NN Ep:13 - Intentional Communities & New Jurisdictions with Jessy Kate Schingler

Transcript

So today we're exploring the question of whether network communities can ever become real political actor without anchoring themselves in a physical location. And the thing is that network national are often described as purely digital communities which are coordinating across boundaries and territories through the use of protocols and platforms but with no association to any specific physical space. And so the question then that we want to ask is what if physical jurisdictions could also become nodes in those networks like becoming those sides in which governance experimentation become possible and

where network nation can potentially anchor themselves in order to interface with existing legal systems. So this enable to distinguish between two separate approach. On the one hand, we have bottomup intentional communities and virtual um online communities that use private law and some degree of contracting or social contracts to govern themselves within existing jurisdictions. And on the other hand, we have more top-down experiments in the creation of new jurisdiction uh including the new economic zones or the charter cities which leverage public law

in order to carve out new regulatory frameworks and of course each one of those approach has its own benefit and drawbacks. Uh the intentional community can move very fast and they can experiment more freely but of course they operate within the cracks of the systems. Whereas new jurisdiction have actual real legal authority but of course they do require the buy in of the states. And so the question that uh we are exploring is how can we potentially benefit from the best of both worlds?

And to discuss those questions we are joined today by Jesse Kinger who has been thinking about this intersection for many years over decades by now uh because she is the co-founder of the embassy network which is a global network of co- livingiving spaces that are experimenting with shared living and governance but also through our own ongoing academic work and practical work on the design and the implementation of new jurisdictional frameworks and together the goal today is to explore how those physical nodes could give network nation a territorial grounding and also what would it take to bridge

the world of intentional communities and jurisdictional innovation. Great. Thank you Jessica for being with us. Um yes so today we want to discuss a little bit like uh placebased communities and uh how they can help us um figure out how to theorize and to operationally implement uh network nations. Uh so perhaps we can start with intentional communities which you have been a very strong participate and catalyzer of. Can you tell us a little bit about your uh experience?

>> Certainly. Yeah, I've been working with intentional communities for a very long time. Uh, mostly in the Bay Area and California. Uh, these are, I would say, communities that are quite different from maybe the the sort of like classic 70s intentional communities. These are communities that have emerged, I would say, really as a result of connections formed through technology and people who are deciding that they want to maximize the chances of overlapping and collaborating when they're in the same physical place together. I've been involved in a community called Rainbow Mansion like in the early uh 2000s uh and then a number of places including

the Embassy San Francisco. um since then the red Victorian uh a few spaces in um Berlin, Amsterdam uh and now somewhere called the fold also in the mission district of San Francisco. But again, these spaces I would say are kind of characterized by almost like a desire to be connected with the world and to concentrate u amazing humans who are inspiring to us with whom we think that we can be more effective uh in the world that we could be alone.

>> And um I think one that is very interesting in especially in the context of network nation is the embassy network. And I think what's the most interesting about the embassy network is perhaps the name embassy. Do you wanna do you want to talk about uh where the name embassy network originate from? >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean first of all the I guess the the initial community through whom I began to build spaces like this was the space community. And so we started off um kind of a priori with a very global perspective thinking about the future of humanity, not just one particular um not just one particular uh let's say uh local location and and

so I think we had this global perspective from the start and we were thinking about what uh the relationship was between the spaces we made and the kinds of futures that we were envisioning as space geeks. And and so we we sort of thought about these spaces as being embassies, but embassies to the future, the futures that we wanted to that we wanted to create. Uh and that we wanted to have a network of these spaces around the world so that we could always have a kind of safe house um wherever we were traveling to meet other people who sort of speak our language and share our culture. Uh and that's where the name came from.

And um so what was the um I guess the condition or the rules or whatever in order for an intentional community to be considered part of that culture or potentially nation uh or future nation uh that is the embassy. Yeah, I think that's a great question because uh which will tie us back to Network Nations because I think we actually really struggled with that for a long time. We, you know, think about like uh I don't know like early 2010s kind of time frame. There wasn't a lot of language around this kind of decentralized collaborative network ecosystem.

