they desire, regardless of the damage that doing so may entail.
Chapter 12: War

In many of the previous chapters, I’ve tried to argue that some phenomenon
would be more or less the same between geostates and anthrostates. I think
war is one area where the difference would be very large. Because this dif-
ference is very large, speculation about how war might work in a polystate is
probably unwise. For that reason, although war is a very large area for dis-
cussion, I will try to limit myself to some observations on why war should be
very different in a polystate, as opposed to how it would be different.
The most apparent way war would be different is that — at least at the
outset of a war — it wouldn’t be clear who held what territory. The closest
geostate analogy might be a civil war. But, even in the case of civil war, fac-
tions are often regional, and spheres of influence are established quickly.
However, this is only possible when there is a small number of non-over-
lapping factions. In a polystate, it is possible that over any radius the size
of a small city, there will be dozens if not hundreds of anthrostates. This
complicates matters.
Suppose Anthrostate A1 goes to war with Anthrostate B2, and that (for
simplicity) neither has any allies or sympathizers. Let us also suppose, as
Clausewitz does, that the end of war is the disarmament of the enemy. It
seems to me there are four ways the war can be accomplished: (1) Selection
of a pre-determined fighting area, (2) Street-to-street fighting with care tak-
en not to harm non-warring anthrostates, or (3) “Peaceful” evacuation of
non-warring anthrostates, followed by fighting in a more traditional man-
ner. (4) Fighting heedless of the consequences.
The first case would be simple enough, though it doesn’t seem likely. Or,
if not unlikely, it at least presents an absurd situation in which parties to the
war agree to fight en masse, then either use state property or rented property
from another state to execute the battle.
The second case (fighting street to street) is possible, but would be risky
geopolitically in a way that typical geostate war is not. War in this sense
would have to be something more like large-scale targeted assassination
than what we usually think of as war. Even that might be dangerous, as a
stray bullet or uncontrolled conflagration might represent an international
incident. In this situation, almost all conventional weapons would have too
high of a collateral damage risk to be useful. Most explosives would be too
dangerous, as would automatic weapons. Innocent victims are a part of all
war, but in the case of the polystate, innocent victims might represent an en-
tirely new faction entering a war in progress. Whether a new faction would
enter a war would be very much subject to the belligerence of the harmed
nation, the level of collateral damage done, and the clarity available to de-
termine who is at fault. It may be the case that accidentally killing a citizen
of a major government would not result in all-out war. However, as the last
hundred years demonstrate amply, the difference between total war and to-
tal peace is not binary.
On that basis, it seems to me that case three (evacuation of non-combat-
ants) is a bit more likely. If B2 went to war with A1, B2 would perhaps do
its best to find the highest concentrations of A1’s citizens and/or leaders.
Especially if B2 was in the stronger political position in the polystate, B2
might be able to urge an evacuation of an area. More realistically, if a state
of war seems to exist over a geographical area, those who can evacuate will
evacuate. If so, any war lasting long enough might automatically result in a
clear field of battle.
Case four, in which the two factions do not heed the higher risk of collat-
eral damage, may unfortunately be the most likely. If a nation feels existen-
tially threatened, or if its citizens have a particular view of conflict, they may
not care for any of the reasoning pointed out above. If someone is coming
to kill my family, the optimum location and population dynamic for combat
will not be high on my list of concerns. If the typical nature of combat is
that the fear of collateral damage to third parties is not a serious one, then
polystate war would probably be different, but no less prevalent than geo-
state war.
With all that said, as I noted earlier, war in the polystate seems to me
to be very complicated, and so far I’m only talking about the case of two
factions. In a polystate, which would contain many similar states, two-par-
ty war is perhaps unlikely. It is also entirely possible that in a state of total
