What If the World Were Like Snow Crash?

In the course of imagining a state in which individuals might have a lot of freedom without democracy, Arnold Kling wonders: 

Suppose that a new non-territorial state is created. Call it Liberista! To become a citizen of Liberista!, you just pay an annual fee. You pay no taxes to the state. As a citizen of Liberista!, you can live anywhere that Liberista!has an embassy compound. Liberista! leases compounds in countries all over the world. Liberista! embassy compounds are as ubiquitous as Hiltons, but many of them have space for large sections of single-family homes, office parks, and so on.

 

Living in an embassy compound as a citizen of Liberista!, your status with respect to the host country is comparable to that of a diplomat. You can travel freely within the host country, but you are exempt from income and property taxes. However, the government of Liberista will expect you to pay your traffic tickets and to otherwise not abuse your diplomatic status. Services like utilities, water, and trash collection must be purchased from providers in the host country. Perhaps you contract for these as an individual citizen, or perhaps you allow Liberista! to contract on your behalf and collect a fee from you.

Liberista! is managed like a hotel chain. As a citizen, you have no more right to vote than does somebody who patronizes a Holiday Inn. You can, of course, make suggestions and register complaints.

Of course, there may be competing transnational enterprises, each with franchises--er, embassies--all over. Such a world is described in Snow Crash, and I make no claim to originality. 

Kling says that, if such a place existed, and was close by, he'd move there. If the obvious problems of diplomacy and security could be resolved, I think I might too. Like Kling, however, I'm fairly rooted in my current home, so I don't think I'd move very far. Still, no matter where it sprang up, I'd applaud efforts to build such a society, and would encourage those who aren't as tied down to make the move. 

Comments

[KT]

This is the libertarian version of "If Bush wins the election, I'm moving to Canada."

[Xeones]

This is the libertarian version of "If Bush wins the election, I'm moving to Canada."

The libertarian version is way cooler.

Does Liberista! use Rat Things for security?

[Fluffy]

The problem with that scenario was illustrated by Nancy Kress in Beggars in Spain [That's a largely unsympathetic look at a quasi-Objectivist society set up in opposition to our current society, that I don't like much because I think it's dishonest in a couple of fundamental ways, but I agree with her on at least this one point]:

As soon as you were successful enough for the other nations to notice you, and regret the loss of your tax revenue and/or the autonomy you provided your citizens, you would be militarily crushed under some pretext or other.

[Warty]

Damn, I could go for some Our Thing pizza.

[Peter Suderman]

Fluffy, that's a major part of the diplomacy/security I was talking about.

[This Dave]

I'm not entirely sure this should be viewed as "not a democracy". In a way it is
similar, except that instead of voting for the individuals who rule the land, you are voting with your feet on which land (and presumably which policies) you will reside. If this were applied on the scale of all nations, you would have a far far greater diversity of options than you do in current US elections, even including the major "third parties". Granted, the vast majority of those options are crap, but the point still stands. I like the idea of libertarian mini-states, but I think it is a valid point that they would eventually be sacked by looters unless they created the sort of militaries or forged the sort of alliances that a lot of hard core libertarians seem to oppose.

[Joel]

Please continue posting about Neal Stephenson. My favorite author + my favorite blog = awesome

[anon]

won't work until we have force fields

(flying cars would help too, but aren't a prerequisite)

[Episiarch]

As soon as you were successful enough for the other nations to notice you, and regret the loss of your tax revenue and/or the autonomy you provided your citizens, you would be militarily crushed under some pretext or other.

Well before this happened, the legality of drugs, gambling, and prostitution would bring them down on you. Even if these things were only allowed for Liberista! "citizens" and there was no non-citizen tourism, the usual suspects (read: the US government) would have a vested interest in shutting you down so that you didn't prove to be a legalization success story.

[Rimfax]

This Dave,

This was all triggered by a debate between Kling and Wilkerson about "freedom of voice (vote) vs. freedom of exit (feet)" Kling was arguing that freedom of exit was more valuable and important, except that, in the current age, the choices of exit lack subtlety.

