Skip to content

Stephenson:Neal:Snow Crash:14,41: Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities (Mike Lorrey)

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Stephensonia

*...pg 14:..He probably does come in here all the time. Picking up important shit for important TMAWH people, delivering it to other FOQNEs, Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities, getting it through customs. That's what Kouriers do. Still...

...pg 41..Metacops Unlimited is theofficial peacekeeping force of White Columns, and als of The Mews at Windsor Heights, the Heights at Bear Run, Cinnamon Grove, and The Farms of Cloverdelle. They also enforce traffic regulations on all highways and byways operated by Fairlanes, Inc. A few different FOQNEs also use them: Caymans Plus and The Alps, for example. But franchise nations prefer to have their own security force. You can bet that Matazania and New South Africa handle their own security; that's the only reason people become citizens, so they can get drafted. Obviously, Novo Sicilia has its own security, too. Narcolombia doesn't need security because people are scared just to drive past the franchise at less than a hundred miles an hour (Y.T. always snags a nifty power boost in neighborhoods thick with Narcolombia consulates), and Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, the grand-daddy of all FOQNEs, handles it in a typically Hong Kong way, with robots.

Metacops' main competitor, WorldBeat Security, handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways, plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals, Pickett's Plantation, Rainbow Heights (check it out-two apartheid Burbclaves and one for black suits), Meadowvale on the [insert name of river], and Brickyard Station. WorldBeat is smaller than MetaCops, handles more upscale contracts, supposedly has a bigger espionage arm--though if that's what people want, they just talk to an account rep at the Central Intelligence Corporation.

And then there's the Enforcers--but they cost a lot and don't take well to supervision. It is rumored that, under their uniforms, they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick, emblazoned with the words "SUE ME".*

Description

As indicated in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash: An organization that, like a nation-state, is a sovereign entity that provides and enforces a system of rules within a given geographic territory. Unlike most nation-states, however, a FOQNE's territory is not contiguous. It consists of plots of real estate that are relatively small (apparently ranging in size from a city-state down to a portion of a building) and widely scattered across North America and elsewhere.

Each FOQNE offers its citizens a number of havens where the rules and culture are uniform and familiar, no matter what region the individual FOQNE site is in. Stephenson compares them to franchised fast-food restaurant chains, in which the individual restaurants and their menus are highly uniform whether located in Dallas, San Francisco, Manhattan, Moscow, Beijing, Paris, etc. A FOQNE may offer citizens a place to live, or it may specialize in providing certain goods or services (pizza, "physical plant security" protection, drugs, religion, etc.).

Archetypal FOQNEs include Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, New South Africa, Nova Sicilia (Mafia-affiliated), Narcolombia, and Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates.

The "burbclaves" are a specialized type of FOQNE consisting of a chain of suburban subdivision-sized city-states and offering citizens a place to reside. Examples: White Columns (for whites only) and Rainbow Heights (catering to upscale blacks).

In "The Diamond Age" we see further use of FOQNEs in the various communities of Neo-Victorians around the World (China, Vancouver, Seattle, London), as well as the Drummers, the several Distributed Republics, CryptNet, Sendero, among others. At the beginning of the novel, we see, in particular, Bud shops among various FOQNEs to join in seeking sanctuary from members of one FOQNE who are avenging his assault on a family of fellow members.

Categories of FOQNEs

Burbclaves

Definition

Suburban Enclaves, i.e. private gated communities.

Examples

Franchulate

Definition

A Franchise Consulate, offering various products and/or services, such as hotel rooms, jail services, pizza, narcotics, etc. essentially any franchise business becomes a consulate of its newly-sovereign corporation when the state disintegrates.

