The Self-Terminating State, Part III: The System That Survives Collapse
The Final Architecture of Radical Federalism
Nota bene: A draft outline of this post erroneously got posted alongside Part II on Monday, March 17. As a result, for some of you some of what you read below may be familiar; hopefully, we’ve added, elaborated, and polished it into something worth taking a second look at.
As we discussed in Part I and Part II, power, left unchecked, metastasizes. It expands until it becomes self-perpetuating—until it consumes everything around it. This is the cycle of every centralized state. Every empire. Every system of governance designed to last forever.
Collapse is not a question of if. It is a question of when.
The only question that matters: What survives?
Radical Federalism is not just resistance. It is not just about breaking Washington’s control. It is about ensuring that when collapse comes, something stronger already exists in its place.
The First 100 Days Plan is not about independence. It is about stability after the inevitable.
This is the final blueprint—a system that does not just resist centralization, but survives what comes after it.
I. Every Government Will Collapse—The Only Question Is What Remains
Rome collapsed. The Soviet Union collapsed. The Mandate of Heaven was lost again and again. The U.S. government—like all others before it—will fail.
Yet history shows that every failed system has two outcomes:
Planned collapse, leading to renewal (like ecological succession after a wildfire).
Unplanned collapse, leading to chaos (like Rome’s fall, which triggered centuries of disorder).
Succession plans are not enough; banking on immortality is not enough; postponing the future to deal with present exigencies will always, always seem justified in the moment—but that is exactly how we got where we are today. Instead, nature gave us a solution: sexual reproduction.
We must take the parts of ourselves which work best and mate them to the most powerful parts of something different, building something entirely new. We must engineer a new cultivar which will flourish, spread, seed a diaspora of variation across the lands and give rise to a successor species of governance—not one single inheritor, but a legacy.
█ The failure of past civilizations was not that they collapsed. The failure was that they did not prepare for it.
The Two Forces That Govern Collapse: Hard Landings vs. Soft Landings
Some systems collapse with nothing to fall back on. With no alternatives in place, the pieces do as much harm colliding and rebounding against one another as the initial implosion itself. These hard landings witness power vaccuums, infighting, and as de Jouvenel teaches us—in the absence of powerful resistance to Power’s gravitational pull—inevitable centralization as the scar tissue hardens, contracts—and remains brittle.
But there is another way.
Some collapses are planned for. Foreseeing the inevitable, end of life care is initiated; a transition plan is put in place; scheduled shutdowns, sunsetting of active plans, decommissioning of facilities, retirement of personel all speak to planned senescence and preparedness for what comes after.
This might be as quiet as the leader stepping back into an advisory role, or as loud as a planned demolition. In all cases, political and financial structures are put in place before the collapse, and there is an opportunity—if carefully stewarded—for power to disperse in the process rather than centralize in a crisis.
█ Radical Federalism’s Final Objective: To engineer a system where collapse is not a crisis, but a transition.
II. The Byzantine Immune System—Why Power Must Be Designed to Fail
If collapse is guaranteed, the system must function even when its parts fail.
As we’ve discussed previously, in computer science Byzantine Fault Tolerance ensures that a distributed network remains operational even when part of it is compromised. This is also how immune systems work—when one cell is infected, the others quarantine and destroy it before it spreads.
What would this look like when applied to political spheres of influence?
The constitutional framers already understood parts of this when they introduced dual-sovereignty—but the theory of their day missed core pieces: that power always tends towards concentration and what that implied about their system’s fate a century down the line; the need to build something with the inevitability of collapse in mind; that population growth alone meant that the overseas empire they broke away from would be a better match for the country they built than the states they saw as central.
Beyond all of that what they missed was this: states, cities and rural counties will lose their way as easily as the federal government, and all three must interlock in ways which both resist authoritarian over-reach from without and restrict it from within. Redundancy in governance and voter-powered opt-in mechanisms with automatic expirations are just the start; beyond that, there’s the power of peer-governments to trigger population votes to provision replacement governments mimicking aptoptosis and autophagy, where cells undergo programmed death or are consumed and repurposed to promote the overall health of the system.
█ Radical Federalism must not just decentralize power. It must design a system where collapse is anticipated, fragmented, and absorbed without chaos.
1. The Immune Response to Federal Capture
One of the greatest weaknesses in decentralization movements is the failure to prevent new monopolies of power from forming.
de Jouvenel warns that power, once decentralized, tends to re-centralize in new forms.
Simply removing Washington does not guarantee that new authoritarian structures won’t arise at the state or local level.
Historical precedents show that fractured power structures can be just as tyrannical:
Feudalism replaced centralized monarchy but led to localized oppression in medieval Europe.
Cartelized economies replaced state control but concentrated power in private monopolies in post-Soviet Russia.
Authoritarian state governments can be just as coercive as federal overreach—which we already witnessed in the Jim Crow era.
█ Solution: A multi-layered system of governance that ensures decentralization is not just fragmentation, but structured resilience.
The Swiss Cantonal Model
The Swiss cantonal model stands as a masterclass in decentralized resilience—a federation designed to prevent centralization from ever taking root. Each canton wields near-sovereign power, controlling its own laws, taxes, and even military traditions, ensuring no single authority can consolidate control. Born from centuries of resisting Habsburg domination and internal overreach, the Swiss system thrives on radical redundancy—local governments operate independently yet coordinate for defense and trade. This built-in antifragility has allowed Switzerland to weather empires, wars, and modern state-building without collapsing into centralized rule. Radical Federalism must follow suit: empower states, fracture federal authority, and make Washington obsolete—not by secession, but by irrelevance.