[anon]

isn't all this already available to varying degrees, depending on wealth?

middle class folks have cruise ships - the customer's live onboard, and contract out all their amenities services to the ship operator - petty offenses committed onboard and say, in acapulco, probably (I'm guessing) get a wrist slap. seems like you have to actually murder someone by throwing them overboard in the middle of the night before higher powers start haggling over jurisdiction...

and isn't this all part of the appeal of las vegas too? different rules - prostitution and gambling are OK? What happens there stays there. For the very wealthy, how many serious crimes never leave the hotel, as the concierge "fixes" things for a wealthy client?

what's the most serious crime openly/credibly alleged to have been committed by a "diplomat" on foreign soil that the diplomat was able to finagle out of with "immunity". Seems like at some point it must break down, and they fall under local authority... so, a matter of degrees at best.

[Rimfax]

Was it just me or did Stephenson's treatment of extra-territoriality seem particularly unflattering. He didn't just mention that racist/extremist neighborhoods would exist. In Snow Crash they were dominant. There was no Cosmotarianland or even Paleotarianland. Just KKKland, Blackpantherland, Mafialand, and, as a lesser offensive option, Agresticland.

[Paul]

What If the World Were Like Snow Crash?

I'd have "Poor Impulse Control" tattooed on my forehead.

[Nipplemancer]

it's kinda like seasteading and unfortunatly slightly more DOA. recognition of a 'nation' that doesn't exist is a major barrier even by small pacific island standards.
at least with seasteading you can just float out in the ocean with a flag of convenience doing anything you want as long as you don't upset the neighborhood bullies.

[SugarFree]

Rimfax,

Rainbow Heights was intergrationalist, The Meadows was not specifically racist, and Mr. Lee's accepted anyone as long as they could pay.

In the book, Mr. Lee's is the most obvious analog to a quasi-libertarian state. It's only non-libertarian concern was of an ecological nature, and environmentalism only runs afoul of libertarianism when it is predicated on socialist mores.

[prolefeed]

As soon as you were successful enough for the other nations to notice you, and regret the loss of your tax revenue and/or the autonomy you provided your citizens, you would be militarily crushed under some pretext or other.

As soon as any of your "citizens" declared they were immune from paying taxes to the IRS, they would be tried for tax evasion and thrown into jail.

You would have to make a treaty with the country surrounding your "embassies" to allow these franchises to be treated as foreign countries completely immune from the laws of the surrounding country, and have the country honor that treaty rather than reneging once the tax losses became too apparent.

Which no country would do. Even if the country tried to turn a huge profit by selling a handful of acres for, say, $10 million per acre, those acres would soon be covered with a huge high-rise stuffed full of wealthy retirees such as Bill Gates sheltering income.

[Mike Laursen]

All I know is Stephenson would come up with a way better name than Liberista!

[IceTrey]

The only problem is that it's not true. Embassies don't have extraterritorial status. The ambassadors and certain diplomats may but not the physical places themselves.

[Fluffy]

Well, if we can give it any name we want, I vote for "Go Fuck Yourself!"

As in, "Here is my passport from the Republic of Go Fuck Yourself!"

And, "The chair recognizes the ambassador from Go Fuck Yourself!"

And, "Isn't that illegal?" "Not in...Go Fuck Yourself!"

[mnmn]

Um, you do realize that Snow Crash's depiction of the world was a parody, right? Like, everything bad about gated communities and horrific, scorched-earth suburbia taken to an extreme? You got that it was unpleasant, didn't you?

Me, I'd just love to live in a Mad Max world. Wouldn't that be bitchin'? Or Waterworld, *with* Costner. That, I think, would be the Heroic Ideal.

[Mike Laursen]

Your approving reference to Waterworld taints everything you've said and anything you will ever say in the future.

[mnmn]

And your saying that, like the post itself, is just more proof that there's a tendency among people around here to completely miss elementary-level irony.

[Jesse Walker]

I thought the world was portrayed fairly negatively (or at least satirically) in Snow Crash, but that Stephenson then made it look much more appealing in The Diamond Age.

[Stacy]

The only problem is that you're treating security as a trivial problem just needing someone to think of a solution, rather than what it really is -- an intractable showstopper. Unless you think there's some way that a chain of Hiltons could defend itself against, say, the US Army.

