About Us

Our mission: You. and all of your friends

We believe a stateless society is a  respectable, useful and exciting idea, a guiding star for political ideas and actions.

We want you to always ask yourself: how would people solve political problems without the state? What would voluntary and contractual solutions look like?

Our target audience are teenagers. And the young at heart. And politicians, the media, private schools, public schools, universities…

We want the OboxPlanet to become a household name, an alternative to Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism. 

We want to make the struggle for freedom fun and exciting once more.

What is the main difference to today?

“Birds of a feather flock together”. Since there are no state restrictions on migration, people with similar preferences can more easily establish communities. This leads to two opposite tendencies.

Firstly, there is less diversity and more discrimination within the near vicinity and within close communities. Just try to imagine what types of neighbors you would choose. Would you want them to share your basic ideas of respect for property or would you want them to trespass, throw trash on your lawn and party all night? Or would you want them to isolate themselves by a Berlin wall type fence around their garden? Would you want them to build a high-rise next to your house or something that fits the style of your house?
We can observe this today already. Wherever people have a choice, they tend to move to areas of similar types of neighbors and build “ghettos”. Except today, countless restrictions like zoning laws, rent controls and building restrictions hinder mobility to the point where mainly the rich and the politically connected can afford to live amongst themselves while we must put up with whatever integration policies those politicians impose upon us.

Secondly, there is more diversity between the different neighborhoods and communities. There are communities for different religions, for vegetarians, for animal lovers, for computer nerds, for golf players, for hippies and for other social experiments. Some communities have strict immigration rules, others are more lenient. Some allow for building high-rises, others sport trailer parks. Even within homogeneous communities, there are sometimes areas where families, seniors or students cluster. Overall, there is intense competition for successful living arrangements and there are models for living together that we cannot even begin to imagine.

What are the likely consequences?

In the near vicinity, where you have personal contact with people, there tends to be less conflict and more efficient cooperation in homogeneous communities, i.e. more peace and prosperity.

Between different communities, OboxPlanet has a powerful recipe for peace: free trade in goods and services. Each voluntary transaction benefits the two trading parties, each benefit from the other. And when trade happens between communities, without personal contact, economic benefit is much more powerful than almost any religious or other prejudice or animosity. Or, as the saying goes on earth: “when goods cannot cross borders, armies will”.

Not it’s your turn: What type of community would you choose to live in?

Steps we can take in our world

Support any and every type of political decentralization and secession.

Let countries split up into “a thousand Lichtensteins” (Hoppe). Make the political units ever smaller, and give them legislative power and taxing autonomy. Move political autonomy down to regions, municipalities, cities, city blocks and street associations in all political matters: education, social security, infrastructure, trade and immigration policy etc.

What is in it for you?

Are you intersted in politics? Yes or no, It makes no difference. Politics is interested in you. More precisely, the state is interested. It is interested in you not as a person but in that you obey its laws, pay taxes and vote for state-friendly politicians.

We cannot escape the state. But we can practice an attitude that makes us feel serenity and optimism. That’s what knowing the OboxPlanet is about.

And here is the first step: most of us live in better circumstances than any of our ancestors. It is our belief that we owe our fate some degree of gratitude.

So, how can we foster serenity and optimism?

If you have an interest in politics, exploring the OboxPlanet and examining voluntary, contractual solutions to political problems can help you break away from the traditional left/right spectrum. Voluntary and stateless solutions are politically neutral.We cannot escape the state. But we can practice an attitude that makes us feel serenity and optimism. And here is the first step: most of us live in better circumstances than any of our forebarers. It is my belief that we owe our fate some degree of gratitude.

Just a moment, you might say, that’s not true. The left wants state control for this end and the right wants state controls for that end. So far, you are right. But ultimately, it leads to the same outcome. The extreme left and the extreme right want complete state control and history has shown that power corrupts, with absolute power leading to absolute corruption.

However, the more intriguing extremes are those on the left and right who advocate for little or no state involvement. This includes left and right anarchists, radical libertarians, and even some communists who believe that their “socialist men” can coexist peacefully without state coercion. Disagreements arise regarding which path will lead to their desired outcome and those theories get rather murky and even ruthless.

Be that as it may, we have a much more elegant solution, the OboxPlanet. We present ideas of how voluntary solutions can function and why they produce more peace, more prosperity, more justice and more equality before the law than on earth. And wherever these ideas appear credible, they can serve as an inspiration and guiding star for reforms on Earth, regardless of what political label we like to use for ourselves.

If you have not been interested in politics, good for you. But as we mentioned before, politics will inevitably intrude in your life through regulations, taxes or voting proposals. Before you become frustrated or confused, have a look at the OboxPlanet. There you will find a simple way to make sense of things and hopefully preserve serenity and optimism.

For Biographers: The history of theWebsite

It has been a project working in the back of my mind for forty years. I used to devour political literature, articles and podcasts with great pleasure while I was consuming them. Then, in between came periods of frustration because they were all just scattered pieces, it never add up. The puzzle-pieces never revealed a clear and simple picture.

Then I published the booklet “HoppeUnplugged”. Its purpose is to make the ideas of Prof. Hans Hermann Hoppe accessible to a broad audience because I believe that they have broad appeal, much beyond those who know his name, beyond the “libertarian bubble”. But how can I present the essence of his thinking politically neutral and appealing to a wide public? That’s when I decided to tackle the challenge to find a simple structure for political thinking and for structuring the topics in the most simple way I can imagine. 

The pieces started falling into place while I re-read Hoppes book “A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism”.|

In the chapters he titles ”Socialism”, he dissects the logic of state actions, regardless of whether they are motivated by conservative, social democrat or communist ideas. This is the part where he looks onto the existing world.

In the other chapters, he goes beyond todays reality on Earth and constructs the workings of a stateless society. In particular, he describes the voluntary and contractual provision of the most basic state functions of law and order.

There it was, the distinction between analyzing the current world and envisioning a stateless society. 

Now, for full disclosure: while I recommend this book as one of the best introductions to libertarian theory, Hoppe does not hold back with criticising all and everything about the states. Experience has shown, that his hard hitting logic is exciting for some and too much for others. There are other authors with other approaches, some of them mentioned throughout the website. Do not let yourself be turned off by the style or personal valuations of different authors. All of them have pearls of wisdom spread throughout their works. Think of it this way: you are exploring a new planet, a new continent. Go look for the places and travel reports that you like and forget the rest – for the moment. 

The OboxPlanet is a structure for political thinking. It allows you to leave all political quarrelling “back in the box”. It serves as a platform for envisioning and exploring the possibilities of a society built on voluntary cooperation. By contemplating how things would function on the OboxPlanet, we can adopt a dispassionate yet discerning perspective when looking at our world today. This detachment allows for a greater sense of serenity, while the optimistic outlook stems from the realization that the solutions developed on the OboxPlanet can potentially be implemented on Earth. All it takes is that humans decide to do so.

I hope this structure will be as useful for you as it has been for me.

Thomas Jacob, initiator of the project
June 2023

 

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