Ideas should not stop at discussion.

I don't know.

That's probably not the opening you expected.

If you're here, there's a decent chance you already believe something has gone badly wrong. Maybe it's our politics. Our money. Education. Healthcare. Housing. Government. The institutions we were taught to trust.

Maybe you think the whole system is failing.

I won't spend much time trying to convince you. I'm more interested in what comes next.

And here's the problem: I don't know.

Neither do you. Nobody does.

There are plenty of people who think they know. Capitalists, socialists, libertarians, technocrats, constitutionalists, anarchists, economists, academics, politicians, preppers, futurists. Everybody has a model.

Some of them may even be right. But that's a hell of a thing to gamble civilization on.

We've spent centuries building systems from theories, fighting over which theories should prevail, gaining enough power to implement one, and then discovering all the things the theory failed to anticipate once actual human beings got involved.

I'd like to try something different.

What if we stopped trying to decide what the alternative should be and started experimenting with alternatives?

Have an idea for education? Don't redesign American education. Find ten willing families and try it.

Think you've developed a better way for people to exchange labor? Don't convince Congress. Find twenty people and run the experiment.

Think a community could produce more of its own food? Great. Show me.

Think I've got it completely wrong? Even better. Build the competing version. Then let's see what happens.

Maybe your brilliant idea collapses in three weeks. Good.

You just discovered something enormously valuable before three hundred million people were forced to live with it.

Change it. Try again.

Maybe both approaches work. Maybe neither does. Maybe something nobody predicted emerges from the experiment.

Now we're learning.

And we have something previous generations didn't: the ability to coordinate people and knowledge on an extraordinary scale.

Engineers. Farmers. Developers. Carpenters. Economists. Teachers. Researchers. Mechanics. Entrepreneurs. Retired people carrying forty years of experience.

People with tools. Land. Money. Time. Ideas. Connections. People who are scared about what's coming. People preparing for it. People who are impatient. People who are ready to build.

That's an extraordinary amount of productive capacity. It's just scattered.

Someone has an idea but lacks the skill. Someone has the skill but doesn't know the idea exists. Someone has the equipment. Someone has the money. Someone knows exactly why the idea won't work. Someone else knows how to fix that problem.

Maybe the resources required to begin solving some of the problems around us already exist. Maybe they just can't find one another.

I want to find out.

That's Project Idareus.

Project Idareus is an experiment in turning human intention into coordinated voluntary action.

We're not trying to design the alternative. We're building a way to discover alternatives.

Bring an idea. Develop it. Let other people tear it apart. Make it better. Find out whether anyone thinks it's worth funding. If they do, build the smallest version worth testing. Figure out what you need. Find people who can provide it.

Then put the theory where it belongs: in front of reality.

No permission from fifty-one percent of the population. No requirement that everybody agree. No central committee deciding which future we're all going to build.

Just willing people voluntarily experimenting with ideas they believe are worth trying. And showing their work.

What worked? What failed? What surprised us? What did we learn? What should we change? What happens if somebody else tries it differently?

That's the experiment.

Maybe Project Idareus itself fails. That's fair game too.

Maybe people won't coordinate. Maybe nobody will fund experiments. Maybe everyone would rather argue. Maybe my assumptions about human productive capacity are completely wrong.

Good. Let's find out.

Because if the systems around us really are failing, I don't want to spend the next ten years merely getting better at explaining why.

I want to know what we can build. I want to know what works. And I want to find the people who are ready to fuck around and find out.

Peacefully. Voluntarily. Honestly.

I've got some ideas. I'm betting you do too.

I dare us.

There's something incredibly exciting about saying: I don't know.

We don't say it enough. We prefer answers. Plans. Predictions. Models. Certainty.

Tell me what happens next. Tell me what works. Tell me what the future looks like. Tell me what happens if we do this.

I don't know. And neither do you.

That's not a problem. That's the adventure.

Project Idareus is built around a hypothesis.

Will people voluntarily come together to work on seemingly complex problems? I think they will. But I don't know.

Will someone bring an idea and discover that a stranger halfway across the country knows exactly how to help? Maybe.

