Note: This is a research note supplementing the book Unscarcity, now available for purchase. These notes expand on concepts from the main text. Start here or get the book.
The Commons: Why One-Size-Fits-All Governance Always Fails
Imagine telling a Swiss farmer in Appenzell that he must govern himself exactly like a Tokyo salaryman. Same tax code. Same family structure. Same relationship with government. Same everything.
He’d laugh you out of the alpine meadow.
And yet that’s precisely what every major political ideology has tried to do for the last two centuries: find the one correct way to organize human life, then impose it everywhere. The communists tried. The capitalists tried. The theocrats tried. All failed—not because their ideas were entirely wrong, but because humans aren’t standardized parts on an assembly line.
The Commons solves this the same way the internet solved global communication: not through centralized control, but through shared protocols at the boundaries.
The Governance Trilemma
Every civilization faces an impossible choice between three things:
- Unity – Everyone follows the same rules
- Diversity – Different communities can live differently
- Scale – The system works for billions of people
Classic empires chose unity and scale. Result: they crushed diversity and eventually collapsed from internal tensions (see: every empire ever).
Medieval Europe chose diversity. Result: hundreds of warring principalities that couldn’t coordinate defense or commerce.
The modern nation-state tried to balance all three. Result: endless culture wars between people who fundamentally don’t want to live the same way, governed by institutions designed for 18th-century information speeds.
The Commons breaks this trilemma by separating what must be shared from what can vary.
What Is a Commons?
A Commons is an autonomous, self-governing community within the MOSAIC (Modular, Autonomous, Interconnected Communities). It can be:
- Geographic: A city, a bioregion, a neighborhood
- Digital: A globally distributed network connected by shared values
- Thematic: A community organized around a practice, profession, or philosophy
Each Commons designs its own culture, governance style, economy, and built environment—provided it adheres to the five inviolable principles of the Five Laws. Think of these as the “laws of gravity” for civilization: you can’t opt out of them any more than you can opt out of falling.
Beyond those five constraints, everything else is negotiable.
Three Glimpses of the Possible
The Kyoto Heritage Commons
Population: 340,000
Life moves slowly here. Neural laces are banned. Residents communicate face-to-face, grow food in community gardens, and celebrate ancient festivals with rituals unchanged for centuries. Children learn calligraphy before they learn coding. Decisions happen in monthly assemblies where the oldest speak first.
Visitors describe it as “stepping into a living museum.”
Residents bristle at that term. They’re not preserving the past—they’re proving that human-scale life remains viable.
The Synthesis Commons
Population: 2.1 million, distributed globally
No physical territory. Just a network of high-bandwidth neural connections spanning forty countries. Members experience shared consciousness during “merge sessions,” pooling thoughts to solve problems no individual mind could tackle. They’ve pioneered new art forms created by hundreds of minds simultaneously.
Biological purists call them “the Borg.” They call themselves “the next step.”
The New Geneva Experimental Commons
Population: 89,000
A testing ground for radical democracy. Every week, they run a different governance experiment: liquid democracy, quadratic voting, AI-assisted deliberation, random citizen assemblies. What works gets documented and shared. What fails also gets documented and shared.
They’ve crashed their own economy three times—on purpose—to stress-test recovery protocols. Other Commons watch their experiments like scientists watching a particularly interesting petri dish.
When Worlds Collide
These three communities agree on almost nothing.
The Heritage Commons thinks neural laces are an abomination. The Synthesis Commons thinks biological isolation is a disability. New Geneva thinks both are adorably certain about things that should be tested empirically.
And yet they coexist. They trade. Their citizens visit each other.
How?
The Watershed Dispute (2047)
The Synthesis Commons establishes a physical node—a server farm and research campus—in the hills above the Kyoto Heritage Commons. They need massive water cooling for their neural processing infrastructure.
The Heritage Commons needs that same watershed for their traditional rice paddies, which have been fed by these streams for four hundred years.
Tensions escalate. Heritage elders accuse Synthesis of “drinking our ancestors’ water.” Synthesis representatives point out that their research benefits all humanity and that efficiency metrics clearly show—
The Heritage delegation walks out. “Efficiency metrics” is precisely the thinking they built their Commons to escape.