war, anthrostates might declare temporary geostates for the duration. In this
situation, the determining factor might simply be the polystate culture and
its attitude toward this sort of behavior. It’s entirely possible that once war
commenced, it’d be prosecuted much like war always has been.
Although it is difficult to say how war might be prosecuted, some of the
political aspects might be interesting to discuss. The political difficulty of
war is discussed in the first book as a potential upside to a polystate, so I
won’t belabor it much here. The gist is this: If an anthrostate makes war, it
risks rapidly alienating a large segment of its population, especially if the
war is generally perceived as unjust. In a system where it is easy to leave, it
would be very hard to make war without the will of the people.
I can think of two important counters to this somewhat rosy notion —
first, that people are subject to propaganda, and second, that in the long
term, warlike individuals might sort into certain anthrostates that might
thus become very dangerous.
The case of propaganda is obvious enough, though propaganda is often
hard to maintain in the long run. In his memoirs, Siegfried Knappe recalled
that even in highly propagandized Nazi Germany, soldiers quickly learned
to differentiate victory from defeat because newsreels used the term “heroic”
whenever there was a loss. And in any case, the avoidance of war weariness
is difficult even in times of general military success.
That said, it should be noted that the possibility of mass defection during
war might perversely result in leaders trying to prosecute wars very quick-
ly and aggressively, which might make things worse in the short term of
warmaking.
The case of personality sorting is more interesting, but perhaps difficult to
predict. It could be imagined that any time a nation goes to war, there could
be people eager to join and fight. On this basis, and on the basis of the rep-
utations achieved by anthrostates, over time highly warlike nations might
emerge. This is entirely possible, though it may be the case that warlike na-
tions do not persist for long in a modern world. Modern warfare is more
and more determined by technology and economics. If North Korea is any
example, a permanent war culture may not be conducive to good science or
the generation of prosperity. In addition, even if there were these warrior
states, they would still be subject to the constraints above.
In summary, it seems to me that although war in a polystate is hard to
understand or speculate about, the nature of the system probably presents
some inertia against large-scale fighting.
 Book 3
Potentially Insoluble
Objections to a Polystate
In writing Book 2, I purposefully put myself in the position of a skeptical
apologist. That is, I start with the conclusion that a polystate could work,
then try to explain why, while keeping an eye out for the limits and biases
of my imagination. However, by and large, the discussions in Book 2 do
not treat normative questions. I have tried to stick largely to trying to un-
derstand what might happen and not to judge what should happen.
In doing so, I came up with a number of issues that are insoluble, usually
because they have an ethical character. That is, if you consider it immoral to
co-exist in the same polystate as a fascist dictator, WS-1 won’t do for you no
matter how well I speculate about the economics of it.1
“Polystate” was written mostly because I think it’s an interesting thought
experiment. At the same time, it also seems to me that it is a system that,
in some form, will be tried at some point. As information technology im-
proves, individuals more and more expect customized experiences. When
I go to a website now, I get information tailored to my interests. If I want
a soda, I can go to Amazon and select from thousands of options. As 3D
printers and programmable matter become more common, almost all ob-
jects may be subject to the whims of individuals. I think it is only a matter
of time before people begin asking for customizability in the frameworks of
their governments.
If it is something that’ll be tried in the future, it’s something we should
think about now. If it contains insoluble problems, it’s probably good to lo-
cate those problems and figure out how they might be ameliorated, avoided,
or at least reckoned with.
Many of the topics to follow have been treated in some form, or have been
touched upon in general by discussion of other areas. For that reason, and
because the problems are generally normative and therefore above my pay
grade2, I am going to list them here with only limited discussion.

