It’s official: The company that runs Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has a new name, Meta Platforms, Inc. The company’s focus, according to its introductory announcement, “will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.”

The metaverse is a decades-old concept. Neal Stephenson coined the term in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, but versions of it appear in much earlier speculative fiction. Think of it as virtual reality on steroids, a computer/Internet environment into which humanity could, and might, effectively move most of its social activities.

To some, this sounds utopian. Others (especially writers of fiction) treat it as at least potentially dystopian. Either way, it’s coming, and the political possibilities are intriguing.

Throughout history, politics has enslaved, and found itself enslaved by, geography. Under feudalism, “borders” shifted with the claims of hereditary lords. These days, state “sovereignty” shifts borders through negotiation or war. Either way, those who don’t dispose of hereditary, electoral, or militarily enforced lordships are considered bound to whichever political paradigm prevails within the geographical borders surrounding their homes.

For example, if one lives in Florida’s 3rd US House District (as I do), one is  “represented” in Congress by US Representative Kat Cammack (R-FL), even though she received votes from only 29.3% of the district’s population, and even though 42.8% of those who bothered to vote preferred her Democratic opponent.

If  our major social and commercial activities can be moved entirely online — and that’s where we’re headed, metaverse or not — there’s no particular reason why our political activities should remain constrained by geography.

It’s time to de-link representation in current institutions from physical location. I may have more in common with two friends who live a thousand miles from me, in opposite directions, than with the neighbors who live on either side of me. Why shouldn’t I share a representative with the former rather than the latter?

Simply set a minimum representation number — for example, one million — and any candidate who gains the endorsement of that minimum goes to Congress, with a vote weighted by number of constituents (e.g. a US representative with two million supporters gets two votes).

One major advantage of electing representatives at large rather than by geographic district in this way is unanimous consent. Instead of the notional support of 29.3% of a district’s population and 57.1% of its voters, each representative would enjoy the express support of 100% of his or her constituents.

It’s also time to reconsider the institutions themselves. Amid much talk of a “national divorce” that lacks any clean geographic component (even the “bluest” states boast significant “red” populations and vice versa), any potential breakup of the United States would necessarily require localization and decentralization of power rather than trying to fit new wine into old borders.

The metaverse may ultimately prove itself a doorway to panarchy — competing governments chosen by, rather than imposed on, each person, without regard to geography. And from such a position, we might find our way to the end of political government entirely.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “The Metaverse: Gateway to Unanimous Consent and Panarchy?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Sidney, Montana Herald, 11/01/21
• “The Metaverse: Gateway to Unanimous Consent and Panarchy?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Anchorage, Alaska Press, 11/01/21
• “The Metaverse: Gateway To Unanimous Consent And Panarchy?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 11/02/21
• “The Metaverse: Gateway to unanimous consent and panarchy?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 11/02/21
• “The Metaverse: Gateway to Unanimous Consent and Panarchy?” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 11/04/21
• “Metaverse: Gateway to Panarchy?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Madill, Oklahoma Record, 11/04/21
• “The Metaverse: Gateway to Unanimous Consent and Panarchy?” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 11/04/21
• “The Metaverse: Gateway to unanimous consent and panarchy?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pahrump Valley, Nevada Times,11/05/21

“Congress is gradually moving toward having only one bill per year,” former congressman Justin Amash (L-MI) tweeted recently. And that bill will have “everything stuffed into it, negotiated by just a few congressional leaders, completely behind closed doors, with no floor amendments permitted.”

Amash presumably has the current “infrastructure” bill in mind. Weighing in at more than 2,700 pages and chock-full of stuff only tenuously (if at all) related to infrastructure, it’s more of a leadership-negotiated door stop than an honestly debated policy proposal.

It’s hardly the first such bill. The Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, also weighed in at about 2,700 pages, but entailed another 20,000 pages of rules and regulations to implement. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) infamously said, Congress had to “pass it to find out what’s in it.”