And so we we spent a lot of time thinking about what does membership look like? And and our initial um reference points were sort of like very discreet and explicit membership models that were um you know things like you pay a certain amount and you have these particular um obligations that are very like you know bullet point enumerated. Um, and there weren't really, I mean, and even today, I think we're still developing them, but there there were like really not any clear reference points for what it means to be a part of something because of a culture or because of certain uh let's say like ritualistic practices or ways in which we relate uh to one another. Um and so

we ended up really I would say establishing membership of specific nodes in embassy network in the end just by by um individual selection like by curation rather than having a discrete and explicit criteria because there wasn't we found there wasn't one u generic criteria that could translate into an institutional uh frame. >> Yeah. is too easy to cheat the formalities like if you have like >> it's easy to cheat the formalities.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. So one interesting node uh of the embassy network which I guess is part of the embassy network is Ftopia. um which uh was created through the inspiration of the embassy network and uh um and it was interesting because it was an actual inspiration meaning that it was really always referring the embassy as to like this is how a proper intentional community exists. Um but then it kind of also acquired its own flavor. Um and you know now we have like a a its own community around Ftopia which is

obviously like a sister community uh to embassy. Um, so I think this really speaks into like the translocal thing in which like every community is not we're not talking about franchising in which we want like every intentional community to replicate exactly the same thing but it's more like every community should find their own flavor and if the flavors are compatible and align then they can be part of the um of the intentional community. Um and so one one other interesting question I think around embassy network but actually enlarge because now I think there is a lot of intentional community which are siblings

even though they are not maybe officially part of the embassy network is like what are the different forms that you see of entanglement uh whether it's like cultural entanglement whether it's like people entanglement whether it's more like financial economic entment that you have seen as experiment successful or prospective experiment within those uh within the this network of intentional communities. >> Yeah, great questions. First of all, I mean I think the way that Ftopia kind of spawned was super cool in that it was not it was not permission based, right? It was uh somebody who had lived

at the embassy and had been very much a you know a student of um uh the sort of architectural and cultural history of spaces like this who at Jess who went back to France and uh purchased a space and was um was sort of like of the DNA of the embassy community and took that cultural and I would say it was like cultural but also operational and logistical um uh I don't know almost like qualities into seating a space that as you say has you know very much become its its own um

yeah its own space its own culture at this point as well and I guess I think from a transfusion standpoint that's really interesting because it wouldn't it just wouldn't have made sense for it to be a permission based thing. It's not like Jess applied and said, "Can I start a new embassy node?" She just was um she just was an embassy node. And so it kind of carried along a lot of the people and interests and practices that that she had encountered, you know, in our community, but also of course in many others. Um and then to the question of entanglement.

Uh I mean I guess that sort of as I just said uh cultural practices are one of them, right? Like there is this I think cultural practices are really interesting because there is this permission to do things differently that comes from having done them already. Um and so the um to be kind of bold and heterodox and try out cultural experiments, uh financial experiments, governance experiments, those are the kinds of things that um it's really emboldening to see and have other people have done that in the past. And so I think in a way cultural transfusion is one of the strongest types of

transfusion even more than financial transfusion in the sense that it's it's kind of hard to fake you know like you can we all have uh standardized patterns for uh for financial transfusion and we've begun to see some of that too but the cultural piece came first. Um on the financial side I also think it's been very it's been very bespoke. So like there are times uh not necessarily with Ftopia but with other spaces in the embassy network where communities might have a very particular financial need and other communities will rally around that in order to support it financially with uh sort of like um like a short-term loan uh or housing people from different nodes in order to help