In the old world, this ends in litigation, legislation, or violence.
In the MOSAIC, it triggers the Boundary Protocol.
A neutral facilitator—from New Geneva, which has no stake in the outcome—opens with a question that cuts through the noise:
“Let’s step back. What is the ultimate objective each of you is trying to achieve?”
Both sides want the same thing: water security. They just define it differently. Heritage measures in centuries of continuity. Synthesis measures in computational stability.
An AI mediator (called “The Oracle” in the book) surfaces data neither side had: the actual hydrology, the consumption patterns, the efficiency options. Facts made visible—exactly what Axiom II (Truth Must Be Seen) demands.
The solution: Synthesis funds a closed-loop cooling system, reducing their draw by 60%. Heritage accepts modern irrigation monitoring, increasing their yield without increasing consumption. Both get more than they originally demanded. The surplus water creates a wetland preserve—which, it turns out, both Commons wanted but neither thought they could afford.
Key insight: Your freedom ends where my flourishing begins—but that boundary isn’t fixed. It can be negotiated when both parties share the same facts and seek the same ultimate goals.
The Architecture That Makes This Work
The Commons model draws on three proven historical patterns:
1. The Hanseatic League (1159–1669)
For five centuries, a confederation of 200+ cities dominated trade across the Baltic and North Seas—without a king, emperor, or central army.
The League operated through the Hansetag (assembly), where delegates met annually to decide rules, resolve disputes, and set trade policies. Decisions were made collectively. Enforcement relied on peer pressure, embargoes, and trade bans—not soldiers.
The system was based on trust, reputation, and reciprocal relations. The informal cooperation among members kept transaction costs low. It worked because:
- Shared legal frameworks (the Law of Lübeck) enabled trade across borders
- Each city retained sovereignty over internal affairs
- Coordination happened through protocols, not commands
Sound familiar? The MOSAIC is the Hanseatic League at internet scale.
2. Swiss Federalism (1291–Present)
Switzerland’s 26 cantons prove that radical decentralization can be stable.
Each canton has its own parliament, constitution, tax code, and laws. The differences are substantial: corporate tax rates range from 11% to 21%. Some cantons hold direct democratic assemblies; others use representative systems.
The federal government handles defense, foreign affairs, and currency. Everything else—education, healthcare, police, economic policy—stays local.
The result? A country with four official languages, two major religions, and wildly different cultures has remained peaceful, democratic, and prosperous for over seven centuries. Not despite its diversity—because of it. Competition between cantons drives policy innovation. Citizens vote with their feet.
The MOSAIC adopts this architecture: maximum local autonomy, minimum necessary coordination.
3. Internet Protocol Governance
The internet itself runs on federated protocols—TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP—that nobody owns and everybody uses.
The Internet Engineering Task Force develops standards through “rough consensus and running code.” No central authority dictates protocol design. Participation is open to anyone. Decisions emerge from demonstrated value, not political power.
DNS (Domain Name System) distributes authority hierarchically while preserving local autonomy. Root servers coordinate global naming without controlling what anyone does with their domain.
This is exactly how Commons interoperate: shared protocols at the boundaries, complete freedom within.
The Five Constraints That Make Freedom Possible
Every Commons must honor the Five Laws—not because some central authority enforces them, but because they’re the minimum requirements for coexistence:
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Experience is Sacred — Every conscious entity has intrinsic worth. You can’t build your Commons on slavery, torture, or the denial of dignity.
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Truth Must Be Seen — No secret courts, hidden budgets, or opaque AI systems. Transparency is non-negotiable.
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Freedom is Reciprocal — Your liberty extends until it constrains another’s capacity to flourish. The noise-makers can make any sound they want; they just can’t export the costs to people who didn’t sign up for it.
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Power Must Decay — No permanent hierarchies. All authority expires unless continuously re-earned. This prevents Commons from becoming local tyrannies.
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Difference Sustains Life — Monoculture is a vulnerability. The system actively protects diversity because uniformity is fragile.
Beyond these five laws of gravity, everything else is local.
Voice and Exit: The Freedom Guarantee
What if your Commons becomes unbearable?
Traditional nation-states make exit hard. Emigration means leaving family, language, culture, career—and starting over somewhere that might not accept you.
