Prof. Tom W. Bell: Special Jurisdictions, Copyrights & Internet Law | Logos Podcast with Jarrad Hope

Jarrad Hope

Great. Well, I mean, it's a pleasure to to speak with you, Tom or Professor Bell. I first got exposed to to your book, Your Next Government many years ago and was enamored by many of the concepts that that you presented and argued for it in there. And I don't know if you probably wouldn't recall, but many years ago, I ended up emailing you about your

Tom Bell

Okay.

Jarrad Hope

And thinking about how to implement this in smart contract form, or at least the sort of arbitration aspect of it. And I've been using these ideas to try and design a political system around, you know, these public programable blockchains as well. So yeah, I just wanted to talk about these and your ideas around copyrights. And yeah, I've used these points in some of my talks as well, but maybe you'd like to introduce yourself and tell us

Tom Bell

I

Jarrad Hope

What

Tom Bell

Don't

Jarrad Hope

You're all

Tom Bell

Know.

Jarrad Hope

About.

Tom Bell

Okay, well, thanks for your kind words. Good to see you again, Jared. Please call me Tom. So I guess you're interested in talking about this book, your Next

Jarrad Hope

Absolutely.

Tom Bell

Government.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Cambridge University Press, 2018. And there's an updated audiobook version from 2020. And I think you mentioned copyright, too. So that would be this book, Intellectual Privilege. I think

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

This is from 2014 and this one's available. You can get a PDF online.

Jarrad Hope

Nice.

Tom Bell

This other one, you gotta, I guess, somehow figure out another way to get access. So as you know, I guess your listeners might not know I'm a professor. Well, I guess I'm. My full time job is I'm a professor at Chapman University, Fowler School of Law here in lovely Orange County, California. And that's pretty much my full time job, except for the last many years, outside parties have come to the university and purchased my services to go work on their special jurisdiction projects. That's what this book is all about, is about special jurisdictions. And so basically, for the last many years, I've had kind of a one foot in practice. I go out and I help people in the real world build jurisdictions. And then another foot in academia where I teach and research and write and do the things a law professor does.

Jarrad Hope

Nice. And I'm kind of curious, like, what were your motivations for for going into law and specifically, you know, the areas around special jurisdictions?

Tom Bell

Well, the law I started in the law long before I got a special jurisdictions, and that was to give a quick version of it, because I had been a philosophy student for many years, I guess at that point, seven years undergraduate and graduate, I was thinking about getting a PhD, I got a master's, and I was just thinking, wow, it's this is great. I like it, but it's all abstract and I like to make things happen. And I was then in graduate school at the University of Southern California. I began researching as a research assistant for a law professor who was doing some kind of philosophical stuff. So. So he wanted a philosophy student. Michael Shapiro was his name. And

Tom Bell

I discovered then, wow, this law stuff is great because you got it's very theoretical. I like that, but you can actually make things happen. And so that got me interested in law. And I ended up going to University of Chicago, and I became an attorney and practiced in Silicon Valley and Washington, DC. And then I went into academia, and then I did that for many years. I started teaching in, I guess, 95. And only a couple of decades after that did I discover special jurisdictions. And that now is my bread and butter. And it's just so rewarding. And I got interested in that because, well, prior to becoming a law professor, between being an attorney and becoming a law professor, I worked at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, which is a think tank, and they press primarily libertarian, free market, classical liberal ideals, which I'm very sympathetic with. And I liked my work there, but I was frustrated because I felt like nothing was happening. There was all these intelligent people, hard working people. They share my values. We're all pushing for these great ideas. I want to see them happen.

Tom Bell

And mostly it didn't happen. And why? Well, lots of reasons, I'm sure. But one reason is because think tanks like Cato bless their hearts. But what they're trying to do is very hard. They're trying to do reform an inch deep and a mile wide. You know, they'll say, we want a new law for all the United States. Well, that's a big ask. There's a lot of people in the United States, and it's hard to get them to agree. And that's the thing that appealed to me about special jurisdictions. It takes that model and turns it on its side. So you're trying to do reform an inch wide and you can go a mile deep then. And it actually works. I hope Cato. And sometimes they get wins and I still support them. But yeah, my focus. I want to make the world change in the ways I think it needs to change. And my focus is on special jurisdictions, because I see that as for me at least, a more effective way to get things done. And it's seems to be panning out so far.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I think, like I agree with you, like reform is, you know, would be ideal, you know, but it does move very slowly. And if you can kind of build out, you know, parallel institutions or economies and deploy them in a way that can be accessed then and ideally do that in a, in a realm that's maybe hosted by a nation. Then like, you know, it can be hugely beneficial and you can move a lot faster.

Jarrad Hope

But, you know, you mentioned that you're sympathetic to sort of libertarian ideals. Why is that? And then

Tom Bell

Hmm'hmm.

Jarrad Hope

What ideals are we talking like? What kind of values are we talking about?

Tom Bell

I would say there's two fundamental reasons why. One is a study of history. Not everybody who studies history reaches the conclusions I've reached. Granted. But I do find that people that promote the most illiberal ideas really don't understand very much about how nation states work and the arc of history. That may be judgmental of me to say that, but there you go. I see a lot of ignorance among people who say, let's have a big government program to fix this. I just kind of rub my temples and and think, have you not seen how that works out? I mean, right now people are talking about we should give the president power to shut down TikTok. I'm thinking I see your motives. Some of them are good, but you're not thinking through how this could play out. You know, the guy you like won't always be president, and it won't be TikTok next time. So

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

That's one thing. Just a study of history. And one thing you learn is that governments are at their best and efficient, and at their worst they are murderous. And we have excellent examples of that right now in the world today, going around dropping bombs on people I care about. And yeah, I don't trust those institutions with the power to kill because they've proven their track record. So that's history and also philosophy. My lodestar is I have a chapter in this book, in the book Your Next government about this, my lodestar is consent.

Tom Bell

And this is for philosophical reasons. I think that's the one thing you really can't argue against consent. We all like mutual consent. And in fact, is, to use a philosophical term, there's a transcendental argument for consent. Transcendental sounds fancy, but it just means it's kind of circular. If you're making an argument, you are showing you value consent because you're saying, I'm trying to persuade you. Listen to me, I bet I can change your mind. Why do you do that? Because you're trying to get the other person to consent. So you can see consent is built into the very process of arguing. The alternative is you pull out a gun, but you don't argue. Then you just say, do it or I'll shoot you. But argumentation, good faith argumentation is premised on we value consent. And so that's my lodestar in political philosophy. And that's what libertarians and classical liberals and other friends of freedom both on the right and left, I figure the right and left. They get it right about half the time, and the libertarians are just more consistently pro freedom across the board. And the thing is, I like freedom. It's true for myself and and others. But I don't really think that's what people want. Or rather, freedom

Tom Bell

Is a way to the goal. What people really want is they want to have rules that they have chosen. I actually view humans as very much law loving creatures. What we don't like is having rules forced on us. We want to choose our rules. So freedom in and of itself isn't much of a value. It's an instrumental value. It's a way to get from here to there. Where we are is most of us living under some rules, some of which we like and some of which we chafe against. And freedom is a way to get us to a better world where we say, I like these rules. These are people I want to be with. I accept these rules. It makes sense to me. They work for me in my my community. And so I don't think really it's about getting away from rules. It's about getting to the rules that we want and we get there through consent.

Jarrad Hope

You're right. I mean I guess when it comes to this the choosing the rules, like, there's many different ways we can go about doing that. And I guess this kind of, you know, this idea of consent is and choosing these rules is kind of the basis of your, you know, the notions that you put forward around polycentric and auto centric law.

Jarrad Hope

Could you go into those ideas a little bit?

