About Fiction States; the challenge of envisioning future societies or systems of government and learning from integration mistakes.

Abstract (Executive Summary)

Let us posit the following statement: ‘Our current systems of governance were designed for earlier centuries and are no longer fit for purpose.’ Sustainable replacement of a governing system relies on the acceptance of that system by the governed and, to earn that, the new system must be better for a minimum of the majority. The status quo is never immutable but, in popular psychology, most people continue to adhere to what has always been done because change requires thought and individuals are risk-adverse with anything as important as their whole society. Accredited philosophers, fiction writers and amateur dreamers alike have put forward their proposals for replacement governance systems and for how to implement change, e.g. the ‘MAYA’ design rule of most advanced yet acceptable, making allowance for people’s desire for both the new and for comforting familiarity. One such suggestion for improved governance is the ‘Fiction State’, a reconfiguration combining two or more existing nation states. The author of this essay considers whether a Fiction State could be successful (integrate) and identifies the main reasons for failure that it must first solve from previous attempts to re-purpose existing countries, citing the institution of the European Union, notably (1) conquering countries against the will of the majority of their population creates a groundswell who desire the system to fail [UK, Maastricht Treaty], (2) taking control over existing territory will meet strong resistance to the project from vested property interests [current governors, businesses and monopolies, private owners], (3) ending democracy [where the new design arrives at the conclusion that consulting the crowd is inefficient] or the sleight of hand of placing an unelected law-making government in legal supremacy over elected governments [European Commission] disenfranchises a population and changes the new system’s aspect from ‘governance’ [consent, humble] to ‘rule’ [imposed, forcible, arrogant], (4) replacing one or more established legal systems with one’s own requires significant investment, (5) where the new governors de facto arrive with nothing tangible and assume control of assets and culture that has been built up over the ages by another’s effort [perceived parasitical appropriation]; and (6) where the new system design is perceived to enrich the ruling cabal of officials [e.g. ‘jobs for the boys’, not subject to income tax] so the generous system faces up not down, providing little or no improvement to the resentful ruled population. In short, to embed a new state design without rejection, a new system must (i) govern, not rule, (ii) have established consent to govern, (iii) offer incentive to the population and vested interests to sacrifice what they had; and (iv) be a democracy with clearly understood checks and balances on power, including transparent, peaceful channels for the population to curb political excesses and abuses. Without these aspects legally fixed in the design from the outset, eventual ebbing of public confidence, system failure and society reverting to the previous configuration is probable. The author concludes that a Fiction State on land would meet too much resistance to be successful, except possibly after a massive catastrophe or ‘re-setting’ event (national or humanitarian). However, 72% of the planet’s surface is unpopulated, the oceans, and the high seas (outside any national jurisdiction) can today and without obstacle be settled by opt-in populations who wish to subscribe to an experiment in governance with no entanglements from existing residential interests. This unnocupied space is clear and legally available for experimentation in new designs for societies. The main non-salary resource cost of agriculture on land worldwide is fresh water (future scarcity of water is commonly expected by the UN, WHO, NGOs) yet farming the ocean (aquaculture) requires no fresh water at all. Initially, this opt-in take-up might not be representative of wider society (probably appealing to libertarian thinkers and physically fit males under 35), but all frontiers change into suburbs over time. Social provision, i.e. paying contributions and receiving support services, could be non-geographical, a competitive market of virtual social care accounts following individuals wherever they roam on the planet (not tied to their own nation). If a floating society and governance system were to be proven to work (e.g. solve the housing, food and water resource crises), familiarity and pros and cons would be visible to existing land-based populations for their consideration. Ultimately, of the many new systems being tried, the opt-in system providing the most advantage to the governed (not the governors) would become dominant, as seaborne units can detach from one system and attach to a better one, effectively voting with their feet — or, in evolutionary terms, decision-making by the population would select in favour of the governance system most fit for purpose and continue to do so, indefinitely refining and improving as a natural product of its initial design parameters. Although attempting a ‘Fiction State’ (repurposing existing countries) could be expected to meet with stern resistance, this paper submits that an innovative governance design for a completely new and decentralised nation on water is now achievable with little resistance.

1. What is a Fiction State?

1.1 The Jaime P. Monfort definition

Monfort, J.P. defines a Fiction State as “the aggregation and integration of at least two nation-states embracing a philosophy of maximum integration in the shortest time interval.”

1.1.1 Notes on the arbitrary restrictions of this definition and discussion of a few issues it leaves out

That definition appears intended to differentiate Fiction States from new states created on virgin territory, single country government replacement and also from micro-nations that sometimes arise from legal loopholes and unclaimed spaces. Previously, these all might have been considered under one subject heading.

The raw material must be nations already, by this definition, so strong and capable opposition to the project by vested interests with all the resources of at least two nation states can be expected (making it harder to achieve than otherwise necessary). The definition leaves every possible supranational governance option still open for thought and discussion, broad boundaries indeed, not ruling out extreme and inhuman disasters from the past; and with no mention of seeking public consent. The Fiction States definition does not only cover governance systems that humans can tolerate living in, so the label can be applied to deliberate authoritarian dystopias too.

Although the challenge of formulating a new nation is an ancient one, making a highly specific sub-division of an existing field of enquiry allows the definer to claim the concept as their own legacy in perpetuity. On the bonus side, the actions of the definer to re-invigorate the debate have moved the field forward and can attract new thinkers.

So, the fiction state concept has been thrown open to popular debate with no further artificial boundaries dictated and the guiding philosophy of the original definition-maker in this subject appears to be humanist in nature, pro bono publico, an attempt to relieve the social and economic problems of less fortunate populations. Ironically, Fiction States that have been implemented so far (the foremost example being the European Union) have definitely not been integrations of poverty-stricken or failed nations but have instead been parasitical in nature; combinations that capture the wealthiest nations where society works well and all utility infrastructure has been built. If a Fiction State proposal is to appropriate and rule what is already there, that is surely a power-grab, a coup or conquest benefitting only the employees of the organisation that assumes authority. Therefore, under this wide definition, a Fiction State proposal can be a force for positive change (optimal for a higher proportion of the population by contrast with the previous failed system) or, caveat emptor, it may be a polite proposal for the grand theft of a population’s assets (the same productive system under different governance, optimal only for the new rulers). An internationally accepted formula may be necessary to better identify Fiction States, the good from the parasitical, on a scale that makes these proposals easier for the public to understand before they commit their lives to them.

When deciding whether a Fiction State proposal should be supported or suspected, what should an acid test look like? At first thought, I would suggest: 1. Is the quality of life (economic or freedom starting point) for this population unbearably low? (i.e. the bottom of the UN Human Development Index). This tells us whether the unstated intention is to benefit the population or just the new leadership. 2. Is property law working or dysfunctional in the previous system? 3. Is the justice system equitably applied in the previous system (ditto for the proposal)? 4. Does the population give majority consent for this new system to be applied to them? This avoids the scenario of a national leader signing their legal consent (or surrender) to takeover when the population strongly opposes this change and will strive to undermine the system later (e.g. the UK Prime Minister signing the Maastricht Treaty with 62–68% public opposition [MORI Ipsos polling]; the UK Prime Minister signing the Lisbon Treaty with 92% public opposition [MORI Ipsos polling of key marginals]; Quisling signing over the rule of Norway to Germany). 5. Long-term viability, e.g. the system may operate well with an influx of productive young pioneers (i.e. disproportionately working males < 30), but will it still be fit for purpose when that wave of population ages and requires social care (i.e. the Singapore effect, with tax in surplus for 30 years then negative for 30 years)?

The current definition of a Fiction State is acceptable as it would otherwise become unwieldy, but keeping it short avoids mention of the essential factors that need to be in place to make a Fiction State viable and sustainable: A desperate need for improvement. Ruling out something even worse than the current situation. Establishing true consent from the population. Overcoming vested interests. Economic and demographic sustainability over time. Thought should therefore be applied to two arenas: Successful design / Successful implementation with popular acceptance (implementation includes the prior-calculation of long-term destabilisation threats and responses, sensu Hari Seldon).

Above all things, we should prioritise an understanding of whether the ruled population are genuinely to be represented in government and benefitting to a higher degree under a new system or whether an illusory confidence trick to benefit others is underway. As Goethe said, “There are none so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe themselves to be free.” The priority should not be that the proposed Fiction State happens but that it faithfully fulfils its duty to serve the population to their best advantage. If a majority of the population believe that the new Fiction State is self-serving and not optimal for them, they should be a passive mechanism to close it down enshrined in legislation.

1.1.2 Shortest time interval

This fairly strict definition applies new emphasis on “the shortest time interval”, which suggests either (i) an imperative and imminent historical deadline that isn’t obvious to this reader or (ii) integration sooner means positive growth can begin without delay, or (iii) cynically, it is not worth doing if the results do not manifest within the author’s personal timeline (the Rameses fallacy). I anticipate that ‘sooner = quicker positive change’ is the desired answer here, but a cynic might sense the speaker envisioning his place within or leading a future structure. Ambition should convey no positive or negative connotation about a person’s suitability to lead as it provides no evidence on their intention toward public good. However, the intention of central figures in a state (whether their work was for personal status/gain or whether it was for an improvement in the human condition) is often a reliable predictive guide to a system flourishing, or future misery for the population. Historically, it is also worth noting that persons capable of overturning systems, e.g. with the intention of relieving poverty, have in many cases relinquished control of the new state to leaders with entirely different, self-serving motivations.

“The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarise: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” Douglas Adams.

The stipulation of the shortest implementation time should only be applied with maximum safeguards, balancing the benefits of a head start (a slight positive) versus an increased risk of losing control to a third party who may run the state as their own private bank account, a catastrophic failure.

1.1.3 At least two nation-states

The wording “at least two nation-states” contrives to exclude two opportune scenarios in state-building:

A. Starting with a blank canvas.

o sea-steading on international waters

o occupying new volcanic islands in international waters

o purchasing land from existing states

o terraforming sand or ice deserts

o locations anywhere not on the surface layer of the planet e.g. subterranean, submerged

o location in planetary orbit or Asgardia (a proposed micronation on the Moon)

o free-floating arks in outer space

B. Bureaucratic legal miscalculations leading to unclaimed niches.

o Sealand (an economic enterprise with almost no resident population)

o Liberland (a libertarian, minimum-state-sector project intended for a population of thousands)

In this sense, the current definition steers toward conjoining/merging existing modern economies (carrying strong vested interests) and steers away from exciting innovations and opportunism which push against much lower resistance. Fiction States are the subject here, but that format is not the only option to solve the problem of failed systems. Even small-scale attempts should not be disregarded as their experimentation provides prototype data which can be scaled up or incorporated into another system, where developments can be evidenced to confer an advantage, even under a different format.