them get through a difficult period or um or supporting them to um you know like purchase something that is needed. Uh and uh we've begun to have uh savings pools that can support new spaces. But I'd say that's that's nent and something that I'm particularly excited about leaning into. And also I think like to me from my experience between like uh those different intentional community there is this really interesting form of entanglement which is actually just the fact that there is a cross-pollination of people and there is a point in which some people don't know anymore you know are you a ftopian or are you an embassy

network or are you muse and like there is so much traveling around from one community to the other that there is actually the identity it's difficult to say I'm justtopian. I actually I never leave that embassy but I've been so close to the embassy people. I feel a little bit also an embassy person and vice versa. So I think there is also like the the because the DNA of a community is the people. The the way in which you share blood is that you share people and there is a point in which because people belong or feel have a sense of belonging to multiple of those communities then take care for all of them at the same time and then it becomes like something bigger than the the sum of its parts.

>> Mhm. Yeah. Totally. I think that's um I think that's a great example also on the identity front you know like when you meet people and they say I am from this community it says a lot about the kinds of uh like social relations that you might be able to encounter or enjoy with that person uh or practices that they're familiar with and yeah I think that you know we have people again who who it's not it's not a label that somebody gives you and you say I feel like I'm a member of Ftopia. Nobody nobody like dames you you know that it's it's something that comes from you that you just that

emerges from you and you you feel that you identify with that identity uh in a way that is super indogenous and I think that's really powerful because that is also a little bit different uh between each person who exudes that identity who shares that identity and so it it has this richness and texture to it that something like um an official membership doesn't come with. >> Yeah. And I think it also leads to this thing of like imagined communities which is often times when we encounter someone that uh define identify themsself as a phototopian or embassy etc. Even if we never had any interaction even

indirectly with those people uh all of is like oh you're part of the same tribe and then all of it then there is this sense of kinship >> that emerge just because we share the same identity right >> yeah absolutely >> and then maybe one one more thing about entanglement that uh I think is interesting to discuss is uh uh this uh prospective vision of like the drifting system Do you want to talk about it? >> Yeah. I mean, um, forever we've had these ideas about, uh, like one rent to live anywhere or the ability to move fluidly between different locations in a way that isn't financially ownorous.

And, uh, that the name we've given to that is Drift as DRFT. It's a it's a currency name. And uh the basic idea is that um like an a concept that came before cryptocurrency was was uh sort of a major thing and but certainly inspired by some of the early activities in cryptocurrency. It was more like a complimentary currency where each location can set a price uh for their rooms per night. Um, but if you're part of the Drift system and when you stay somewhere, it actually mints one Drift token and the Drift token uh goes to the

host location or host room. And uh let's say every unit of time like every night or every month or whatever unit of time is decided the uh the the fiat currency that comes along with those guest stays is kind of smoothed across all of the locations and the prices that they have set in a way that means each location is earning um fiat currency and minting drift units as people move around the network. And there's got to be some sort of like demorrage process as part of that. Um but yeah, we've done like local experiments with that and um it's been really fun. Uh we haven't we haven't scaled it up uh beyond some some

prototypes but we shall see. >> Good. So in some way it is also like um an attempt at creating this kind of virtual jurisdiction in which my credits that I have accumulated in one node also are valid in another node to the extent that those nodes recognize each other as being part of the same thing. And uh yeah, maybe this brings us to another very important uh topic uh of yours uh which is new jurisdictions. Um and uh maybe you can tell us a little bit like the various uh projects that you're

involved with into these topics. >> Yeah. So, um I guess maybe it's maybe it's self-evident or maybe not, but I think that each of these each of these nodes in you know what we call the embassy network, but of course there's many other networks out there that are I think um operating in and experimenting with similar dynamics. Um, in many ways I would say that we are playing with the private law side uh of the kind of institutional ecosystem where we we have all this culture and community and interesting activities happening and then we have a bunch of

