The Post-State Billionaire, Part 6: Endgame – What Comes After the Empire?
The empire doesn’t need a new king. It needs composting. What comes next is ours to build — federated, communal, liberatory. Prototype the future now.
There is no TL;DR, read the fucking essay.
We’ve mapped the empire: its infrastructure, its myths, its data-fueled dominion, and its post-democratic sovereignty. But here’s the truth that haunts every revolution:
Tearing down is easy. Rebuilding is the work of generations.
So what comes after the billionaire class? If we win in the streets, in the courts, in the code, what kind of world do we inherit? And what kind do we build?
First: We Do Not Rebuild the Throne
We do not de-platform the emperors to anoint new ones. We’re not replacing Musk with some slightly nicer innovation, bro, or trading Zuckerberg for a blue-check decentralist who still believes in monetizing attention.
We don’t want new gods. We want no gods. No landlords. No algorithmic kings.
What comes after the empire isn’t a new regime. It’s a new terrain.
What the Terrain Looks Like:
Federated systems, not platforms. Think Mastodon, not Facebook. Power is distributed. Communities set their own terms.
Commons-based infrastructure. Broadband as a public utility. AI trained with consent. Open-source as the backbone, not the outlier.
Labor-centered digital economies. Not gigified precarity. Not crypto libertarian fantasy. Real ownership, real equity, real unions.
Education that creates hackers, not users. Critical thinking, code literacy, and historical memory.
Ecological tech. No more strip-mining the Earth to mint NFTs. Tech that exists to serve, not consume.
This isn’t utopia. It’s maintenance. It’s governance. It’s friction. It’s real.
Who Builds It?
Not them. Us.
The sysadmins and union reps. The mutual aid circles. The educators. The co-op founders. The open-source contributors. The artists. The weirdos. The people who never wanted power, just freedom.
Because here’s the secret: the empire runs on stolen labor. It always has. And when the labor walks away, the whole thing collapses.
What Keeps It Alive?
Not venture capital. Not ad models. Not charisma.
Ritual. Accountability. Community. Stewardship. Imagination.
The empire sold us a story: that convenience is freedom, and disruption is destiny. We tell a better one: that shared power is freedom, and solidarity is survival.
Action (Even If It Feels Small or Impossible):
Start building the afterworld.
Join a tech co-op or help start one.
Build or contribute to community-owned infrastructure.
Host teach-ins on post-capitalist digital futures.
Create art, games, tools, and stories that imagine beyond extraction.
Write a new social contract. Even if it’s just for you and your neighbors.
The future isn’t something we inherit. It’s something we prototype.
Go back to the beginning: The Post-State Sovereign is Real and We Should Be Terrified — Restack, re-read, rehearse.
