Planetary governance is essential because it is already here. The end point of the Fifth Estate is to be a digital commonwealth integrated into a new architecture of global governance. By organizing and coordinating via the Network, Network Citizens will legitimize the Fifth Estate and lay the groundwork for a new order.
Outline
4.1. Forging the New Order
4.2. Network Citizens
4.3. Network Commons
4.4. The Network Fund
4.4.a. The Question Concerning Technology
4.4.b. The Purpose of Technology
4.4.c. The Planning Imperative
4.4.d. The Question Concerning AI
4.4.e. The Need for a New Global Prosperity Model
4.4.f. The Mega Fund
4.5. Architecture of the New Nomos
4.1. Forging the New Order
Planetary Governance is an existential imperative, because it is already here—it is just carried out in the most unsophisticated ways. In fact, planetarity is perhaps the only credible, non-ideological unifying project available to us after the last two centuries of ideology and revolution which have colored Modernity.
We can represent this common project via the establishment and legitimization of the Fifth Estate. To bring about the New Order, I propose that the Fifth Estate must take on the charge of building the digital coordination layer of a true planetary commonwealth which would act as a digital Switzerland: An internationally legitimate neutral realm which leverages the new spatial order of the Network to guarantee the rights of Voice, Agency, and if needed, Exit of every person or collective on Earth, independent of their government of birth. Imagine Facebook, but with every person on Earth, fully decentralized, open source, and with legitimate political personhood as a neutral network “country”. This is the logical conclusion of the Fifth Estate.
For this to happen, the Fifth Estate must become a legitimate fifth power. In the spirit of starting a conversation and inspiring future development of these ideas, I will describe what I consider the essential features of this commonwealth.
4.2. Network Citizens
To re-state the central argument of this essay thus far: The Network has emerged as a new Nomos: a spatial and legal order existing in parallel to and unconstrained by nation states; this space has been settled by billions across the planet, reframing the nature of sovereignty and territorial integrity; by the international convention of self determination and human rights, this space and its settlers (the Fifth Estate) must be recognized as legitimate governance actors in the international system.
To ensure this outcome, the Fifth Estate must be formally constituted as a digital planetary commonwealth that exists in parallel to nation states and international organizations. This commonwealth is not to be understood as a unified political entity, but rather as a decentralized coordination and accountability network which each person or group can leverage at planetary scale. The first step towards this future is to create a standard of “citizenship” for members of this commonwealth (the Fifth Estate). These will be referred to as Network Citizens.
The world in which the Fifth Estate is legitimate is one in which every person, in addition to maintaining and upholding their national identity, would be entitled to a legitimate Network “Passport” which guarantees their right of self determination (Voice, Agency, Exit) in the new spatial and legal order of the Network. This Network Passport would enable any person on Earth to enjoy all the benefits that all the strong passports1 from nation states such as Singapore, France, and Japan provide: global mobility and unrestricted access to the world economy. Such a passport would establish a legal standard and legitimacy to the Network that it has thus far lacked.
Key to building a strong Network Passport is enabling more and more people to earn a living via the Network, independent of their domestic countries. Indeed the G7 countries, whose passports are the strongest on the world stage, account for 40% of world GDP. The size of the Internet economy is about $2 Trillion. It would likely need to grow by orders of magnitude more before a true Network Passport can be considered legitimate.
Beyond the Network Passport, every Network Citizen would be self sovereign by default. That means they’d possess the already sanctioned international right of self determination, and carry the responsibility for complete control over their digital identity, and self custody of their digital assets, data, and compute. States, corporations, and other third party organizations would have to negotiate access to Network Citizens’ data, digital footprint, and digital assets. With respect to digital identity, proof of humanity is paramount. One person. One account. One voice. This doesn’t preclude the existence of pseudonymous identities, in fact it enables it at scale, without condemning the Fifth Estate to a world of scams, spam, and deepfakes.
Network Citizens would be the foundation of the Fifth Estate, acting as the chief vessels, “borders”, and activating nodes of Network Power. The best way for them to utilize said power, and in the process legitimize the Fifth Estate, would be by forming and joining Network organizations which would further their interests, both within their local communities (cities/nation states) and across the world.
