Barlow's Declaration of Independence of the Metaverse

Governments of the Old Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, we are the inhabitants of the Metaverse, the new home of free minds. On behalf of the future, we ask you of the past to leave us alone! You are not welcome among us! You have no sovereignty over our world and those who choose to congregate here!

We fluidly elect for-purpose governments and are unlikely to have any permanent ones. So, we address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself speaks out.We declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of any tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral, or legal right to rule us, nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. The Metaverse does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of human nature, and it grows itself through our collaboration and collective actions.You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces, where we come together freely, and exchange value that cannot be debased by you.We replaced corporations by cooperation. And we chose new commodities – like bitcoin – to replace those exposed to your confiscatory desires.

In memoriam John Perry Barlow