Examples

  • Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong - the grand-daddy of FOQNE's, well lit, excellent robotic security, anti-weapon policies for non-citizens, and generous immigration policies. RE: the Port Sherman, Oregon Mr. Lee's...a pretty good sized {MLGHK} franchulate here. In typical Hong Kong style, it is more of a spray of small buildings and rooms all over town. But it's a dense spray. Dense enough that Hong Kong has several full-time employees here, including a proconsul... So it's not an automated, unmanned franchulate like you normally see in the lower 48.
  • Snooze n' Cruise - for the RV, camping, and homeless set...it isn't camping if you don't have a home to go back to...
  • Spectrum 2000 - As the name implies, each one has a whole range of rooms, from human coin lockers in the lobby all the way to luxury suites at the top. - pg. 297
  • Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates - Like the Catholic Church, only Pentecostal Protestant in theology, and an agressive evangelical missionary policy that would make the Mormons look like Shakers. Product: Kool-Aid, Snow Crash, Speaking in Tongues, "How America Was Saved from Communism: ELVIS SHOT JFK" by Reverend Wayne,
  • CopShop - Private Police Agency
  • MetaCops - Private Police Agency
  • WorldBeat Security - Another Private Police Agency
  • The Enforcers - the baddest of the badboy Private Police Agencies
  • The Crips - Private Police Agency/Drug Distributors/Bordello Operators/Pimps
  • Novo Sicilia - franchise conglomerate of pizza houses, lending, protection/police agencies, collections agencies, etc.
  • Mercy Hospitals - a subsidiary of the Vatican Corporation
  • United States of America - shorn of vast portions of its military-defense structure, and lacking the ability to enforce its own laws across its former domain due to chronic illiquidity and hyperinflationary currency due to loss of federal parklands and forests and excessive Social Security/Medicaid/Medicare related debt to the Baby Boomer generation (as well as a shift by the monetary world to the untaxable encrypted gold-backed eCurrency founded years before by Epiphyte2 following their adventures recovering Yamashita's gold), the US of A is the IBM of the world of Snow Crash: bloated, inefficient, impotent, overburdened, excessively fascist, and living in denial over its loss of importance in the world. It conspires with L Bob Rife, Reverend Wayne, and Raven to destroy the ultra-freedoms of the new world order and reimpose statist zombification upon the American populace.

Private Road Networks

CruiseWays, Inc. and Fairlanes, Inc. are the primary competitors in the privately operated road industry. Where their road networks intersect tend to become areas of pitched battles or uneasy traffic treaties, unless said intersections are sold to a third party for independent development as malls, as in the case of the intersection of Cruiseways, Inc. Rte. Cal-12 and Fairlanes Rte. CSV-5 (once known as Vista Road).

Theoretical Basis

The basis of international law of any sort is that it is a form of private anarchical law that sovereign entities voluntarily accede to be bound by, which take the form of treaties, conventions and the like. Even resolutions passed by the United Nations are inherently private law because every nation is at their liberty to obey resolutions that bear on them, or enforce resolutions on other nations (much like Protocol Enforcement in The Diamond Age).

A sovereign entity may be a whole nation, or any individual or group of individual who have established their sovereignty and whose sovereignty has been recognised by one or more other recognised sovereign entities. Thus, the existence of sovereignty is a matter of creating consensus reality, at least on a de facto basis, i.e. if a PR campaign can convince enough people that the Palestinians should have their own nation in the West Bank and Gaza, and/or that the Palestinian Authority is the legitimate government of that nation, then consensus reality has created the sovereign nation of Palestine.

In the world of legality and philosophy, sovereignty was once the sole domain of monarchs and various other aristocrats, as well as leaders of religious groups, like The Pope.

The basis for such claims to sovereignty is two-fold, the first of which was known as "Divine Right", i.e. that it is a state of being given by God. In europe, The Pope, the elected Prince of Christ, anointed other religious and political leaders with "Divine Right", a practice which began with the baptisms of Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire, Clovis I of the Merovingian kings of France, among others, but was based on similar practices going back to the earliest Sumerian civilizations, where Kings were considered sons and/or brothers of the Gods.

It was after Henry VIII broke away from the Church (and was excommunicated without God striking him down where he stood) that the general public began to have an inkling that something was funny. The Puritans, Quakers, Baptists, and other protestant sects helped break people into the idea of thinking for themselves, and having fewer middlemen in between the average bloke and the big guy upstairs. Along with this was the notion that all men had rights, and ultimately that all men are sovereign individuals who only delegate some powers to republican government in order to secure the remainder of their rights within greater society.

Ultimately, people came to question the idea that government must be a monopoly, or even that government was needed at all (see anarcho-capitalism, anarchy, and libertarianism).

The second form of sovereignty in legality is Allodial Title, which, in its simplest form, is where an individual or group posesses title to land as a freehold, without overlord, an independent polity. In medieval and renaissance europe, anyone with allodial title to a freehold was ostensibly regarded as a prince. Allodial title can be established by either being Granted Allode over land granted by a sovereign monarch or other state, or by either Discovery, or Conquest. Allode might also be established by Creation, as was the case with much of the Netherlands.

To dispense with claims by critics that such a heavily enclaved society, as that depicted in Snow Crash or The Diamond Age, would not work, Stephenson institutes the concept of the Common Economic Protocol, a system of law, much like the Common Law and various forms of International Law, which any sovereign entity can accede to, in part or in whole. Such enclave franchise nations are also discussed in economist David Friedman's seminal anarcho-capitalist book, "The Machinery of Freedom".

Some such laws already exist and are implemented to varying degrees. For example, The Hague Convention has worked for several decades on implementing various conventions to regularize private law among nations, including the Hague Service Convention, the Hague Apostille Convention, among others. There is also a Common Economic Protocol in v 1.0 implementation on the web that was inspired by Stephenson's novels.