Tom Bell

Sure. Polycentric law is basically the idea that we can have a, a system of polities, different communities,

Tom Bell

Sometimes overlapping, certainly cheek and jowl next to each other, each living under different rules, not radically different, typically because you can't have one of them saying, oh, my rule is I get to conquer my neighbors. But, you know, living peaceably. And the alternative to that autocentric is basically a monocentric laws where you have one sovereign who runs everything for everybody. And the really this monocentric view is what you see in, in kind of armchair philosophy or kind of a kind of street political philosophy or simplified undergraduate versions of the state. Hobbes, for example, advocated it. And I don't mean to talk down Hobbes as he was unsophisticated, but I will say the model is kind of unsophisticated. It's very simple. And you say, oh, you want to know how to run things, pick one person and put them in charge. And if you don't do that, warns Hobbes, life will be nasty, brutish and short. It'll be a war of all against all. Now, Hobbes, you know, offered this model. He wasn't the only one, but he's kind of the one you'll read about as an undergraduate student. But it's just not accurate. Historically. In fact, Hobbes should have been able to look back on European history and seeing that for a long while.

Tom Bell

Actually, Europe was this hodgepodge of different jurisdictions under the Holy Roman Empire. You know, it wasn't really an empire. What it was was a confederation of quasi autonomous entities like city states and Italy and Burgs in Germany. That's where the Hansa League got started. The Hansa League was its whole other thing. And all this, this kind of mixed mishmash of different jurisdictions was kind of messy, but they co-existed together. They weren't totally at peace all the time. Of course, Italian city states went to war against one another, but at least these were not world wars. So were the Hobbesian reasoning gets you is totalitarian regimes that have control over massive amounts of the world and trying to get more. I look at Russia now as a perfect example. You got a strongman at the top. It controls a vast amount of territory, and yet it's still not enough. They're still invading their neighbors, trying to get more and more territory versus, well, what is the most polycentric system today? I would say the United States has a fair claim to it. Alas, it's much more monocentric than I'd like, and it seems

Jarrad Hope

Man.

Tom Bell

To be headed that way. But the United States, one of its virtues is that it's pretty polycentric. We have the the 50 states plus some other things like the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and various territories. And then within states we have cities which are not, of course, autonomous, but which do have a lot of governance over their local affairs. And that allows people to move from state to state, from city to state, city to city, choosing the place they like, the kind of people they want to live with. And that gives us freedom. We could have more, but that's an example of a polycentric system. Now, I think we need to go more in that direction. We need to have lots more special jurisdictions that have more autonomy. And I think the world is heading that way. That's one of the things that I chronicle in this book. I've got wonderful charts which I could share with you, but I'd have to screen share that just chart over time, the number of special jurisdictions that's, you know, special economic zones, free trade zones and things like that. And it's just it's a curve that just really has taken off in recent decades. And I think that's a good thing. So the world is heading towards more polycentricity. We should be happy about that. I won't pretend it's not without its problems. There are some challenges. That's one reason I wrote the book. I'm saying, here it comes people. Let's get ready. This could be great if we manage it well. So let's get ready and do it right. And the world will be a richer, more interesting, complex and freer place.

Jarrad Hope

So. Absolutely. I mean, and what does that world what is your ideal world look like then? It sounds like you're almost talking about having like many sort of like city states that are kind of intermeshed. Would that be accurate?

Tom Bell

Well, what about my ideal world? I will sort of say, ultimately, you know, I stand back and I want to say, you know, what happens in history is going to happen. I hope it will promote human flourishing, prosperity, freedom. I do care about humans. That's what I want to see. Human flourishing. And it may turn out under the right circumstances that a more monocentric form of government would bring that. And the way I see history is sometimes it just kind of fluctuates. It goes between these periods of more centralization and decentralization. And I actually see it as kind of going on an upward arc. You know, things are actually getting better over time. But we're kind of going between these two measures of human society mono centricity versus polycentricity. But right now, you know, what I see coming is more polycentricity, and I'm happy about that. And and so my D world ideal world for like the next, oh, you know, few decades when I'll be busy is increasing polycentricity and more choice between jurisdictions. It's not like I like polycentricity in and of itself. It does have costs, right? If you have lots of borders, you have to deal with changes from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It's complicated. Things can go wrong. But if we manage it well, it can be great because it could give us and I think will give us more freedom of choice. We'll we'll be able to choose those jurisdictions that suit us best. Individually, we'll have more choice. And also, even if you don't want to change jurisdictions, which most of us won't, right? I mean, I'm still living in California.

Tom Bell

I've lived in California for a long time. I got all these complaints against the government. I'm working on these projects. Have I moved to them? No. I'm staying where I am, and yet I benefit. Why? Because in these jurisdictions, people can run these experiments in governance, and they can discover what works and what does not work. And then that can be sent to other countries. And this is really what happens. You look at China, right? China kind of looked over the fence at Hong Kong and said, wow, they're doing great over there. What's going on? And they figured it out. Well, they got property rights. They got contract rights. Let's bring some of that here to China, to the mainland, just, you know, right across the Pearl River Delta into Shenzhen. They started these experiments with special economic zones, and it really worked and it spread throughout China. So that's a benefit of polycentric jurisdictions, is it can be for some of us. I get to go there, I get to live there. And I might do that someday. I'm not giving up on that. But in the meantime, if you don't want to move, you want to stay next to your kids and grandparents, whatever. You got good reason to stay where you are, even if you have complaints against the government. Nonetheless, you could benefit because your local government could say, as those governments in China, we need to do things better. They tried out that thing over there. Wow, that really worked great. Let's do that here. And then you'll benefit even without moving.

Jarrad Hope

All right. Yeah. I mean, that problem of moving is definitely an issue, like switching costs. You know, it's kind of unreasonable to expect, you know, if you want, you know, different institutions or, you know, different rules, but you're living under one of these mono centric versions of, of law in particular, you know, what do you do in that scenario? Right. I don't know how you how you think about that at all.

Tom Bell

Yeah, well, mostly, I mean, people complain. Voice actor, voice exit and loyalty are the three kind

Jarrad Hope

Albert

Tom Bell

Of things

Jarrad Hope

Hirschman.

Tom Bell

That you.

Jarrad Hope

That's

Tom Bell

Yeah.

Jarrad Hope

It? Yeah.

Tom Bell

Hirschman. Yeah. And so most of us just complain if we even do that. Hopefully we live in a place where we can complain and we don't have people knocking on our door in the dark of night to drag us away for complaining. So that's voice. And then there are people who exit. And then then there's folks who just, I guess, don't complain and are happy and are loyal. I guess there are some people like that. I just I don't see many of them. So those are basically your choices. And as you noted, Jared, the exit option is really asking a lot. It works for people who are kind of footloose, like digital nomads. I guess they get to go where they want. But most of us, you know, have commitments. We have roots, we live where we live because we like it. And it's asking a lot to ask people to leave. And again, you know, happily, I don't think that's necessary. That's a benefit of special jurisdictions is they can create or try out ideas. And I think we should be humble about governance. Governance is really complicated. I can't imagine anything more complicated than governing big groups of people. Right. Just having a relationship with one person is complicated. Governing a whole community. Politicians have, you know, I don't know if my respect, but I'm glad I don't have their job there.

Tom Bell

That's a tough job and it's hard to figure out. And even the best libertarians and economists, they get it wrong sometimes because people are complicated. And so we need people to try out things to see what actually works in practice. And when they figured out they can bring it home, or at least export it, or we can import it to our communities. And there is another thing. We can bring special jurisdictions to our homes. My my long term goal, Jared, is I get to stay in California where the weather's I love it. It's got all the things I love. You can go surfing, you can go skiing on the same day, which I've done before, deserts. And oh, it's just wonderful. The government's terrible. So what I'd like to do is bring special jurisdictions to California, to the United States generally. We have some in in the United States, but they're kind of kind of paltry. They're kind of weak. They don't really have much autonomy. And California, I think, really needs special jurisdictions. And so ultimately, what I'd like to do is yeah, have a special jurisdiction right here in California. I could keep going to the beach.

