The Self-Terminating State, Part II: The Ecological Succession of Power
How Radical Federalism Must Learn from Nature, Code, and Forgotten Histories
Last time we asserted that power, if left unchecked, grows monstrous. But power that is bound, that is forced into cycles of renewal, that weakens upon use, becomes something else entirely. It becomes self-regulating. It becomes immune to capture.
We have explored how Radical Federalism must build structures that erode centralized power from within. But there are still lessons to be drawn from the natural world, from digital architecture, from civilizations that survived conquest—and from those that did not.
Part I: The Lessons of Enduring Decentralization
1. The Balinese Water Temple: Decentralized, Non-Hierarchical Control
In the lush valleys of Bali, an ancient system of water management has thrived for over a thousand years—not by the dictates of a single authority, but through a decentralized, self-regulating network. Known as Subak, this cooperative system ensures that no one village, family, or ruler can monopolize the island’s most precious resource: water. Instead, irrigation is governed through water temples, where farmers, priests, and local leaders gather to negotiate its flow.
Decisions are made not by coercion, but through mutual agreement reinforced by social trust. Adjustable bamboo weirs function as natural switches, redirecting the water’s course with a push of the lever—letting farmers fine-tune distribution without centralized enforcement.
What makes Subak extraordinary is its resilience—an enduring balance of cooperation and engineering that has outlasted empires, colonial rule, and modern bureaucracy. Trust is not enforced from above; it is cultivated within the system itself, binding each farmer to the success of the whole. In an era where water rights are increasingly privatized and centralized, Subak stands as proof that self-governance—rooted in mutual dependence—can persist longer than any imposed authority.
█ Summary:
The Balinese Subak system governs water resources without a central authority.
No single leader dictates water distribution; control is maintained through localized agreements.
It has persisted for over 1,000 years, outlasting colonial rulers and modern bureaucracies.
Subak proves that decentralized coordination can endure. Radical Federalism must apply similar principles:
Replace federal funding with multi-state financial pacts.
Delegate infrastructure, transit, and energy to interlocking regional councils.
Embrace cooperative networks that persist regardless of federal authority.
2. The Iroquois Confederacy: Horizontal Power That Cannot Be Seized
For centuries, the Iroquois Confederacy endured as one of the most sophisticated governance systems in North America—not because of a central authority, but because power was kept diffuse, layered, and recallable. Chiefs (sachems) were representatives chosen by clan mothers, and if they failed, they could be removed instantly. Leadership rotated, alliances were renegotiated, and power never became stagnant. Even if one leader faltered, the Confederacy as a whole remained unbroken.
This is the antithesis of centralized power. Governance must not be built around single points of failure—it must be distributed, redundant, and immune to seizure. If a governor invokes emergency powers, their legitimacy must be immediately tested by recall election. If a state legislature seeks to nullify federal mandates, it must require multi-state approval, ensuring no rogue stronghold of unchecked power. Even the judiciary must be constrained—any ruling that weakens or strengthens federal authority must trigger automatic review to prevent undue concentration of influence.
The Iroquois knew that power, left unchecked, seeks to entrench itself. By keeping leadership temporary and recallable, they preempted stagnation. Yet when a central authority refuses to let go, nature’s ultimate regulator is collapse. Every over-centralized system devours itself—our only choice is to guide that collapse on our terms. Power must not just be decentralized; it must be placed in a framework where it can never become absolute, never move beyond the people’s reach.
█ Summary:
The Iroquois Confederacy survived by distributing power horizontally:
Decisions required broad consensus.
Leadership was rotational and recallable.
Power existed in layers, so even if one part failed, the whole remained intact.
This model suggests:
Immediate recall for governors invoking emergency powers.
Multi-state approval for drastic actions like nullification.
Automatic review for judicial rulings that undercut federal authority.
Power must never be allowed to concentrate.
3. Predator and Prey: The Cycle of Power and Collapse
History may not repeat itself, but power cycles always do: expansion, overreach, collapse. Like a lion population that outgrows its food supply, a central government that amasses too much power overextends, erodes trust, and ultimately crumbles. This cycle is as predictable as any ecological pattern.