1 Having worked in the movie industry for some years, I can say that you probably
already exist in a nation with fascist dictators of a sort, but you may take comfort knowing
that at least they aren’t legally recognized as such.
2 Spoiler Alert: this book does not solve the gun rights debate.
Bureaucracy Explosion

As I have discussed in some previous sections, a number of the workings of

a polystate could potentially result in a great need for more officials whose
job is only to navigate the complexities that result from a society with many
overlapping governments. If a polystate necessarily requires more such in-
dividuals, the conversion of a geostate to a polystate system could at least in
this sense be thought of as an economic loss.
It’s conceivable these problems could be ameliorated by better technolo-
gy, which could take the place of many somewhat mindless duties that nev-
ertheless currently require humans.
It’s also possible to imagine a way polystates could limit internal an-
throstate bureaucracy by making governments more accountable to citizens.
It could also be the case that a profusion of small governments would require
fewer internal employees than a large body with the equivalent number of
citizens. But, this is hard to speculate on well. As C. Northcote Parkinson
said, “...it is manifest that there need be little or no relationship between the
work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned.”
Nevertheless, the need for an expanded amount of bureaucracy, as I be-
lieve is likely to exist in a polystate, would cost money directly and create
the potential for indirect loss through corruption and rent seeking. If so,
the polystate might still be worth it if the afforded freedoms were valued
enough by citizens. In addition, it is possible that in the long term, the need
for bureaucracy would lessen if over time citizens coalesced around a small
number of governments or government types.

Constraints on Social Security via Age Sorting

This may seem specific, but I think it’s important. In many Western econo-
mies, it pays to be old. This hasn’t yet induced anyone to manufacture pro-ag-
ing creams or to bring comb-overs into high fashion, but it may well induce
some ire among the young. Social security systems work on the premise that
young people pay in while young and receive payment back when they get
older. But what if people age sort their anthrostates?
A rational short-term-thinking young person might prefer a more liber-
tarian society on the basis that she probably doesn’t need health insurance.
Anthrostates could insist that one must pay in what one gets out or one must
pay in for a time period before taking out, but it is entirely unlikely these
policies will make an 18-year-old think rationally about life 50 years from
now.
It may also be the case that elderly people are attracted specifically to
systems that cater to their needs by providing high social security and
healthcare. The elder-centric system might not persist for long without go-
ing bankrupt. In other words, if the young have differential preferences of a
certain kind, in the long term, social security might not be possible.
That said, the above assumes that people will behave ultra-rationally (at
least in the short term) and will not act charitably toward their elders. If
people are not ultra-rational, as is widely believed outside of economics,
they may simply not tend to care to switch out of their parents’ systems.
It may also be the case that charitableness isn’t necessary for young people
to exist in these systems. Suppose, for example, that in the first 50 years of
a polystate the more minimal societies prove to be less stable. That might
result in many young people gravitating toward more standard systems. In
addition, if the modern world is any guide, young people on average tend to
favor expanding the welfare state in a way that probably costs them in the
short and medium term. That is, what is not economically rational may still
be socially fashionable.
These questions all have to do with one’s view of human nature and of
responsibility to fellow citizens. Social security might well be constrained
by the tendency (or lack thereof) for people to behave generously toward
strangers when uncoerced. For those who believe social security is neces-
sary to an ethical state, this constraint may pose an insoluble problem.
This problem of age-assorting of social security states in specific might
well be extended to any notion of future planning by any anthrostate in gen-
eral.

De-Integration of Society

One of the good and bad things about a large nation is that you are in the
same ship of state as a lot of people who are nothing like you. This may mean
society isn’t what you want it to be, but it also may mean you are compelled
to learn how other people think.
It is probably the case that the availability of infinite splintering of gov-
ernments would lead a polystate to in some sense be more fractured than a
geostate. For example, different economic systems, different public property
systems, and different healthcare systems might lead to groups of people
who live near each other but can essentially ignore each other’s existence.
This is, of course, already the case to some extent in every geostate, but the
polystate might splinter even further. It is not clear to me what the effect of
this would be or whether it is desirable or not. The polystate would at least
have the saving grace of limiting regional disparities based on manmade
borders.