2. Introducing the big question; handshakes from antiquity

The Fiction State is a recent variation of a game invented in the Classical Period of Greek history, toward the end of the Golden Age of Athens. Essentially, it is the theoretical planning and philosophy of a new and better kind of integrated state for citizens to live in. The intention differs from utopia (systematic development of humanity to the highest level imaginable) as it must also be practical. Utopia stems from the Greek ‘O Topia’, meaning ‘no such place’, in other words Sir Thomas Moore identified utopia as a place so good that it can’t exist (he was punning). The challenge, if we assume imagination is confined to the realistic, is to make the new state’s design optimal for a higher proportion of the population than has been the case in previous systems. This lower expectation remains within scope of what is achievable.

The criteria or measure for what ‘optimal’ actually looks like and whether what you have to do to reach it is morally acceptable will differ between observers, their experiences, priorities and disciplines, e.g. the assumption it will relieve poverty may be reached at the expense of ensuring safety or by denuding the environment; maximising governance efficiency may be achieved by ending democracy. It is an expectation that the principles of the system’s founders will be evident in the political and economic design, although it is highly improbable that their principles will be compatible with every single citizen’s opinions or needs, so hard choices must be made about the proportion of the population to disenfranchise from the designed future; and whether dissenters are free to leave and integrate into another system, which has not always been the case in state planning after revolutions and invasions around the world.

Not everyone will benefit from change. If the sub-optimal group is too large at the start, or even 50/50, the state will not be implemented or it will be enforced with only partial consent. This challenges its founders to either (i) adapt the philosophical design into a half-way state and thus weaken it, or (ii) deliberately disguise what is being done until it is too late, in turn sacrificing public trust and fuelling resentment, passive opposition, political opposition, external criticism etc. when the public find out what has been done to them.

Historically, many states facing public criticism and resistance have moved to a fear-based system to protect the centre, in turn losing the moral high-ground before collapsing or being liberated (not necessarily by better systems). For past errors such as these oppressions not to be repeated, which would be obtuse now that we have enough examples to observe the pattern, the founders of Fiction States will be required to invent something new and different to governance systems that have been attempted before. If these thinkers cannot provide clear improvement and the idea does not gain popular traction, the safe option of conforming to the most successful of the previous systems (e.g. single state democracy) remains the logical holding pattern as it can be expected to cause the least harm (many understand and can control its foibles).

In this sub-category, specifically using the wording ‘Fiction State’, there are prohibitions that the more generalised Greek school of Plato did not limit itself by: (1) an amalgamation of existing nation states; and (2) quick completion. As these prohibitions appear arbitrary, when a Fiction State is proposed, good process oversight would be served by asking whether these guidelines should be rigidly adhered to or could be removed, if they represent obstacles to better design and are used to justify a short-cut obtaining public consent.

Even in classical times, the end goal of creating such a model was to implement ideas in the real world. Early-stage interest in Fiction States also indicates this form to be dominantly economics-led (to optimise wealth gain, distribution and consumption, to alleviate poverty), with reduced focus on delivering higher ideals — as favoured by classical thinkers. In this sense, both democratic philosophers of old and modern economists are idealists but, in the design of a state, they attach greater importance to their own discipline: Economic thinkers / Freedom and ideals thinkers.

This assessment discusses critical errors previously made in the design and implementation of new states and supra-national governance which have led to system failure, with a view to learn lessons and not repeat them. It is contentious to give a finding in what is effectively an extended abstract (couched for a non-academic audience) but assigning equal weight to the economy and freedoms, with checks and balances, might be the way to assure structural resilience and also gain popular acceptance.

If this paper only identified past mistakes and what can be learned from them, it would miss an opportunity to posit a new and potentially workable contribution to the Fiction States debate. Therefore, this paper proposes a non-geographical decentralised system of citizenship that would create an international Fiction State without replacing any of the existing nation states, would draw from existing states only their citizens who actively apply to join it, would remove the need to replace anything, would re-drawing no borders, would meet least resistance from vested interests, would be agile and competitive, would have no internal opposition as people could un-link and which could be joined or quitted by anyone in the world at any time. This proposal solves the issues of higher ideals, consent and opposition (3 out of 4) but the economics of state revenue still need to be configured. Previous systems have approached this from the other end (solving economics, 1 of 4).

3. What prompted you to search for the phrase ‘Fiction State’?

3.1 The wrong way to build a network

If you have a top 100 university email address, you may have received unsolicited messages on the subject of Fiction States and that’s prompted you to use your search skills, so here you are. As the enthusiastic individual behind those emails uses mass-circulation methods which include no option to unsubscribe, institutional mail filters will probably disable any links and divert these messages to spam. Although the credibility of the field of Fiction States has been tarnished at the introduction stage by this unwise choice of marketing tool, I would caution against writing this subject off as the ideas we are asked to work on could inform or become the future organisational model of our species.

3.2 Balancing planning for the public good against the risk of endorsement

Surely this is a topic with which we should engage intellectually — but we can do that by contributing to a pool of ideas in a debate and not confusing that field of thought (building an open resource) with academic endorsement of any individual’s agenda. Indeed, I also want this subject to be thought about in detail by the right people and will help any catalyst do that by propagating the discussion. I can see the originator of this definition would like bright people to become involved but it also seems probable that he will have trouble recruiting the highest quality original thinkers, philosophers and polymaths, not because they are narrow-minded or resistant to change (a predictable accusation when rebuffed) but as they are already recognised and generally keep a reputational distance between themselves and someone for whom they might appear to be indirectly providing endorsement. When someone has prior experience of people wanting to use one’s success to assist their careers, people are understandably careful about their turn of phrase.

It appears the enthusiastic originator’s response to this slow engagement has been to cast his net wider (spam) in hope of bringing in some unknown bright contributors. Sadly, that methodology will probably also appeal to less capable or unorthodox elements and fantasists, which in turn explains the precaution that applicants who want to join the team are screened. It seems fair to remind everyone that you can input ideas on this subject without registering to join anything.

To solve this problem, I would suggest the creation of an online forum that may be joined anonymously. Contributors would then be able to supply experienced thinking for peer review on this open subject (before they are ready to link their names and reputations to radical ideas or to the cult of one personality) without revealing their statuses or place of work. An example of this should be the Intellectual Dark Web Community, although very few people using this platform at the time of writing (founded March 2019) appear to be intellectuals or have shown themselves to be capable of objectively assessing challenging ideas. Hope remains that this site or another forum similar to it will develop into an anonymous space for genuinely bright thinkers to thoroughly test proposals without reputational risk.

3.2.1 Subjectively then…

I emphasise my interest in this subject and notes herein are not intended to express support for anyone’s programme as, if successful, a new Fiction State has the potential to confer considerable power and authority onto well-placed founder figures. I would also like to be able to discuss the concept of Fiction States in general, both in a favourable and critical terms, without supra-national political and economic consolidation being my goal. I write from the United Kingdom, which is a comparatively successful combination state of this type (aligning multiple countries) but I would categorise most other attempts (e.g. USSR, EU) as flawed designs when applying the same criteria, e.g. questioning they meet the criterion of consent to rule. My personal inclination is toward building democracies, although many people (ironically defining themselves as liberals) view democracy as the problem preventing the implementation of their ideals.

3.3 What to do? How to engage with the process?

Rather than ignore the email approach which interests me or respond to it directly and risk precipitating a long chain of on-the-record correspondence, I have chosen to write an essay with which I hope to present ideas which haven’t been addressed properly by either utopian (impractical) or so-called eutopian (practical) propositions before. I encourage others to also work on Fiction States, from their own experiences and perspectives (e.g. I would not be the right person to contribute ideas for a religious state as that is not my experience, but do need to understand and incorporate knowledge from beyond my field). Whether people collaborate or just say their piece shouldn’t matter, as long as they are heard from.

4. A declaration of preconceptions

4.1 The tipping point for a critic to become a supporter

This author’s existing position is that until a better governance system is devised, the country (the single, self-governing nation state) should remain the internationally accepted unit of governance and diplomacy (the antithesis of Fiction States). Previous attempts to merge countries into new structures have been imposed, mismanaged and often necessity has moved them away from the original plan and into oppressive areas, which that risks misery for untold numbers of people if the design cannot be guaranteed to stay on-track and be passive — but, having made that damning assessment, if these exemplars’ errors are recognised and not repeated, the next iteration could still be successful (defined by being comparatively more optimal in the majority opinion of the general population than their rating of earlier configurations). Although not opposed to change, that change has to benefit a high majority of the ruled population and not be implemented mainly to provide jobs for a ruling cabal.

4.2 Should we step away from the natural process that delivered us to this point of development?

In evolutionary terms, you have the freedom to monitor almost two hundred governance methodologies (e.g. the home-grown systems of planet Earth’s 199 individual nations, if they happened to all use different approaches). The natural pattern in both animal body design (genetic mutations’ influence on survival) and governance systems is that one design pulls ahead, then the others have the option to stay as they are or copy it. In biology, once a mutation occurs, the animal or plant cannot remove it and restore an earlier design, so less optimal designs are doomed to extinction. By contrast, in a human society’s governance system, we do have the option to change, reverse and swap or even be a stateless anarchy where we try countless different pathways. All you need to do to make any of those things happen is pass legislation. We could all choose to follow a strictly evolutionary model and, for example, decide what system to switch to at the end of a regular 12 month cycle.

However, in a supra-national authority, which includes the Fiction States definition, all the eggs are in one basket and there is only one trajectory for the entire population, risking success or failure for all, opposing innovation and cancelling companion-system experimentation. We should be naturally reluctant to remove the advantage of testing multiple pathways and learning from the best unless the proposed single system has strong democratic safeguards and can be replaced agreeably before an abysmal failure if the majority of the ruled believe it to be failing (even if that is against the interests of the leadership). In short, it must be agile and institutions must allow re-configuration.

4.2.1. What happens when the population turn against ‘all eggs in one basket’ Fiction State governance?

Great design is only the first step. We must anticipate that people will want to hijack a new state and turn it to work more to their own advantage, a vehicle for them but not what it was intended to be. Public protection must be designed into the plan. Consider the Senate-focussed (decision-making learned forum) state design of ancient Rome, and how later Roman Emperors transitioned the seat of power into their personal hands, leaving the population vulnerable to an individual’s prejudices and whimsies. No safeguard existed to challenge that person’s power in cases where they went gradually insane (Caligula, Nero).