Jarrad Hope

Is that

Jarrad Hope

One of your your practical exercises you might be working on on the side at all or.

Tom Bell

Yes, I've been for a few years now, kind of poking around trying to find how can we do this in California. And I got to say, it's it's hard. I like

Jarrad Hope

Right.

Tom Bell

To do things without passing new legislation. Getting new legislation passed is very difficult.

Tom Bell

And it'll be very hard in California to do something like that. And. But did the open. I haven't found good openings yet. Sometimes you work with a jurisdiction. This is, you know, abroad with other countries. You discover, oh, they got a law on the books we can use, or they have this interesting constitutional structure which we can, we can use to start a special jurisdiction. Don't really see that. I've been looking for a while. I've looked at Indian tribe jurisdictions and federal enclaves, and it's just in California. I think we'd have to have new legislation. However, there is hope. There is always hope. But there's especially hope because there's this big new project. You might have heard of it up in the Bay area called California forever or Forever California. It's in

Jarrad Hope

I

Tom Bell

Solano

Jarrad Hope

Haven't.

Tom Bell

County.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah, yeah.

Tom Bell

Yeah. And so some investors have bought a big, big chunk of land, and they are trying to create this new community. The way they tout it is it'll be, you know, livable, it'll be walkable. And that all sounds great. I have not heard them talk yet much about, oh, we're going to have some autonomy to do our own, our own regulation. And I think that's what they need to do, because

Jarrad Hope

All right.

Tom Bell

Otherwise it's just like a big HOA. And maybe they'll make money. Okay, maybe, but it's not that interesting. And in fact, I'm not even sure they'll make money if they don't have some special carve outs in the regulatory regulatory sphere. Because, for example, there's going to be all these environmental impact statements required and that can kill a development project. That's why there's not enough development. Among the many reasons as one reason why there's not enough development in California, why housing is so expensive because it's so expensive to build housing. I

Jarrad Hope

Hmm'hmm.

Tom Bell

Haven't heard anything up in Solano County where they're saying, we're going to solve that problem. Instead, it looks to me like they're saying we're going to have a lot of land and we're going to do a lot of building. So we're actually going to have a lot of these problems. And

Jarrad Hope

Right.

Tom Bell

So I'm actually worried for them that it won't fly because they don't have any regulatory autonomy. So I think someday they're going to wake up. They I've not heard any talk on their account yet. Maybe they're working on this and I haven't heard from him. Somebody to wake up and realize, oh yeah, this is never going to work. If we don't get something that lets us do what we want to do without Sacramento, you know, shutting us down and burying us in red tape.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah, well, fingers crossed for that, I guess.

Tom Bell

Yeah.

Jarrad Hope

I like when we're talking about jurisdictions here. There sounds like there's an implication that there is a strong sort of territorial component to to this. Is that how you how you view things?

Tom Bell

No. Not solely. That's the things I've worked on have been more traditional.

Jarrad Hope

Hmm'hmm.

Tom Bell

I guess we could call them special jurisdictions where you actually have a demarcated geographic area and you say in there you get to do this stuff and not outside of it. But doubtless you're thinking about the network state and Balaji Sreenivasan's book and his work in that area. And there's some other people, Zuzul, who is kind of an interesting

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

I mean, it was geographically situated, but not permanently so Soosalu, as your listeners might know, was a pop up. I guess we call it kind of a pop up community or jurisdiction. That was in Montenegro, and they did another one recently in a jurisdiction. I've worked a lot on a real space, physically demarcated jurisdiction. Prosperar. But they set up another one there. What's it called? Vitalia, I believe

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Another

Jarrad Hope

That's it.

Tom Bell

Kind of. Yeah. Zuza soosalu kind of or Zulu Zulu kind of community.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

So we

Jarrad Hope

Who

Tom Bell

Have

Jarrad Hope

Knows?

Tom Bell

Two

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

We have three models in. We have the kind I tend to work on, which is here's a geographic space. And then you have the network states, which are still mostly just an idea. And then zuzul, which is kind of a temporary I

Tom Bell

Guess it's geographically demarcated. When I could throw one more in there. I have worked kind of on a decentralized jurisdiction, the Catawba Digital Economic Zone, which

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Is a. Yeah, a zone set up by a Native American tribe here in the United States, in the Carolinas, North and South Carolina. They have lands on both sides of the border there. And yeah, I helped them create the digital economic zone as a right now, it's entirely virtual. So it's kind of like a network state, but it is sitting on servers on reservation land that's

Jarrad Hope

Right.

Tom Bell

Actually important for their legal autonomy. They can say to regulators outside their their jurisdiction, because it's a tribe. They have a nation, an Indian nation. They say, you know, look, this is on our land. These servers are on our land. You don't get to mess with them. So it's not distributed the way I think. Villages model of a network state is.

Jarrad Hope

Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, from my perspective the sort of network state concept probably goes back to around like the late 90s and early 2000. Like all of this sort of crypto anarchists and cypherpunks were talking about you know, like these virtual states or cyber states or temporary autonomous zones. You know, basically how I'm starting to view things is viewing like a blockchain a public program or blockchain as a form of popular sovereignty. You know, the consensus algorithm is kind of like a quasi parliament. And

Jarrad Hope

The order that you're creating is, you know, obviously the chain itself and it becomes

Tom Bell

Mm.hmm.

Jarrad Hope

Completely auditable. And then in my view, like, you can do do this sort of market based discovery of institutions by having, allowing anyone to be able to deploy the rule sets on there, and then people can voluntarily opt in and out of them.

Tom Bell

Waku.

Jarrad Hope

And so it's very similar to the network state thing. But going back to this the notion of territory, the reason I asked is because, you know, we touched a little bit on physical security. And there's kind of a delineation there where you know, if you look at Freetown, Christiania in Denmark, for example, if you ever go in there, you know, everyone's almost armed to the teeth, you know, in terms of, like their not with not with, you know, weapons, I hope, but like, they make sure they're anonymous, right? And they're all kind

Tom Bell

And.

Jarrad Hope

Of defending themselves. And then if you go like on to, you know, view dark web or darknet markets, for example, you'll find that there's a lot of, you know effort put into you know, securing your personal, you know, your identity and your personal security or OpSec, right.

Jarrad Hope

And like, that's kind of if you take like, libertarianism to its like, conclusion, you know, that's kind of the realm you get into. Right. And so I don't know how you think about, like, the private production of defense or like what would be a solution to that?

Tom Bell

Well, I just want to go back and just say. Because you were talking about blockchains, I just I

Jarrad Hope

Sorry.

Tom Bell

Like your

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Thinking there.

Jarrad Hope

Oh,

Tom Bell

I

Jarrad Hope

Thanks.

Tom Bell

Agree,

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Yeah. Bitcoin is actually, I haven't really heard it presented this way. Probably it has been, but I haven't heard it presented. It's kind of like itself. It's kind of a I don't know if I'd say it's sovereign. Maybe you could say the Bitcoin community is kind of sovereign in

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

A very narrow sphere. Right. It's about

Jarrad Hope

Sure.

Tom Bell

Exchanging monetary value. But that's not an unimportant area. Right. Money's

Jarrad Hope

Right.

Tom Bell

Pretty important. So yeah great example. And it's all consensual. And and to tie it to your second theme about security well, you know, they say if you don't own your own wallet, you don't really own your Bitcoin and you

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

Have to have some kind of password or other security to control access to your wallet or else, you know, anybody else can take your money. And these other communities that you mentioned, like was it Christiana

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Is the name of the community where everyone goes they're kind of guarded and

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

On the dark web, of course people are, because they're probably subject to felony prosecution, very sensitive

Jarrad Hope

Yeah, yeah.

