The Archaic Binary of "The State or Anarchy"#
Whenever we discuss reducing the functions of the state, we are immediately asked, "So you want to eliminate security, courts, and welfare too?" This reaction assumes that the bundle of functions currently held by a single organization must eternally remain in that exact same bundle to operate.
However, in telecommunications, the device, network, app, authentication, and payment are all operated by different providers. Just as the internet did not require a World Government, institutions do not necessarily require a single, monolithic provider.
The Cosmic Government does not aim to flip the switch on the state overnight. The goal is to systematically reduce, one by one, the functions that supposedly "only the state can provide."
From Monopolist to Protocol#
The modern state makes the rules, verifies identities, issues currency, grants qualifications, distributes services, judges disputes, and evaluates its own performance. The provider, the examiner, and the evaluator are all concentrated within the same massive organization.
We will break this down into components.
- Identity verification will allow mutual validation by multiple issuers.
- Proof of ability will be demonstrated not only by national qualifications but by portfolios and update histories.
- Payments will connect multiple methods beyond just state currency.
- Education, insurance, and welfare will allow users to compare and switch providers.
- Dispute resolution will offer a choice of procedures depending on the field, centralizing only the ultimate prevention of violence.
- Policies will make their purpose, cost, effect, alternatives, and termination conditions machine-readable.
When this happens, what remains of the state will not be an all-determining authority. It will be a minimal interoperability layer—ensuring that different systems can connect without colliding.
The Work That May Remain in the Interoperability Layer#
Problems that are difficult to resolve purely through private choice will remain. The prevention of violence, guaranteeing the rights of those unable to contract themselves (like children), wide-area disasters, infectious diseases, environmental externalities, and ultimate disputes that cannot be solved between systems.
The crucial point is to avoid the leap in logic that says, "Because it is public, the government must do all of it." The scope of what must be handled collectively should be strictly limited, and even that layer must be tagged with a purpose, cost, deadline, audit, and mechanism for filing objections.
The thinner the interoperability layer, the better. However, thinness itself must not become a religion. If vulnerable individuals effectively lose their options, that separation design is a failure.
Substitution is Stronger Than Criticism#
Merely criticizing the existing state cannot weaken its monopoly. If the functions necessary for daily life exist nowhere else, people have no choice but to return, no matter how dissatisfied they are.
Therefore, the revolution of the Cosmic Government is not an occupation, but a substitution.
- Deploying proof of ability that is more reliable than paper titles.
- Operating cosmic laws with clear revision histories, rather than rules made behind closed doors.
- Creating policy evaluations that measure improvements in life, not budget expenditures.
- Designing for exit and data portability from the very start, not just for joining.
If mechanisms that are freer, cheaper, more transparent, and exitable than the state are actually used, the monopoly will crumble—not through ideology, but through comparison.
When This Vision Fails#
If the separated private systems become an even greater monopoly than the state, we have failed. If exit becomes an exclusive privilege of the wealthy, we have failed. If authentication or currency cannot withstand fraud and ultimately rely on a single authority, we have failed. If technology increases surveillance rather than choices, we have failed.
The Cosmic Government itself is no exception. It must remain subject to verification, exposed to competition, and ready to be exited if it proves useless.
A hundred years from now, the culture known as Japan will likely remain. But the "State of Japan" does not need to be the sole apparatus uniformly supplying rules, qualifications, currency, welfare, and belonging. The state can shrink from a community of shared destiny into an interoperability layer connecting multiple systems.