To date, supra-national states which have lost public confidence have fallen back on discipline, rigidity, tighter laws, removing checks and balances on power, over-ruling election results and attaching stigmatising labels to anyone who calls for democratic change (e.g. traitors, far-right, commies, radicals). This always fails in the longer term because, when the majority of the public think a state is going wrong (whether that perception is correct or not), rumours of decline become a self-fulfilling prophecy when people cash out assets and then a critical number dis-associate themselves from supporting its officers and the branches of state control. Confidence is essential for continuation, which is why all states try to couch themselves in the visual trappings of permanence, imposing stone buildings and the architecture of empire. If a population become disinclined to obey, no governing system ever devised can continue to operate. The incumbent also generally takes on a negative aspect (owning the mistakes of the regime) as compared to the liberator, who is flawless because they haven’t had an opportunity to make their mistakes yet. In short, the contract between supra-national authority and the population must be respected by the state because, even if the leadership were to remove all of a population’s rights, the people in significant numbers can still stop the state functioning by simply withdrawing their obedience.

An alternative mechanism to respond to unpopularity could be a ‘pressure release valve’ set into a Fiction State’s design by legislation, that if a critical threshold of no-confidence is reached in a public survey at the end of each ten year cycle, an unstoppable public consultation process will be convened to allow, that’s ‘down to up’ decision-making, the population to impose changes to the governance system — or its replacement in toto.

4.3 The kind of countries included in Fiction State proposals should be considered when deciding whether to support

The advantage of writing this in 2019 is we centuries of hindsight and have seen both successes and abuses of power. This is not the first generation in which Fiction State-style fast political and economic unity between multiple countries has been attempted (often under duress). It is not the first time centralisation and scaling-up has been imposed without any lawful mechanism to reverse that incremental trend. As mentioned before, I suggest that a new Fiction State should not be parasitical on the success of existing states (e.g. combinations of states in the top quarter of the UN Human Development Index — the most developed countries), assuming their powers, replacing their flags, claiming their glories, demanding tribute and spending their assets. If the hypothetical proposal is for the new state to rule the UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, Norway, the US etc., it is harder to persuade people of the benefit to those populations as they are doing alright anyway. This opportunism will bring maximum resistance and deliver least gain to those populations. If the proposal is to replace the governance system of the combined Gulf nations, it could be a force to establish a more equitable framework of human and gender rights or it could be an indirect attempt to dominate petroleum assets, so that be argued either way (uncertain intention).

To earn support as a force for good, a new Fiction State should instead aim to replace the disastrously-managed states at the bottom of the Index, where introduction of a new system would also meet the least public resistance and have the potential to make the most positive impact on public health and lifestyles. The Fiction State should bring prosperity to a place where it does not exist, not spend what is there. This approach is logic, not leftism. Whether it is a big state or small state system (a slider setting between high taxation with many centralised services versus low taxation with many privatised services) is a debate in which I can weigh both sides and bring no preconceptions before deciding whether to lend support.

4.4 What are the goals for your new design? Should you return to your assumptions and review them?

Progress is change but not all change is progress. Although I have taken a critical line on Jordan Peterson’s conceptual reasoning in the past, I will cite now an observation where I do agree with him. Peterson was discussing Marx and what people might assume from his work, that the goal should be to continually progress toward living in a state of comfort; for the highest proportion of us as possible. Is the pursuit of maximum comfort a sensible goal? Is it something that the design of a new society should be expected to encourage? What Peterson said was “that waiting on a feather bed all day and peeling grapes is a pretty meaningless existence.” The alternative suggestion is that we need stimulating activity beyond what is comfortable. You don’t learn anything new (skills, experiences) until you leave your comfort zone and, as you master those new areas, your circle of comfort then expands and you should pack away your anxiety to venture outside it again. Our socially-aware societies of the modern western world tend to rule everything out by default for safety reasons or so as not to offend anyone at all or make them feel uncomfortable. The potential for someone to get finger burns is not a reason to stop everyone cooking. Free speech makes people uncomfortable, so will this become an area for regulation in your design for a future society based on the more comfort principle, or do you instead allow balanced leeway into unregulated areas that do not prioritise comfort? Should choosing to access those areas (e.g. risk being insulted or over-worked) be strictly opt-in, so the vulnerable in society can be left untroubled by discomfiting ideas and tasks? There’s a scale here and the planner of a new fiction state will be the one who moves the slider setting to the place of their choosing.

4.5 Widening your sources of design inspiration

“Socialism always starts with a utopian vision of an egalitarian future, then ends up with people eating their own pets.” This is a popular quote from UK politics, but it has been attributed to more than one person. I think the problem with the veracity of this statement is that the word ‘socialism’ has not been qualified, e.g. “Utopian socialism always starts…”. This is probably close to the truth for some utopian socialism and for the extremes of communism but it isn’t reasonable to apply it to mild socialist popular views like the need for a universal health system and a comprehensive welfare safety net paid for from taxes (latterly from borrowing). What I’m saying here is that, whether you position your identity as right or left or something else, it is very easy to be dismissive of a thousand different policies that have originated from ‘the other side’ with one sweeping gesture. In the design of a new fiction state, the imagination behind it should be invited to dismiss all preconceptions — but not forget the reasons why policies have gone awry and alter them. This is a feedback loop. Don’t miss opportunities in re-configuring other people’s ideas, even discredited ones.

4.6 The human need for belonging

I think most human beings have a need for belonging. Across the last thousand years, people built their communities and sense of identity around the foundation of community belief in a god. As belief in a god has diminished in the majority of advanced societies, nothing has really replaced it. Science is good but it doesn’t fill that hole because it has no essence of our need for spiritual and intangible belonging to something greater than our daily reality. People are therefore becoming ‘atomised’, in other words lacking a sense of belonging and purpose, isolated as individuals in a confusing sea of the mind. I prefer that but most people are driven to despair by it. The thing is, if some new or old group pops up in front of the atomised population and says “We can offer you a sense of belonging. We can give you a purpose”, then people really do swarm into their waiting arms. This, I think, is the reason why identity politics and hundreds of little tribes have arisen (recycling, vegan, Leave, Remain, IDW, #Metoo, Proud Boys, Antifa). The reason people are so angry and become fiercely dedicated to these tribes in a way that isn’t proportionate isn’t because of the threat but because of the very real fear that if they left the movement, they would again be alone, atomised, with no sense of purpose and belonging. From our evolutionary history, a sense of belonging (group support) was selected in favour of because it increases the probability that our genetics will survive long enough to be reproduced. Survival doesn’t care what concept we gather and co-operate around (god, recycling, whatever), just as long as we are compelled to do it.

What I’m getting at with this idea is that a future planned society, even if the planners are agnostic, may actually need to install either a secular form of god or some equally centrally-approved pillar involving spiritual mystical elements (see Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series) to satisfy the inherited human need for belonging and identity, i.e. to prevent the public moving their support to destabilising and antagonistic micro-movements.

Even atheists should consider the benefits of instituting an un-scientific role of this kind as there are important and useful things it delivers for the population. For example, people need a way to mark and announce important stages in their lives such as coming of age, marriage and funerals. The religion delivers this important social service. When someone is bereaved or something else bitterly unfair and depressing has happened to them, they are inconsolable by secular standards (giving them a cake won’t make them happy), so they need something deeper that promises to make sense of the unknown and mortality. That promise doesn’t need to be true but helps to restore their mental health by presenting a solution to the unknowable which can’t be delivered by anything reality-based or data-driven. If you don’t believe in a god, that shouldn’t be a reason to leave a unifying character of this type out of your design. It is probably best to keep religion separate to state, i.e. not invite their followers to take control of the system.

5. What kind of thinker are you? Economic or freedom?

I also hope to re-frame the planning of Fiction States away from purely Aristolean economic thought and measures of success (characterised by the simplistic phrase “It’s the economy, stupid!”) because these systems always fail when they mismatch with human nature and then number planners have no idea why the scheme collapsed. It’s not that Aristotle and the economists were wrong when they were conditioned by training to think that anything which can’t be measured, timed, counted or otherwise quantified, which doesn’t have energy or mass, should be completely ignored like a ghost. However, economists fail to take into account that many intangible constructs and abstracts are real human influences too and can be the deciding factors in whether a governance system works in reality as well as on paper.

For example, it is impossible to measure, quantify or even to describe with any meaningful accuracy the concept of ‘quality’, but it’s absence is evident because if you were to remove that attribute from art, there would be no difference between fine art and a child’s hand-slap painting.

Abstracts and constructs (especially freedom) must be included in the design of any new Fiction State or it will be a failure because people will naturally resist methods which conflict with human nature. Democracy, beauty, identity (real, not artificial and imposed) and belonging are all so much ignis fatuus to an economic thinker, but we must step back and realise that the measurable economy is probably ranked lower in the public’s hierarchy of priorities than the contradicting priority “It’s freedom, stupid!”

An institution (a university for example) is not its buildings, corridors, lamps, steel and glass — a popular misconception. It ceases to exist if you remove the people and the community of minds. Some people carry this belonging with them as identity and some reject it, but are still in the counted population with that label. For example, if a person is from Finland and living in Iceland, they are counted in both populations. The geographical position and infrastructure of an institution is simply where it has chosen to congregate because we feel it should be anchored somewhere in the mind. It needs to be solid, a place you can photograph to show its reality. The actual address we assign to that entity is really a variable because it is really a shared understanding in people’s minds. We recognise the genius loci, the spirit of place, the inspiring goodwill which allows and enthuses everything from Cambridge University, MIT, Space X, NASA, Apple, the Parthenon and the Court of King Arthur. If a Fiction State fails to welcome and honour these intangibles, it will have to deal with opposing forces (some ancient and deeply ingrained) which the public already do believe in and may feel have been slighted by the new system’s arrogance. In some systems (often the atheist far-left: Khmer Rouge, Stalinism), the clock has been re-set to ‘Year 1’, to amputate all the reputations and beliefs that have existed before, including religion. This stops a population from ‘hedging their bets’, adopting a halfway house between two systems and keeping the option open to go back. As Henry Ford said, “History is bunk”. History also tells us that attempts to delete constructs from societies across the last 200 years have all failed. Cultural history, even the name of a god that cannot be spoken, can be passed unofficially and will find a way to surface when the regime expires or moderates.

Returning to the difference, it seems impossible to reconcile the measuring systems of an economic thinker with those of a higher ideals thinker because they are using different criteria in different measuring systems. What works perfectly in the air does not work underwater. To comprehend both positions and find mutually compatible solutions, one must be a polymath; an intellectual rarity who (by not focussing all of their career’s effort into one subject) might not have distinguished themselves as leading any particular field. Indeed, the educational system blocks polymaths by insisting they choose either the arts or the sciences when entering higher education, when they had the capacity to excel in both. However, a polymathic thinker sees the linkages between multiple fields and is more aware that fields of academic separation are a convenient artifice at the higher levels because they merge (e.g. mathematics, philosophy and theology). There is linkage between biology and income tax (incentive, selfishness and altruism underpin both).