Tom Bell

About their identities. And what's the solution? Well, I mean, obviously that is one solution. It sounds exhausting, though. You know, if I had to walk around all day, like in some mad Max film, worried about being ambushed on every corner, I mean, you know, it sounds cool when you're 14 or even when you're my age, but it only sounds cool for 20 minutes. Oh, yeah, I'll be a badass. I'll have ammo

Jarrad Hope

All right.

Tom Bell

Across my chest and I'll walk around with a gun. You know, dude, I want to go play at the park with my

Jarrad Hope

It's

Tom Bell

Kid.

Jarrad Hope

Exhausting.

Tom Bell

I

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Want to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee and read the paper once in a while. It's exhausting. I can't do that. So what's the solution? What? We do need security. There are bad actors in the world. There are psychopathic people ask. Many of them are at the heads of nation states now. But there's all kinds of bad people out there that will hurt us without blinking an eye. So we do need security. And the solution? A solution. I think we need lots of solutions. And you do want defense in depth, but a solution is the geographic communities. The benefit of those is you can actually put up a wall. I mean, it's an ancient solution. And people, some of them have a thing against walls. Well, I say it depends. It depends on what your wall is doing. If it's protecting your city state from marauding goths, I'm all for it. Or to use a more up to date version. If it's protecting your special jurisdiction from people who would come in and steal things or even from government regulators or their agents who would come and interfere with your operations, you probably do want a wall. And these days, of course, you can probably do a wall in a way that's much softer. You can use, you know, electronic monitoring and things like that. So it doesn't look like a walled citadel. But that is one solution. You live in a walled community, and there you can take your kid to the local playground and drink coffee on your deck without wearing a belt of ammo. And there are costs. You can't get away from security costs. At least you can kind of push it to the other side of the hedge so you don't have to see it, and you can hand it off to professionals so you yourself don't have to be like a character in a mad Max film.

Jarrad Hope

Right? Yeah. I think if I recall correctly in in your book, your next government you kind of touch upon this notion of, like, economic exile, right? So like is that correct? Am I remembering remembering that correctly?

Tom Bell

Don't think I used that phrase.

Jarrad Hope

Okay,

Jarrad Hope

Right?

Tom Bell

Economic exile. I can imagine what you're alluding to. But tell me more. Maybe I got something to

Tom Bell

Say

Jarrad Hope

I

Tom Bell

About it.

Jarrad Hope

Guess, like you know, at least from the crypto world, right? Like you, you might enter into a lot of the ways that, you know blockchain projects work at their base layer is you have to kind of collateralize, you know, your obligations so you can be penalized, right?

Jarrad Hope

So I guess I was imagining, you know, my interpretation of, of your words that, you know, perhaps you could enter into an agreement voluntarily. You collateralize it either through your own capital or through an insurance company, for example.

Tom Bell

Okay.

Jarrad Hope

And then if you misbehave at some point you know, some of that collateral will get slashed or removed, right,

Tom Bell

Okay.

Jarrad Hope

And redistributed to, to wherever it goes.

Jarrad Hope

And if it goes so far, then you will lose access to,

Tom Bell

I

Jarrad Hope

The

Tom Bell

See.

Jarrad Hope

Series of rules that you're participating in.

Tom Bell

And that's the

Tom Bell

Economic exile. Yeah, I

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Love that model. I've actually written about that. I have a paper in the independent review about distributed protocol communities. And so I look at several what I call distributed protocol communities, blockchain. But also, you know, Ethereum. What's another one? I think I looked at Ada, the Solana and several of them.

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

And basically I kind of I looked at all these communities, describe them, and that's one of the features I described, staking and slashing. And then if you're interested in that paper, it also says look at some other things here. Like we care about privacy is how do these kind of rank them all and not with with hard numbers, but kind of like this one's better than that one. So yes. Economic controls on behavior very important. And I guess you're raising this, Jed, because we, we segwayed from security and we were talking about security and kind of it's like ugliest forms. I mean, again, I'll say we need security. We need actually once in a while, some tough people with guns because it's a bad world out there. But, you know, we'd prefer to get people to behave in softer ways than waving pistols in their faces. And economic sanctions are a great way to do that. Right? You say to all kinds of actors, good and bad, you know, here are the rules. You play by the rules, you can get rich. And if you don't, you're going to lose your money. And you know, that's a big incentive, even for psychopaths.

Tom Bell

They like money. And so you can say to them, we don't have to shoot you. We're just going to make sure that if you don't do nice things to people, you end up losing your money. And staking lets you kind of do that up front. You have to pre-commit and hopefully it's consensual. I think it pretty much in all the distributed protocol communities. It is consensual, right? Nobody forces you to to have Bitcoin. You enter that community voluntarily. And some of those communities, those that have their own self governments. Yeah. You have to stake some of your assets on contingent on your good behavior following the rules. That's a great system. And, and not only ever written about this, I'm working on a form of government that uses that. It'll be a combination of things like that and the real world. I can't say much about it. They do have a website, free society. And like I say, as I've been working on that one for years and we're getting close to launch and it's going to be very exciting and it'll

Jarrad Hope

Very

Tom Bell

Combine.

Jarrad Hope

Cool.

Tom Bell

Yeah. Real space. Real space area. Indeed. Sovereignty is the goal. And with full scope governance, you know, top to bottom, soup to nuts the full stack, as they say in programing the full stack of governance. And it'll it we plan to use lots of things like that. We want to distributed government not with just we're not appointing a king. It's like old school. We don't do that. It'll be, you know, a kind of distributed, decentralized form of government. So you have to use mechanisms like economic sanctions.

Jarrad Hope

Right? I mean, that sounds really exciting. I can't wait to to see it released and learn from it. There's a few things that, you know, there's a lot to unpack there, like, in terms of, like, different rabbit holes to potentially go down. But you mentioned sovereignty and you did make that comment on, you know, Bitcoin and whether, you know, it is like a form of sovereignty or not.

Tom Bell

You.

Jarrad Hope

And that's kind of how I what got me so excited about Bitcoin initially was that it was able to operate, you know, in a quote unquote hostile environment, yet was able to secure value. It was able to deploy a monetary policy across, you know, a population of people and

Jarrad Hope

Is still operating that way today.

Jarrad Hope

But, you know, like we've seen new attacks on these systems. And you mentioned privacy before as well. I don't know if you have a position on privacy or and what you think about it.

Tom Bell

Well, I will say I don't think it works very well to treat a personal information like property. That's kind of one proposed solution to what are seen as the problems of privacy. And for reasons I will get into, I'll say that doesn't attract me. I think that just

Tom Bell

That model doesn't work. And partly it's because as my other book, my other book about copyright critiques using a property model for for copyright, I happen to be a huge fan of property intangible things. I think property makes sense for things you can touch. It does not work so well for intangibles, some more than others. I think privacy rights, as they say, I don't even like that phrase, is not a good place to use property rights. Of course, I do think people should be allowed to be private if they want to be, and no one should get in the way of them doing that by, for example, outlawing encryption software. Yeah. But but I also recognize that most legal systems have mechanisms for piercing property to stop bad actors. I can't think of any that basically let anonymous actors have free rein. And yeah, I'm not sure even I so practically I don't see how that could work.

Jarrad Hope

Hmm'hmm.