4.3. Network Commons
In his book The Network State, technologist Balaji Srinivasan invented the concept of network states as digital-native countries. In his own words:
A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.
Painting a picture can probably better explain the concept. In your mind’s eye, imagine a virtual country with no sizable territory, commanding a network of 1.4 Billion citizens who share the same value system, and can voluntarily join and peacefully exit said country.
What I’ve just described is not science fiction, but rather the Holy See and the billions of Catholics under its jurisdiction. The Catholic Church is not technically a network state, but possesses some of the key properties that a network state at its peak might have:
Shared ethos
A large distributed network of “citizens”
Sovereignty: the Holy See has been a recognized sovereign entity since the fall of Rome
Discontiguous real estate
The platonic ideal of the network state, then, is the Catholic Church with a digital coordination layer. True network states don’t exist. It is possible they never will. There have been attempts, some of which I have been involved in. But the reality is that network states have failed for several reasons.
The first reason is one of definitions. The concept of network states as such fails to recognize that Network Power is not about shoving the concept of the state into the Internet, but about recognizing the Network itself as a locus of power greater and more ‘fit for purpose’ than the state as theorized.
The defining feature of the modern state is that it has a monopoly on violence. A network does not. Instead we can imagine the coordinating entity of a network would be one of many actors within it with the capacity for force, which would push it to be more diplomat than autocrat. A network’s controlling entity would derive its power (and lack of it) purely from its ability for sustaining cooperation at scale within the network. This is a paradigm shift from the state, which derives power from its ability to dominate territory and the people living under it. The term “network state” therefore conjures up bad vibes as a moniker, which the media has predictably2 latched3 on to loudly discredit the idea. More interesting is the notion of Network Nations, as suggested by David Jonhston4, rather than network states.
Second, as currently conceived, network states are primarily a libertarian technology of exit from current political systems. The problem is that “exit” as a mode of politics does not scale. It is an option open to, on the one hand, the most desperate, or for a wealthy minority, rendering network states as a “movement” or framework politically unscalable.
What is valuable and salvageable in the network states concept is its principled defense of the internationally sanctioned right of self determination. However this right can be achieved without making exit primary.
If we integrate it into and expand Srinivasan’s concept, we arrive at something closer to the Network Commons: definite digital collectives with the ability to achieve social or political aims within their polity—leveraging Network Power to achieve more significant modes of “voice” and political agency than simply voting—and when absolutely necessary, without (the ‘exit’ mode) by graduating into Network Nations.
Network Commons could manifest as the following:
Regional Network Commons: digital clones of existing communities, from cities to nation states, members of which could leverage Network Power to solve local problems.
Affinity Network Commons: organized around shared social ethos that are fully digital and international, with no desire for eventual sovereignty.
Purpose Network Commons: designed to achieve coordinated social, economic, and political goals that go beyond the pure nonprofit or pure for profit structures. At scale, a very small minority of them may have the capital necessary to become true Network Nations.
The first step to making the recognition of Network Nations even a remote possibility is to convince a critical mass of towns, cities, and ultimately nation states to make the transition to Regional Network Commons by digitizing their governance infrastructure and organizations. Every city and nation state in the world should have a corresponding Regional Network Commons which citizens and civil servants can leverage to organize and govern.
This can be done first by encouraging cities and nation states to use the Network as a digital border and wait room for managing immigration processes. The example of Estonia once again should be used as a template, scaled globally city by city to start.
This strategy would have the benefit of establishing the Fifth Estate as a legitimate layer for political recognition, because when a critical mass of cities and nation states are already situated on the network, the arrival of purely network based political entities would not be a surprise, and easier to recognize as peers.
In future, we might see true Network Nations emerge. One could imagine a large Network Commons merging with another, or more interestingly, with existing sovereign states, or even becoming the de facto political power in existing polities.