To labour the point, an hypothetical purely rigorous and inflexible economic thinker would accept living in slavery (loss of an unmeasurable intangible) if they had one more penny coin in their pocket than they would have kept otherwise. Conversely, a rigorous democratic or freedom thinker would make any sacrifice (wealth, their life) to ensure people do not have those principles stolen from them. Economists, statesmen and people near the un-empathic far end of the autistic spectrum are more likely to think the quantifiable is the only measure that matters, yet the public disagree and still value abstracts, constructs and higher ideals like democratic representation and not being treated by the state as units of livestock.

The public may sense a ruling group’s arrogance when everyday human needs and construct-anchoring points like these are downplayed and ignored in the management of the state. They sense something has been left out of the calculation and therefore distrust the people making that calculation as they ‘don’t think like us’.

Economics is undoubtedly the academic field which has the most influence on this subject’s planning and in the measurement of success (the presentation of administrative data), so the seed of a design’s failure can be sown very early, when planners and leaders disregard or show contempt for the population’s voice. Setting superior and inferior tribes (the so-called ‘us and them’ of ruler and ruled) is a design flaw, so whether true or not, the ruling group must not appear to disregard the population as ignorant and their mental inferiors. An opinion or suggestion for change should be considered according to what it is and how much support it has in the population, not dismissed because of who has said it or whether an opposition ideology supports it. It is a maxim that potentially anyone can be wrong, so when a ruling group’s policy is in opposition to a majority of the public, they should not press blindly forward and should instead consider the possibility their direction may indeed be wrong. This requires a mechanism, a clearly-communicated safeguard. In reality, the modern trend is for supra-national leadership to do the opposite and try to remove public approval safeguards (democratic influence) from the system. This trend increases tension rather than addressing it and also removes the main options to protest against unfairness peacefully (the law, the vote), logically signposting people to the alternative and less-desirable options of passive (lawful) and violent (unlawful) resistance. Increasing public anger and channelling ordinary people toward violence, if that is the only remaining way for them to be heard, seems astonishingly counter-productive (see Louis XVI and Nicholas II).

A regular follower of media channels will probably have noticed that major political events are linked by broadcasters to fluctuations in economic indicators. These demonstrate impact in a real-time, measurable and comparative way. A decision is taken by a government representative, then the report goes on to mention that markets reacted in such a way — as if indicating that the decision was correct or incorrect, as if economics is all that matters. For example, an event is postponed, the value of the currency goes up, therefore implying that the postponement was the correct decision. The currency value rising will also reduce export sales, so the same data can be used to show both success and failure. This kind of economic measure of correctness is not a good guideline to right and wrong in ethics. Although approaching extremis to illustrate this point, if a society announced the forthcoming murder of every elderly member of the population, the currency value would rise strongly as that crime against humanity would remove the burden of state pensions.

Entering this arena, an economist’s antagonist can be a positive influence because they serve reason — listening to them might make an economist’s system work when applied to real people. Additionally, as any economist will tell you, every currency will eventually collapse, therefore the design of a new Fiction State should be resilient enough to perpetuate through a future failure of economics and, to do so, it must have a strong foundation of shared and trusted inclusive ideals to fall back on.

6. What does the history of the new micro-nation or new Fiction State (>1 country) tell us?

6.1 Historical definitions and attempts

6.1.1. Plato

The broader idea of founding the perfect state from first principles has been in existence since 380 BC and it is still relevant today, particularly the thorny question of the legitimacy and conditioning of the ruling officers of state. In context, when Plato wrote The Republic, he had just experienced 3 years of the Peloponnesian War, the renown Pericles had just died, Athens had effectively collapsed as a functional city state and democracy by 404 BC (when he was only 23) and Plato, a democrat from a well-connected political family, had to contend with his own cousins supporting oligarchy. Indeed, he placed his own family from the democratic side into his fictional state as central characters.

He knew things could be done differently as stories were still circulating of the Minoan culture on Thera (Santorini) and at Knossos, where the population seemed content, prosperous and, for example, it has been noted by Sir Arthur Evans that no depiction of tools or acts of war can be found in the Minoan artistic legacy.

The essential point is, the city state that Plato had been raised to believe was the most advanced on Earth had… failed. Its governance system, based on intellectual reasoning and piety, was overcome by the combined forces of plague, hostility to Athenian expectation of tribute from other city states, over-indulgence and military ambition (the disastrous invasion of Syracuse). Apart perhaps from plague, all of those factors were avoidable, so society’s failure was a systemic human choice, predominantly greed. This moment was a crucible of change where the population, ordinary members of the public as well as philosophers, discoursing in the market place attempted to rally support for new ways of doing things and aired brand new concepts of governance, the sýstima.

There are two clear differences between the Greeks and any modern consideration of governance system building. Firstly, the Greeks started with a blank canvas — and we can’t (at least not on the land surface of the Earth). Secondly, they didn’t theorise but actually went out and did it. When a philosopher gathered enough like-minded followers and they set sail to start a new society under new principles, they usually relocated these families to an empty part of the map where they would not be disturbed. Several attempts of this kind floundered when land which had appeared empty for most of the first year was entered by seasonally nomadic peoples such as the Scythians and Parthians who, upon discovering new communities on lands they considered to be theirs, subsequently exterminated them. In this century, our starting point has to be fully populated countries, which means a new Fiction State is not an act of creation but instead requires system replacement, the ending of vested interests from the old system and the deletion or assimilation of deeply embedded constructs (flags, borders, titles, rivalries, history, culture). In short, people can accept you building a new home for them but will resist the idea of you demolishing their existing home for that promise. The Greeks didn’t have that problem as there were ownership gaps.

6.1.2. Notes from more recent centuries

Returning to the most basic state system of one type of citizen ruling others, single person governance (king, emperor), where a figurehead/individual can make any law that suits them (or is above the law) has eventually become unacceptable to most populations. Therefore, newer state developments have separated the ‘king’ figure from law-making, handed law-making power to an assembly and in some cases placed another assembly of elders above that chamber to require an independent approval safeguard. After that, incapacity in an individual cannot jeopardise the population. Additionally, by separating power, the job of king was no longer something to fight over because the power-wielding incentive had been removed (soft power only), so that individual could live out their life in relative safety and adoration. In essence, power had moved a rung or two down the ladder. Any configuration proposal can be made for a new Fiction State but, at this point in human development, any plan which gave unlimited law-making power over a state or a vital subject area (e.g. military, revenue) to an unelected individual would most probably be unacceptable (unaccountability, risk of inconsistency).

There are always notable exceptions. This guideline intended to avoid ‘the divine right of kings’ has been contravened since 1993 by the appointment of EU Commissioners, who make laws (directives, dictats) and have not been elected by anyone. Generally, this exception has been made possible by diverting public attention away from where law-making power is held. If people feel they have voted for a representative in Europe’s Parliament, they feel satisfied, not realising that no one from that Parliament is in the law-making government of the European Union (only unelected people are).

What we have learned here is that an unelected (presidents can be either) state figurehead can be retained in a Fiction State design, as an honorary position can be acceptable — but only if law-making authority resides in a different chamber or governance, i.e. an assembly appointed by the population, not friends appointed by the figurehead. This is not an opinion; it is an essential public safeguard and it also builds confidence and stability into the design.

At the advent of the last century, we inherited public governance systems and attitudes toward qualification to hold office that were optimal for the Bronze Age (the strongest favoured their own). Many hierarchies and prohibitions were also derived from religious faith (supernatural belief over-ruling data and evidence). Some countries are still governed by these systems, which provides an advantage to the rulers because any push-back against them can also be spun as resistance to god.

In our shared history, we find a high proportion of leaders who were drawn from the most successful members of fighting classes, i.e. we found the person with the most proven capability to take people’s lives and we put them in charge of everyone’s lives. Genius.

Deleting all the baggage that has gone before and planning a new and better governance system for the benefit of all is, to a creative mind, a dreamlike position (see, e.g., John Lennon’s Imagine, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation). It may or may not be a coincidence that popular interest in new ways of running society spikes at points when old empires are failing or directly following catastrophic wars. Making a system that is just, optimal for a high majority (a utopia), feeds itself without external dependence or aggressive expansion and generates just citizens by design is the primary challenge here, but acceptance by the governed population which permits systemic sustainability is also essential to prevent prolapse. When you don’t have permission to try a new system, resistance ensues and then the new society switches to a fear-based system ‘to protect itself against the humans’, who are seen by the leaders as the main problem to defeat.

The alternative/contrary force that works in favour of the state is ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, where the population or next generation of that population begin to support the system because that is all that they know or have ever known. However, de-humanising populations to raw material status (even with a second generation’s agreement) in order to control them (the extreme becomes realistic) can be the logical outcome of a ruling class not establishing public consent to rule in the very beginning. This simple step is often ignored because people tend to say ‘no’ when the outcome is unknown, so the people changing the system simply don’t ask the question. The European Union, for example, assumed public acceptance without asking the population (or having national governments ask) in many countries, a decision which positioned the institution in the public mind in such places as an unwelcome force, a conqueror who takes what you have and doesn’t care what you think, setting a pattern of resentment which may grow in time to overthrow or force the re-design of the state (e.g. either to replace the institution with a democracy or to build law-making democracy into the institution by treaty change). In this example or object lesson of implementation failure, most of the emotional resistance to the institution can be designed out or removed by (a) obtaining consent before implementation; and (b) scaling-up the elected supra-national parliament to become the highest law-making government (abolishing the Commission). This satisfies the test of establishing public consent at the beginning, renewing public consent at regular intervals and it establishes the safeguard of public accountability, which currently does not exist in that institution.