Ethical Co-Existence

Is it ethical in general to live next door to a person whose society allows vivi-
section of animals? This would be the sort of question you might have to ask
yourself in a polystate. Mind you, at this moment unethical things are hap-
pening in pretty much every country on the planet, and I don’t think most of
us feel we’re either directly responsible or personally tainted by them. How-
ever, it seems to me there’s something viscerally different between knowing
North Korea starves its citizens and knowing that the family next door beats
their children. I pay taxes to neither3, and I approve of neither, and yet prox-
imity and direct awareness make a great deal of difference to me.
A related example to which the reader may be less sympathetic (this is an
eBook, after all) is ethically tech-free or ethically tech-low societies. There
could very well be a paleolithic style anthrostate, in which members are pro-
hibited from using tools created in the last 10,000 years. Even if members
were capable of this, they would find it very hard to avoid at least interacting
with technology. I may live like a caveman, but my technocratic neighbor
can surveil me from his arduino quadcopter, which rather ruins the experi-
ence.
There is probably no way to resolve this, other than perhaps in some ver-
sion of the private property nature reserves mentioned earlier. However, one
wonders how well a paleolithic society that does not engage with other soci-
eties would be able to hold onto its property in the long term.
I suspect that in a polystate there would still be broad norms. And, as
3 Or, at least, if by some means my tax dollars help the abusive parents next door,
those dollars don’t support the violence per se, and in any case money is not nearly the
majority of my concern.
discussed earlier, the overlapping of societies might speed the homogeniza-
tion of norms. But it would also mean that an individual at any point in time
would live in the same “state” as another individual committing unethical
acts. It is not clear that this would be acceptable, regardless of any benefits
gotten in the trade-off.

Mob Rule

One of the pros of the polystate I’ve suggested is that it makes government
more beholden to citizens, as the citizens are readily able to leave govern-
ment. However, this could result in an odd sort of mob rule in which leaders
are so beholden to citizens (and their perception of citizens, and their per-
ception of citizens’ perception of them, and so on) that the wise or educated
have no ability to exercise discretion or prudence. By analogy, imagine the
difficulty of raising a child if that child were able to leave you for some other
parent quickly and for any reason. You might be tempted to dole out the
candy a bit more regularly.
It may be noted though that the citizens of a state are not children and
government is not a parent. I suspect the extent to which this is seen as a
problem depends on one’s view of democracy and of loyalty to one’s nation.
One man’s mob rule is another man’s polity. And, if a society is indeed a mob
rule in all the ways that those words signify, it will soon find itself without a
mob to do the ruling.

Sacred Locations

Are locations and nations inseparable? Civilization, as we think of it, is not

much older than 10,000 years, and all modern geostates are much young-
er. And yet, almost all nations, religions, ethnicities, and creeds, however
young, tie their history to important locations.
Suppose there were a strip of land claimed by group A to be the origin
place of their messiah and claimed by group B to be their ancestral home-
land. Let us also suppose these two groups hate each other. Both have a
metaphysical attachment to this particular location. As such, it’s possible
that neither party would be amenable to a polystate system on the mere basis
that it would mean, in a sense, that one’s own party doesn’t have a geograph-
ic right to that location. Imagine how a devout Muslim might feel knowing
that the Kaaba was in some sense private property that could be lost. Or,
imagine that same Muslim being unable to restrict the movement of infidels
in the area of the Kaaba.
In other words, in the case where individuals consider ethnicity/religion/
culture and a part of the planet to be linked inseparably, the polystate’s al-
lowance for free movement of citizens may pose a dilemma.
I should admit, I’m somewhat dubious of the ties between location and
nation. One wonders whether fewer wars would have been fought if Jeru-
salem were a mental state and not a city. That said, it cannot be denied that
to many if not most people, the love of a location and its history cannot be
disentangled from the idea of nationhood. This may pose a problem for the
polystate, especially in the short term. People may feel a personal kinship
with locality and be uncomfortable with the idea that their part of the world
no longer has a defined boundary. In the case of sacred locations, the right
for the individual to visit may not be nearly as important as the right for a
state to control. This would not be impossible to do via private property, but
it would be more difficult in a polystate, especially if the claimed sacred area
is large.

Safety/Weapon Carrying

If anyone in the polystate is in a society that permits the carrying of guns,

nobody in any anthrostate is “free” to live in a gunless society. This is true for
all weapons, but guns are a good embodiment of the issue. In a polystate, the
near-certain existence of anthrostates permitting concealed weapons means
that everyone exists in a state that permits concealed weapons. Short of some
very impressive technological developments, the potential added danger of
weapons is probably unavoidable without further constraints being placed
on the entire polystate. This danger is certainly unavoidable in WS-1.

