Smangus is a rare exemplar of anarchism in practice — Acts 2:44–45 All who believed were together and held everything in common, and they began selling their property and possessions and distributing the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need According to legend, Taiwan’s most remote indigenous village was founded 400 years ago when the great chief Mangus led a…

Most associations resemble a corporate oligarchy — A while ago, Dave Volek, author of the Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG) concept, wrote an article comparing his ideal new form of representative democracy to actual existing homeowners associations. His TDG concept, based on neighborhood-level representation that elects progressively higher level representatives based on direct relationships, reputation, and trust, similar…

Obviously, it’s exploitative — Although I write about politics on Medium, I do not use Twitter for politics. Twitter politics are mostly worse than useless. Rather, I use Twitter for cute art and animal videos, because life is hard and I need a break. Twitter, of course, is a huge platform for artists to…

The first franchises were Catholic monasteries During the Middle Ages, local governments granted high church officials and other personages a license to maintain civil order and to assess taxes. Medieval courts or lords granted others the right to operate ferries, hold markets, and perform professional business activities. The licensee paid…

Can central planning solve the economy’s woes? — A note from the editor: I recommend this text as bringing one more example that, as I wrote some time ago, “Socialism is eternally alive.” Henryk A. Kowalczyk * * * People are frustrated with the current system, and rightfully so. We are living through a period of very visible…

The trend is for corporations to operate like the old feudal estates in ways we’ve never seen before. The title might seem a bit like gobbledygook, so let me explain what I mean. New feudalism, or “neo-feudalism,” is an observation made by figures from economist Yanis Varoufakis to criminologist Clifford…

We’re seeing the biggest shift in the Republican Party since the southern strategy Have you wondered why politicians are not what they used to be? It’s not because their DNA has degenerated. It is rather because one can be in government today and not in power, because power has migrated…

The economy is turning to techno-feudalism — They say that the secret to getting rich in a gold rush is selling picks. The idea behind feudalism is to make this a permanent state of affairs. Capitalism is about providing goods and services for a profit: these are the gold miners, or more likely the ones who employ…

Nigeria held one of the world’s most complex democracies before it was destroyed — There’s gotta be a better way. Our elites are utterly detached from the day to day experience of the people they rule, and many of us have lost hope that we can influence their decisions in any meaningful way. …