Exit Builds Genuine Community

Throughout 400 years of American history, some of the strongest communities have been those which made the most of exit. The earliest settlements with the greatest success were those with a strong religious element. The trend continued somewhat out West in the 19th century as well. I would bet that Seasteading, at least in its infancy, will pick up where these pioneer communities left off.

It’s easy to see why. To forgo the benefits of urban life and mutual cooperation only makes sense if the returns to exit are higher. And so in all these historical instances we see a blend, among those who have exited, of like-minded idealism and self-interest. Taken to the frontier, life is on the threshold of being nasty, brutish and short. But it is precisely because of this difficulty that solidarity builds further. Whatever vital functions a government had performed in society before, now these must be assumed by individual pioneers.

I think this is what De Toqueville had in mind when he wrote about how weakness leads to stronger association. The Frenchman says:

Amongst democratic nations, on the contrary, all the citizens are independent and feeble; they can hardly do anything by themselves, and none of them can oblige his fellow-men to lend him their assistance. They all, therefore, fall into a state of incapacity, if they do not learn voluntarily to help each other.

The flip side of this theme was picked up by Charles Murray in his book called In Pursuit. When men can oblige others to lend assistance, association atrophies:

Communities exist because they have a reason to exist, some core of functions around which the affiliations that constitute a vital community can form and grow. When the government takes away a core function, it depletes not only the source of vitality pertaining to that particular function, but also the vitality of a much larger family of responses…

“If you don’t do it, nobody will” is a powerful motivator for solidarity. Whereas “if you don’t do it, the government will” is a charitable and fraternal buzz kill. Murray says, and I agree, that people tend not to do a chore if somebody else will do it for them. Philanthropic free riding is the irrational voter by another name.

The power of exit relates to this in two ways–: it pushes people closer to a situation where “if you don’t do it, nobody else will” applies. And that is the great community generator. For the pioneer community, the exigencies of life in the wild will foster a greater reliance on others. For the society left behind, the more people exit, the less philanthropic free-riding occurs among those who remain present. If enough people leave, you are the government and the two slogans become one and the same.