Startup Costs

It may be the case that the cost of starting certain forms of anthrostate would
be prohibitive, even if they would be good in the long run. Most new states,
if they were at all modern, would have some fairly large upfront costs in
terms of computing and location purchases. In the modern world, most very
large projects which don’t have a clear economic benefit (e.g., large works of
art, outer-space travel, particle colliders, etc.) are accomplished by govern-
ments because it is hard to get the needed capital from private individuals
and groups. If the creation of a new system were a very expensive undertak-
ing, it might require similar investment. However, it is unlikely that one gov-
ernment will use its taxpayers’ money to create a competitor government.
We can easily conceive of low-cost systems, or ways to implement expen-
sive systems piecemeal, but the upfront cost might limit some not-yet-imag-
ined government formats.

Transition

Even if all the above difficulties were dealt with, the issue of transition from
geostate to polystate may be unethical, as it would probably result in vio-
lence, and given the history of revolutions, might well result in failure. That
is, even if a polystate seems desirable compared to your geostate, the process
of change might represent too high a cost for the change itself to be desir-
able. It is probably the case that a polystate would limit the concentration of
power, and therefore it is probable there would be resistance.
The only way around bloodshed I can imagine would be the creation of
new territory, either by artificial means or by the colonization of other ce-
lestial bodies. For the moment, these both seem to be distant possibilities.
 EPILOGUE

For the purpose of simplicity, I have centered this book around a minimal
polystate, and so most of the arguments herein are crafted for that setting.
However, most if not all of the bad things (and good) mentioned above
could be marginalized by having a more extensive polystate. The options
are infinite and are therefore useless to argue over here, but some interest-
ing ideas to spark your imagination might be these — illegalization of war,
illegalization of private property, illegalization of guns, guaranteed income,
changeover time of 10 years, instant changeover, limiting number of states
to 100 overall, yearly constitutional congresses, common currency, and
common judiciary.
By expanding the rules, you will necessarily restrict variety. However,
when it comes to danger, prejudice, and censorship, to name just a few is-
sues, variety is not necessarily desirable.
One particularly interesting possibility is the creation of a polystate-style
tax code. For example, suppose each year you are told “you must pay x dol-
lars in taxes,” and then are given a set of options for where the money goes
(perhaps with non-discretionary payments to things like military and infra-
structure). It would be interesting to see how the public chooses differently
from its representatives. I don’t know precisely what the results would be of
such a system, but I suspect it may at some point be tried.
And that is the note I would like to close on. I freely admit, if tomorrow
a polystate were set up somewhere, I would not join. I would excitedly read
about it, and would love to visit, but I’d like to see it actually work for oh... 50
years or so before I join the party.
That said, part of why I wrote this book is that I think the idea, if workable,
would have many good consequences. A reading of the last few centuries
shows us that idealized government forms typically fail in practice, regard-
less of theories of their good and bad qualities. As Burke wrote, “They who
destroy everything certainly will remove some grievance. They who make
everything new have a chance that they may establish something beneficial.”
It is probably the case that, much like a surgeon operating on a poorly
researched animal, any change is likely to do bad, and any great change may
kill the patient. And yet, most of the governments the readers exist in are
the products, at some level, of philosophers and economists who proposed
different ways of living. I would never claim (certainly not in writing) to be
either a philosopher or an economist, but I do think the polystate is an in-
teresting concept with a great deal of potential good in it. As a puzzle and as
a possible benefit to society, I think it warrants discussion, and perhaps even
a limited trial somewhere by some means.
It is my sincere hope that a few people will find this book to be as in-
teresting a topic as I have, and will use the above chapters as a primer for
discussion. Bertrand Russell once said the difference between science and
mathematics is that the former concerns “what is,” while the latter concerns
“what would be if.” This is more of a speculative social science, which makes
it “what might be if, but maybe not?” In other words, it is fertile ground for
debate.

Zach Weinersmith

PS: I am well aware that some of the sections in this book will convince
some readers that I am a communist fascist anarchist monarchist libertar-
ian socialist capitalist statist syndicalist sadist masochist narcissist pervert.
However, only about half of that is true.