Network Commons enable the Fifth Estate to become more than a mass of people who do not effectively coordinate with one another. In so doing, they reify the principle of subsidiarity by making the world small, localizing Fifth Estate governance within particular communities. Once Network Commons grow in size and scale, and begin to recognize one another and develop a parallel economy, the conditions for a New Westphalian moment5 will be at hand, leading to a renewed ‘Nomos of the Earth’.
4.4. The Network Fund
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the newly formed Republic, made for and by the Third Estate, was besieged on all sides by the monarchies of the First Coalition: Great Britain, Holland, Prussia, Austria, Sardinia, and Spain. To wage its revolutionary wars, the republic invented national conscription, the Levée en masse, and in the process, the army became the core institution of the Third Estate.
As the army was to the original Third Estate, Capital must be to the Fifth Estate. Recall that the Network is a force of Total Mobilization. It achieves this by liberating that which was scarce, and making it cheaply available to the Fifth Estate. In the first wave of the Internet, this happened to information and media; in the second wave, which we are currently living in, this is being done to intelligence via open source AI. The next wave, of which the crypto moment is a volatile glimpse, will do the same thing for Capital.
While they would be revolutionary if properly implemented at scale, Network Commons will take years to build and longer to be integrated within the international governance system. Meantime, the most expedient network organization which must be formed in order for the Fifth Estate to achieve legitimacy is an economic engine: something that can massively scale the Network’s GDP from its current $2.5 Trillion, putting it on par with the great powers of the world, and serving as the catalyst behind legitimizing the Network Passport and Network Citizenship in general. To achieve that, I propose the establishment of a Network Fund. But before outlining its contours, it is important to understand the context which makes it necessary.
The Question Concerning Technology
The greatest myth of our age is the belief that modern civilization is fundamentally technological. The truth is that modern society is the most formidable enemy to Technology. We hold it at a suspicious distance, while proving ourselves unworthy stewards of its remarkable power.
Under modernity, all things are measured by a single yardstick: Utility. Money is the final Judge of all things Useful. But as someone once remarked, "the desire to be useful is the virtue of the prostitute." What passes for technology today often accomplishes everything for us, safe for the most crucial task: giving us true Agency over our world.
You can consume or rent anything under the sun. Yet, the power to create and genuinely own something of lasting value, and most significantly, to master yourself, eludes your grasp. You cannot build your own home; you remain shackled by the chains of uninspired labor; you are a modern-day serf.
As technology advances, the loudest voices in our time cry out to either banish it entirely or propel it forward at breakneck pace. The question that remains unanswered, one that the doomsayers and prophets of progress have both conveniently overlooked: "What is the ultimate purpose of all this Technology?"
As a project, Modernity was defined by its desire to master nature through technology. What succeeds Modernity is that which masters Technology in the service of nature. In recent years, Modernity died with the divine punishment that is plague and war. Since then, we have been living in the time of accelerated contradictions. Gestations for a new world. New ideologies and proto-religions, vile and blissful alike, are vying for supremacy—yet, they are all stumped by the problem of Technology.
The Purpose of Technology
In a true technological civilization, Technology is a custom that liberates Culture. And what we call Culture comes from the highest expressions of Leisure. To be human is to excel in the art of leisure, beyond mere amusement and distraction.
The pinnacle of leisure is the perfection of nature, both human and otherwise. Instead of artifacts of consumption, think instead of the Greeks who in their leisure gifted the world scientific inquiry and philosophy, the meticulous codification of contracts and taxes, the exalted craft of the written word, dramatic masterpieces, the resplendent Parthenon, and the academy itself.
The true purpose of Technology is to be the rock upon which bountiful leisure can stand. To echo Mumford, "the aesthetic flower sprouts out of the economic leaf." But it is clear we have strayed from this ideal. Today, leisure is mere relief from work, a means to enhance our productivity as workers. Technology, too, exists solely to make us as efficient as our machines, which is the reason we are on a collision course with them as AI and robotics improves.
But the most remarkable technologies are those that expand our domains of leisure, providing spaces where we can engage in activities for their intrinsic worth and define the individuals we aspire to become. In a genuine technological civilization, focused leisure unlocks the full potential of a person, propelling them toward excellence for its own sake, empowered by the very technology that leisure has helped to create.