The Predator-Prey Model of Federal Power
Consider the standard Lotka-Volterra system (okay, yes, this is just for fun at this point—feel free to skip ahead if this is a massive turnoff. [No, we are not only joking—applying the same highly quantitative, numerate methods common in economics to politics is something which needs to be done. No, we do not believe that economics as developed today is adequate to its task—primarily, it is the very divorce between politics and economics, and the failure to recognize the reality of money as a unit of political power (its power over the labor of individuals, its coercive might, its role in politics) which we believe is behind the greatest shortcomings of the field. Yes, this seems somewhat technocratic—but technocracy, when focused back on itself instead of disrupting locality, has its place)]:
where:
P represents predators (centralized authority, federal agencies, enforcement mechanisms)
R represents prey (resources, legitimacy, public trust, state autonomy)
α is the intrinsic growth rate of centralized power, expanding its influence when resources are plentiful.
β represents the efficiency of power consumption—how effectively the federal government extracts resources, taxes, and enforces mandates.
δ is the predation efficiency, which in this case describes how well the government’s reach sustains itself by controlling the states.
γ is the natural decay rate of public trust and legitimacy, representing how power erodes when it fails to deliver stability or prosperity.
This system exhibits oscillatory behavior: when the government’s power grows unchecked, it inevitably leads to the exhaustion of the very resources that sustain it. Public trust craters, economic compliance falters, and legitimacy disintegrates. The central authority collapses, allowing decentralized systems to recover—until the cycle starts again.
The Dictionary
Radical Federalism must not passively wait for collapse—it must accelerate the cycle. The strategy is to starve the predator before it reaches a critical mass. How? By deliberately controlling the variables in the system:
Reduce the effective predation rate (β) by limiting federal extraction mechanisms.
States must deny enforcement capacity by refusing to cooperate with federal mandates.
Legal tax nullification and revenue diversion slow the financial flow to Washington.
Withdrawal from federal regulatory compacts increases friction in governance.
Increase the decay rate of central authority (γ).
Legitimacy crises must be amplified through legal challenges, state defiance, and multi-state compacts.
The overreach of federal agencies should be spotlighted and exaggerated to weaken trust in centralized rule.
Lawsuits and legal bottlenecks should clog federal action, forcing delays and inefficiencies.
Force overextension (δ) by baiting Washington into unsustainable enforcement actions.
Make the government chase compliance. The harder it has to work to enforce laws, the faster it depletes its own capacity.
When the IRS or federal agencies escalate enforcement, states should escalate noncompliance in tandem, making enforcement untenable.
Legal whack-a-mole: Ensure that every attempt to centralize power is met with state-level legal countermeasures.
Prepare the alternative ecosystem before collapse.
State institutions must be built ahead of time—alternative financial systems, legal frameworks, and parallel infrastructure must already be in place.
The transition must be seamless. When federal collapse occurs, state governance must be positioned to absorb the vacuum, preventing chaos.
Encourage competitive governance. If one state fails, another must be ready to replace it, ensuring resilience through redundancy.
Put Simply
Power expands (predators grow) when resources and trust abound. But as central authority consumes more legitimacy, it hits the tipping point where the prey (public trust) collapses—and with it, the predator. The mechanics can be simplified to three levers:
Expansion Rate: How quickly federal authority grows.
Consumption Efficiency: How easily it extracts resources and imposes mandates.
Decay Rate: How rapidly legitimacy erodes under overreach.
Radical Federalism must not passively wait for this collapse—it must accelerate it.
Mapping This to Radical Federalism
Starve Federal Enforcement: Deny cooperation, nullify taxes, and divert revenue.
Coalesce Legitimacy Crises: Spotlight federal overreach, clog the courts with challenges, and delay compliance.
Force Overextension: Bait Washington into unsustainable enforcement actions, making it spend more energy than it can sustain.
Build Alternatives: Create parallel financial and legal structures so that when federal control collapses, states can assume governance without chaos.
The Key Lesson: Washington will overreach. Our job is to build a cyclical future in which that overreach is fatal. Every centralized system self-destructs—the question is whether we’re ready to replace it when it does. By engineering conditions for unsustainable enforcement, economic starvation, and legitimacy erosion, we ensure that what follows is not another empire, but a truly decentralized order.