If there’s anything worse than a law passed by Congress, it’s a law passed by Congress that no one, even Congress, knows the contents of. Many big bills end up on the floor for debate and voting before they’re complete enough to be printed and distributed to the people who are supposed to debate and vote on them.

Short of abolishing the federal government (now there’s an idea worth considering!), there’s probably no cure for bad laws. But there’s a cure, in three parts, for not knowing what’s in those bad laws.

The first part of the cure is called the Read The Bills Act. The RTBA was proposed by Downsize DC in 2006. It’s been introduced in the US Senate by Rand Paul (R-KY) six times, dying in committee each time.

The RTBA would require bills to be publicly posted at least 72 hours prior to Congress formally taking up those bills for consideration. The leadership log-rolling  production of “Infrastructure Week” has been dragging on for months now, so 72 hours of having the final product available/visible doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

Part two, also courtesy of Downsize DC, is the One Subject at a Time Act, which is exactly what it sounds like. Every bill would have to be about one thing. No more grab-bags full of unrelated party favors for every constituency under the sun in the name of “infrastructure” or “defense” or whatever.

Part three is a steroid shot for the Read The Bills Act. In my opinion, the bills should not just be “posted.” They should be read aloud on the floors of the House and Senate before they can be voted on.

Yes, every word.

Yes, every bill.

And if a member of Congress doesn’t sit through it, he or she doesn’t get to vote on it.

We’d quickly start getting  brochure-size legislation instead of encyclopedia-size legislation. And we’d be better off as a result.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

On October 21, actor Alec Baldwin shot and killed one person (cinematographer Halyna Hutchins) and wounded another (director Joel Souza) on the set of Rust, a western film he was making in New Mexico.

Reportage generally describes the shooting as an “accident,” but it wasn’t. There are two kinds of firearms discharges: Intentional and negligent. This incident is no exception. But that doesn’t mean the intent or negligence was wholly Baldwin’s.

Was the shooting intentional or negligent? And whose intent or negligence contributed to it? From afar, this looks like a complicated question.

Don’t write off intent entirely. The motion picture industry in general, and the Rust set specifically, were in the throes of ongoing labor disputes. It’s not beyond belief that sabotage was involved.

Negligence seems the more likely explanation, though.

The gun was supposed to be a prop. It was presented to Baldwin by assistant director Dave Halls as a “cold gun” during a rehearsal, to indicate that it held no ammunition. But when Baldwin drew it, and presumably pulled the trigger, it turned out not to be “cold” after all.

Did Baldwin personally check the gun’s chambers for live ammo before using it?

Did Halls personally check the gun’s chambers for live ammo before pronouncing it “cold?”

Did production armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed personally check the gun’s chambers for live ammo before authorizing its presence on the set?

Is it true that, as The Wrap reports, crew members had taken the gun off-set for some target shooting with live ammo earlier in the day, then returned it — possibly with live ammo still in the chambers?

Is it true that, as the Los Angeles Times reports, one of the complaints motivating a walk-off of crew members that day related to previous discharges of prop guns?

It sounds like there may have been plenty of negligence to go around on the set of Rust. And Baldwin may bear a good deal of responsibility for that negligence in his role as a producer trying to squeeze a lot out of a small budget ($6-7 million, a pittance by Hollywood standards). Competence, experience, and trustworthiness may be expensive, but they aren’t optional where guns are involved.

As an actor,  Baldwin probably bears a good deal less responsibility, but certainly not none.

Yes, the shooting occurred at the end of a long chain of people and protocols which should have made it impossible for what happened to happen. But he, not those other people, drew the gun and pointed it at Hutchins and Souza.

Even on a movie set, personally checking a gun for live ammo before pointing it at someone is the absolute bare minimum of personal responsibility (off a movie set, by the way, one should never point a gun at someone one does not intend to shoot, even if it’s certainly unloaded).

There’s seemingly plenty of blame to go around here, for everyone and everything except the gun. It’s an inanimate object. Guns don’t kill people. People do, whether intentionally or negligently.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY