National governments really are Fiat hierarchies. And they have a monopoly on force. This is true for democracies all the way to dictatorships.

We need governance, not centralized governments.

Churchill

When he said this, Churchill assumed that a government would be in place. And it was a fair, Fiat assumption.

Democracy

In the same speech, Churchill defined democracy as “insurance,”

People, including Churchill, had reason to believe that given the history of raids, wars and other dangers from abroad. they would continue. And in a Fiat world, it was a valid assumption.

So, yes, democracy is better for our wellbeing than other forms of governance. However, like all forms of modern governments, democratic governments bring along with them a Fiat hierarchy and a bureaucracy. And even though the bosses of said hierarchy are elected by the governed, nevertheless, the hierarchy and its bureaucracy is imposed by force.

National Governments

National governments were engendered by big kingdoms, which were engendered by lesser kingdoms, which were engendered by tribal chiefdoms. This is true for all national governments, from shameless dictatorships to benevolent democracies. Governments are huge Fiat hierarchies in charge of the national borders and a monopoly on force.

Nations

I think at this point it would come in handy to talk about nations. These are primarily groups of people who speak the same language. More accurately, these are groups of people who have been forced to speak the same language and live/fake the same culture. Spain is a good example of what I mean: it cleansed its portion of the peninsula and then did the same thing in the Americas. It also applies to all of Europe and a good chunk of the modern world.

Iberian Peninsula

Take Spain. First the Germanic tribes, Goths, Visigoths, Celts, moved throughout the European continent and incorporated or cleansed the people who were already living in the peninsula. The disparate tribes spoke their own versions of the language. Then the Romans of yore showed up and took over the Iberian peninsula. They spoke Latin and forced everybody to speak it as well.

Later the Roman empire fell apart and wars ensued. In the end, the Castilian chiefdom won and forced everybody else, in what’s today Spain, to speak Castilian. The Basque, the Catalonians, the Astures, and the Galicians still speak their corresponding language, but they speak Castilian as well. In fact, all of Europe went through similar amalgamation.

This “amalgamation” was not peaceful by any means. It involved all-out wars and ethnic cleansing.

Tribes became nations, by brute force.

However, it all happened a long time ago and by now we are happy to believe that “nations” have always been this way. Kind of like a perfect result of a fantasy evolution.

Lingua Franca

You can fake culture, traditions and rituals, but not language. Let’s assume a common language as the main requirement for a nation.

In that case, much of the world is becoming an American-english-speaking nation. This time the amalgamation is brought about not by brute force, but by the financial system, a milder, but just as devastating, form of force.

Today, a lot of people can,

• Communicate with one another.
• Share their common problems.
• Learn from one another.
• Collaborate.
• Solve problems bigger than themselves by working together with people anywhere the world.

We are now at a point where we should be coming up with new systems, not stick to one anchored in the past. We can create a better history going forward, without violence, with collaboration.

The Fiat System

The Fiat system that we’ve inherited has not been viable for a while already and will continue to get worse going forward. In a search for an alternative, we need to be able to see,

• The Fiat system.
• How much it hurts all of us.
• How much we accept it.
• How invisible it is.

The Fiat Hierarchy

Every kind of organization today is based on a Fiat hierarchy: businesses, non-for-profits, churches, NGOs, and governments.

Governments

Governments are the biggest and most powerful Fiat hierarchies of all. And they have a monopoly on violence, the most raw type of force.

Churchill was right in saying that democracies are better than other forms of government, but they are not good enough to solve the problems we face. In fact, they’ve created many of the problems we face today.

In fact, national governments have de facto created this “foreign danger,”

• Countries are an enclosure and enclosures create borders.
• Anything and anybody outside these borders are, therefore, foreign.
• Anything foreign can easily become, or be made, into a “foreign danger.”

The idea that national governments are an anachronism has been recognized for a long time.

I first ran into it in the book La Cuarta Vertebra,^∇ an early-1960s book. Before that, in 1910, King Gillette, the inventor of the shaver with replaceable blades, proposed a World Corporation to bypass governments.^∇ There are many others that have come up on a regular basis, but they all have the same weakness: their proposed fix is to build a taller Fiat hierarchy.

I believe that the opposite is called for: governance without a Fiat hierarchy at all.

Collaboration

As I said above, People can solve problems bigger than themselves by working together with people anywhere in the world. It may take a long time, but Radical governance is what is bound to replace Fiat governments

The European Union is an example of what happens when 1) borders come down and 2) things, like currency, get normalized across countries.

Borders

Borders are a major weakness in the way the anthropocentric world runs today. A world government would be the most fragile of things,

• An extremely tall Fiat hierarchy,
• With a monopoly on violence≤
• Control of which would be coveted by many.

A world with no Fiat hierarchy is our safest and most attractive alternative.

Currency

A big part of the problems we face have also to do with money. In fact, Fiat hierarchies and money together, given that money is packaged power.

The European Union has a single currency, the Euro, which has replaced the disparate national currencies. For world-wide commerce, it would be better, too, to have one currency. Unlike the Euro, this currency would be decentralized, not minted by banks.^∇

ENDNOTES

1. Ariel Procaccia. Citizens’ Assemblies Are Upgrading Democracy: Fair Algorithms Are Part of the Program. Scientific American. Nov 2022. <https://radicals.world/GsJaao>

2. Richard Langworth. Churchill’s ”Democracy is the Worst Form of Government… .” <https://radicals.world/1a6vDr> (alt, <https://diigo.com/0qf2ob>)

3. Richard Langworth. Churchill’s ”Democracy is the Worst Form of Government… .” <https://diigo.com/0qf2of> (alt, https://diigo.com/0qf2ob>)

4. Martii Lami. La cuarta vertebra: estafador a pesar suyo. <>

5. King Camp Gillette. World Corporation. 1910. <https://radicals.world/wmJFfR>

6. Matt Perez, Adrian Perez, Jose Leal. rCOIN. <https://radicalcompanies.com/2022/05/07/rcoin.html>