The need for Libertarianism has never been stronger, but this time it is distraction rather than taxes that is theft. Let me explain.
Welcome to Lead Prompt // executing leadership from the root. I’m your host, John Collins.
I despise politics. If I was younger and had the energy for it, I would probably be an Anarchist, but I will settle for labeling myself a Libertarian. I fundamentally believe that people should not be taxed for their creativity or efforts. If you earn it, you should get to keep it.
I am fine with other forms of taxation: sales taxes, for example. I believe a government is a necessary evil, but it should be starved of revenue in the form of taxes in order to keep it small and weak. In my ideal world, governments should be nothing more than a service provider; the smaller, the better.
Big tax revenues lead to big governments, and big governments lead to big trouble.
When the government becomes the main investor or employer of your economy, you have state socialism with all of the bloat and wastefulness that goes with that. There are no "big efficient governments", it’s an oxymoron.
Tax is theft. It is immoral. It is literally taking money from you that you have earned without your consent, by penalty of law if you do not comply.
But what about Technolibertarianism?
The New Bureaucracy: Algorithms as State Agencies
In the online world of 2026, large corporations and social media giants are getting too big for their boots. They are behaving like large, bureaucratic state agencies disguised as innovators. They are rent-seekers, feeding "slop" into our social network algorithms to keep us enraged enough to engage.
Their tax comes in a different guise: distraction. They will happily steal your time and attention to feed their bottom line.
“You are the product” is the common decry. You may not be paying with your money, but you are certainly paying with your time, which, in my mind, is far more valuable. Time is the only non-renewable resource we have. When a platform manipulates your dopamine receptors to keep you scrolling through ads, they aren't just "providing a service" they are levying an attention tax. They are the new tax collectors of the mind.
The Roots: The Cyberpunk Vision
To understand how we fight back, we have to look at the "hacker roots" of this movement. In the late 1980s, thinkers like Timothy C. May penned The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto. May saw it coming. He predicted that high-level encryption would destroy the state's ability to tax and regulate, leading to a world of anonymous, voluntary transactions.
A few years later, Eric Hughes followed up with A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, famously stating, "Cypherpunks write code." They didn't wait for permission or lobby for better laws. They built the tools of freedom. This is the core of the Technolibertarian ethos: Freedom through architecture, not through legislation.
In 1996, John Perry Barlow wrote the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. He told the "Governments of the Industrial World" that they were not welcome in our new digital home. For a while, we believed him. But the "Industrial World" didn't leave; it just bought the servers. The digital frontier was fenced in, and the "open range" of the early internet was replaced by corporate fiefdoms.
The Sovereign Individual in a Decentralized World
If the 90s were about "Defence" (hiding from the state with encryption), then 2026 is about "Offence" (replacing the state's functions with code).
In their 1997 book The Sovereign Individual, James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg predicted a "Great Divide." They argued that the digital age would allow individuals to escape the "protection racket" of the nation-state. They saw a future where the most productive members of society would use technology to move their assets and their presence to jurisdictions that treated them as customers rather than subjects.
Today, we see this playing out through the "Sovereign Stack":
- Bitcoin provides an exit from the debasement of central bank currencies.
- Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) provide an exit from state-issued permission to exist.
- End-to-End Encryption provides an exit from the twin attacks of both the state and the "Attention Tax" collectors.
The Rise of the Network State
We are moving toward what Balaji Srinivasan calls The Network State. If you don't like the "service" your current government provides, you don't just stay and complain. You use your "Voice" to find like-minded people online, form a "startup society," and eventually acquire physical land.
This is the ultimate Libertarian dream: Competitive Governance. Why should the "Social Contract" be a monopoly? Why can't I choose my governance provider the way I choose my cloud hosting?
Modern Technolibertarians aren't just complaining about the bloat; they are building the alternatives. As Marc Andreessen argued in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto, technological growth is the only path to human survival and flourishing. To a Technolibertarian, any regulation that slows down AI, biotech, or decentralized finance isn't just an economic mistake, it’s a crime against the future.
What is a Technolibertarian?
So, after looking at the history and the future, how do we define ourselves?
A Technolibertarian is someone who values freedom online above all else. Someone who is a hacker, an open-source advocate, a maker, a crypto advocate, or a freedom of speech advocate. They understand that Code is Law, and they want that law to be written in a way that empowers the individual.
- They respect others they disagree with. They live by the "live and let live" mantra.
- They despise authoritarianism in all forms, whether it comes from the central planning of the Left or the moralizing surveillance of the Right.
- They view "The Algorithm" with suspicion. If a system is designed to keep you distracted, it is designed to keep you weak.
Conclusion: Executing Leadership from the Root
In 2026, the battle lines have shifted. The tax collector is still a problem, yes, but the more insidious threat is the centralization of our digital lives. When a handful of CEOs can decide what is "truth," or when an AI-driven feed can steal four hours of your day before you've even had coffee, you are not a free individual.
To be a Technolibertarian today is to reclaim your Time, your Attention, and your Code. It is to realize that if you don't build your own stack, someone else will build it for you and they will charge you in the form of your very soul.
It’s time to stop being the product. It’s time to start being the architect.
I’m John Collins, and this has been Lead Prompt.
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| Concept | The Old World | The Technolibertarian Future |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | Fiat (controlled by State) | Bitcoin (controlled by Code) |
| Governance | Monopolistic (The Nation State) | Competitive (The Network State) |
| Security | Regulation and Laws | Cryptography and Zero-Knowledge |
| Value | Labour and Capital | Attention and Creativity |
| Social | Corporate Algorithms (The Tax) | Decentralized Protocols (The Freedom) |
Sources:
The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, Timothy C. May - https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/may-crypto-manifesto.html
A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, Eric Hughes - https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow - https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
The Sovereign Individual, James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg - https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Sovereign-Individual/James-Dale-Davidson/9780684832722
The Network State, Balaji Srinivasan - https://thenetworkstate.com
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Marc Andreessen - https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
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