Tom Bell

There's ways to shield to use Pseudonymity. Now, Pseudonymity, of course, is this middle ground between anonymity and and kind of knowing someone's true ID and I'm a big fan of Pseudonymity and I guess Bitcoin and other distributed protocol communities. I think that's what they use. And even on the dark web, Pseudonymity plays a role, right? If you

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

Want to run a store that sells hashish through the mail illegally you know, you're going to have a reputation online. One of my colleagues over at Pepperdine University Julia Norgaard, has written about this. She's an economist. And and it's really interesting how on the dark web, there are enforcement mechanisms. People do have reputations

Jarrad Hope

Oh,

Tom Bell

Even,

Jarrad Hope

Yeah, they have their

Tom Bell

You

Jarrad Hope

Own

Tom Bell

Know.

Jarrad Hope

Set of rules, you know, to

Tom Bell

Oh,

Jarrad Hope

Regulate

Tom Bell

Yes. Yes.

Jarrad Hope

Behavior. Right? Super

Tom Bell

Yeah,

Jarrad Hope

Fascinating.

Tom Bell

But the important thing is you can't lay hands on those people the way they structure it. And that's

Jarrad Hope

No.

Tom Bell

Attractive for distributed protocol communities. So there's some thoughts. I mean, if you wanted me to say yes, privacy

Jarrad Hope

No.

Tom Bell

All

Jarrad Hope

Not

Tom Bell

The way.

Jarrad Hope

Necessarily. No.

Tom Bell

I can't

Jarrad Hope

Like

Tom Bell

Do that.

Jarrad Hope

No. Absolutely no. I was just curious. Right. For for me, I've been approaching it as a means of achieving political neutrality in these networks. Because if you can introduce bias, say, like in a, in a public blockchain if the stake is or the nodes are securing, the network can be coerced in a major way, it could undermine the entire value of, of that system

Jarrad Hope

Or of the order itself.

Tom Bell

It's absolutely.

Jarrad Hope

And so it kind of ties back to this notion of sovereignty.

Tom Bell

Yes.

Jarrad Hope

So, so like you know, I guess, like the Cypherpunk motto, I can't remember exactly, but it's, you know, it's privacy for the weak and, you know, publicity for, for the strong, basically. So

Tom Bell

Interesting,

Jarrad Hope

All your public administrations

Jarrad Hope

And these things should be public. The money that flows to, you know, politicians, for example, should be public. But, you know, private individuals can enter into private contracts privately without coercion. It's not without its faults, as you've pointed out. Right? Like but I do wonder, you know, if if the reduction in transaction costs and, like, enabling, you know, this sort of free economic exchange would lead to more value creation. But I guess that rests on, you know, people in general being being good. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm

Tom Bell

I think

Jarrad Hope

Just

Tom Bell

People

Jarrad Hope

Gonna.

Tom Bell

Are self-interested, right? I

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Used when I was younger. I used to wonder, are they good or bad? And I decided they're self-interested.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah, yeah. Well I mean self-interest is quite interesting right. Because it's like it almost implies like rational agents as well. But

Tom Bell

Mm.hmm.

Jarrad Hope

I think one of the issues that I struggle with, with, say, like a form of individualism, which I subscribe to, is that if you have an entity that has more intelligence or more capacity to manage that, that individual's life experience you know, through media or whatever, you can change their, their their minds or, you know, their opinions on certain things. And so I don't know how you defend against that, but I do wonder if that that changes the equation a little bit. Yeah. Anyway.

Tom Bell

Yeah, yeah. You're talking about people being persuaded, right? And concerned. Is that allegedly autonomous? Individuals are not as autonomous as maybe we want them to be or as they want to be, because they're subject to influences that change their minds. That's your concern.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah, I think so. Like almost like a managed democracy. Right? You

Tom Bell

The.

Jarrad Hope

Know, so anyway, you mentioned, you know, this this full stack that you're doing right.

Tom Bell

Okay.

Jarrad Hope

I like the, the term you use because, you know, you've kind of I want to get into your legs. Right? And you've been working on this sort of open source kernel for, for a legal system there. But

Jarrad Hope

You've been borrowing a lot of sort of like software concepts.

Tom Bell

You're.

Jarrad Hope

So maybe I would love for you to kind of talk a little bit about your legs and, you

Tom Bell

Okay.

Jarrad Hope

Know, your motivations behind it and what your aspirations are for it.

Tom Bell

Sure. So Eulex is, as I called it, an open source legal system. I to be more careful and to use more words would say it is an open source kernel, an important kernel of of full blown legal system. A full blown legal system will have other things. But it's an important part of every legal system, and it's rather like the kernel. So there's a Linux as the name suggests, I was influenced by Linux, and there's a Linux kernel in my Android phone. On that Android operating system, it's the most most popular operating system in the world is Android,

Jarrad Hope

The.

Tom Bell

And it's basically built on Linux. So there's a Linux kernel in there. And that's what I see Eulex as. It's like Linux open source. Anyone can read the code. It's right there. It's available for everybody, no charge. And it can be used. And actually now is being used in two real world jurisdictions and Prospera in Honduras, on the island of Roatan and the Catawba Economic Zone, they are running Eulex in the same way that Android is running this Linux kernel. And what Eulex does is, you know, to Jared is it, it gathers together. Well, it does a few things. It's it a big part of it, the substantive part where the actual rules, you know, here's what it means to commit assault and battery. You know, those kinds of rules are borrowed from other sources. And it basically I took my basket to the library and I said, I need some taught rules. Oh, look, here's the restatement second of tours from the American Law Institute. I'm going to use that and contracts. There's the restatement second of contracts. I could say more about what these rule sets are, but it's important they are all flag free. For me personally, it's very important.

Tom Bell

And for the client I initially created this for, it was important. They're all flag free. They come from non-governmental sources like the American Law Institute, the American Bar Association, the Uniform Law Council. And to go back now and to explain that, where do you let's come from? So I was working in Honduras. This was on the I worked on three teams in Honduras. The last one finally got things going with Prospero, the Z on the island of Roatan. But the first two teams I worked on, they didn't make it, you know, they did good work. And for the second team, and I was working with them to build a legal system because we wanted to start a zone. And they said, you know, Tom, we need a legal system. That was my job. I was like the attorney on the team. And I realized very quickly, we're not going to be able to. I don't want to, but it wouldn't work politically. We're not going to be able to just say, oh, let's bring down Texas law, for example, or the United States law. Oh, man, that would just look so bad. Hondurans have a thing about colonialism, okay? Because they

Jarrad Hope

It's

Tom Bell

Have

Jarrad Hope

Sure.

Tom Bell

Experienced it. And and they're proud people. Their country has problems. What country doesn't? But darned if you're gonna, as a Honduran, going to stomach seeing a foreign flag essentially planted on your soil. No, they've had enough of that. So I realized I can't have any flags attached to this. And so we needed rules. I needed flag free sources of rules. And so that's when I realized, oh, I can go use because I happen to know from my academic career all these private sources of rules which we use in law school. I use the Restatement of contracts to teach contracts class because it's kind of these it's not just that they're privately produced, which is great, but it's also they're better than the stuff the state creates. Why? Well, you know, governments are governments and they're run by legislators and bureaucrats. And the rules, even at their best, reflect local concerns. Whereas the rules that the Alai and the ABA create, they're kind of abstracted from any day to day concerns of some lobbyist, nobody, you know, was a lobbying the ABA or the ally, actually, they've started, but that's another story. The rule I'm using rules from a time before that lobbying got started.

Jarrad Hope

I

Tom Bell

They're the good

Jarrad Hope

Was going

Tom Bell

Old

Jarrad Hope

To

Tom Bell

Rules.

Jarrad Hope

Ask, you know, like you, you know, you're very specific about the additions that you've chosen, and they are not the newest additions. Right?

Tom Bell

Yes.

Tom Bell

That's true.

Jarrad Hope

And

Tom Bell

There's

Jarrad Hope

Then this

Tom Bell

A reason

Jarrad Hope

Is

Tom Bell

For

Jarrad Hope

The

Tom Bell

That.

