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“A consequentialist libertarian framework designed to maximize utility and liberty through competitive micro-boroughs, strictly limited outcome-based laws, and objective externality pricing.”
Libertarian based on consequentialist reasoning, that maximum freedom is most likely to maximize long run economic utility. Economic externalities lead to many situations where collective action may be warranted, including to solve free rider problems, but only when the cost of the government solution is earnestly estimated to be less than the cost of the externality it solves, in the long run.
• A government should be based on economic principles. • Federal design with a city government and many borough governments within it. • Strict limitations on borough size and shape, to ensure that "voting with your feet" is easy. • City government limited to designating a minimal network of roads and paths, designating nature-space, and settling disputes with borough and city government. • Borough government limited to defining property rights, promoting efficient competition, taxing or subsidizing externalities, income tax only if necessary, resolving disputes that can't be resolved privately, very limited licensure and information disclosure requirements, UBI as the only welfare option, limited externality-based zoning, and designation of further travel ways, parks, and nature space. • Two legislative bodies that both must approve changes to the law: council and the people (via local committees) • Voting weighted by population vs owned land value vs owned land area must also both pass. • Limited amount of action council can take per year (in terms of length of time and number of laws) so that the people don't need to spend much of their lives thinking about and considering fighting / supporting legal changes. Also inherently limits the power of politicians and the government. • Supermajority requirement for laws (60%) • Statutory law. • Consequentialist outcome-based law. The law may not reward or punish specific methods and means, and must only prescribe outcomes. • Right to choose private law • Use of force is equal to all but limited. • Military and national defense is assumed to be taken care of by a higher government.
These documents are built on the belief that a city should be governed by objective rules, competitive institutions, and measured accountability rather than discretionary political power. Government should exist to define rights, resolve conflicts, protect people from actual harm, and coordinate shared infrastructure where markets have difficulty doing so. It should not become a general-purpose authority over private life.
The first premise is that power should be explicit, limited, and difficult to expand. City and borough governments may only use powers specifically granted to them. Lawmaking is constrained by supermajority requirements, public notice periods, yearly word limits, limited official lawmaking days, and multiple voting methods. Laws that restrict government are easier to pass than laws that restrict people, and laws that restrict people are easier to repeal. This reflects the belief that government failure is dangerous, cumulative, and hard to reverse, so the legal structure should bias toward liberty, restraint, and corrigibility.
The second premise is that law should be grounded in measurable harm. A person should not be punished merely because an authority dislikes their behavior, technology, method, intention, lifestyle, or role. Legal consequences should be based on actual harm, concrete risk imposed on others, broken contracts, damaged property, nuisance, lost opportunity, or violation of clearly defined rights. Where conduct creates external costs, those costs should be measured and priced. Where conduct creates external benefits, those benefits should be rewarded. This turns law away from moralized command-and-control regulation and toward objective compensation, deterrence, and incentive alignment.
The third premise is that justice should be proportional. Remedies should generally compensate the harmed party and charge the offender according to the harm done, adjusted when necessary by the likelihood that this type of harm is caught and proven. Punishment should not be a symbolic act of domination. Prison and other severe restraints should be reserved for people who remain dangerous or cannot otherwise make victims whole. The legal system should recognize that imprisonment, seizure, delay, and coercive process are themselves costly and should be limited to cases where their expected benefits exceed their social costs.
The fourth premise is that adjudication should be predictable, statutory, and understandable. Courts should apply written law and contract rather than create open-ended common law. Precedent may inform argument, but it should not silently become law. Ambiguity should not be used against ordinary people; a defendant’s reasonable interpretation of law or contract should matter. Contracts should be readable, plain, and fair enough that ordinary parties can understand what they are agreeing to. Legal systems are legitimate only when people can know the rules in advance.
The fifth premise is that courts, police, prisons, public-space maintenance, utilities, and other civic services should be exposed to competition wherever possible. Private courts, private police, private holding facilities, private utility operators, private public-space maintainers, and insurance systems are favored because monopolies tend to become inefficient, unaccountable, and self-protective. Where full competition is difficult, the documents try to simulate it through choice, vouchers, stewardship rights, insurance consortia, bidding, review metrics, and separation of infrastructure into governable sections.
The sixth premise is that monopoly problems should be handled structurally rather than through centralized bureaucracy. Roads, utilities, parks, and public spaces often have natural-monopoly characteristics, but that does not mean they must be run by a single city department. Adjacent landowners can steward infrastructure segments, choose operators, and constrain pricing because they themselves bear the consequences. Insurance monopolexes can coordinate risk-reduction efforts where prevention benefits many people. The goal is to make collective-action problems solvable without converting them into permanent bureaucratic control.
The seventh premise is that taxation should target externalities and land value rather than productive activity. Land value taxes are favored because land value is largely created by location, community, infrastructure, and surrounding activity rather than by the individual landholder alone. Taxes and subsidies should be tied to measurable negative or positive externalities. Excess local revenue should be used to reduce the burden of higher-level taxes where possible, especially taxes that discourage work, trade, building, and productive enterprise.
The eighth premise is that land use should protect neighbors from real invasions while leaving owners broad freedom to build, experiment, and adapt. Rights to light, air, sound environment, water flow, and protection from unwanted matter or energy are treated as property-like rights. Zoning should not micromanage aesthetics, uses, methods, or technologies except where they materially affect others. If zoning changes reduce land value, owners should be compensated. This reflects the belief that the built environment should be shaped by property rights, externality pricing, and voluntary coordination, not by broad political discretion.
The ninth premise is that cities should be physically designed around human-scale access, public space, and nature. The documents require a network of travel ways, pedestrian and low-speed vehicle routes, and periodic nature corridors. This reflects the belief that civic life depends not only on legal rules, but also on the physical pattern of streets, paths, parks, and shared spaces. A good city should make ordinary movement, encounter, privacy, and access to nature easier by default.
The tenth premise is that community membership matters. Residency and citizenship are treated as serious social relationships, not merely administrative categories. Guest access, trial access, permanent access, and citizenship create graduated levels of belonging. Vouching, trial periods, hearings, and neighbor input are used because the character of a place depends heavily on the people who are admitted into it. The aim is not arbitrary exclusion, but a transparent process for preserving trust, safety, and social compatibility.
The eleventh premise is that public institutions should be judged by outcomes. Laws should have success criteria and be reviewed. Prison facilities should be rewarded for reducing recidivism, not for maximizing occupancy. Public subsidies should be justified by positive externalities. Legal procedures should discourage strategic delay. Government budgets should prioritize essential expenditures and degrade gracefully when revenue falls. The structure assumes that institutions follow incentives, so incentives must be designed deliberately.
Overall, these documents advocate a city built on liberty, private ordering, objective harm accounting, competitive governance, local consent, and strong limits on political discretion. They reject the idea that good civic life requires a centralized bureaucracy with broad regulatory power. Instead, they attempt to create a framework where law is clear, coercion is minimized, externalities are priced, public goods are rewarded, monopolies are disciplined, and people can choose among competing institutions while still living together under a shared constitutional order.