█ Summary:
Federal power behaves like a predator that eventually exhausts its prey (public trust).
Radical Federalism should usurp this cycle—starving the predator and expediting collapse.
Parallel institutions must be in place so that, when federal control crumbles, decentralized governance seamlessly takes over.
We cannot rely on tradition alone—we must engineer constraints so powerful that centralization is physically impossible. Radical Federalism must surpass every previous model by actively dictating the terms of the inevitable collapse.
Part II: Engineering the Cycle of Power and Collapse
1. Bacterial Cooperative Survival: Emergency Powers That Must Destroy Themselves
Nature has solved the problem of unchecked power. Certain bacteria, when facing crisis, fragment rather than consolidate. They sacrifice parts of the colony so that only the most adaptable strains persist—a feature of survival, not a flaw.
Governance must follow the same logic: every use of power must trigger its own counterforce. The moment extraordinary authority is invoked, it must begin dismantling itself:
A governor who declares emergency rule must immediately face a recall election.
A legislature that suspends federal compliance must submit to automatic public reaffirmation.
Any nullification of federal mandates must expire unless renewed by a supermajority.
Rome lacked this fail-safe. Its emergency dictatorship, meant to be temporary, persisted until figures like Sulla and Julius Caesar made themselves permanent rulers. The Republic didn’t fall to conquest; it fell to its own failure to build a self-destruct sequence into power.
█ Radical Federalism must resist that failure: no power should exist without a mechanism for dismantling it. Survival depends not on permanence, but on the ability to let go.
Summary:
Some bacteria, under stress, jettison nonessential parts to ensure overall survival.
Governance must do likewise: emergency powers must decay upon use.
Rome fell by failing to implement this kill switch.
We must design something better. Yet if power can be invoked repeatedly, it can still expand too quickly. Which brings us to Rate-Limiting Power.
2. Rate-Limiting Power: The Circuit Breakers of Governance
In digital systems, overload is expected—hence circuit breakers and rate limits that slow or block requests when capacity is strained. Governance needs an equivalent.
Radical Federalism must throttle how often extreme measures can be used:
Escalating Thresholds: Each declaration of emergency power requires greater oversight and higher reauthorization hurdles.
Judicial Nullification Limits: Repeatedly striking down federal mandates raises the evidentiary burden to prevent obstructionism.
Progressive Approval: Tax remittance refusals or drastic nullifications must trigger increasingly complex approvals—first a majority, then a supermajority, then a public referendum.
Unchecked power accelerates, but well-designed systems never allow runaway escalation. Radical Federalism’s rate limits ensure emergency authority stays extraordinary, preserving resilience.
Without circuit breakers, any government risks meltdown. Engineered constraints force power to slow itself down.
█ Summary:
Digital systems use circuit breakers to prevent overload.
Radical Federalism imposes escalating thresholds for extreme measures—keeping them rare and deliberate.
Even then, a single compromised node—like a coerced governor or judiciary—could undermine everything if it goes unchecked. That’s where Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) comes in.
3. Byzantine Fault Tolerance Redux: Resisting Capture from Within
A system that assumes loyalty is already compromised. It can’t rely on ethics or precedent—it must withstand sabotage. Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT), originally designed for distributed networks, ensures that even if some nodes fail or are coerced, the system remains functional. Radical Federalism integrates BFT at every governance level.
Multi-State Failover: A Firewall Against Federal Capture
Federal power only needs to coerce enough nodes: a governor, a legislature, a judiciary. Left unchallenged, each captured node strengthens central reach until resistance collapses. The solution? Anticipate failure and reroute authority before capture spreads.
Enforcement Interdiction: Compromised governors lose cooperation from surrounding states, isolating federal mandates.
Jurisdictional Asymmetry: A federal ruling in one state cannot dictate policy for others; legal defense pacts override captured judiciaries.
Economic Redundancy: Interstate financial networks insulate states from federal sanctions or funding freezes, preventing economic blackmail.
Economic Resistance: The Infrastructure of Independence
No political structure is secure without economic autonomy. Parallel trade and financial systems make federal coercion ineffective:
State-Controlled Financial Networks: Regional banking pacts insulate from federal monetary pressure.
Autonomous Trade Mechanisms: Supply chains reroute around federal blockades.