Jarrad Hope

Reason.

Tom Bell

Yeah,

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

That is a reason. So there are a few things Eli is doing now which I just look at and I'm aghast. Like the restatement of copyright. What are you thinking, people? There's no common law of copyright.

Jarrad Hope

Hmm'hmm.

Tom Bell

And then and there's definitely kind of getting some influence from certain political factions in the ally. But another reason I like to use the older version. So yeah, you've noticed I don't always use the most recent version of what the ABA or the ally most of the ally produces. And that's because I like another jurisdiction to take the first run at it. And if and I figure there's lots of interested people out there and legislatures, the country over that. You know, this is where the guard to the ulxs products that could or could not accept this new uniform code or, or a proposed model statute. And if nobody likes it, that tells me something. Maybe there's a problem there. Maybe, you know, for example, some woke element got a hold of the

Jarrad Hope

And.

Tom Bell

Draft and turned it into something that just won't sell in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, you know, all these non blue states. Also so that's a part of it. That's part of it. And I'm a little more comfortable with the ally because they don't have states adopt their stuff. But even there I actually get in and I look at the rules and sometimes I, you know, I have to make a judgment call I tend to go for. I'm kind of conservative. What I'm proposing is already kind of radical. So I need to be conservative where I can be conservative. And a way I try to bring in some conservativism and say, I'm only sticking with the standards, the stuff that everyone is seen for maybe decades, and they're used to it and, you know, it hasn't been attacked by commentators. I'm okay with that. The new stuff is kind of untested. I'm

Jarrad Hope

Hmm'hmm.

Tom Bell

Not sure it's that good, and it doesn't have a big crowd of people that are familiar with it. That's another thing. Jared,

Jarrad Hope

Nmhm.

Tom Bell

An idea with Eulex is to make buy in easy. You earlier said, you know, asking somebody, we both said this to up and leave the jurisdiction to go somewhere else. Physically, it's a big ask. Not

Jarrad Hope

Hmm'hmm.

Tom Bell

Everyone can do that. Not everybody wants to do that and it's expensive. You use the word I think transaction costs or something like that.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Okay, well if you start a new jurisdiction, it's got its own. It's all all new rules. And and you're thinking of going there, you're going to go, what are the rules? Do I have to sit down and read? I'm not a lawyer. Most people aren't lawyers. I could do it. I don't want to do it, but most people can't do it. Sit down and read all the rules and know whether I want to live there. But

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

The nice thing with using these rule sets in Eulex is you don't have to trust this guy. Tom. I don't even know who this Bell guy is. You can trust me, but you don't have to because I use stuff other people created. So there's some things about the biggest part of Eulex. There's more to it. There's a framework, there's some procedural rules which actually I'm very interested in, but mostly people are interested in the substantive rules. And then there's some meta rules to kind of hold it all together. And the idea again, to take the step back is walk in. You got I basically help people build legal systems. They say, we got a place we need laws, help us with that. And I go, okay, chunk, here's Eulex. And now we've covered a ton of rules. And you know, we do need other stuff, but we don't have to program that new.

Jarrad Hope

Gotcha. Yeah. I guess one of the things I noticed with you, Alex, is, you know, you are making these references to existing works, and I, you know, I think you've done really well in terms of what you've chosen. But I guess this is touching upon, like, the notion of copyright. Like, you're not actually bringing in the black letter rules. You're referencing the documents themselves, right? And I think Eli in particular has a reputation of enforcing their copyright around this material.

Jarrad Hope

I'm

Jarrad Hope

I'm kind of curious how you think about that and what could potentially be done about it.

Tom Bell

I love it, I get to hold it both books because you're bringing in themes from both books. Yeah that's

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

Great. Eulex talks about this book, talks about Eulex, and this book talks about copyright and that the first book, electoral privilege, does not talk about it, but I will. Now you're asking what's the copyright status of these rules? Because you've noticed Eulex, for the most part, does not give you the rules. It kind of says, go over there and read that. And this is frustration for me. It's kind of hard to give that to people because

Jarrad Hope

Hmm'hmm.

Tom Bell

As you noted, the ally does not make it available on their website. Now, I've had back and forths with their attorneys, and I probably wasn't very polite. I was probably kind

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Of snide about it. And I regret that because they're just professionals doing their jobs. But I was kind of irate because. I don't think the alley has any. Just claim to a copyright in the black letter rules of the restatements for various reasons. Many reasons which I have, I have in a memo in my files in anticipation of the day I'm sued. But the basic reason is because it's called the enactments exception to copyright. And basically the idea is you do not want in the United States, we don't let a sovereign say, here are the rules, people you have to live under. And if you don't obey them, we can throw you in jail or fine you. And so there you go. And then and then say, and you have to pay us, says the government. You have to pay us to get a copy. That's just outrageous. So the official enactments exception to copyright, it's a doctrine created by the Supreme Court and other lower courts, basically says it is court created. It's not in the statute says basically, if it's an official enactment of a sovereign, you can't copyright it.

Tom Bell

Now, it turns out the restatements have been enacted as official enactments in two jurisdictions that are kind of part of the United States, the US Virgin Islands and the Northern Marianas Islands, both of which are kind of like outer territories, United States or under United States protection. And they were both. And so I could get into why it happened. But basically those two jurisdictions a long time ago said we need precedence. They were creating new governments because the United States was saying, stand on your own two feet. And, okay, we'll do that. We're going to create our own government. And we have courts now, we don't have any precedents. The restatements are our precedents. That's what they said. They're now official enactments. Furthermore, in the Catawba Digital Economic zone, as of I guess, less than a year ago, Eulex is now the official law. So that is an official enactment of a sovereign on United States soil, the Catawba Indian Nation. So for these reasons and others I could get into, I'll try not to go on and on. The Allied

Tom Bell

Does not have good claim to the restatements with regard to the uniform commercial codes. The same thing. Those have been adopted. I don't use UCC provisions that have not been adopted by a state. So they're all official enactments. And the short of it is right now, we're in this awkward time where that stuff's going to get online, but it's it's not easy to do yet. And a free society, a big part of what I've been doing for them is getting all this stuff together. And we're going to be able, when we launch to say there's a website easily accessible, everything in the same format, all been spell checked, organized neatly, all the stuff in Eulex. And I'll be able to go to my I GitHub page, GitHub page and link through to the free society,

Jarrad Hope

Very

Tom Bell

Substantive

Jarrad Hope

Cool.

Tom Bell

Rules. And I really

Jarrad Hope

All

Tom Bell

Do

Jarrad Hope

Right.

Tom Bell

Need to do that. Jared. You're absolutely right. It's frustrating. People ask me this. Okay, you like school? What are the rules of contracts? Second restatement of contracts. Yeah, but what are they? And I say you're going to have to find those. I'm sorry. I don't have a copy for you right now, but it's coming. And by the way, one last thing on this. You can actually, if you know where to go on Prosper's website, because remember, prosper is running you Lex two. So

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

All this stuff is part of prosperity law. And there's a if you know where to go on their website, you can find copies of. They had them translated, I think, into Spanish as well, but you can certainly find the English language versions of the restatements. It's hard to find. They do not wave the flag, and they have it in a format that you can't easily cut and paste. As far

Tom Bell

As I can figure out, all you can do is do a screenshot. You can't even get a PDF that you can turn into text. I think

Jarrad Hope

Right.

Tom Bell

They did this because they're concerned about liability. They don't want to get sued in the United States. I would tell them, guys, you might get sued, but you'll win. And of course they'll say, Tom, you might be right, but we don't want a lawsuit. It's if you get sued, you've already lost. It's expensive.

Jarrad Hope

You're right.