The MOSAIC guarantees two forms of freedom:
Voice: You can participate in your Commons’ governance. Monthly assemblies, liquid democracy, AI-assisted deliberation—whatever your community chooses.
Exit: You can leave for another Commons that better fits your values—and your Foundation access travels with you. Housing, healthcare, food, energy—guaranteed everywhere. Exit doesn’t mean destitution.
This creates competitive pressure. Commons that govern badly lose members. Commons that govern well attract them. The system evolves toward what people actually want—not what leaders think they should want.
The Objection You’re Already Thinking
“But won’t some Commons become local tyrannies?”
Yes, some will try. Here’s why they’ll fail:
The Diversity Guard requires major decisions to achieve consensus across demonstrably different Commons. A local tyrant can’t rewrite the rules without buy-in from people outside his influence.
The PoD Intervention Protocol allows other Commons to challenge violations of the Five Laws. Evidence gets submitted to a diverse panel. If confirmed, coordinated pressure follows: economic sanctions, support for citizen exit, reputation damage.
Exit remains guaranteed. A tyrant’s power depends on controlling the population. When people can leave freely—taking their Foundation access with them—authoritarianism becomes self-defeating. Who stays to be oppressed when oppression is optional?
The MOSAIC doesn’t prevent bad governance by banning it from above. It prevents bad governance by making it uncompetitive.
Why This Isn’t Communism, Libertarianism, or Anything You’ve Seen
Not communism: There’s no central planning. No state ownership. No attempt to homogenize human life. The Kyoto Heritage Commons and the Synthesis Commons have virtually nothing in common except the protocols that let them coexist.
Not libertarianism: The Foundation guarantees everyone’s survival unconditionally. Your freedom to starve is not a freedom worth having. And the Five Laws constrains what you can do to others—you can’t externalize costs onto people who didn’t consent.
Not nationalism: Commons aren’t defined by blood, soil, or historical grievance. They’re defined by choice. You join the community whose values match yours. You leave when they don’t.
Not techno-utopianism: The Kyoto Heritage Commons proves you can opt out of technological acceleration entirely. Neural laces aren’t required. High-tech isn’t mandatory. The system protects traditional ways of life precisely because diversity is strength.
It’s something new: Infrastructure Libertarianism. Invisible infrastructure that maximizes local freedom. The Foundation handles logistics (like TCP/IP handles packets). Humans handle values (like websites handle content).
More freedom than current systems, not less.
The Practical Question: How Do You Start?
You don’t convert the entire world overnight. You start with Free Zones—experimental regions where the Foundation infrastructure gets built and tested before scaling.
Think of them as the “garage startups” of governance:
- A small territory (city, charter zone, willing region)
- Abundance infrastructure deployed (automated food, housing, energy, healthcare)
- Citizenship pathway via Civic Service
- Voluntary participation—nobody forced in
When people see it working—when the neighbor’s kids are thriving without the anxiety economy—the model spreads. Not through conquest. Through demonstration.
The Hanseatic League didn’t conquer Northern Europe. It just made membership advantageous. Other cities joined because the alternative was being left out.
The Bottom Line
We’ve been arguing about the right way to organize human life for ten thousand years. Every answer has failed because the question was wrong.
There is no one right way.
There are many right ways—for different people, in different circumstances, with different values. The Commons model stops trying to pick a winner and builds the infrastructure for peaceful coexistence.
Shared protocols at the boundaries. Local freedom within.
It’s how the internet works. It’s how the Hanseatic League worked. It’s how Switzerland works.
It’s how civilization can work—when we stop assuming everyone must live the same way.
References
- Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.
- The rise and fall of the Hanseatic League — Works in Progress Magazine
- Swiss Federalism: A Comparative Analysis — SwissFederalism.ch
- IETF: Internet Engineering Task Force — Open standards development
- Freedom House: Switzerland 2024 — Democratic freedom assessment
Related Articles
- The MOSAIC Architecture — Technical deep-dive into the coordination layer
- The Diversity Guard — How diverse consensus prevents capture
- The Foundation — The Foundation that makes Exit possible
- Free Zones — Where the experiment begins
- Proof-of-Diversity — The consensus mechanism explained
© 2025 Patrick Deglon. All Rights Reserved.