Many thinkers have designed a workable plan for part 1 (design) but have then gone on to fail on part 2 (acceptance) because they make the error of assuming the population they propose to control will be delighted with their idea and have no doubt but to strive for its success. This is a serious delusion, unless the previous system was exceptionally oppressive. Marx, in simplistic terms, aimed to change who owned the means of production from the wealthy minority to the individuals who actually did the work, making a reward system optimal for a greater proportion of society (in theory). Not taking human nature into account, Marx failed to anticipate the workarounds people would inevitably make to his vision. No designer of an open human system can expect humans to contradict their evolutionary programming; they will selfishly favour the survival of their own and family genetics ahead of other people’s (we give medals for altruism precisely because it is against our instinct), he did not anticipate that if people in difficult jobs are paid the same as those in easy jobs then lack of incentive will cause people to slack off; and he also failed to comprehend institutional knowledge — that treating people as units, expecting a city-based unit to replace an agricultural worker to be equivalent in terms of productivity, although what we now call ‘institutional knowledge’ was lost. People are not standardised, not equivalent. With no incentive, they stop trying. People don’t share power if they don’t have to. The surprise that seems obvious to us but Marx utterly failed to foresee was that in a control system where the individual owns no property, the leader of the society de facto personally owns everything in the state, so is an absolute monarch by another name.

Whether people like it or not, the selfish instincts (work for the survival advantage of your own genetics) of human nature align naturally with the capitalist system because more control over the unknown, together with aspiration of a better lifestyle for yourself and your progeny are both incentives, so people try harder to be productive and earn more.

Additionally, property law (which underpins capitalism) is directly responsible for the global distribution of wealth we see today. Africa has been held back brutally for over 100 years because of the simple fact that people who own land cannot show a document to prove it, therefore they cannot evidence assets and borrow against those assets to invest in a business and become active in the economy. The good business idea dies in the dust when it isn’t funded, not because it is unworkable but because there is no collateral to offset the risk. Owning the land but unable to prove it is the same as having no collateral, so doing without the system of paper is economic poison to a system.

Equally, in the Muslim world, borrowing money is not permitted by scripture, so you can only turn a good idea into a business if you are financially successful already, which is completely counter-intuitive and inhibiting. Many utopias remove property law and borrowing in their design, without proposing a practical replacement, but these seemingly unpleasant capitalist elements are fertilisers that feed the crop just as much as working incentive.

The long-term sustainability of capitalism completely and ironically depends on its acceptance by the poor. For this to happen, the successful must pay a share of their financial gain to help those who need support (encumbered by either poor health, misfortune or poor capacity), the poor must have an equal say in society as the wealthy, mobility (education) must be possible to allow aspirational hope to those who want it and there must be justice. If capitalists do not address inequality, a threshold of desperation will be reached sooner and then capitalism is overthrown. It is in a capitalist supporter’s interest to reduce inequality (not just a socialist’s) to allow the system continue longer.

Capitalism faces two points of failure in the modern age: (i) If the wealthy find ways to avoid paying a proportion of their income to support the ‘have-nots’, who heavily outnumber them and should not be put under survival-level pressure to seize assets back (breaking the property law system, which all credit is based upon); and (ii) confidence must not be lost in credit and the value of money.

Again, simplistically, in a FIAT monetary system, where money (promissory notes) are printed but not secured on tangible assets, there is always more debt owing than there is money in existence in the system. Another way of saying this is that if you print the very first dollar or pound at a central bank and issue it at 10 percent interest, 1.10 debt has been created but only 1.0 exists in the whole world, therefore it is impossible for full repayment to ever be made. Compound interest on debt makes that gap between all there is and what’s owing ever larger.

The debts of a modern society are usually de-linked from something like the gold standard, so the promise to repay is a confidence issue, which can survive only as long as the population believe the delusion. Due to compound interest, the cumulative debt of society inevitably increases to a breaking point where confidence in money is lost (quickly) and all currency returns to its intrinsic value, famously said to be that of paper. This is the tipping point at which wealth can be re-set to a baseline, a traumatic crash for everyone (as happened in France with the Mississippi Scheme, in England with the South-Sea Bubble, in the Netherlands with tulip commodities, in Germany with the devaluation of the Reich mark, then in more recent decades with currencies in the former Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe. We shouldn’t hear this list from a position of comfort as currency collapse will happen to us, the question only being ‘when?’

In summary, the lesson from historical attempts at utopia is that for a society to work, the population has to believe in it. Designing the perfect system is not enough. Being optimal for the majority is not enough. People must buy-in. It is a challenge for the founder of a new society to design what confidence and belief in their plan should look like, how people can feel more like shareholders who want it to work (our plan) than unhappy customers, who don’t care (about your plan).

6.1.3. Proposed but unrealised Fiction States.

To quote Jaime P. Monfort’s essay in the Huffington Post: “The World’s two first fiction states are on the go, namely Balkanland (Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) and Reypública (Portugal and Spain)…” I believe this refers to trading links and working toward a potential tariff-free market as opposed to a single government for each of those two areas. It is worth noting that it would be impossible for Reypública to form as a self-governing Fiction State because both Portugal and Spain are already under unelected foreign rule as vassal states of the European Union — their highest form of law-making government is the same — the European Commission. Reypública can only happen upon the dissolution of the European Union as (i) a true Fiction State cannot be ruled by another Fiction State; that would be an illusion of where law-making government sits; and (ii) it is unrealistic to claim to be a republic if you are under unelected rule.

Another proposed configuration that never happened (which has the backing of the Adam Smith Institute) is the Fiction State of CANZUK, the political and economic merging of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. This is a fairly natural grouping of English-speaking nations in an advanced stage of societal and infrastructure development. If you were to offer the populations of those countries the opportunity to travel, work and live anywhere they want within those 6 countries (and 1 province), many and perhaps the majority would see this as a desirable opportunity. However, this may be criticised as a too close racial/cultural grouping or a club for wealthy countries. It could also be criticised as parasitic (appropriating existing success) because that particular collection of countries are not the priority for better governance.

7. The problem of replacing existing states

7.1 Always spoiling somebody’s party

Even if a Fiction State is more efficient than a current state or states, the architect faces the problem of convincing others to allow them to try it, to entrust them with millions of people’s livelihoods and fears until the new system is proven. This is why major changes in statehood are most often accepted at times when the previous system has failed or reached a stage of crisis, so there is little to lose.

There will also be an implementation investment for the outgoing systems to pay (figuratively, officers of state being asked to buy the rope for their own hanging) and, inevitably, there will be extensive and persuasive vested interests that have little incentive to comply with any change that ends their revenue stream. Compensation for all vested interests in terms of future earnings would be practically impossible, so someone has to lose out and they can be expected to use their connections to stop that happening.

7.1.2. State categories

Type / Efficient modern systems? / Optimal living for the majority?

1. Utopia / N/A — impractical to realise / N/A — impractical to realise

2. Fiction State (intended aim) / Yes / Yes

3. Grown State (functioning) / No / Yes

4. Grown State (dysfunctional) / No / No

5. Planned State (dysfunctional) / No / No

6. No State (dysfunctional) / No / No

The architect of the new plan may intend to convert multiple countries into a Fiction State but will encounter population resistance to change which will increase in significance relative to the existing level of functionality of the system being replaced. Logic suggests that changing two category 3 states into a Fiction State would face strong resistance but changing two category 6 states into a Fiction State should be a much smoother process.

Installing a combined Fiction State will be well-supported by finance, resources, technology and infrastructure if the state is already ranked high, but opposition will also be stronger in a high-ranked category from the public because they do not want to give up the physical and emotional landscape they and their forefathers have built. This obstacle may be tackled in several ways. The architects of the European Union, for example, chose to impose the new structure in collaboration with national leaders but without consulting national populations, unless consultation on treaty change was legally unavoidable (e.g. it is required in Ireland’s constitution).

Some supra-national authorities have arisen from revolutions and war but all of these methods (including taking control of populations without consultation) are forms of conquest. To achieve a new state without conquest, the historical option is no longer possible (marriage between dynasties of monarchs who personally own their nations) and so, assuming the conquest route is ethically invalid, a challenge to the Fiction State is to find another way to assimilate populations and territory with the permission of the people concerned (not just one leader).

7.2 Perceived geographical restriction

The definition of the Fiction State (replacing more than one current state) limits available options in people’s minds geographically, i.e. people may think simultaneous replacement would be insurmountably hindered through complexity if the two states do not already share a border. I think this is not a perception that Monfort intended but it is likely to persist unless it is explained to people that it is not a technological or legislative obstacle. In some cases, language, culture, genetic separation or ingrained historical feuding will mean neighbouring populations are genuinely incompatible, or a more compatible partner for them may be located on a different continent altogether. For example, England, Canada and New Zealand would have a high commonality score despite being far apart. China and Japan would have a low score, despite being closely situated, due to their history of opposition and parallel rather than shared heritage. Distance also provides a better configuration of trade links to diverse export markets as a distant partner you join has established regional links. We should therefore reduce our dependence on geographical pairings.

7.3. Imbalance: Why the opportunity, when it comes, may pass unnoticed

The opportunity for a successful Fiction State to have formed existed for a while in the years up to 1776. If the British Government had offered US colonists the option of a combined parliament sitting alternately in Washington D.C. and London, to which all citizens would be able to elect, the geopolitical struggle in the world may have had a very different complexion today. However, this was never suggested at the time because of a difference in the relative power and populations of the two sides, i.e. one had more wealth and head-count than the other, so naturally expected to be the dominant partner and not have to share power, despite being in decline, which led to a predictable crisis point and separation. History has since reversed that UK/US position in both wealth and numbers (which both vary over time with the rise and fall of empires), but the risk was never taken and may not be again when future opportunities arise because of an asset imbalance between two sides. Indeed, rich nations have lower per-capita birth rates and tend to normalise negative trade imbalances, so can be expected to switch asset positions with less developed countries over a few centuries. Historically, most empires collapse within 250 years — but the pace of social change and national debt has been increasing, so this cycle can be expected to accelerate unless new factors come into play (e.g. fusion energy).

7.3.1 Getting the timing right

Points when national and supra-national change becomes possible because ideas enjoy a better reception:

1. The functionality of the state and its governance is broken (organisational change must happen).

2. The site of the state is no longer inhabitable (sea-level rises, super-volcano, radiation).

3. The business model of the state is broken (e.g. dependent on an export commodity with falling demand — oil, tobacco, coffee, tourism, financial services? Historically — manual lacemaking).

4. Trust in politics has broken down; politicians no longer represent the public (a cyclical election decision?).

5. The state has fallen to a coup or threat (no choice given to the public).

6. The state has fallen to a revolution (no choice given to the leadership).

7. A niche has been identified — new legislation, land or technology making a new habitat accessible (e.g. international no-man’s land, a legal entity owner ceasing to exist, underwater, airborne, outer space).

8. A competing global system brings pressure (e.g. one that won’t trade with a state unless it transforms).

9. A significant new industry must be adapted to (e.g. artificial intelligence, public gene technology, nuclear fusion energy, food-printing technology).