Tom Bell

So there you go. The stuff's kind of online. You got to work hard to get it. I'm hoping someday soon I'll be able to say it's all online. It should be available yesterday. It should have been.

Jarrad Hope

You

Tom Bell

But

Jarrad Hope

Know.

Tom Bell

The alley has. It likes money, I guess. Is that. That's

Jarrad Hope

Of

Tom Bell

It.

Jarrad Hope

Course,

Tom Bell

You know, they don't

Jarrad Hope

Of course.

Tom Bell

Sell their books. That's how they make money.

Jarrad Hope

I guess. I mean, it's fantastic. You know, you're, you know, undergoing an effort with free society to, to to make that more available. And it's similar because to my approach, because I've been thinking about the same problem. And we've just recently kind of built out a small platform under called Costco. It's empty at the moment, but the idea is that anyone, any user, can come and basically build a book and then start populating sections, and then users can submit multiple interpretations for that section, and then they can get upvoted. Right. And so it becomes

Tom Bell

I

Jarrad Hope

A

Tom Bell

Don't

Jarrad Hope

Way

Tom Bell

Know.

Jarrad Hope

To community crowdsource all of the substantive rules. And then

Tom Bell

That's

Jarrad Hope

From there

Tom Bell

Cool.

Jarrad Hope

You would have like a quote unquote, copyleft, you know, public domain version of, you know, black letter rules that have been,

Tom Bell

Okay.

Jarrad Hope

You know, reconstituted or, you know, interpreted or

Jarrad Hope

However. Yeah. So that's and then of course,

Tom Bell

Interestingly.

Jarrad Hope

There'll be an option for DMCA you know, if there's any potential interpretations that might be too close to the original black letter rules.

Tom Bell

Did

Jarrad Hope

So.

Tom Bell

You say? Did you say DMCA Digital

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Millennium

Jarrad Hope

Yes.

Tom Bell

Copyright Act?

Jarrad Hope

So like the idea is, is kind of similar to like a platform like of user generated content like YouTube or, you know any social media website where you might get a user uploading copyrighted material

Jarrad Hope

And you need a vehicle

Tom Bell

I see,

Jarrad Hope

To be able

Tom Bell

I

Jarrad Hope

To

Tom Bell

See,

Jarrad Hope

Remove

Tom Bell

I

Jarrad Hope

It,

Tom Bell

See.

Jarrad Hope

Right?

Tom Bell

I see,

Tom Bell

I see.

Jarrad Hope

So this is we're trying to act as a platform and to that allows, you know, for, you know, users to come up with their own sets of bodies of law. And my intention

Jarrad Hope

Is to restatements of law in a way. Yeah. Or

Tom Bell

Yeah,

Jarrad Hope

Restatements

Tom Bell

I

Jarrad Hope

Of restatements

Tom Bell

Should get.

Jarrad Hope

Of law. Yeah.

Tom Bell

I should get him something. I'll be want to be involved with it. And I assume you're going to set up, like, the whole suite. So you'll have people incentivized somehow through some kind of a cryptocurrency

Tom Bell

Or token.

Jarrad Hope

Not at this stage. No. Like, I

Tom Bell

The.

Jarrad Hope

Think the the MVP or proof of concept is just the, the platform itself. And then like

Jarrad Hope

We'll start, you know, populating it to show a proof of concept and then like,

Tom Bell

Whatever.

Jarrad Hope

You know, I can send it your way to, to get your input and feedback

Jarrad Hope

And

Tom Bell

Sherm.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

So feel

Tom Bell

Free to feel. Feel free to take you legs and you know, just you can scrape it off of GitHub. It's there for the use. And

Jarrad Hope

Yeah,

Tom Bell

You used

Jarrad Hope

I'd like

Tom Bell

Copyleft.

Jarrad Hope

To contribute back to it. Yeah.

Tom Bell

You

Jarrad Hope

That's.

Tom Bell

Used. You used two words in close conjunction. You used copyleft with public domain. I will observe those are different, right? Copyleft.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Yeah. Real open source actually uses copyright. So in a way UX is not open source in that way because I don't assert I can't, I couldn't if I wanted to. I don't think I really would have much of a copyright claim, certainly in the substantive rules. Yeah. So and so that's public domain is basically take it and run with it. Don't defame me. Right. You shouldn't represent you shouldn't like change it in odious ways and say that's Tom's work but otherwise. But copyleft. Yeah it does rely on copyright to kind of enforce openness. And I'm okay with copyleft. I just don't think it's it's not what I'm doing. I don't think I could do it.

Jarrad Hope

Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. I think, like, one thing we haven't really touched upon you know, we talked about special zones. You know, why we'd want to move to them? But we haven't really touched upon, like, what nation states are doing wrong in. And I'm kind of curious, like, you know, in your view, like, I especially like your argument around governmental immunity. That was an eye opener to me.

Tom Bell

Yeah,

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

I'm very cranky about that.

Tom Bell

Well, what governments are doing wrong. I'm going to paint a picture before I get into the details, because it sticks more and it's more fun. And I think here it's a pretty good picture. And I view nation states in their current form as like, dinosaurs in

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

Their heyday. And I don't know if we're going to have something like the KT boundary, you know, a big meteorite. I don't think actually that's what I see happening, but that but the mammals were around when the dinosaurs were around, skittering amongst the feet of the dinosaurs. And that's a picture I see now. The nation states are these big, kind of scary, kind of awesome, amazing, huge, powerful things stomping around, kind of probably clumsy. Some of them are quite clever. The dinosaurs were, some of them very sophisticated. We know that at least from Jurassic Park and other authorities and they're all all and all they're kind of cool. But the mammals are there, and and eventually I'm rooting for the mammals. Eventually the mammals are going to rise up, as it were. And those are the special jurisdictions, these little things skittering about the feet of the dinosaurs. And I do see problems ahead for the dinosaurs. I don't know if it's going to be a meteorite, but I wrote a chapter in a book on this called The Forecast for anarchy. So it's a book about anarchy, Rutledge University Press. Unfortunately, that one's really hard to share. It's in a chapter copyright restricted somewhere. But anyhow, it's a forecast for anarchy. And I didn't come up with this myself. I did the research. I looked at, you know, various forecasts, kind of these high level forecasts, the world in the next, you know, six decades, that kind of thing. And many of them are noted. And you also get this from economists. There's some unsustainable economics going on with nation states.

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

We keep hearing this. The drumbeats been going on for a long time. That's because it's easy to see, right? It's easy to see this problem coming. And so people get desensitized, I guess, to the enormity of the just to choose one example, the US debt and the problem that most of our budget pretty quickly foreseeably absent some radical changes, is going to be going to paying off interest on the debt instead of doing things like paying off retirees and buying jets and things like that. And and the United States is hardly alone in that, this this stuff started getting on the table. Jared. Even before the demographic collapse problem loomed

Tom Bell

On the horizon,

Tom Bell

Which is another long term problem for nation states. So we got these big tidal waves coming in. You can see them coming, the big waves. If you've ever surfed, you know, the big waves you see first they start breaking earlier.

Jarrad Hope

I'm

Tom Bell

They

Jarrad Hope

Australian.

Tom Bell

Raise up earlier.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah. Yes.

Tom Bell

Yeah. Yeah. So. Oh are you okay. So

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

You get it. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing some big waves coming. And just like with surfing, to use a different metaphor now big waves can be the best thing if you know what you're doing, if you're prepared and you catch that wave, you're going to get where you want to go and probably have a good time if you're in the wrong place. If you get caught inside, that can

Jarrad Hope

And. Yeah.

