In short, it’s just plain scary. AFFEERCE is an invention of Jeff Graubart, described in a free e-book titled AFFEERCE A Business Plan to Save the United States and Then the World which is available (along with other informational writings) from AFFFEERCE.com. So far, I have only read the preface, and there is enough there to fill me with a chilling dread. In a subsequent post, I intend to proceed from the preface to the introduction. The whole book is over 300 pages long. I’m not making any promises to analyze the whole thing, but I hope to do so.
It’s seasteading
Or landsteading. More to the point, it explicitly calls for the creation of nations as a form of private property. From page 9 (emphasis mine, here and in subsequent quoted passages):
AFFEERCE is an idea that hopefully will change the world. Most peoples’ first impression of AFFEERCE will be through this book. That includes the wealthy AFFEERCIANADOS who will start the first land corporations that will create the first AFFEERCE nations. That includes entrepreneurs who will create the technology for our new world. It includes budding politicians, who will advocate for AFFEERCE in the current United States. It will include citizens of other nations who will come up with their own national business plans. It will include countless citizens who will decide on the merits of what we are doing.
I refer to technology creators as inventors, not entrepreneurs, although of course they are often both. That is a small kvetch. My major beef is that starting a nation as a land corporation makes it explicitly clear that polity is to be a business function. This is the privatization (NOT abolition) of government. From page 10:
Of course, the third and fundamental problem of all movements is how do we bring such a society about? There is only one sure way: a business plan. Relying on both the profit motive and the AFFEERCE spirit, AFFEERCE will grow into a corporation so large and powerful, it will swallow Washington whole.
A hostile takeover. Business ranks above politics.
It’s classist
The statement above that wealthy AFFEERCIANADOS will start the first AFFEERCE nations seems to imply that implementation of AFFEERCE is not something that the non-wealthy can accomplish independently of the wealthy. That alone is a non-starter for me. From the preface, page 10:
My friends thought I was nuts and said that if I was so smart, why was I so poor and not out making money in the business world (That’s what people said back in 1980). They were right. Who would listen to a pauper? So I became a software engineer and in the next 25 years accumulated in excess of a million dollars.
No, they were wrong. Being wealthy does not make a person more credible.
It’s Hobbesian
And of course statist, if that’s something that matters to you. From page 10:
Similar ideas are cropping up elsewhere under the banner, “progressive libertarian,” but most of those philosophies suffer from three problems. The first is a tendency toward anarchy, when a government is essential at this point to protect the natural rights of mankind.
Not sure at this point what the author means by “at this point.”
It’s mystical
From page 11:
Today’s physicists don’t have a clue. They have deviated from reality in ways more extreme than the alchemists of old. They hide behind mathematical equations so complex that even they don’t understand them. The fundamental problem is quite simple. They refuse to admit that consciousness is built into the fabric of the universe.
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