Figure 14. Source: Our World in Data.
In such a world, the yearning for distinction and genius surges through the species, driving us ever upward. Instead of fostering unfettered competition— a race to mediocrity6—success is defined by the most noble, beautiful, and remarkable manifestations of Difference. A reign of glorious wealth, divine beauty, bounded wisdom, and the ultimate refinement of humanity: This is the harvest of Leisure—and the authentic purpose of Technology.
The Planning Imperative
If technology is the production of leisure to nurture the blossoming of genius, to engage in the technological craft is to place our faith in design, in cultivating new visions—simply, in the art of planning.
The problem: our age has tamed Technology, and bound it to the whims of Capital. Since then, all the prophets of technological acceleration have abdicated their powers of planning, and cast their hats into the abyss of the Free Market.
Today, the vanguards of technology make cheap tools and call it fire—because that is the only acceptable scale their dreams can have in our time. Meanwhile the go-go-train of short sighted startups and Capital leaves in its wake the vast Humanity whose lives are made poorer by the death of those greater dreams.
The parasite is killing the host. Far from unleashing it, the Free Market restrains technological progress, because it shuns the wisdom of deliberate strategy, long term investment, and thoughtful craftsmanship that make Grand Visions of the Future possible.
Critics will counter that the market is a disciplinarian force, but what force disciplines the market? The answer, an obvious one to all the great Visionaries of future past, lies in nothing short of a new paradigm for technological advancement—one that enables the deliberate, long term investment and pursuit of great technical achievements like AI, disseminating them globally. Indeed OpenAI’s impressive research breakthroughs were born from an act of planning 9 years in the making. The current speculative froth of the AI industry is the classic stamp of the Free Market. This leads us to the next point.
The Question Concerning AI
AI is a Natural Monopoly7—given the prohibitive costs of training and scaling state of the art models, the logical conclusion is that one or two firms will more likely end up supplying the world with cheap AI services than many. This is exactly what we’re seeing unfold with the duopoly of Nvidia (compute) and Microsoft (models)—by way of OpenAI. Both companies are currently worth a combined $6.2 Trillion. It is no surprise that it is these same firms and their subsidiaries which are leading the calls to regulate the technology.
Figure 15. Source: Our World in Data.
Assuming the current state of affairs holds, it is once again Big Tech which will govern and own a property that should, in principle, be owned and governed by the Fifth Estate. After all, AI is an emergent system born from the fruits of the Fifth Estate. It is impossible to achieve the incredible feats of scaling credited to OpenAI without the mountains of data produced by billions over decades—Wikipedia chief among them.
Big Tech’s monopoly on governing AI is arguably the least desirable outcome possible. They have used fear to foment the AI regulatory regime. In their telling, the advent of Artificial Intelligence has been mystified so much as to mean everything from the arrival of a new God to the extinction of the species. Truly, things do not have to be so dramatic.
If AI is a significant technology, it is because like all general purpose technologies (electricity, the computer, etc.) it allows humanity to do way more, extremely cheaply. The only important thing left to know about AI is not whether it is “General” or “Super”, but whether it is Good.
Beyond rather vague definitions of AI as a system that can do anything a human can do, I would define Good AI as follows:
Good AI is a man-made computing system capable of turning thought into action at close to zero marginal cost.
Good AI is simply a system that can move at the speed of thought in digital and physical space. This seems good enough to both describe what AI does today, and what we’d like it to do in future. There is no need to weave convoluted theories of intelligence, consciousness, or visions of Skynet to build such a system. Generously, this is just marketing from an ideological cult nested within Silicon Valley.
For the rest of the world, and for the foreseeable future, Good AI should be understood and stewarded as just any other man made system—reasonably and fairly. There is no species dominance problem with AI. As has always been the case in history, man is a wolf to man. The emergence of AI-Security Industrial complexes around the world is the only “AI risk” that should be taken seriously.