Liberista! would exist at the pleasure of its host country. You can ask e.g. the Jews how that's worked out for them.

[Andrew T]

So, let's say a citizen of the entirely virtual country of Libertista! commits a crime that would get a foreigner deported. To where would such citizen be deported to? A Canadian gets deported back to Canada, not to the Canadian embassy. It would seem that a virtual country would need at least some sort of actual real estate other than leased embassies.

[poy]

I'd guess a Reason writer could probably afford to live in a U-Stor-It bin in Libertista, as long as he had a roommate, and subsisted mostly on Soylent Green.

[Elemenope]

I thought the world was portrayed fairly negatively (or at least satirically) in Snow Crash, but that Stephenson then made it look much more appealing in The Diamond Age.

All worlds are more appealing when the problem of scarcity is decisively solved (without solving it by killing all of the consumers; that's a *bad* solution).

Nanotech just makes it all better.

[Elemenope]

Unless you think there's some way that a chain of Hiltons could defend itself against, say, the US Army.

Rat things, dude. Rat things.

[Fluffy]

Unless you think there's some way that a chain of Hiltons could defend itself against, say, the US Army.

How about a series of massive EMP weapons in low orbit over the northern hemisphere on a dead man's switch? That's probably the cheapest alternative. The problem is getting them up there without anyone realizing what they are. Maybe disguise them as microwave power transmission experimental stations?

But that would require leadership willing to threaten industrial civilization itself in order to keep the US at bay. And they'd have to be willing to actually make good on the threat.

And your saying that, like the post itself, is just more proof that there's a tendency among people around here to completely miss elementary-level irony.

Unless Suderman's ability to take an idea Stephenson intended to describe an aspect of a dystopia and make it attractive and desirable is some kind of higher level irony that you have completely missed.

[anonymous]

"So, let's say a citizen of the entirely virtual country of Libertista! commits a crime that would get a foreigner deported. To where would such citizen be deported to? A Canadian gets deported back to Canada, not to the Canadian embassy. It would seem that a virtual country would need at least some sort of actual real estate other than leased embassies."

In Snow Crash, the embassies were the country. The traditional governments in the US had imploded under economic mismanagement, popular disengagement, and general worthlessness, and thus posed no obstacle. The more functional branches broke away and became for-profit (the CIA and library of congress are sort of a clearing house for information, DoD spinoffs sell security services).

Stephenson's depiction was satirical, but not entirely negative. The core of the federal government still existed (sort of), and tended to treat its few remaining citizens/workers like shit (and they were proud of being treated like shit, good patriots that they were). The franchulates, in contrast, served their citizens and enabled them to have the government their subculture desired -- the case of New South Africa illustrates the downside of such radical pluralism, but Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong and Cosa Nostra are quite helpful to the protagonists.

Obviously the world is dystopian in certain respects, but the distributed republic model didn't create the social chaos responsible for the dystopia, it simply rose to prominence in the power vacuum; mice replacing dinosaurs in the aftermath of the cataclysm.

[josh]

The level to which people here are addled by droid ideology is just incredible. The franchulates -- some of them, in some ways -- are attractive because the government is depicted as worse. So the overall scathing parody of American paranoia and the overwhelmingly dystopian vision of privatization can be ignored. But not the parody of incompetent, heartless government. And the Mafia-run sovereign state looks like a good alternative to current reality. Check.

And:

Unless Suderman's ability to take an idea Stephenson intended to describe an aspect of a dystopia and make it attractive and desirable is some kind of higher level irony that you have completely missed.

Can you say precisely how he did that, now that you're finished with your apparently serious scenario of private corporations defending themselves against the government with giant EMP weapons?

I'm starting to guess I'm amid a bunch of those creepy kids who drew pictures of cool tanks, guns and army mans all over their school folders. All grown up now. Sort of.

[Paul]

but that Stephenson then made it look much more appealing in The Diamond Age.

Word.

[anonymous]

"The level to which people here are addled by droid ideology is just incredible. The franchulates -- some of them, in some ways -- are attractive because the government is depicted as worse. So the overall scathing parody of American paranoia and the overwhelmingly dystopian vision of privatization can be ignored. But not the parody of incompetent, heartless government. And the Mafia-run sovereign state looks like a good alternative to current reality. Check."

