A Society Without Coercion
People are capable of reaching agreement and providing for each other without pressure from above.
Why this matters to me
I don't want to remake existing states. I'm interested in bringing together people who think alike and seeing what they build together.
In a conventional society, much of the effort goes into making people do things: monitoring, checking, punishing. That's understandable when people don't trust each other and live with scarcity. But I see more and more examples of people reaching agreement on their own and keeping their word without oversight.
What interests me is the practical side: how to set up a small environment where cooperating pays off more than fighting. You can start with ten people and one place.
Questions I ask myself
Can we reach agreement without someone forcing us?
What are you willing to share?
Who would help you grow faster than you would on your own?
How much trust does it take for rules to become unnecessary?
Some of them I want to answer not with words but with experience — together with people who think alike.
My position
Self-organization is creation
The idea of a society without coercion is often associated with destruction and struggle. I see it the other way around: as people's ability to build order themselves when they share a goal, trust each other and have clear rules they agreed on together.
Peter Kropotkin showed that mutual aid is as much a factor of evolution as competition. Elinor Ostrom studied communities that have managed shared forests, pastures and water for centuries without the state and without a private owner.
Order can grow from the bottom up, like a pattern of seeds that has no center.
The commons in the modern sense
Sharing resources doesn't mean a person owns nothing. It means some things are more useful when held in common: knowledge, tools, infrastructure, a place to live and work. Open source and Wikipedia have shown how this works in the digital world.
Networked communities
Balaji Srinivasan describes the network state: people first come together online around a shared idea, then start living and working side by side. What resonates with me is not the word "state" but the order of the steps: people and values first, then territory and rules.
That's where my idea of a shared place to live comes from: ten people rent a good place in Vietnam or Thailand and live together. One knows how to make money, another builds websites, a third teaches. Side by side, everyone grows faster.
Exchanging value without barriers
Today, sending money to someone in another country can be harder than agreeing on a project with them: sanctions, restrictions, fees. For small groups, I want to build systems where resources and value move quickly and transparently, and agreements are visible to every participant.
Horizons
Not a forecast, but the direction I want to move in
Now
Online interest groups, joint projects, coliving. People are trying to live and work side by side and learning to reach agreement without a boss.
Nearer
Networked communities with shared infrastructure and their own systems for exchanging value. Small places where people live by rules they agreed on themselves.
Far
Cooperation becomes more natural than struggle, because everyone's basic needs are met. Coercion remains a rare exception.
Thinkers and Books
Thinkers
- Peter Kropotkin Mutual aid is a factor of evolution on a par with struggle: those who know how to cooperate survive.
- Elinor Ostrom For centuries people have managed shared resources themselves, as long as the rules are fair and made by those they affect.
- Balaji Srinivasan The network state: first an online community of like-minded people, then a shared life in the real world.
Books
- «The Network State» How new societies can form around an idea rather than around a territory.
- «Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution» Observations of animals and people that argue with a simplified Darwinism.
- «Governing the Commons» Eight principles by which communities preserve shared resources without outside oversight.
Related
Get new thoughts on a society without coercion
Rather do than read? Let's meet