10. A change in the belief system or religion (e.g. Ancient Rome under Constantine).

Although all of these scenarios are ongoing possibilities in this century, the breakdown of trust between populations and politicians to an extent never seen before at the global scale is, at the time of writing, a leading divisive factor. Whether people support a new system over an existing system will always be influenced by how attractive that proposal is in context, so it can also be intuitively assumed (with high probability) that the inclination to change is stronger when the many believe they have little to lose by ‘getting rid of’ their apparently corrupted system or leaders. By this logic, several countries’ populations are leaning farther than ever into a zone of low resistance to radical governance change and there are fewer geographic barriers to forming like-minded groups, i.e. internet use.

8. Integration object lessons of the recent past

8.1 The overall success of the integration of countries into the Fiction State of the European Union.

The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli (1513), Chapter V: Concerning the way to Govern Cities or Principalities which Lived Under their Own Laws before they were Annexed

“Whenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and interest, and does it utmost to support him; and therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.”

Monfort, J.P. wrote in 2016 that “The European Union is undoubtedly the best instance of a successful integration episode the World has seen since the conclusion of World War II.” This statement becomes less true over time. It was written in the year that the UK population was asked for the very first time if they wanted to be a member state of the European Union, answering no. The Union had never been as popular in the UK as the period when it was rejected (2016–2019).

An analogue might be if you asked native Tibetans if they endorse rule by the People’s Republic of China and go on to claim that ‘apart from them saying no, it was a successful integration’. Putting this in perspective, only 1 of 28 states has entered the leaving process for this attempted integration but after 23 (now 26) years undergoing a thorough programme of assimilation and re-education, if the conversion is still meeting majority resistance in some nations, along with proportionately high rejection in many others, it is definitely unsuccessful.

More recently, opinion poll sample groups (outliers?) have shown majority support to leave the European Union in Italy, Greece and the Netherlands, together with high minority opposition in both Sweden and Denmark. Time will tell if this structure becomes a sustainable integration as it currently stands or whether its components have to be re-designed to earn acceptability.

8.2. The first exception, an object lesson: The failure of the integration of (specifically) the United Kingdom into the Fiction State of the European Union

The British perspective is worth examining separately from the rest of the bloc because its population had a different experience to many other nations. It was also the first population to move toward freedom, democracy and independence. If a future Fiction State is going to be introduced successfully and encounter least resistance, it must learn from the European Union case not to repeat the critical errors made when attempting to integrate the United Kingdom. I suggest the reasons can be reduced to two fatal design flaws at the very beginning of the integration process (8.2.2 and 8.2.3).

8.2.1. Context

The United Kingdom had little or no reason to change its business model or to sacrifice its independence. It was the world’s 5th largest economy, heavily networked with trading arrangements (and extended family/social connections) with non-EU regions of the world. The UK was already part of a single trading area with continental Europe called the Common Market. Membership of a trading market was acceptable to the British in 1975 but the additional strategic political decision taken in 1992 to put the UK population under un-democratic foreign rule was not acceptable to the public.

There is a regional variation between countries on their people’s level of compliance with rule from outside their borders. Some countries have normalised hundreds of years of rule by different foreign empires (e.g. the Czechs have been forcibly ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Nazi Germany, the Warsaw Pact and have now agreed to be ruled by the EU), on the whole representing a compliant attitude to being conquered and offering only easily manageable resistance from the ruler’s perspective. An eventually successful Czech resistance to communism arose from Havel’s movement, which took a very long time and was conveniently abetted by global forces for change. It is very difficult for any population to resist dominant regimes of this kind because non-compliance usually results in sanctions (hardship) and the denial of opportunities, both of which stifle the evolutionary imperative to seek advantage. Many will give up and comply or trade their support for a job in the ruling apparatus. For nations which have not had this experience of being conquered (e.g. the UK since the fall of Rome), the step-change might be the same practical change as experienced by other nations but it is perceived as a monumental loss of freedom. There is a geographical difference to the level of compliance with being conquered, to roll over or fight. Notoriously, Celtic peoples have a higher propensity and inclination in this direction.

Therefore, the UK Prime Minister and EU leadership faced the choice of either (1) moving the UK to a Norway-style model of European Economic Area membership only (a common market with no political integration), (2) calling a referendum on UK/EU political membership and receiving the answer No by a large majority and risking leaving the Common Market as well; or 3) imposing foreign rule without seeking approval. The third option was used.

This was obviously a hard decision to make but it is also one that a new Fiction State will undoubtedly encounter. In future, an unrealised state has more options, to (a) change the design and make the proposal more appealing until it does gain majority support, (b) re-locate the proposed state to a place where it will be more appealing by contrast [i.e. damaged, inhospitable or new land], © make the state virtual, so the citizens are comprised only of people who opt-in to be part of it [volunteers are enthusiasts by definition — they self-filter], (d) have different entry levels that can still interact as part or full members, or (e) impose the new state. Of these alternatives, (e) is the only option that will generate a generation of anger and dispossession from the ruled population. It is worth noting that different geographical populations around the world will have different levels of tolerance and compliance with tyranny.

8.2.2 Critical error 1: No consent to rule

62% to 68% of the United Kingdom’s population were opposed to European Union membership in the year of joining. (Maastricht 1992, MORI/Ipsos polling). Conquering countries (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) against the will of the population created a huge public relations problem by association: the Nazi Party and the European Union shared the same policy. Forcible abduction is the perfect way to lose the hearts and minds of any population and commit them to work for the ruin of the new Fiction State as their preferred outcome.

UK membership ended the ‘permissive consensus’ on European integration as Pascal Lamy, chef de cabinet for Jacques Delors, the president of the European Commission, stated “Europe was built in a St. Simonian way from the beginning. The people weren’t ready to agree to integration, so you had to get on without telling them too much about what was happening. Now St. Simonianism is finished. It can’t work when you have to face democratic opinion.”

The Treaty of Nice — European Constitution and The Lisbon Treaty were all heavily opposed by the majority of the population in the UK, but signed off anyway by the Prime Minister (8 percent support [single digit] in the UK population for the Lisbon Treaty in the MORI/Ipsos poll of marginal constituencies).

In summary, no new state should be imposed clearly against the will of the population and have to rely on Stockholm Syndrome for its public acceptance, as the EU did with the United Kingdom. Without securing permission from the public, it will be opposed to a lesser or more relentless degree by those who do not accept the new, forced identity. There are two forces in any compliance and opposition struggle, the logical and the emotional (economic vs higher ideals); this resistance is emotional.

8.2.3 Critical error 2: Cancelling democracy to improve the efficiency of government

Objectively, there is a temptation to do this for its positive effect as an efficiency gain, especially when meeting the challenge of managing a very large and complex portfolio. If it is assumed that taking this tyrannical action is unreasonable or rare in an advanced country, the reality is this move has already been applied in Europe.

The highest form of law-making government for every person in the European Union is a the European Commission, no member of which has been elected. To join the EU, all 28 member nations (as at April 2019) had to give up democracy (no one elected to the European Parliament is a member of the government of the EU). The Commission makes laws which pass into UK law without any opportunity to object (only 1 EU directive out of c. 900 has ever been debated at Westminster).

Giving up democracy and passing under unelected rule was a significant blow to the British psyche, so generated understandable frustration and lost entitlement. Again, the new state’s policy matched highly negative past regimes, i.e. created a shared policy connection in the mind between the Nazi Party and the European Union (and Stalin). In public-relations terms, this was a disastrous design flaw that could have been solved without problem (i.e. hold elections to populate the senior government). The only logical explanation for why the architects of the new European Union State did not want an elected government is that they required their own chosen people to fill the leadership positions, to serve the political programme of centralisation (priority) and the human population (secondary, only if compatible with the core programme). This brings into question the whole design purpose: Whom does the new Fiction State serve?

In the design of this example, the EU single state, the Parliament’s function is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. It serves as a comforting distraction, to ensure people remember they have voted for something, whilst the real government can take separated, compartmentalised decisions. Ministers of state (Commissioners) assuming the power of absolute monarchs with no functioning democratic checks and balances is the real danger here; i.e. even if the process is passive today, the population of Europe have no way at all to stop the focus of those individuals changing in future. A Fiction State design should endeavour to prevent this possibility.

In summary, in the authority hierarchy of a new Fiction State, it is not possible to discreetly remove democracy from the law-making government level and still expect to retain support from a disenfranchised population. In the US this is encapsulated by “No taxation without representation”. In the design of any new Fiction State, the public must have a voice (decision-making influence) and must also be allowed a passive means of protest when affronted. If the state declares its law is now superior to national law (the legal route to change is over-ruled) and democracy only exists at the lower levels (the democratic route to change is over-ruled), this restricts means of opposing the state to unlawful methods. The irony is that removing regulated forms of passive resistance was selected to make governance easier but that channels people into unlawful and/or aggressive resistance, which should be the least-preferred process for both the ruler and the ruled.

So why was democracy removed in this example of multi-national integration? Figureheads and ministers in many modern states have declared that populism is a threat and must be stopped. Unfortunately, populism (what the public wants) and democracy (what the public wants) are indivisibly the same thing. What such leaders are saying is that they want to remove democracy from influencing the state in any way, as it is a force that counter-weights the leadership’s ability to do what they want to do efficiently, without wasting time explaining and seeking support for decisions. A state leadership body would prefer that the population should simply trust. If no trust has been built, this risks the accusation of arrogance (a negative pressure against popularity). To many politicians, having to stand for election at intervals is an imposition, having to answer questions from the press is impertinence and the public are a nuisance (even if they don’t acknowledge this publically). It is true that politicians would have easier lives if measures to block populism were applied but they would also (a) ironically fuel populism by doing so and (b) would themselves pass beyond the democratic control of the people, so the potential threat would be from the politician, not the public. Populism is a headache that the new Fiction State should accept and live with, the price of a ruling position. The alternative, removing democracy, is a draconian, fatally divisive move that is ethically indefensible and can be expected to ultimately break the state.

Sooner or later, a proportion of the public will protest either about one unpopular aspect of policy or will call for the end of the Fiction State itself. A resilient plan for society must incorporate ways in which protest against the system can happen peacefully, including clearly communicated rules describing how the public have a realistic chance to force change, synonymous to a tree bending in the wind instead of being rigid and broken sooner. In any new Fiction State, it seems better to give the population influence as stakeholders in the form of democratic or legal pathways allowing the majority of the ruled population to veto a significant policy or action (e.g. treaty-level change, initiating conflict).

8.2.4. Swapping-out allegiance to historical constructs

Following the referendum decision of 2016 to leave the European Union, many people naturally expected to return to old constructs and allegiances which pre-dated the Union, e.g. Parliament and the Monarchy. At the following state opening of Parliament, the Queen of England wore a European Union flag as a hat. This seems a trivial matter but in terms of seeking an identity, it showed the population how far the Fiction State’s infiltration had travelled, i.e. many people who had been conditioned to provide a life-time of loyalty to the Crown realised that day that they were alone, ending their belief in the individual and in the domestic and international system.