It's not so much that present-day society is predicted as unattractive, just that it's shown as untenable -- in Snow Crash, the proposition for nation-states is essentially what content industries are facing today. Technology exacerbates preexisting structural flaws, pushing a group of stagnant institutions to the brink of destruction. Some (the CIA, gated communities, gangs) are either empowered by or adapt to the change, others exert their power fighting the tide and wither away.

I'm not sure that "dystopia" is even the right term. Usually "dystopia" indicates that the author is following the logical (typically totalitarian) endpoint of some undesirable political/cultural/ideological trend, with the intent to set humanity on a better course. Snow Crash is no Brave New World or 1984. The privatization and social disintegration didn't cause the changes to society, they were unleashed as a result of those changes. Thematically, it's closer to post-apocalypse. Post-apoc fiction usually accepts the drastic upheaval as given, and then tries to see how people and social institutions react. Given that the world is recovering from a period of massive social and economic chaos, it's obviously going to be a shitty period that brings out the worst in people (and post-apoc has a tendency towards the cynical anyway), but it doesn't necessarily follow that every attempt to create a new social order is flawed because of that.

The franchulates don't play the explicitly antagonistic role of oppressive states in dystopian fiction. They're more like any sort of new technology in science fiction -- something that both brings benefits and creates problems and dangers, which the author explores through the plot. The franchulates are as likely to help the heroes as to harm them, which is definitely not a usual feature of dystopian social orders. They're as "dystopian" as the Metaverse or the Diamond Age's nanotechnology.

[Nupek]

nepal-indiaPrime Minister Manmohan Singh is one among the prime ministers who have ruled India to have travelled extensively world-wide. History reveals that only three of the Indian Prime ministers have visited Nepal so far. The incumbent prime minister also has not visited the nation in his six year term.
http://nupek.com/world/why-do-our-prime-ministers-show-reluctance-to-visit-nepal/

[Fluffy]

Unless Suderman's ability to take an idea Stephenson intended to describe an aspect of a dystopia and make it attractive and desirable is some kind of higher level irony that you have completely missed.

Can you say precisely how he did that, now that you're finished with your apparently serious scenario of private corporations defending themselves against the government with giant EMP weapons?

No, the EMP idea was a joke. It's actually a cross-posting joke [maybe a triple cross-posting joke] since over at Radley's site the other day we had a discussion about the "Apocalypse Game" Radley linked to, one feature of which was the destruction of industrial civilization via cheap EMP weaponry.

But to answer your question, you have to remember that one man's dystopia is not always another man's dystopia. For example: Personally, I have always considered Atlas Shrugged to be an allegory, but let's say you read it as a straight adventure story. Galt's Gulch sounds an awful lot like a "franchulate" to me. [I'm handicapped by the fact that I have never read any Stephenson, and am just going by synopses here.] If the franchulates are intended to be dystopic, inverting the author's intent and finding a way to impose a positive spin on them would pretty much be the dictionary definition of "irony".

In my first post in this thread, I talked about Beggars in Spain, where the author is deliberately seeking to malign libertarian "fantasies of withdrawal" by imagining a scenario where a quasi-Objectivist group actually withdraws and things proceed to go awry. But because she doesn't actually understand either libertarianism or Objectivism, while reading the novel I pretty much ignored her critique while focusing on the features of this imagined society that I liked. So that would be an example of "how precisely" one could invert the author's intent in such a case.

[Openworld]

Two approaches can lower risks that free areas will be attacked on by predatory powers:

1. Paul Romer's ideas on global partnerships for "Charter Cities" (see his recent TED talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_romer.html on launching a new generation of Hong Kongs)

2. Success-sharing free zones (http://www.openworld.com) - where windfall land value gains in free areas help fund good causes, including microscholarship and microfinance initiatives, that generate global constituencies for the growth of free areas.

Best,

Mark Frazier
Openworld
"Awakening assets for good"
@openworld (Twitter)

[charles brooks]

Everyone has their favorite way of using the internet. Many of us search to find what we want, click in to a specific website, read what's available and click out. That's not necessarily a bad thing because it's efficient. We learn to tune out things we don't need and go straight for what's essential.

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