Decentralized Trade Unions
Decentralized trade unions and cooperative governance form the backbone of true economic independence, severing the chains of federal coercion. Worker-owned industries, community-driven markets, and autonomous trade networks ensure that wealth remains in the hands of those who create it—not bureaucrats or corporate monopolies. Like the Swiss cantons or medieval Hanseatic League, these structures embed economic sovereignty at every level, making centralized financial control obsolete. When communities control their own supply chains, credit systems, and mutual aid networks, Washington’s grip weakens—not by rebellion, but by irrelevance. Radical Federalism demands nothing less: economic resilience built from the ground up, unshackled from federal dictates, and impervious to collapse.
2. The Radical Federalist Future
Washington does not need to control every state—it only needs to isolate the defiant, neutering resistance and enforcing de facto compliance. Radical Federalism must ensure that when pressure is applied, power does not simply revert to federal control. Instead, the system must be designed to trigger automatic realignments that reinforce autonomy, not collapse into subjugation:
If one governor capitulates, legal authority must automatically transfer to multi-state compacts.
If federal courts strike down state laws, enforcement must be rerouted through independent judicial pacts.
If a state collapses into federal control, financial reserves must dynamically shift tax revenue elsewhere.
This requires pre-built mechanisms—not reliance on shifting public sentiment or reactive decision-making. The key is automation:
Voting systems and referendums should include trigger-based fallbacks, activating new governance layers if participation drops below threshold levels or policy diversity diminishes.
Peer-reinforced oversight—a jury of one’s peers system—would allow states to hold each other accountable.
1-pass override systems could ensure that agreements between federal and local votes automatically nullify state enforcement of federal mandates at the local level.
If a state government is captured, its authority must not default back to Washington—it must instead trigger pre-designed fallback mechanisms that shift governance to resilient, peer-reinforced structures:
Cross-state veto coalitions could allow legislative decisions in one state to be checked by a weighted consensus of allied states.
Emergency municipal autonomy provisions could enable cities and counties to opt out of state-level mandateswhen federal encroachment is detected.
Economic insulation measures would dynamically reallocate tax revenue from key industries to prevent federal fiscal strangulation of resistant regions.
Most critically, these systems must function automatically. Resistance cannot hinge on temporary political will—it must be embedded in governance itself. Any attempt to suppress autonomy should trigger deeper layers of distributed power rather than fracture the movement.
█ One node can fall. The system remains untouched.
3. Multi-Agent Governance: A System That Cannot Be Taken
Multi-agent governance means designing a system where no single failure—political, economic, or legal—can deliver absolute control to any authority. It is not just about decentralization but about embedding structural fragmentationthat ensures when one pillar falls, others immediately compensate.
Legislative Resilience : Power must be layered with overlapping jurisdictions that prevent any single entity—federal, state, or local—from dictating sovereignty.
Solution: Tiered governance pacts where state and local governments hold mutual override capabilities, preventing legal monopolization.
Fiscal Redundancy : Governments reliant on single revenue streams can be bought, starved, or coerced. Financial autonomy requires parallel funding mechanisms:
Solution: Public banking systems shielded from federal seizure, interstate economic networks, and localized tax reserves to prevent fiscal blackmail.
Decentralized Enforcement : No movement survives without a mechanism to uphold its own laws. Law enforcement cannot be monolithic—it must be hyper-localized, community-controlled, and resistant to federal deputization.
Solution: Multi-county enforcement compacts and regional self-defense pacts ensure legal authority is too distributed to be co-opted by force.
Radical Federalism is not simply about limiting power—it is about ensuring that power cannot be consolidated, even in the face of collapse.
█ The system cannot be seized because it was never designed to be controlled.
III. The First 100 Days Plan—How to Implement Radical Federalism Before Collapse
The system must be in place before collapse happens. The First 100 Days is the operational roadmap—not just for autonomy, but for what remains standing when Washington fails.
1. Political Implementation: The First Laws That Must Be Passed
The State Sovereign Legal Framework Act: Codify state judicial primacy.
The Multi-State Compact for Economic and Legal Autonomy: Form immediate legal defense networks.
The Public Safety Independence Act: Block local law enforcement from federal cooperation.
2. Financial Resistance: How to Starve Washington Before It Starves the States
The State Banking & Fiscal Independence Initiative: Fully shield local finacne and economy from federal coercion and clawbacks.
The Federal Tax Reduction Campaign: Leverage Washington’s ongoing defunding to reduce federal tax reliance and reroute funds to state control.
Infrastructure & Public Services Independence: Replace federal grants before they become coercive.
3. Law Enforcement and Judicial Resistance
The State Judicial Firewall: Ensure state courts have final say on all mandates.
The Federal Enforcement Obstruction Mechanism: Create legal bottlenecks for federal compliance.
Municipal Law Enforcement Resistance: Bar local police from federal deputization.
4. The Defense Plan—Preempting Federal Retaliation
If funding is cut, reserve funds activate immediately.
If state leaders are targeted legally, mass legal defenses are triggered automatically.
If Washington moves to seize financial control, assets shift beyond federal reach.
█ The first 100 days determine whether Radical Federalism succeeds before Washington can react. The window is closing. The time is now.
Final Words: The System That Cannot Be Captured
Rome collapsed. The Soviet Union collapsed. Washington will collapse. Collapse is not the failure. The failure is not preparing for it.
We are not reforming Washington. We are replacing it—without ever needing to fight.
We are not waiting for collapse. We are building a system that survives it.
A system that:
Decays deliberately, preventing stagnation.
Auto-repairs, ensuring no single node is vital.
Neutralizes federal escalation before it happens.
This is not just a plan. This is the first immune system against centralized power.
█ The system that cannot be captured is the system that cannot be taken. This is the final architecture of Radical Federalism.