institutional infrastructure as the backbone for that and those need to interact in really like delicate um ways but also important ways, right? like the the institutional scaffolding for those communities is the thing that both uh is the container within it takes place. It's also um a sort of protector uh for the dynamics that happen within those nodes or those environments. Um and one of the things that that I and you know I think many other people have been tracking um have been seeing happening around the world is that there's also a number of that that the prevailance of uh new jurisdictions around the world is

increasing over time by which I mean if you look at um a phenomenon like special economic zones which are very much um I would say zones that are looking to create usually economic concessions to stimulate economic activity and uh those have been around for quite a long time. But one of the things that I think we're starting to see more and more in the world right now is that uh that pattern of tweaking uh juris jurisdictional constructs is becoming more common and not just for economic purposes but also for social innovation purposes. So the ability to experiment with different uh

currencies, different forms of identity, uh different business or like corporate form constructs. And so I've been starting to research and track uh and uh seed collaborations with new jurisdictions that are um that are attempting to do this from a very like social impact uh kind of perspective. >> And uh do you have like a few examples of interesting new jurisdictions that are emerging?

>> Yeah. Um, I mean the the main one that I've been working with recently is called the Galifu Mindfulness City and it's um it's a what's called a special administrative region in uh Bhutan. It's on the southern border of Bhutan. Uh it's 2500 square kilometers and the uh within a country that's about 40,000 square kilometers. Uh so the country is like roughly the size of Switzerland and the special administrative region is uh like more than three times the size the physical size of Singapore and within that special administrative region uh they so sorry the broader within the broader country you have Bhutanese law which is a kind of evolution of Buddhist

legal systems and a little bit of civil law and common law and within the special administrative region. Um the legal system is entirely different. It's um based on Singaporean law mixed with a little bit of uh financial uh regulation from the uh Abu Dhabi u uh financial markets >> and um can you talk maybe like a little bit to the intention behind the establishment of the GMC? It's such an interesting project and many many intentions I think come together to form like a very unique like landscape for for like crafting the

future in a way. Um but Bhutan is a you know famously a tiny landlocked Himalayan kingdom and it sits between two uh global superpowers India and China and very small population and um is thinking about what is what is its both cultural and economic future in a world that is uh very globalized. And how does it how does it continue to offer a rich environment for its own citizens uh in a way that

kind of is self-reinforcing or like reinforcing of the incredible cultural affordances that Bhutan has without giving without risking uh that to say like the the classic failure modes of opening up to a global economy. Uh which tends to, you know, very much homogenize cultures um focus development on uh economic returns. And so they're taking a background of, you know, like a like um like thousands of years Buddhist um backdrop and cultural background and

using that as the framing to say what does what does values forward mindful development look like and what would you know like um in almost like a like a summary sense like what is a Buddhist futuristic Buddhist city look like. And so you will say that it's kind of like it's an experiment where the ambition is to check whether it works or not and then expand it over the rest of Bhutan or is it an experiment that has specifically the the aspiration of staying within that city and perhaps replicating the experiment in other jurisdictions or like what

what's the what's the outcome of a successful experiment in the case of Jensen? Yeah. So, uh, for the for the case of GMC and Bhutan, the strategy that's been articulated by His Majesty the King of Bhutan is what they call the diamond strategy, which is that they've basically uh sectioned off this area of GMC to be its own experiment. And if and as aspects of that experiment turn out to be fruitful or successful that those can flow back into the rest of Bhutan but in a very carefully curated sense. And so it's kind of like a it's like a protective membrane that

is existing around the GMC area to allow for that experimentation but in a way that uh protects the rest of the country and the the culture from it and yet sift it up to be economically benefiting from uh from the upside of those experiments by having Bhutanese citizens be the be the beneficiaries of let's say surplus from the city itself. And how does it work with external people that are not uh resident or somehow physically or non-physically associated with uh GMC meaning like is there a concept of like you know like Estonia had done like the e- residency of digital citizenship so

