Anthemism: Explainer Video Script
Our political environment of statism pressures you from every direction.
There are countless regulations that forbid you from taking initiative. There are tariffs, income taxes, sales taxes, estate taxes, and inflation—all demanding a piece of you. And then there is healthcare, which is regulated to absurdity, and for this reason expensive and inaccessible. Education? Try to find a good school for your kid, without turning your life upside down.
By the time you finish optimizing the little that you can, all your life energy is spent dealing with bureaucracy and the inevitable.
You might be unhappy with the system—but what can you actually do to make it better?
Vote? That could work if things are basically tolerable and you just want to fine-tune things. But can you really hang your well-being on a single vote?
And are the alternatives you vote for really that different? For example, in the U.S., both Republicans and Democrats want a statist, paternalist government. Republicans do it with tariffs and regulations, telling business owners who they can hire, driving up the costs of running a business—the surplus going to the government as a hidden tax. Democrats take taxes directly, and regulate you with DEI and environmentalism. Both inflate the money supply like there is no tomorrow.
Vote or no vote, things are not going to get any better until the ideas dominating the public change. So, if you want to make it better, try to change the public’s ideas toward a free political system (by the way, it’s laissez-faire capitalism).
But can you really hope to change the minds of hundreds of millions of people while also keeping your day job and focusing on your profession?
Let’s be honest: you know that within your lifetime, and perhaps your children’s lifetime, nothing is going to significantly change. The Dark Ages lasted for 600 years. This could take just as long before we turn a corner. And you, Mr. wise man, are no Don Quixote—gullible enough to be fighting windmills, are you? But hey… all you’re left with is waiting for Godot.
Instead, let’s do something crazy: start a new country. This is crazy—but not as crazy as hoping things will get good enough in our lifetime, in our home country.
This is what Anthemism is all about… The name comes from Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem, where the hero leaves a collectivist society to start a new one. Following Ayn Rand’s vision of freedom—capitalism based on her philosophy of Objectivism—the idea is to create it in a new place, rather than trying to reform the one we live in now.
Your critique is spot on: trying to reform the system from within is indeed a Quixotic struggle. However, your call to "start in a new place," much like the hero of Anthem, sounds even more utopian in the 21st century.
There are no more "uncharted forests" where one can hide from Leviathan. Any physical "new place" will either fall under existing jurisdictions or become an easy target for their regulators the moment it thrives.
Here are my counterarguments to your manifesto:
- Territory is an atavism. Why search for land when we can build a Network State? Today, Web3 and blockchain allow us to build courts, insurance, and property rights in a digital layer that is borderless by design.
- Infrastructure without coercion. Instead of forced taxes, we can use opt-in pools and smart contracts. If the system provides real value (secure transactions, verified expertise), people will pay for it.
- Simulate, don't wait. Instead of waiting 600 years for the "Dark Ages" to end, I propose turning this into a venture project. Let’s build a "game" — a high-fidelity simulation of this state with a real internal economy.
"Anthemism" is a great ideological foundation. But let’s face it: a new country today won't start with seizing land; it will start with the first line of code and the reputation capital of its citizens. Are you ready to move from manifestos to designing a system that cannot be simply "shut down"?