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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

You could imagine a different form of law based on personal & community sovereignty rather than geographic. See eg. Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, where citizens are members of various phyles, each with global sovereignty but clustered within enclaves in each major city. Interactions between citizens of the same phyle are governed by the laws of the phyle, which themselves are shaped by the values of its citizens. Interactions between different phyles are subject to the Common Economic Protocol, which you could think of as a trade agreement governing protection of property rights and economic wherewithal but saying nothing about the personal conduct of people.

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Sovereignty is always personal or community, with geographic or other (e.g., subject matter) limits adopted by the sovereign (perhaps with encouragement from others, particularly other sovereigns whose preferred domains would otherwise be threatened.)

That's actually kind of the point of GP: the geographic limit here doesn't apply to the power of the sovereign around whose notional domain the line is drawn, it applies as a rule adopted governing relations between sovereigns but does not in practice apply where no sufficiently powerful sovereign has an interest at stake for which they will Lodge a protest (backed with the implicit threat of force.)

Parties using geographic games as a way to reject affiliation with recognized sovereigns are not evading the power of such sovereigns, only the protection of them.

That’s a federation, like the USA or Switzerland. It doesn’t matter what type of government you have, it must protect its control over its laws, the federated system is a subset of those laws. So federated governments would take a similarly dim view if foreign entities tried to park and govern themselves in that federation’s border, the foreigners can’t just say, “hey you’ve got a new state in your border”.

In this case the federated system is worldwide, and the individual phyles by definition must park and govern themselves within the federation's border. Because the federated system is worldwide, it must contain only a small subset of the laws we normally associate with a nation-state, those that directly affect peaceful trade and dispute resolution. Cultural values are left for the phyle to administer.

Another key difference is that your phyle follows you around, geographically, while your nation's jurisdiction ends at its borders. If I'm an American expat interacting with another American expat in Shanghai, I'm still subject to Chinese law. If I'm a Neo-Victorian (to use one of the phyles from Diamond Age) interacting with another Neo-Victorian in Hong Kong, I'm subject to Neo-Victorian law. A block over could be a Han Chinese (also using the Diamond Age phyle, but in this case it corresponds to a real ethnicity in our world) enclave, and its citizens would be subject to Han Chinese law when interacting with other Han Chinese. If, as a Neo-Victorian, I cross the street to do a business deal with a Han Chinese, our dealings are governed by the Common Economic Protocol, the set of laws common to the federated system as a whole.

How is this different from the millet system?

> Another key difference is that your phyle follows you around, geographically, while your nation's jurisdiction ends at its borders.

A nation-states jurisdiction does not end at it's borders unless it chooses for it to, which few do entirely. It ability to practically enforce it's rules may or may not do so, depending on the power of the state and power and interests of other states who may be concerned with the specific matter (especially, but not exclusively, the one in whose borders the target of the enforcement is located.)

That book ended on a pessimistic note though- with a reenactment of the boxer-war, because those tribes where cultural incompatible- some beeing overly creative and industrious, driving others into dependancy.

It also was very pessimistic on technocratic solutions for the "good nurture" problem. Basically nothing can replace a real parent coaxing a self-expanding mind into beeing.

I get the sense most Neal Stephenson books don't actually end on either an optimistic or pessimistic note, they just...end. He doesn't seem very interested in passing judgment on whatever future he imagines, he just wants to imagine it. The world simply is the way it is, and humans will continue to be humans, and that occasionally involves doing shitty things. Technology just amplifies that.

He's pretty good at imagining it too - The Diamond Age was published in 1995, just as the Internet was beginning to take off, and yet it envisioned The Internet, videoconferencing, smart paper, drones, and a whole bunch of other technological innovations that didn't catch on for 15 years or so. Cryptonomicon was published 10 years before Bitcoin but fully described two of its biggest use-cases, remittances and digital gold. Snow Crash had the "America is good at only 4 things: music, movies, microcode, and high-speed pizza delivery" line in 1992, 20 years before it became true and right as the rest of the country was celebrating us becoming the sole superpower.

Snow Crash is so bizarre. It launches you straight into the story with no explanation, starting off with some crazy pizza delivery man in a rocket car with swords and an electric zapper thing for people who don't pay the bill. The whole book is like that--it never explains how, why, or when, leaving you to piece it all together yourself. The entire time I was reading it, I was waiting for a 30000 feet view of the world. But then it ended, never having fully explained itself.

I've never read anything else quite like it, and honestly don't know what I think of it. Are all of Neal Stephenson's books like that?

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