is is GMC specifically about the local node of GMC or is it this kind of like gateway that also enable external actor to work with uh or within the GMC jurisdiction even though they're not physically there. Yeah. So I mean it's very early days with the GMC project but um the intention and that the beginnings of uh the beginnings of um let's say like a visa policy basically are I think going to be coming into focus and probably be announced sometime this year. Uh but the as I think many people are familiar with Bhutan itself has a

very particular tourism policy that involves a daily fee for tourists to go visit with the idea of uh it's called um highquality low volume tourism policy and the idea with GMC is to have a totally different uh visa system that would allow people to come in um to work and collaborate, to establish businesses, uh to attend events that will have a totally different framing. And I I don't know exactly what that will be, but I know that the intention is to make it easier, like significantly easier for people to come into that area of Bhutan, but really it's sort of like

an exlosure from Bhutan and to spend time there and collaborate there. And within that within the legal system as it's being defined, one of the really exciting like qualities features of that jurisdiction is the emphasis on blockchainbased public goods and services and u like banking and economic tools as well. And so I think in many ways we have the seeds for a kind of um even though you know GMC itself is of course territorialized, I think we have the seeds for the kinds of services and identity building that

are derritorialized in the sense that there will be banking services um uh like corporate form um and identity services that are by their very nature uh digital first and I think that's really exciting and it's one of the areas that I've been kind of thinking about um and collaborating with some folks on >> and so in some way um even if uh GMC is inherently territorial and there is just one node of GMC um you see somehow GMC as a potential platform jurisdictional platform potentially for those more digital

native communities i.e. potential network nation to actually leverage this jurisdiction as a hanker in order to um I guess in order to hanker themsel into a territorial jurisdiction in order to be able to operate and in order to be able to interface with other uh jurisdictional actors. like this is now getting into more like what I see as exciting opportunities, not necessarily things that the GMC team is focused on at the moment. Um but one of the things I think is really exciting especially when we think about the the network nations like theory of functional sovereignty is

to look at opportunities for establishing bespoke or maybe not bespoke but like novel uh statutory or corporate forms within the GMC jurisdiction uh that are prototypes of new ways ways of um new ways of working, new ways of collaborating, whether that's like uh like like a regenerative corporate form that has uh totally different tax treatment or whether it's um a sort of uh Buddhist conflict resolution processes that are uh fundamentally encoded into the the statutory

expression um or uh like digital native corporate reforms that are, you know, basically like what's happening with the Duna, but even going further to to think about um uh yeah, like like DAO DAO native corporate forms, etc., and doing that in a way that is aligned with the values of uh Bhutan and of GMC, prototyping it there. And to the extent that those experiments are um are effective or successful, then there's this really cool opportunity for other jurisdictions to adopt the same

statutory corporate forms. And then you have this uh sort of like it's both modular, but it's also interoperable. And you can begin to have activities and like economic activities and governance activities kind of umworked across multiple locations and this but it's kind of like a portal going through uh between different jurisdictions as opposed to like a territorial like space covering um jurisdictional construct. So I mean that's that's obviously like you know more of um futuristic direction but that's what I think is so much of the opportunity that is provided for us in these spaces. So if I try to like bring

back this conversation towards like the network nation network state nation/state dichotomy um it sounds like so the Bhutan is clearly like a very strong nation at the cultural level right like there is a very specific culture that indeed uh wants to be preserved at all cost um and then GMC seems to be this kind of like more of a it's not it's not uh a region that is emerging as a new jurisdiction because of a cultural need. There is no GMC nation uh which is pretty much the same as the Bhutan nation. Somehow there is a desire of institutional innovation in

order to explore and potentially uh implement institutions that are more a that have more affinity with the Bhutanese culture but also more affinity with the global culture that perhaps the existing Bhutanese institution do not have. So it's it feels like it's more of a it's an institutional scaffolding that is not there to respond to the needs of a particular nation but is rather there to innovate institutionally in order to help a nation open up. Is that does that sound correct?