Tom Bell

Be a totally different experience. And so part of this book is the idea is I'm trying to get people. I'm like the surfer who says, outside, outside, and you start paddling for the horizon. You tell all your buddies the big sets come and get out there. And so that's what I'm doing. And then also you can't really teach surfing in a book, but I do think there's things in a book you, you can tell people that can prepare them for this. So big, big crashes are coming ahead for the dinosaurs. Big waves are going to hit the dinosaurs to mix those two metaphors. And I guess I want to prepare we mammals, the special jurisdictions, the mammals are like the special jurisdictions. That's what we are going to use to surf these big changes. That's the idea. We're going to have these small, nimble, manipulable, hopefully well secured jurisdictions when the stuff hits the fan, which it will in a lot of important, powerful places. There will be jurisdictions that help us get through that carry the law to a new, hopefully better world. Dinosaurs are still around right now. They're birds and they're useful to us. Or amusing, but they don't go around killing us the way the the dinosaurs used to kill mammals. And that's the world I want us to get to. I'm not saying states are going to totally disappear, but it's rather like Neal Stephenson's wonderful novels, especially Snow Crash, where he illustrates nation states are still around, but they're they like birds, you know, like chickens, you know, or parrots or something. The kind of ridiculous or sometimes useful, but they're certainly not threatening. So there you go. There's the big changes coming ahead. That's why I wrote the book. That's where I want to be. I want to be in that brave new world with special jurisdictions doing interesting work. And I think we have to prepare for it. It's going to happen, like it or not. There's no getting out of this ocean. The big waves are coming, and, you know, we either paddle outside or we get caught inside. That's where we are.

Jarrad Hope

You're right. Nice. So I will wrap up now, but like, I wanted to ask one last question. Much further. Much earlier on, we were talking about, you know, different jurisdictions identifying, you know, certain institutions or rules. And then, you know, bringing it into their own you know, we talked about private property, you know I'm very interested in sound money. You know, we've talked about Eulex and common law. Is there any other sort of like key institutions that are kind of foundational for, you know maybe not a kernel, but a distribution of a political system that you think is important.

Tom Bell

Other important institutions for the distribution, or maybe the management of a political. Political system to to let us live together in peace and prosperity.

Jarrad Hope

Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Bell

Yeah. Okay. And you covered law, of course. And sound money is on your list. And mine too. We could throw in kind of loose cultural things. I'm not really a specialist in most of that, but I do think

Jarrad Hope

Mm.hmm.

Tom Bell

It's important for people to certainly share certain fundamental values. The reason, you know, the reason we don't go around hitting each other and murdering each other and stealing things from each other. Most of us, we civilized people is not really because it's in the laws. It's not like you

Jarrad Hope

No.

Tom Bell

And I wake up and think, oh, every morning I wish I

Jarrad Hope

Today's

Tom Bell

Could kill somebody.

Jarrad Hope

A good day

Tom Bell

But

Jarrad Hope

For

Tom Bell

Doug,

Jarrad Hope

Murder.

Tom Bell

On that level.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Oh, but there's that law dog on it, I guess. Haha. Again, I keep forgetting that's just not how it works. You know, we're socialized, so that's not even on the table. Yeah, most of those laws are for the psychopaths. So when we grab them, you know, and stop them, we can say, these are the rules. We spell this out for you and hopefully they can send it to them. So anyhow so culture is very important. I myself care about it. I actually started actually a fiction book which is still on the shelf. It was kind of a young adult fiction, and it involves kind of world building where the young people have to rebuild the world. And so I was going to use that for pedagogical purposes, which unfortunately made it a little, I could tell, not as much fun as a book needs to be. Maybe someday when I have more free time on my hands, I'll revisit that. And another thing use this kind of out of left field for most of your audience, probably, but I'm going to put it on the list because it is on my list is theology. Theology.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

I'm a student of theological history. I've been reading lately a lot about the the deists and who were influential at the time. The founders were influential. Many of the founders were themselves at least influenced heavily by the dais. Some of them were deists. And so I'm interested in this interplay of theology. And they were connected. You know, it was not a coincidence that the founders of the United States were deists. They were fighting against authorities of all types. The deists were famous for being against what they called priestcraft. They saw that as akin to statecraft. So they were interested in liberating people. Epistemologically. Right. Liberating their thinking, their beliefs about the world, in addition to liberating them from, you know, coercion, which is basically political reform. And I am too. I'm not going to say much about it here, but I will say you asked what's on the list? And I'll say getting some theological things figured out would be really helpful to peace and prosperity.

Jarrad Hope

It? Absolutely.

Tom Bell

When people have the same fundamental agreements about some important issues, it helps.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah. Like a like a form of cultural. Almost like cultural hegemony. Like the idea of theology being important. Wasn't apparent to me until I read Hans Adam the second the state and the third millennium, where he kind of brings that up.

Tom Bell

I can be dead. I don't remember a thing. I read it years ago. I'll revisit that. I have that book.

Jarrad Hope

It's

Tom Bell

Wonderful.

Jarrad Hope

A very small note, but like, I took notice of it, right. And then I kind of I never really had appreciated the social institutional regulatory mechanism of, of religion. Right. And I've like gone deeper into that and a bit more interested in, you know perennial philosophy these days. But I don't think a lot of people realize that there's more to, to theology than the doctrinal aspects. And, you

Jarrad Hope

Know the exoteric. So, yeah, I would agree on that point. I think it's actually really important. So, so yeah, I guess we're pretty much out of time, unfortunately. I would love to continue talking to you, but I don't want to take up any more of your time. Is there any sort of given the themes that we chatted about in an aside from your your two main books and the the fire caster anarchy forecast anarchy, right?

Tom Bell

All right.

Tom Bell

Yeah.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

There's a book called The paper is the forecast for anarchy. It's

Jarrad Hope

I

Tom Bell

A chapter

Jarrad Hope

Could.

Tom Bell

In the book, and it's a reader compendium, Rutledge Press.

Jarrad Hope

Well.

Tom Bell

I can send it to you and you can post it. I guess

Jarrad Hope

Sure.

Tom Bell

I'll link it to the book. Yeah.

Jarrad Hope

And

Tom Bell

Also

Jarrad Hope

Is there any.

Tom Bell

The paper.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Oh, sorry.

Jarrad Hope

Go.

Jarrad Hope

No. After you. After you.

Tom Bell

The independent review paper. I can send you a link to that.

Jarrad Hope

Yeah.

Tom Bell

Well, I will say this here. It basically says, like, you know, what should interested listeners do if they want to learn more about my thinking? I'll say you won't find my social media. I just don't have time. I'm busy working.

Jarrad Hope

I

Jarrad Hope

Don't blame you.

Tom Bell

Yeah. But I, you know, published papers from time to time, and I, I guess if you want to see some things I've done, you can go visit Prospera virtually or visit in real space. I want to go back to prosper. It sounds really nice. I've been there before. Swarming it's warm waters with its coral reef right off the shore. The place is on a beach in Paradise as Roatan Honduras. It's a wonderful place. So

Jarrad Hope

How to do

Tom Bell

They

Jarrad Hope

Better

Tom Bell

Can

Jarrad Hope

Than

Tom Bell

Visit

Jarrad Hope

That.

Tom Bell

There. Yeah. Or you can read online the laws or the digital economic zone. And keep your eye can say on free societies, keep your eyes open. We hope to be able to do public announcements. And the goal there is a big one. It's a big ask. And we think we can pull it off where we find a sovereign with which we can have an agreement such that the sovereign backs off some territory and we create a new physical sovereign there. That's the goal. And we're

Jarrad Hope

It's

Tom Bell

Getting

Jarrad Hope

Incredibly,

Tom Bell

Close.

Jarrad Hope

Incredibly exciting. I'm

Tom Bell

Yeah.

Jarrad Hope

Wishing that you're the best of luck for that. And and anticipating it eagerly. So, yeah, thank you so much for your time. And I guess that's a wrap.

Tom Bell

Thank you, thank you.