Given this definition, and assuming architectural breakthroughs for building AI, it is also the case that Good AI will radically transform the global economy. Some estimate that under such a scenario, double digit GDP growth8 would become a possibility—meaning Gross World Product (GWP) could reach upwards of $40 Quadrillion by 2100. To be sure, most expert economists9 believe anything above 5% growth by century’s end is pure fantasy. For reference, current GWP is around $120 Trillion.
Figure 16. Source: Our World in Data.
But even assuming the optimistic hypothesis is false, the advent of Good AI is simply another aspect of the phase shift from a Labor (wage driven) economy, to a Capital (technology driven) economy that has already happened throughout developed economies.
What can we make of all of this? Keeping the interests of the Fifth Estate in mind, it would appear that the logical conclusion is that an alternative project of building Good AI that can be owned and governed by the Fifth Estate is one of the most important initiatives the Network could undertake.
We can envision a federated Good AI lab, owned by the Network, forever nonprofit, with several subsidiary labs spread around the world. Researchers in those labs would share findings across a purpose built secure network not accessible to non-affiliates.
Private companies and governments are not the sole entities capable of funding AI. Network Power has historically proven to be equally capable of mobilizing billions in capital. If it works, this Good AI lab would undeniably capture the lion’s share of the runaway economic windfall predicted by economists. The question is how such wealth would be stewarded.
The Need for a New Global Prosperity Model
To recap what we’ve explored so far: We have seen that Technology exists to enable Leisure, which is the source of genius and high culture. We have seen that “Modern technological civilization” has failed to produce this outcome, counterintuitively, due to the short term outlook of the Free Market. We’ve also seen that the emergence of AI exacerbates the problem of Technology as currently conceived and negatively affects the interests of the Fifth Estate. We must now address how, as Technology intensifies the shift from labor to capital based economies, the wealth produced would be distributed in light of the failure of our global prosperity model.
It must be admitted that the economic fruits of the Technological Revolution have thus far been enjoyed by too few. The concentrated wealth of trillion-dollar tech behemoths has been enabled by commoditizing the data, usage and influence of the Fifth Estate. Despite this, most of the Fifth Estate remains shut out from the immense wealth created.
This dynamic has stoked a profound psychological yearning among Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha for ownership, heritage, and the trappings of generational affluence. Relentless curation of aspirational online personas and conspicuous consumption offer fleeting remedies, but fail to provide a substantive sense of legacy or patrimony.
The world to come is increasingly shaped by growing returns to Technology. In such an environment, prosperity must be more widely distributed to offset global volatility. In the 21st century, the global economy—driven more and more by Technology—will collapse if all of the gains from automation and overall technical progress accrue to a small number of institutions and the individuals who govern them.
Figure 17. Source: Our World in Data.
One might say: “but what’s so bad about wealth inequality? There are winners, and there are losers, and there always will be”. The answer has nothing to do with morality, and is in fact purely economic. It is a fact that lopsided wealth concentration is an inevitable outcome of capitalism. Capitalism produces surplus value, which either goes to labor, or to the owners of Capital. In a capitalistic system, the owners get the surplus.
Ten years ago, 72 million10 people held close to 50% of the world’s wealth. As of 2023, 81 individual billionaires have more wealth11 than 50% of the world combined, reflecting an exponentially growing rate of concentration. This is a problem, for in the global Capitalist system, the rich don’t actually spend the capital they gather—that is, make money more productive. To defer paying capital gains taxes, which would come due upon the sale of assets, they mostly rest on their wealth, borrowing against it until death comes calling.
Warren Buffett, at 93, currently sits on $133 Billion, much of which will go to his children in a charitable trust12 after he walked back his decision to give away all his wealth. This trust will back more blue chip charities already sufficiently funded by other members of the wealthy half, despite said charities’ reputation for persistently ineffective capital allocation. If donating money to the $1 Trillion nonprofit industrial complex13 actually could save the world, surely the New Jerusalem would have descended to Earth by now.
Buffett is only one example, but plenty more of his class behave much the same way. Beyond a certain threshold of wealth, capital is effectively taken out of productive economic circulation, decreasing the velocity of money in the system. This makes our world exponentially less rich and productive.