The Fiction State’s designers and leaders (who are committed) may assume that to remove old constructs like this is a good move. It might be or it might not. However, where they go too far is in expecting replacement of loyalties with newly invented constructs. You can cancel the use of a flag, but few will be genuinely loyal to the new flag. Some people would sacrifice their lives to defend their old system but they would never do so for the new, even if it benefits them economically because life is more essential to an individual than income. To generate this level of unquestioning loyalty will take many hundreds of years, a luxury the new Fiction State does not have.

I would expect that most Fiction States would fail to recruit in any hypothetical attempt to conscript citizens into military defence forces where loss of life was possible, for example. People are willing to make personal sacrifice or even die for a national construct but are not willing to for a political Fiction State. An exception to this rule is Israel, where the population has strong religious unity/solidarity, but that is a single nation where people know what they have in common, which makes loyalty straightforward. In general though, some of the new Fiction State’s population will even regard troops bearing the State’s own flag to be the threat to them (residual allegiance to the subjugated nation they came from). Loyalty cannot be replaced like-for-like. An example of this comes from the development of the Eurofighter project, which focus groups in the UK believed (from the name) must be an enemy aircraft to be used against them, which led to this vehicle being re-named the Typhoon locally.

8.2.5. A critic’s perspective (inaccurate ratios of a crisis point, intended to illustrate a point) of the relative share of a national population that finds supra-national Fiction State rule optimal (in green) and people who have been excluded from democratic representation and receive nothing of enough benefit to outweigh their losses (in red).

If the new Fiction State proposal results in these proportions, it has failed to fulfil its remit. The objective should be to increase the surface area of green, optimal groups.

To confirm success, the individual should acknowledge the benefit they receive, but they should also see peer evidence from people around them that they have gained more than they have been taxed to pay for the system. If the state fulfils its purpose, evidence such as this should be evident to all. If the state has failed to fulfil its purpose and more than half of the population identify it as sub-optimal for themselves and their neighbours (e.g. by referendum), after which the state rigidly refuses the chance to re-design itself for improved public acceptance, it seems reasonable that the state should be rejected in favour of the previous design. This is not a regression in civilisation; it is a reversal to improve conditions and restore to a better form of civilisation.

A leadership group in a Fiction State might believe the population cannot see the whole picture and therefore are not in a position to make any assessment of whether the state is optimal for them or not. However, people talk amongst themselves. This can be characterised by the exchange “I am injured!” (individual) — “No, you only think you are injured (remote state spokesman).” Conversely, logic suggests that when a leader takes a decision, they do not feel its direct effects, therefore the people the state’s decisions are impacting are in a much better position than the political class (who read indirect feedback) to say whether decisions are beneficial or not.

In revising a state plan, the greatest change from red to green in this figure could be achieved by a re-design of the system to include elected representation (influence upon) the choice of persons who form the highest law-making government. That would change the weight on the scales by removing the perceived loss in this figure (what politicians call ‘the bleeding stump effect’ — being aware of something you had under the old system which has now been taken away feels like a more acute injustice than never having had it in the first place), as this outweighs any marginal gains by concentrating on growing individual circles. A simple correction of a dangerous design flaw will have a major effect on public acceptance of the Fiction State, expanding green coverage in the figure to see a sustainable majority.

8.3 How the Free Republic of Liberland was neutralised

Although not a joining of nations (the Monfort definition of a Fiction State), Liberland is a relevant, fascinating and opportunistic project started in 2015 by President Vít Jedlička, who noticed that a small island in the Danube between Croatia and Serbia had been left outside both of those countries’ international borders [the border ended at the respective river banks and the water was an international thoroughfare]. People planning Fiction States can learn a lot from this intervention example.

As an piece of land, it wasn’t highly sought after and only contained one dilapidated wooden structure. However, it became interesting as the subject of an error caused by two-dimensional land-based thinking. What could truly be capitalised upon in this micro-nation niche opportunity was rule-free freedom from any nation’s legal and taxation system. The strategic threat to Serbia and Croatia of allowing a potential unrestricted tax-haven (a business advantage against their economies) and possibly a safe refuge for criminals alongside them caused these two countries (led by Serbia) to deny the people who claimed the island any access to it. Effectively paralysing settlement, this is an example of geographical vested interests stopping the progress of a potential new nation for economic reasons.

I should also comment that likeminded people applied to be citizens of Liberland, usually believing in free-markets and minimum-state interference. However, there is no guarantee that the second generation of settlers in any new state formed by likeminded principle will automatically agree with their parents and also want to live that way, as they have different influences and subsequent iterations of information.

In summary, founding values should be a broad church to retain shared values across the generations and the population also needs to have lawful access to the state that cannot be sealed off by neighbouring authorities or the project ends right there.

8.4 The Principality of Sealand

This micro-nation (27 residents) was formerly a North Sea gun emplacement, 10 miles off the coast of Suffolk, England. It was claimed as a state after the founder noticed it was not only abandoned but also slightly beyond the claim of UK territorial waters. Although the founders would define Sealand as a fully-fledged country, in reality it has been used for its earning potential (selling souvenir passports and titles) and also earns revenue by housing business data servers beyond the legislative reach of national governments, tax investigators, Interpol etc. Sealand is by no means unique as a haven from investigative powers as The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are both not in the European Union and therefore do not participate in its revenue protection or data protection exercises. Therefore, Sealand has a competitive advantage over the mainland but must also offer services that undercut locations with similar statuses. When the British Government decided to remove Sealand’s independence by extending UK coastal waters to 20 miles, Sealand reciprocated amusingly by issuing a matching declaration which extended their boundary to an equivalent distance and claimed sections of the Essex coast.

What can be learned from the Sealand experiment is that being outside the rules (undercutting costs, avoiding taxes and bypassing regulations) is a viable economic model but only if the micro-nation is so small as to not significantly affect the neighbouring economy, i.e. it doesn’t become too greedy. It may be the case that an existing state can overwhelm and neutralise a brand new micro-nation but will have difficulty doing that whilst retaining public approval if the micro-nation has been in place for decades because that looks like bullying (public sympathy transfers to the underdog). In some cases, a small Fiction State should position itself as the underdog to take advantage of this.

9. Further challenges for Fiction State proposals to address

· Small state with low tax and only an essential service provision or large state with higher tax accompanied by a high service-provision expectation?

· Better-perceived fairness of the taxation / services balance (influenced by the ethos of the population).

· Improved fairness of opportunity and social mobility for those who bring their skills to market.

· Perceived circles of ‘us and them’, inclusivity and exclusivity. What does ‘us’ mean to you (a couple, your extended family, a country which includes people you have not met, several countries, a hemisphere, the whole species)? Where does the boundary line of what ‘us’ means end and is it in a different place for different people? Can the boundary of how people perceive ‘us’ be extended to include the whole population? Would that be done by education or by communal ‘La Grande Fête’ projects everyone can feel part of (e.g. build a structure to be proud of; go to the moon)? Should this divert effort from priorities?

· Time zones and daylight saving. Could Planet Earth have a single world time, e.g. it is now 16:00 everywhere on the surface of the planet? It would provide an efficiency advantage as we globalise, in the coordination of trans-national virtual meetings, international travel times, logistics planning etc. This is really a question of how to overcome natural resistance from people with unusually low intelligence who interpret this as meaning they would have to go to work in the dark and sleep in the day, i.e. they think a number directs their life, not a diurnal/nocturnal cycle. How we describe time is merely an artificial construct, so the only change would be to call the hour individuals wake up (different in different locations) by another number.

· Language and communications. Should society make rulings to consolidate to a narrower group of common languages (e.g. which to teach, which to use for pilots or diplomacy) or should the survival of languages be left to natural market forces?

· How will the proposed society divide up into layers? Should sorting and layering be allowed or suppressed? Ambition for improved comfort and life-chances is an incentive for productivity (good for all, the tide raises all boats, theoretically) but should assets built up by individuals be inherited by others who have contributed no productivity (e.g. Capitalism says yes, Marxism says no)? Will there be ways to deliberately shake up layers as generations pass and are sorted by their own efforts or external forces, i.e. education, achievement, revaluation, directives?

· Who controls the provision of information, state education, investigative journalism and who undertakes and funds the responsibility of balanced editing? Philosophically, why does this immense power reside in that place?

· Money and debt. Will there be a currency? Will guaranteeing the currency be linked to any state assets or will it be free-floating and rely on fluctuations in confidence? Is the currency exchangeable outside the Fiction State, to enable trade with other systems?

· The drivers and consequences of population change. The foundation of a new state will probably attract a younger population (‘Go West, young man’). This may create a bulge or wave of productive workers, but they will all retire and be a draw on the state’s resources within a few years. Population ageing and social security, in particular the design and funding of sustainable pensions systems, is a difficult problem particularly when life-expectancy rises globally. What is the impact upon resources in later life? Can a disparity in service provision between generations be mitigated against or prevented?

· When the founding fathers of the USA began their new state, they built a prison and a gallows first. What intention should a new Fiction State set, e.g. to build a hospital, a governor’s residence, agricultural barns? How should regulation-breaking, law-breaking and so on be incentivised-against, sanctioned or punished and how can rehabilitation into society be managed — particularly in a small state, low-funded model?

10. O Topia; an undeveloped new Fiction State proposal.

Until now, Fiction State combination proposals have mostly (with the exception of CANZUK) concerned geographical neighbours. Does it have to be about people living close to one another? If so, why? This reasoning falls away against a background of the internet. People who have income from online work and pay tax in the country where they are registered (which can be swapped) may already sense a different possible future.

I propose that it is no longer necessary to only open Fiction State citizenship to the population of specific countries already bordering each other. A virtual state could draw population from all countries on the planet (c. 198).

The system an individual subscribes to (flag allegiance; incremental contributions to the collective fund for services; the collection, assessment and distribution of welfare; transactions by international transfer; diplomatic representation etc.) now has the potential to travel with you. Local systems (where you physically are at any moment) such as emergency services can be reimbursed by the virtual state’s fund derived from tax income.

It’s not that hard to imagine as, at any time, people who have one nationality can be found living, working or travelling in other states and systems. Now, imagine a whole population of a Fiction State doing that, to the point where no geographical centre/home with a capital city is required. Essentially, a Fiction State can be a great club that people join, carrying that citizenship label with them no matter which external jurisdiction they live in.

