Federal Power: Two Paths for Libertaria

Sovereign Society Research 001 · Founding research brief · 4 October 2026

A constitution promises protection. Someone must make that promise hold when a powerful institution refuses it. That is where our constitutional work has reached its first fork.

The Libertaria Federation Network is developing a constitution grounded in Fractalism. Its German reading draft, version 0.4, gives us a common starting point. Our subsequent discussion exposed a decision that cannot be settled by better wording: does the federation possess coercive powers of its own, or must enforcement remain with specifically commissioned associations?

We will develop two designs and test them against the same failures. Their names identify research branches, not adopted constitutions.

Open Federation

Open Federation has no standing federal power to impose levies or command a police force. Chapters and other participants commission shared services, contribute through explicit agreements and organise protection through accountable associations. Its central test is whether those arrangements can protect people and enforce legitimate obligations when a powerful Chapter refuses cooperation.

Civic Federation

Civic Federation establishes limited common institutions, a defined financing mechanism, direct individual participation in federal budget decisions, independent adjudication and bounded enforcement. Its central test is whether those institutions can remain confined to their mandate when expanding it would make their work easier.

This branch investigates a minimal-state direction. We must distinguish voluntarily assumed obligations from territorial authority imposed on nonparticipants. Federal enforcement alone does not settle that distinction; jurisdiction, exit and financing must be specified.

One protection floor

Both branches protect identity and essential substrate, expression, confidential communication, voluntary association, effective exit and independent challenge. Both prohibit torture, degrading treatment, collective punishment and inherited guilt. A person need not leave a community to claim these protections. Neither a majority nor a funding body may cancel them.

A community receives no additional right to dominate its members merely by joining other communities. Nonparticipants retain their rights. Changing an institution, its location or its contractor does not erase existing claims.

Responsibility for delegated power applies in both designs. The fork concerns the location and scope of enforcement power, not whether power must answer for its conduct.

The questions we will test

1. Can either design protect an individual whose Chapter blocks complaints, communication or exit?
2. Can it obtain an independent examination of an SAE whose host Chapter conceals its records?
3. Can it recover misused common funds without making uninvolved members pay for another actor’s conduct?
4. Can it sustain shared infrastructure and long-term research when benefits reach noncontributors?
5. Can it remove a failed provider while preserving care, identity, records and accrued claims?
6. Can it withstand captured auditors, fabricated Chapters, covert influence and concentrated economic power?
7. Can it maintain protection during an emergency without creating permanent emergency authority?

Method before verdict

We will first write the missing organisational rules for each branch. Every rule must identify an actor, a power, a financing source, a review procedure and an exit consequence. The common rights text stays the same. Each organisational proposal must disclose any conflict with the existing reading draft instead of silently editing it away.

The first simulation round will use paired scenarios in the Libertaria tabletop project: the same population, resources, initial obligations, shocks and adversarial behaviour for both branches. Repeated runs will vary Chapter size, wealth concentration, willingness to contribute, enforcement resistance and institutional capture. Every run will record its assumptions and decisions. Simulations establish behaviour under those assumptions; a later pilot must test implementation in practice.

We will measure unresolved rights violations, time to remedy, recurring costs, continuity of service, distribution of burdens, exit costs and changes in institutional power. Faster enforcement cannot compensate for torture or collective punishment. Each design must first pass the protection floor; performance comparisons follow.

We will define outcome thresholds before running the comparisons. Results will be reported by scenario and assumption set. An overall percentage of success would hide the conditions under which a system fails. No success probability has been established yet.

What remains undecided

The proposed one-percent transaction contribution, its assessment base, the relation between Chapter votes and individual votes, the selection of auditors and the powers of enforcement institutions remain design questions. Neither research branch adopts them merely because they appeared in the discussion.

The next step is a short organisational charter for each branch, followed by the first paired case: an SAE and its host Chapter refuse a legitimate independent audit. We will trace what each system can actually do, who pays, who decides and what happens to the people caught inside it.

A constitutional promise must survive refusal. This study asks which organisation can make it survive without consuming the rights it exists to protect.

Starting texts

• Fractalism: the philosophical starting point.
• The Exitarian Framework.
• The Exitarian Foundation.
• Why our reading draft names concrete prohibitions.

The archived internal baseline is the German Libertaria constitutional reading draft v0.4. The two branches are research proposals; neither replaces that baseline.