Towards Atmospheric Supergovernance

Slouching Toward Post-Westphalia

Hi all,

Got some new content in the works, but for now—here’s a piece I wrote for a recent governance futurist project I was a part of. While I don’t believe in the ‘network state’ as proposed by the tech-right, I find the ideas surrounding what might succeed the “nation state” in a post-internet world pretty fascinating. This was my attempt to (polemically) imagine a positive vision of such a thing. Enjoy! And I’m looking for new collaborators these days—if you’ve dug any of my work, please do reach out on Bluesky @joetforhire.com or Twitter @joetforhire. 🫡

I might be misremembering, but I think it was Buckminster Fuller who said, "Don't try to replace the old thing with the new thing. Instead, build the new thing directly on top of the old thing. Push the old thing down one sedimentary layer so it can live on as a vestigial-compost-fossil fuel hybrid that will shape our future in weird, unpredictable ways."

This is the most crucial pattern to grasp in changing superstructures. You simply must ignore what’s going on around you. Look up and build a ladder. The old systems are beyond saving. Start assembling whatever succeeds the nation-state in plain sight and blissful ignorance. The limbic system plopped right on top of the reptile brain. In every mammal there is something of the eyeball-licker. The neocortex, stuck on top ofthem, elbowed its way into a new, big forehead and floored the gas pedal.

The old system is still turning its massive cogs while the new system slithers around them. Proust smells a cookie, remembers, writes a novel. Would you like to remember these turbulent 20s in a similar way?

To accelerate, build above, without dismantling.

That's why the John McAfee guys bushwhacking their way toward Randian utopias in central America are missing the mark. The world is already country-fied. There are no blank slates in old games. Why build a government from first principles in someone else's backyard?

You’re using a network state to purchase land? Cool, I’m hunting whale blubber aboard a U.S. naval destroyer. The prime minister did not kill the English king and take his crown. The king is compost. Fossil. A little flavor.

To progress, levitate one self-organizing layer upward. The nation-state is the limbic system of the hivemind. Mammalian: alpha dogs, mother’s milk.

Pivot to the neocortical. To erupt into open rebellion and secede from the living configurations is a death sentence. Our foundation must be the 'parallel polis' of the Czechoslovak dissidents of the 70s. Something that can eat the enemy’s soul away from the inside. Living in truth.

The end of history came with the triumph of the optimal meta-nation: market intelligence, a bill of rights, a golden door and a path to naturalization. The local minimum of hegemonic democracy.

As history returns, we are challenged to venture out to the frontiers again.

This is what Vitalik was getting at when he said "the only logical successor state to the USA is the internet."

Instead of running parallel we head upward, to atmospheric supergovernance. The shining city on a hill grows dim. Beyond it: a planetscale honeycomb in the cloud.