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This is American Anarchy. From 2021: https://t.co/fVOBT8PlrK AMERICAN ANARCHY American anarchy is the limit case of left- and right-libertarianism, when a good thing is taken so far it becomes bad. It’s what happens when we are all equal and you ain’t the boss of me. When no one is in charge and everything is in chaos. When the left loses control of speech and the right loses control of borders. When you have millions who agree on nothing other than 1A and 2A, with all the commensurate shouting and shooting. This type of anarcho-libertarianism is ascendant in 21st century America, and is the mirror image of the totalitarian movements of 20th century Europe. It flies far past minarchism into anarchism. The Internet takes everything to an extreme, to its logical conclusion, and anarchy will be no different. Rather than the presence of a malign state, anarchy is the malign absence of any state. If the assembly line led to millions of men moving in formation under Stalin and Hitler, then the smartphone leads to millions of men distrusting everyone and listening to no one. CHINESE CONTROL The most dangerous reaction to American Anarchy will be Chinese Control. The Chinese will export their drones and surveillance gear to states that want to impose order. In particular, it is likely that Western Europe, Canada, California, and other blue states will run the Chinese surveillance stack to repress their population in a post-dollar West. While the Chinese will often say they have no interest in exporting their political model, the inward-pointing surveillance stack they currently sell to many countries already has a political model embedded in it. That model *somewhat* works for the Chinese themselves, who understand how to get around the firewall, and who also have *some* leeway as Chinese citizens. But that Chinese surveillance stack will feel truly alien and totalitarian when used abroad. A surveillance stack that works for 1.4B Chinese will easily keep a Western European or Blue American state of (say) 20M in a very tight box, an unnatural box. This may lead to a disastrous feedback loop where the reaction to Chinese Control (the presence of a malign state) is a doubling down on American Anarchy (the malign absence of any state). More crackdowns, more retaliatory attacks, and so on without limit. You get something that approaches the Middle East in the Midwest. Indeed, that’s arguably already here, though you may need to switch the signs to imagine a Chinese-aided blue state cracking down on reds by ~2030. China itself won’t care because it will be safely behind its firewall, sipping green tea. The Chinese will care about as much as an American walking through an airport in the 2000s cared about the scenes of devastation shown on the wall-mounted TVs. “Sucks for them”, he thought sympathetically, as he saw something blowing up on the other side of the world. Then he went about his life. In a reversal, that’s how much of Asia is now experiencing America: as something anarchic on the screen that they gawk at as they walk through the airport. And because most manufacturing has already been moved out of America, the rest of the world doesn’t need to jump in and help restore order. They will just hang back and mind their own business. The net is that it may be pretty ugly for America, Canada, and Western Europe. The endpoint of the Western sovereign debt crisis is not some golden age of hard money, but dark ages and hard times. THE INTERNET INTERMEDIATE There is always a way forward, though. One path is for those millions who want neither American Anarchy nor Chinese Control to find their ideal community, apply to it, and then abide by its rules if admitted. To opt in to constraints. To sign a social smart contract, to democratically legitimate a new state by voting with feet, wallet, and ballot. Such communities would be volitional (rather than tightly controlled) and civilized (rather than anarchic). We might begin building them today, these startup societies and network states. Starbase is perhaps the best American example of a startup society. Everyone who’s there voted for it with their feet, wallet, and ballot. Internally aligned, clear leadership, clear purpose, full consent.