The Constitution of Non-State Government

Throughout the West, the basic institutions of public life are approaching collapse: Public debt has grown to unrepayable sums—currently at over $30 trillion in the United States alone; violent crime reigns in the once-great cities; social divisions are increasingly intractable; and the supposedly sovereign citizen feels powerless before an ever-growing centralized Leviathan.

Is there no other form of government to replace the impending ruin of the state? This book contends that there is.

The state is in fact a recent form of government, which has existed less than 400 years. Its key characteristics – centralization, ceaseless expansion of its powers to tax and coerce, its removal of all intermediating institutions between those powers and its citizens, its pretense of legitimacy in majoritarian absolutism – have finally reached their historical dead end. Far longer-lived and far more successful non-state governments have existed throughout history. The 500-year-old Hanseatic League, the over 700-year-old Swiss Confederation, and the 1100-year-old Venetian republic provide inspiring alternatives.

From those examples this book has abstracted a non-state constitution, kleristocracy, established on the new praxeological category of architectonics. The brilliant insight of architectonics is astonishing in its simplicity. It is this: Just as the subjective theory of value establishes economics, so it establishes reason as the directing agency of political affairs in a communitarian polity. The book rigorously demonstrates the superiority of the kleristocratic constitution over all of the state’s advocates in political science, from Hobbes to Rawls. And it provides a highly detailed implementation of its principles in the American State where it is most likely to succeed: The State of Texas.

The Constitution of Non-State Government is a book written with logical power and icon-busting verve, as befits a thoroughgoing tract that breathtakingly upends every received notion about what constitutes good government.

“This is a tremendous achievement.” – Dr. Walter E. Block, Loyola University

“An impressive achievement. . . it is excellent and the product of careful thought and much learning.” – Dr. David Gordon, Ludwig von Mises Institute

“It is a splendid study written in a clear and spirited style. . . I especially liked the effort you made to show concretely how Texas (or some other state) could gradually transition into your non-state republic.” – Dr. Donald Livingston, Abbeville Institute

“A banquet of reflections and insights. . . an impressive achievement.” – Dr. David R. Upham, University of Dallas