Taxation Failover: Decentralized revenue models redirect obligations away from Washington if needed.
Once these failover structures exist, they become the real source of governance. What began as resistance evolves into replacement.
█ We have self-destructing power, rate-limiting checks, and Byzantine Fault Tolerance. But fault tolerance alone is not enough. We must ensure no single framework ever ossifies into permanence.
Part III: The Ecological Succession of Power
Power is not a structure—it is a process. No government truly “lasts”; it either collapses outright or decays into something new. The only sustainable systems are those designed to decay and renew.
Radical Federalism must embrace ecological succession: the natural process by which barren landscapes evolve into thriving ecosystems, not through stability, but through constant transformation. The goal is not to build an immortal state, but a system that can never be captured or centralized.
1. Emergent Complexity: Governance as an Ecosystem
A forest begins barren, then passes through stages—mosses, grasses, shrubs, and eventually a diverse canopy. Periodic disruption (wildfires, floods) prevents stagnation, allowing renewal. Governance must do the same: plan for renewal, not cling to permanence. Past republics failed because they tried to preserve themselves instead of embracing evolution.
█ Radical Federalism thrives on its own destruction. By ensuring every power decays upon use, it prevents the deadly cycle of permanent authority.
2. Washington as the Strangler Fig—Replacing Federal Control from Within
Federal authority endures only because no true alternative has taken root. As we’ve discussed before, the strangler fig does not chop down the host tree; it grows around it, using the same soil and resources until the host becomes irrelevant. That is our strategy:
Quiet Infiltration: Build public banks, independent tax systems, and legal pacts so the federal framework fades into mere decoration.
Cultural Failover: Shift schools, media, and public discourse away from federal funding and narratives, creating parallel ecosystems that hollow out Washington’s legitimacy.
Lock In Precedents: Whenever courts strike down federal mandates, states must instantly pass laws hardening those rulings. Use federal decisions to erode federal power.
█ We are not fighting the tree. We are replacing it. By the time Washington notices, its trunk has already been engulfed, leaving Radical Federalism standing on its own.
3. Power Must Always Be Temporary
Authoritarian collapse, failed empires, and stagnant regimes share one fatal flaw: they treat power as permanent. The Roman Republic’s dictatorship became permanent; the Soviet Union centralized control until it imploded; the United States has hoarded federal power for centuries, making its eventual collapse catastrophic.
Radical Federalism must break that pattern.
The Ecological Succession Model of Governance
Power must be forced into decay: laws and offices automatically expire unless re-ratified by overwhelming consent.
Every institution must contain seeds of its replacement: the moment a system stabilizes, it must be dismantled into something new.
Periodic collapse is not failure: it is how we prevent ossification into tyranny.
We must stop building for permanence. Instead, we must build for collapse, renewal, and evolution.
4. The Endgame: A System That Can Never Be Captured
Radical Federalism has no final form—by design. Governance erodes itself upon contact. To prevent tyranny indefinitely, power must wither the moment it is used:
Emergency powers are lost once invoked, pending overwhelming reaffirmation.
Legal rulings that weaken federal authority raise the bar for future cases.
Nullifications trigger escalating verification, preventing arbitrary sabotage.
No institution can ever remain static.
A Practical Example of Self-Terminating Governance
Ancient Athens employed ostracism—an annual public vote to exile any figure deemed too powerful. This mechanism prevented any one leader from consolidating influence indefinitely. A modern adaptation could require every constitutional amendment to carry a 50-year sunset clause, forcing each generation to re-ratify or discard outdated laws. By embedding such self-terminating mechanisms, Radical Federalism ensures no authority—executive, legislative, or judicial—can linger beyond its legitimate usefulness.
Thus, Radical Federalism stands apart from every failed experiment. Every empire seeking permanence became the tyranny it once opposed. This system cannot follow that path.
Engineering the Cultivar
Power must not just be decentralized—it must be temporary.
Governance must not just resist capture—it must dissolve upon contact.
Radical Federalism must not just oppose centralization—it must ensure that no institution outlasts its usefulness.
We are not here to build something that lasts.
We are here to seed new life that will forever outpace extinction.
█ Radical Federalism’s endgame: the future is unstable, and that is its strength.