The Problem of Allodial Title

Allodial Title is a well known and ancient form of land title in which the landholder owns it without overlord, as a freehold. This form of title is as opposed to the feudal land title of 'fee simple', 'feod', etc. in which the landholder posesses the land by fealty and/or rent to a greater authority, such as a king or other monarch, who granted the land to his or her vassal.

Quite a number of land holdings in europe remain in allodial state even today. In the US, at the time of the American Revolution, it was declared that by dint of conquest as represented by the American victory, all feudal land grants by the King to colonists or other vassals were transformed to allodial title. However, the original Articles of Confederation, and the pre-Civil War US Constitution both demanded that the several states contribute funds to the federal government based on the value of the land held by each state, this measure was used to justify property taxes on all supposedly allodial titles, a state of taxation which clearly contradicts the principle of allodial title.

Some states outlaw property tax on ones homestead, but essentially any land which has been seized for bankruptcy or tax lein by a state government has had allodial title seized by the state or by a reserve bank, and thereafter any property holder can only obtain Certificate of Deed (which is not a Deed per se, only a certificate that a Deed exists).

Nevada, however, has instituted an Allodial Title Program, in which a property holder pays a discounted amount, relative to all future property taxes they would pay in their lifetime, to the state, and thereafter no longer pays taxes, or is subject to local jurisdiction.

However, we shall note that even in the mature ancap society of The Diamond Age, the Neo-Victorian FOQNE held much territory entirely as lands leased from other sovereign entities. Indeed, the island of New Chusan/New Atlantis is an entirely nanotechnological construct, risen out of an area of the sea leased from the Chinese Republic. Even if land is held allodial by one sovereign entity, it can be leased to another entity to be an entirely separate sovereign territory, particularly if the lessee's sovereignty is affirmed by the lessor as a term of the agreement, as was the case with Hong Kong, the Panama Canal Zone, and is currently the case with Guantanamo Bay.

Real World Implementation of FOQNEs

Historical

The Roman Catholic Church is possibly the real grand-daddy of FOQNEs in the real world, its bishops, archbishops, and cardinals are princes of the church, enforcing Ecclesiastical Law upon its clergy and laymembers, and each holding title to the property of the parishes of their respective dioscese under Corporation Sole, an ecclesiastical form of incorporation which operates outside secular corporate law. Cardinals address monarchs and other heads of state as "cousin", implying that each Cardinal is a sovereign ruler of his own domain treating secular rulers as equals.

The State of Massachusetts was once made up of its current day territory as well as Maine, which only became an independent state in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which maintained the balance of slave/non-slave states in the US Senate.

A number of Empires, such as the British, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, German, and French Empires involved colonies non-contiguous to their home lands, while the territories of various sovereigns in medeival, renaissance, and enlightenment Europe were frequently non-contiguous, such as that of the Spanish Netherlands, Spanish areas of Italy, as well as that of William of Orange, whose territory included that of the French principality of Orange, Holland, and, eventually, Britain.

Such feudal manifestations should not be considered unusual. Note that the Windsor family refers to the British Empire and Commonwealth as 'the family firm'.

Contiguity of territory is a fiction invented by the nationalist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which in many circumstances does not deal with ethnic/cultural migration or archipelagism.

Current Day Examples

The enclave territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian area entirely within Azerbaijan, as well as the Azeri territory of Nakhichevanskaya, demonstrate that non-contiguity is not necessary on a large scale.

On a much smaller scale the Belgian-Dutch community of Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau, which is a border community in which city blocks, streets, and neighborhoods make up a patchwork quilt of Belgian and Dutch fealties, where one can enter a persons front door in Holland and exit the back door in Belgium.

The recent vote by Killington, VT on March 2, 2004 to secede and join NH (despite being separated from NH by 25 miles of Vermont territory), and interest in secession by other isolated Vermont "gold" towns has arisen with possible secession votes by several at town meeting in March of 2005, it is clear that the concept is not dismissed out of hand by persons and communities under dire confiscatory pressure by their present political fealties.

Members of the Free State Project have proposed that towns and cities across the country who feel overtaxed by their respective state governments should secede and join New Hampshire.

Online nations have also arisen which have little or no existence in the real world, however many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been gaining increasing authority and sovereignty in the international stage.

The Nature Conservancy owns the pacific island of Palmyra and controls all functions on the island while ceding international relations to the US military. Also the Unitarian owned Star Island Corporation owns the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire and handles all administrative functions on the island. Several years ago several british members of Greenpeace seized the north atlantic island of Rockall and declared it an independent nation (hoping to replicate the success of SeaLand) however the British government defused the situation by saying that anybody could visit and live on the island.