>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think it's I think you put it well in the sense that um it's a fascinating almost like contrast with my understanding of the network state approach which is it's very like totalizing I find the network state approach in that it sort of tries to subsume the things around it whereas I think what uh the ideas of the network nation are articulating and the link with GMC and brutal Han is that it's it's much more multi-layered. Like it's it's sort of explicitly trying to support and protect Bhutanese culture and well-being in a kind of intact way,

right? Like it's not trying to be in competition with that or take that over. Um and yet it is also creating this within it protected bubble for things to be operated differently with a recognition of the kind of rich global environment that um Bhutan can you know learn from absorb build on improve um but there isn't a desire to to merge these or to have them be like each layer is distinct. and is intended to be kind of sustained in and of itself. And yet there's a relationship between them. And that like to me that gets at this notion of subsidiarity but also polyentricity that

we talk about a lot in the network nations work. Um and it's you know I mean of course it's emerging like this is like a moment of of like massive cultural and geopolitical transition for our planet. So, I think that we're all kind of like grasping at uh like proto examples of how how these things are emerging, but it feels like it it like embodies and engenders the qualities that um that we are articulating with the with the network nations work. Mhm. And will that uh will that sounds absolutely crazy uh or not to say that um the GMC institutional scaffolding is actually somehow intended also to

bootstrap a new form of uh culture which is this culture that is this kind of like more technologically native and maybe like uh open to transnational nationality uh yet maintaining all the cultural artifact that are defining Bhutan but but that's kind of a new culture nonetheless because I guess the Bhutan has remained perhaps less uh transnational or international and and actually even with the visa requirement like more closed on its uh on preservation um so will that make sense to say that

perhaps with the GMC whether it's intentional or as consequence. This can actually create a new cluster of like a new bootstrapping of uh of a new cultural artifact which is you know let's actually experiment with um identifying ways in which we can be a international recognized center while also preserving the value of you know community and ecology and sustainability and like happiness and all those things that uh have made actually Bhutan uh internationally renowned because of its culture and then and if that's the case does that mean that perhaps other

countries that also perhaps want to explore uh clustering around those new cultural artifact could create um I'm going to use the word on purpose embassies um which are also representative of such a similar you know open to technology, open to global um interaction and yet not turning into the Singapore or the Dubai uh financial uh center but rather more local focusing on ecology and sustainability.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really nicely articulated. I mean, I I think that is the I think that's the opportunity of what's happening in GMC and and I think that it warrants additional thought um and I guess stepping back to think about where are the potentialities uh for doing that. So like as a vision, I I think that it's it's a great goal and it raises a bunch of like I think really interesting questions about where where the best like uh portals or like linkage points are. I talked about

corporate form but you know I think uh dispute resolution is another one. I think credentials uh are another one. I think that um like currencies and banking infrastructure obviously um one that's already being experimented with quite a lot around the world. Um and this is where uh some of us are starting to do some like what I think is really exciting and interesting work looking at uh new jurisdictions um at a university in Tokyo called Chibetch. Yeah. And what's exciting about that is we have like a kind of little um little like protected home where we can kind of explore and ask

some of these questions and think about think about perhaps like frameworks or uh new opportunities or get into designing some of these particular like statutory innovations that that could be adopted by some of these new jurisdictions. And one we haven't talked about here yet today that that is a huge area um that I'm I'm excited about and I know you are too is looking at uh sort of synthetic intelligences and the ways in which there's an opportunity to have not just digital native but uh like AI native statutory expressions that would recognize other forms of intelligence at like a more foundational formative

level. Um, again, you know, I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I think there's an opportunity to spend some time with it. Yeah. And I think this uh this also relate to uh a lot of the work we've been doing in the past years uh mostly like within the blockchain world, but I think now it's becoming more and more applicable to AI, which is the concept of regulatory equivalence. um where the idea is uh instead of trying to adapt or to apply existing laws to novel technology or instead of trying to like stretch in various way or reinterpret the law so that it's somehow apply to the things