This entirely re-defines what a state is; it de-links nationality from the geographically-dependent concept of a country. The citizen would genuinely be from ‘O Topia’, no place, because their constructs would be attached to population and not to land.

It also re-defines what a Fiction State can be, as it integrates more than one population but it leaves land and the intransigence of place in a human sense (the difficult job of integrating countries with vested interests and those who don’t want to be in it) behind. The state could therefore be extended anywhere, into orbit, underwater, whatrever humans eventually inhabit.

One considerable attraction would be that when a citizen changes nationality to the new Fiction State, they leave behind all of the debt that their previous state borrowed from world markets in their name. Some national debts are unrepayable, e.g. GBP 400,000 per person. As people transition away from those economies and become personally free of their obligation to these national debt contracts, confidence will reduce in their old countries’ ability to meet their obligations. This has the effect, whether slow or fast, of collapsing systems fit for the previous century and re-setting the monetary system in the global economy. Not only citizens of the new state would have their slate wiped clean — this levelling would extend much farther. This instability, precipitating a global re-boot, would give people improved incentive to consider systemic change.

I would recommend either a finite mathematical currency (limiting the amount of money that can be issued, then the market adjusts its relative value) or a currency linked very firmly to a precious metals standard (globally dispersed vaults), which insulates the new Fiction State’s currency from the inevitable collapse of confidence-based systems which have zero collateral to guarantee them (FIAT). Another option would be to have no official state currency and instead float free on the currencies of all other countries around the world, i.e. convert everything into the currencies where the citizens physically are. Confidence loss would then not be a problem as one would simply transact in another currency, whatever the most stable one is in that crisis.

Groupings of the past which have been implemented (not just suggested) have all been by location. For example, Wales is an extension of someone’s concept of ‘us’ which includes the people who occupy that part of the map. In a non-geographical ‘place’, that grouping of ‘us’ could be the social and economic view individuals subscribe to, i.e. call the state ‘Libertaria’, ‘Capitalia’ or ‘Socialista’. If you were to sort people who feel affinity to those ideals, each population would have a massive presence on the world stage, any of the three would have a population greater than any nation with a seat at the United Nations.

The benefits are: small low-cost state, dispersed state apparatus (making it impossible to invade or close down), huge potential global population (service-buying power, diplomatic influence and the network of languages and global business interests would be exceptional), no defence overheads required (there’s no location to fight over) and — importantly — it would be completely opt-in (full consent), so every citizen would want to be part of it (no unwilling proportion of the population). It would be a borderless state (no overheads for monitoring a boundary), meaning that its citizens could live anywhere they want on the globe, subject to negotiation with other nations (the same task any new state would have to deal with).

I would recommend a democracy with online voting to appoint and guide a governing body, but mine only counts as one view of many. The interface between the individual and the state could be displayed in any language, for example, as the output of transactions and voting would be numerical (culture free). Contributions would be made by the new state to the education system of whatever old state they were resident in at the time that service was needed.

The main problem is that an individual could subscribe to the new Fiction State and enjoy low taxation until they were old, but then might cancel their citizenship and re-join their previous nation’s health or pensions system in order to benefit from free services in old age. This would drain other nations and citizens of the new Fiction State might become unwelcome ‘freeloaders’. A mechanism would therefore be required to collect welfare and health taxes, which could be paid to other nations to provide services to both citizens and former citizens of the Fiction State, thus removing a reason for them to change nationality for financial reasons.

Author’s note

In summary: Even if a fiction state design is perfect on paper, it won’t survive in reality without consent from the people and from vested interests. The only way to get consent from all is to have opt-in citizenship. The only way to filter like that is to drop the geographical catchment area of ‘country’ and make the state virtual and global. People then have a Fiction State around an aligned ethos, not land. The states created in this form would be subject to market forces and the best systems would attract the greatest populations. The drawback (challenge to be designed-out) is that people might opt into a state that has low tax when they have low support requirements, then change to citizenship of a high-tax and high service provision state when they need more support.

This idea requires a great deal of further development and I believe it is beyond one author to deliver an adequately worked-out assessment. I would welcome peer contributions to this open-source debate, with the aim of publishing an informed and workable proposal.

Faith Jones, 22 April 2019.

ADDENDUM — SEASTEADING (Summer of 2020)

My original About Fiction States essay was written in 2018, updated in 2019 and at the end of that I invited people to join in with their ideas of how future governance could be configured. Since then, people have brought up the subject of seasteading and I’ve started to realise that colonising the oceans is a much better solution to the future society question that Fiction States ever could be.

The huge problem with Fiction States (the combination of existing nation states) is that the concept is hide-bound. A Fiction State can only happen if you take control of the land and assets which other people have built up and give yourself the right to govern and tax the people who already live there. This presents insurmountable problems in both property law and consent to rule, which of course means strong opposition, legal challenges and someone else’s regulatory system to pick through.

Now, let’s hop out of that very old box. I’ve recently read the book Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians, by Joe Quirk, with Patri Friedman. I’ve watched the podcasts on Youtube and also read the first screenplay on the subject of seasteading. I don’t think any of these visionaries will mind if I tell you that the key ideas of the seasteading movement are these:

Vested interests — None.

Attempting a grand alternative society on land is almost impossible because vested interests will oppose it (the population, the politicians, monopoly businesses and the owners of assets you need to control), plus there’s overcoming the existing legal and regulatory framework. Attempting a grand alternative society on the sea involves none of these resisting factors because ownership does not exist beyond territorial limits. The problem is therefore one of engineering to mitigate natural forces, which humanity is advanced enough to solve.

Sea is 72% of the Earth’s surface and no one lives there except in a transient sense, so there’s nothing to prevent a new population gathering on water.

That doesn’t mean 72% of the planet’s surface is available for seasteading because there are zones around coastlines which are either designated as territorial waters (up to 12 miles) or are in the country’s area of regulatory interest or ‘exclusive economic zones’ (up to 200 miles), but that does leave about 50% of the planet’s surface as empty, habitable, almost unregulated surface space, or ‘international waters’, as established by the Convention of the High Seas in 1958.

If you are in international waters, that doesn’t mean you can do absolutely anything you like either because universally recognised criminal acts (think piracy, drugs) allow any nation to intervene under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction (see the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). However, if the new society will follow the basic civilised standards, no one can invoke this convention to justify intervention against you.

Engineering — Already designed.

We have solved the engineering challenges already. Essentially, the habitation would be on a fluid environment and, to state the obvious, we can’t breathe water. So what does seasteading accommodation look like?

In coastal areas, (1) seastead housing pods, each on a stilt connected to the shallow sea floor, have been constructed in Panama this year by a company called Ocean Builders (https://ocean.builders/seapod/). The cost is equivalent to a standard family home in the US.

(2) Low-build 3D-printed housing modules [floating bungalows], individually or connected in mats, can float on placid waters or infill bays and harbours with even lower cost housing. These module homes can be moved, reconfigured and taken out for repair. They can be built of recycled plastic with honeycomb walls for buoyancy and heat retention, or silica, which lasts for 10,000 years and eventually returns to sand.

Those two options are not appropriate when you get out on the high seas where storms and wave height can be monumental, bouncing you around and potentially sweeping people away. The seas are less rough around the equator but assuming we aren’t going to restrict the possibilities to a narrow band (cold waters are better oxygenated and carry high stocks of fish species used for food), the options for deep, rough water are:

(3) platforms that rise out of the water on stilts, so tall waves pass underneath [oil rigs do this]; (4) tip-ships, which are apparently very stable, especially if a few are connected, which also makes upgrading to a platform deck possible. Imagine a long, cylindrical vessel, like a baseball bat, being towed out to sea and then flooded at the thick end, so it stands up in the water. The habitation is at the top and the waves wash past it without much movement; and (5) a combination of two, i.e. a mat of housing modules that people can live in when the conditions are fair, then a stilt-like rig in which they can shelter from stormy conditions.

Sustainability

Two thirds of the world’s fresh water is needed for agriculture and we are running out of water, but aquaculture (farming the sea) requires no fresh water to produce food. This is the only way to scale-up agricultural food production without water shortages for people, which looked inevitable if the human population continues to go up. Food can also be exported from the sea to the land.

The analogue from the Seasteading book (Joe Quirk) is that when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers, the land could only support a very small population. When we switched to farming and intensively managed food, we became able to feed seven billion people on land. However, we have always continued to be hunter gatherers on the oceans. Why? Perhaps because that’s how it has always been done, which is not a good reason for us not to improve it.

People can set up seaweed farms at sea now (for food and biofuels), but why don’t we farm fish on the high seas? After all, when their droppings sink to the floor of the deep ocean, that locks away carbon from the carbon cycle for up to ten million years and can reduce the impact of climate change. The reason why we don’t is because there’s no incentive to invest in livestock that can run away and be collected legally by other people. However, this problem has also been solved because an engineer has developed large Kevlar cages in the shape of the C60 molecule (the Bucky Ball), like underwater cathedrals, which can house fish and symbiotic ecosystems [seaweed, crustaceans to remove parasites] and which can float around with the seasteads.

Social care — online registration, then take it with you

Refer to the closing section of the Fiction States essay, where I describe a health and welfare pay-in safety net system that people can opt-into no matter where they live on the planet, from which money can be drawn for treatment and services anywhere in the world.

Governance

Imagine a democracy where every citizen has opted-in. Now imagine multiple democracies of this kind, where the best of them attract citizens from the other, less optimal systems because seasteads are modular and can detach and attach elsewhere on more preferable ‘island states’. As with biology, this mobility selects in favour of the best systems with the most attractive styles of governance. There is a major disincentive for a leader to act badly because his or her population will simply move away, which deletes all of the bad leader’s power.

Get involved, spread the word

If you want to plan a new and improved society for human habitation, either as a thought exercise or for real, you will have to integrate the classic disciplines of engineering (durable and safe), economics (incentive) and philosophy (the dream, fairness), or your effort will fail; no exceptions. A new society should appeal to people’s natural needs and not pressure them. People like me (leaning toward philosophical input) see critical problems that engineers and economists don’t, and vice versa. A debate opens the subject up and can bring in the variety of expertise needed, as no individual can possibly have a full set of answers. Contact me, contact the authors of the Seasteading book, leave a comment below, but if you are interested in future societies don’t let this possible future slip because it is already workable.

That’s my bit. Now it’s up to you. Remember though, the clock is ticking because sea-level is rising at around an average of 5mm per year, the total length of coastline is reducing, the global population is rising, energy consumption is rising, water and food supply levels are static. This is a good answer to many problems so it would be sensible to not wait twenty years before setting up habitation offshore.