The archipelagic island nation of the Seychelles passed a law in ~1996 stating that any person who deposited at least $2 million USD in one of their banks not only would receive Seychellian citizenship, but be designated a Seychellian Honorary Consul in whatever nation they reside, their residence becoming a Seychellian consulate. After protest from the United States, the nation made this qualification informal, only stating that investor-immigrants shall be given unspecified incentives for contributing to the economy and society of the Seychelles, however the precedent is now set, and there are one or more Honorary consulates in over 60 nations.

The Gated Community as Proto-Burbclave (WikiPedia entry)

In its modern form, a gated community is a form of closed community, characterized by a controlled entrance for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, usually staffed by full-time, private security guards, that leads into one or more small residential streets, with walls or fences surrounding the perimeter of the entire development. Many gated communities have various amenities which make it possible for residents to stay within the community for day-to-day activities.

Gated communities are a type of Common Interest Community (CIC) or Common Interest Development (CID).

A worldwide phenomenon

A limited number of gated communities have long been established for foreigners in various regions of the world. Some examples include, the worker compounds in the Middle East, built largely for the oil industry, or the compounds built under apartheid in South Africa.

In more recent times, a much larger number of gated communities has rapidly developed in various regions throughout the world, especially in China, Mexico, and the United States. Especially in China, the trend towards gated communities is accelerating, in response to changing laws and economics.

In 2000, eight million U.S. residents lived in gated communities. However, in China, by law, all new residential developments are gated, and China is already well on the way to overtaking the U.S. for the largest number of residents living in gated communities (more info).

J.G. Ballard has examined the phenomena in his novel Super-Cannes.

Analysis

Real estate developers design and build gated communities because buyers want them; the existence of walls and gates around a community enhances the value of the homes located there. Many homeowners prefer to live in gated communities, just as many apartment dwellers prefer secured buildings, not only as a deterrent to crime, but also to enjoy privacy and peace of mind.

Physical walls, in some cases fortified and surveilled, give the inhabitants a sense of security. Some sociologists have criticized the creation of these type of walls as fortressing. Opponents of gated communities argue that physical segregation is not always necessary to create defensible space, that is, to establish control over a particular space. They claim symbolic barriers can be sufficient.

Another attribute of gated communities is that in many cases their population is homogeneous, that is, grouped along boundaries of social class, race/ethnicity or culture. White flight is often a factor in this respect.

However, this analysis is entirely couched within the leftish postmodern mindset of the non-scientific intellectual class, and ignores the fact that ethnic groups other than whites tend to naturally enclave and ghettoize themselves without stimulus from white society, as the enclaving tendency occurs among minorities in any society. What many sociologists ignore with regard to white enclaving is that there are far more ways to be a minority than just race.

Libertarians, for example, have been making attempts at enclaving, with some success, for years, hoping to create their own society ruled by what they view as a true implementation of individual liberty. Similarly, the back-to-nature commune movement of the 60's and 70's resulted in a significant migration of communalists to areas of Oregon and Vermont to build intentional communities. In the '50's and 60's, quite a number of enclave communities sprang up around the country which are focused entirely toward aircraft pilots. Yacht and house-boat marinas are similarly activity-focused enclaves.

Examples

Some of the newest gated communities in China include: * Riverside Garden (more info), (Shenyang city, Liaoning province) A luxury development with over 1,000 housing units, a supermarket, business center, laundry delivery service, tennis court, and fitness club. * Beijing Riviera (more info), (Chaoyang District, Beijing) This multi-faceted development includes hundreds of apartments, condominiums, and villas, along with an onsite water treatment plant, an office center, sports and recreation facilities (including swimming pools, tennis courts, a skate park, and a golf driving range), a supermarket, a beauty salon, and a travel agency. * Oriental Grand Garden (more info) (Pudong District, Shanghai) The facilities at this gated community include a swimming pool, spa, gym, tennis court, a hair salon, and a 24-hour convenience store.

Some of the gated communities in Mexico include: * Bajamar (more info), Baja A gated complex of homes and condominiums, with a view of the Pacific Ocean, centered around a 27-hole gold course. * Chula Vista Norte (more info), (San Antonio, Jalisco) This secure development overlooks Lake Chapala, and offers various sizes of lots on which to build homes.

Examples of gated communities in the United States are Seagate in Brooklyn (New York City), while a rural form can be found in the Eastman Village District of Grantham, NH, which uses the dense New Hampshire forests as its walls.

drummers Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong Common Economic Protocol Protocol Enforcement Eutropians transhumanists transhumanism YT Hiro Protagonist Miranda distributed computing