that actually operate according to very different principles. Uh perhaps sometimes it's better not to start from scratch because starting from scratch is like an insane amount of work, but it's better to actually observe what kind of equivalences can exist and just recognizing the equivalence on how different technology might somehow lead to an equivalent outcome which can be equivalent to specific legal formalities. And um and especially within the blockchain world like because this requires uh there's a lot of regulation required around like tokens and cryptocurrencies uh but also because of the inherent decentralized nature of those technology then existing

laws that were designed for centralized institutions are very not uh easy or even possible to apply. And so the need of these kind of regulatory innovation um and and and I think all those zones those those new jurisdictional zones have this very interesting benefit of um starting from a kind of like asyn of experimentation like sandboxing and then seeing what works and what doesn't work uh to bring it back. So the like I think the benefit uh of creating those specific regulatory zones in addition to

just the traditional economic zones is really also to see how given the technological advancement. What can we do that is actually better and that leads to the same policy objectives without necessarily the drawback uh of relying on an old system that is mostly paper based and opening up to the new opportunities in addition to the challenge of AI and blockchain. Um so this is like this is something that I think the GMC is thinking about but I guess there is a lot uh more uh initiatives in terms of regulatory zones that are thinking of that. It's like a place where perhaps we could have a bit

of the best of both worlds in that as you say like starting from scratch is a lot of work but also um sometimes starting from scratch is like you know if you think about software right like rewriting a codebase and getting into the nitty-gritty of like all of the corners the dusty corners of something. Sometimes it is actually easier to do a rewrite, but you want to control your variables, right? And so like the cool thing about some of these uh special administrative regions or like new jurisdictions that are looking at social innovations is that they can be really principled about the things that they're rewriting uh so that they both are not taking on like a whole new um uh jurisdiction from scratch. uh like even

in the case of GMC, they're they're adopting Singaporean law as a baseline, right? And then they're choosing very specific things to innovate on top of that. Uh, and then observe how those new policies or laws kind of play out, what behaviors they gave rise to, tweak it, and then sort of like, you know, as it standardizes, uh, you might see it being articulated as an option for uh, or like more explicitly being being shared and offered as an option for other jurisdictions to adopt as well.

>> Yeah. I I just wanted to maybe address another important question around like the the the distinction indeed like it feels like the the embassy network and the uh Ftopia and those intentional communities they are trying to articulate this kind of like additional layer of functional sovereignty uh using mostly like private law, contract, exlosure, what not. Uh, basically recreating a jurisdiction that doesn't have and to some extent doesn't need a physical territorial jurisdiction, which

is what we usually describe as the the the way in which network operates. Um and when we think about uh the GMC and when we think about the more like charter city special economic or administrative zone, they start from this very territorial basis but um they they provide tools that in some way perhaps network could strongly benefit from. And if we go back to uh the previous episode that we discussed with Vitalik where he made this distinction between the zones and the tribes uh it feels that in fact GMC and other type of uh administrative zone could become the

physical uh institutional home for those network that actually don't really need uh because they could operate just with this kind of self-s sovereign uh infrastructure but then they always lack the interface with the more institutional legal and state based world. Uh so how do you see this kind of relationship between like what we're doing with the international communities and what GMC and other uh states are doing in order to create zones of innovation and whether those zones can become uh I guess ad hoc homes where it's not because the network nation

decides to incorporate there but it's because the network nation might choose across multiple jurisdiction and different zones. on to instantiate specific embassies or specific incorporated entity that can help them build interfaces with existing states. >> Yeah, I mean I think uh we were kind of grasping at that earlier a bit with the corporate forum question, but I I think what you're pointing to goes further than that. Um, and so I'm just sort of riffing, but I think that part of the reason that I find the dispute resolution or like court system um approach really interesting is