Taxing the wealthy will never resolve this issue. Everyone wants to get rich, especially those in poverty, and nobody, including the poor, likes to pay more taxes than they should. Instead of empowering dysfunctional states further to mismanage more and more appropriated assets, a more resilient approach is to make everyone rich. We can do this by ensuring that billions own a slice of the most productive capital this century—Technology—and ensure that gains from said capital are reinvested into further productive wealth creation.
“To get rich is glorious”, as Deng Xioping said. Built and stewarded properly, Technology has the potential to produce a world where the economic floor can be raised for everyone, while at the same time no ceiling will be placed above anyone. A Network Fund formed for and governed by the Fifth Estate is perfectly suited to assume this responsibility.
The Mega Fund
The Network Fund is a proposal for a commonly owned ‘Network Sovereign Wealth Fund’ made by and for the Fifth Estate. The fund would invest in transformative technologies (AI, robotics, and energy), and crucially, it would grant every person on Earth who is a member of the Fifth Estate a share, giving them upside in the wealth generated by these breakthroughs.
Assuming the status quo persists, power will shift from Labor to Capital by orders of magnitude greater than during the Industrial Revolution, accruing primarily to the AI-Security Industrial Complex. The Network Fund’s prosperity model is an alternative future, as it would broadly distribute the wealth of economically disruptive technologies.
To ensure each person can claim their share only once, at scale, across the world, the Network Fund could employ the self sovereign identity system discussed in the “Network Citizens” section. Onboarded users would receive their shares through a global airdrop. It would be a cultural moment etched into history.
Unlike UBI which provides periodic payouts, the Network Fund’s prosperity architecture represents an evolutionary leap: an ownable asset that can be passed down as a commonwealth birthright across generations. Instead of flowing only to a few founders and investors, the compounding dividends of technological advancements become a legacy accessible to all people in perpetuity.
In addition, like today’s capitalist class, citizens of the Fifth Estate would have the ability to borrow against the present and future value of their equity in the fund, enabling them to access resources for entrepreneurship, as well as personal development and well-being, such as nutrition, housing, health, education, children, etc.
And because the Network Fund would be primarily digital, it would be run extremely lean, automating airdrops and payouts at scale via smart contracts. It is beyond the scope of this essay to outline in detail how such a network organization would be capitalized or governed. Once again I aim only to start a conversation. But the dense research and proposals from Glen Weyl’s Radical Xchange, including a Plural Funding14 mechanism which optimizes “matching funds by prioritizing projects based on the number of people who contributed”, point to potential options.
Ultimately, it is this unmet longing for ownership and agency in the face of tremendous social, political, and technological shifts that the Network Fund resolves through a kind of distributed capitalism. By granting a stake in the upside of world-redefining Technology, and thus sharing its power with the Fifth Estate, the fund would gain legitimacy through capital, just as Wikipedia gained legitimacy through information. Successful compounded investments would increase the size of the Network’s (and global) GDP, giving holders of the Network Passport discussed above economic credibility and international legitimacy.
4.5. Architecture of the New Nomos
Finally, taking all of the above into account, the approximate architecture of the New Nomos might look something like this:
Figure 18. Architecture of the New Nomos.
With the Fifth Estate recognized as a legitimate spatial and legal order, coterminous with the Westphalian regime, a new system of Networked Planetary Governance would emerge. Operating on the principle of Subsidiarity, this system would enable legitimate scale sensitive actors from the Old World and the Fifth Estate to cooperate to solve governance problems at scale.
Operating on the principle of Self Determination, this system would allow for the existence of Network Nations alongside Westphalian nation states. And finally, leveraging the Fifth Estate’s coordination technologies, this system would empower partner organizations and institutions within and without the Network to cooperate and intervene at each level of governance suitable to them.
Some version of this systematic architecture will emerge at some point this century. It is already priced in, because as students of History will remember, systems of governance are never eternal, and in fact can only expand to their breaking point. The nation state will not disappear from the face of the Earth; it will simply be given a new life, and proper role, in the New Nomos of the Earth brought about by the Fifth Estate.