because it it's um a tool an institutional form where within it it can recognize multiple different uh let's say statutory creatures from different jurisdictions in a way that would create a link from one jurisdiction to another. So if you have like um like a contractual enforcement mechanism or a dispute resolution mechanism in one jurisdiction uh that recognizes innovations in those other jurisdictions then it creates this like um external I don't know if it's a stabilizing force but like it adds one more like anchor point uh to of legitimacy to those

innovations in a different jurisdiction that is a sort of like independent um independently um like incorporated um like yeah organization and I think that's really interesting because the something like a dispute resolution mechanism is itself like a pretty vanilla concept that most jurisdictions would recognize but the types of corporate form or other activities that it recognizes internally can itself bring some legitimacy and sustainability to those innovations. I don't know if I'm if I'm making sense, but that's like

that's one area I think about a lot and I'd be really interested in kind of digging in on more. Uh but I think there's also a question of within I don't know like within a specific jurisdiction you know I mentioned tax policy before and that's one way that jurisdictions attract uh new new users you could say or new participants is in having favorable tax policy. I think maybe that's an example where tax policy is actually something that's really hard to advocate for and propagate across multiple jurisdictions.

So maybe maybe that's an example that isn't very good in terms of innovations that would be easily modularizable and uh like adoptable in multiple jurisdictions. Um any yeah those are just a couple of examples. Um as a closing little thought um perhaps you could share like given your experience both in the context of intentional communities with embassy and Ptopia and so forth but also with your experience with your involvement with like the GMC. Um is there something that you've learned working with this more like public jurisdictional endeavor of the GMC uh that is relevant and that could be helpful for all those

communities intentional communities or other type of network nations which are trying to organize themselves across borders. >> I think that's a really hard one. what's coming what's coming to mind um is sort of like actually I think I don't know if this will go anywhere but what's coming to mind is interestingly the least um generalizable feature which is land policy like I think that one of the defining features of GMC will be how it legally treats its land, its territory. And there were some

announcements made at Bhutan's National Day last month about the fact that the land will actually be held in um uh like basically interest by the GMC authority uh and so that it won't be sold to uh foreigners or speculators whether whether foreigners or Bhutanese individuals and so I like I think that how we manage how we manage land and territory is critical to the basically how we manage the resources that are contained within

a given layer or node is critical to a defining feature of the kind of mutualism and commons qualities that are being sought in uh whether it's a territorial jurisdiction or a network nations node. And I I also think I don't know but I think it's interesting to consider the ways in which that decision will allow for the network nations nodes to be kind of necessarily autonomous from or um like we won't see like property ownership leaking into uh

the non-territorial layer of network nations from the underlying jurisdictions and maybe that is a maybe that's a good thing in the sense that like generalizing from that insight I think that what we need within the network nations design space is to think about this notion of self-contained functionality right we talk about functional sovereignty and so whatever resources it is that we are managing together that we have a way to create closure around them so that we're not stuck kind of waiting or asking permissions at the

interfaces. Uh and I think that can apply like land was just the example that came to mind but obviously that can apply to like you know network nation focus on like educational credentials or healthcare provision or whatever it is. Um but really thinking about like following the logical reasoning process to to like push ourselves to think about the dynamics around a particular set of affordances and how we keep them uh self-contained and self-perpetuating within the particular node.

>> Mhm. Amazing. Yeah, this is like a this is a huge rabbit hole that uh we probably will have to dig into further on. Uh thanks a lot Jessica Kate. Do you want to share uh information about how people can follow your work? Uh I am Jesse Kate on Twitter. Um the work we're doing at uh Chiba is under the Henaku Center. Um and we can share a link to that um in the show notes. Uh, Embassy Network's website is currently down, but it should be back up sometime soon. Um, and I'm sure P can think of other things that I should share as well, but that's all that's coming to mind.

Amazing. Thank you, Jessica Kate. And uh, hope we continue the conversation soon. >> Thanks, P. Byebye.