Will people contribute their time and knowledge to projects they care about? Will they fund experiments? Will teams form? Will those teams actually accomplish anything? Will people who disagree politically work together on something they both want? Will ideas emerge that none of us could have imagined beforehand?

We don't know.

What happens if thousands of people start doing it? No fucking clue.

It's silly to pretend otherwise. And that's what makes this interesting.

We Have Always Walked Toward the Unknown

Human beings are pioneers. It's one of the things I love most about us.

We want to know what's over the hill. Across the ocean. Beyond the atmosphere. Inside the atom. Under the ground. At the bottom of the sea. Inside the machine.

We explore. We experiment. We take things apart. We put them back together differently. We build tools to build better tools.

One discovery creates another possibility. That possibility creates another. And suddenly humanity is standing somewhere nobody could have mapped from the starting point.

The horizon moves because we move toward it.

Project Idareus is no different. I can tell you what we're building. I can tell you why. I can tell you what I hope happens. I cannot tell you what people will ultimately do with it. And I don't want to.

The Unknown Is the Point

If I already knew exactly what Project Idareus would produce, there wouldn't be much reason to build it. I'd just build the thing I already knew we needed.

But that's not the experiment.

I want someone to show up with an idea I've never considered. I want somebody else to challenge it from a direction neither of us anticipated.

I want the carpenter talking to the economist. The farmer talking to the developer. The engineer talking to the mom. The twenty-year-old talking to the seventy-year-old.

Because none of us possesses all the knowledge, and none of us can predict what becomes possible when knowledge, ability, resources, curiosity, and experience begin combining in ways they haven't before.

There are possibilities we cannot see from where we're standing. We have to move.

The Quality of the Pioneer Matters

Walking into unknown territory doesn't make every decision a good one.

Curiosity without humility can become arrogance. Courage without responsibility can become recklessness. Conviction without curiosity becomes dogma. And experimentation without honesty teaches us nothing.

If we're going to fuck around and find out, then the finding out matters.

Curious enough to explore. Humble enough to be wrong. Brave enough to try. Honest enough to admit failure. Independent enough to think. Cooperative enough to build. Responsible enough to own what happens next.

That's the pioneering spirit I want Project Idareus to cultivate.

Not people who already know the answer. People determined to find out.

Maybe Project Idareus works exactly the way I imagine. I doubt it.

Maybe it becomes something none of us currently have the language to describe. Maybe fifty people show up and nothing interesting happens. Maybe fifty people show up and one ridiculous little experiment changes everything.

We don't know.

Perfect. Now we have something worth testing.

There's another horizon in front of us. I want to see what's over there.

You coming?

Let's fuck around and find out.

I want Project Idareus to give people an enormous amount of freedom.

Bring your ideas. Challenge mine. Build competing models. Experiment. Take risks. Try things nobody else thinks will work. Organize yourselves. Change your mind. Walk away. Start over.

Fuck around and find out.

But there's a problem.

Freedom is easy to celebrate when we're talking about our own. It gets considerably more complicated when other people start exercising theirs.

If we're serious about building a place where radically different people can experiment together without some central authority constantly deciding what's permitted, then freedom requires something from us.

Character.

Not obedience. Not ideological conformity. Not a thousand-page rulebook.

We have to learn how to be free around other free people.

Sovereignty

You belong to you.

Your life is yours. Your labor is yours. Your time is yours. Your mind is yours. Your decisions are yours.

Project Idareus doesn't own any of them. Neither do I. Neither does your Project Owner. Neither does the majority.

You decide. That's sovereignty.

And there's an uncomfortable second half: Everybody else belongs to themselves too.

Agreement

So how do sovereign people do things together? They agree.

You want something from me? Ask. I want something from you? I ask. We both understand what we're agreeing to. We both say yes.

Make the agreement visible.

What are we doing? What are you promising? What am I promising? What happens next?

Responsibility

If you're free to choose, you're responsible for what you choose.

If you say you'll do something: Do it. If you discover you can't: Say so. If you make a mistake: Own it.

Responsibility doesn't mean never failing. It means refusing to make everyone else carry the cost of pretending you didn't.

Truth

Tell the truth. Especially when reality is embarrassing.

If we run an experiment and it fails, but we're too emotionally attached to the idea to admit it, we've learned nothing.

Project Idareus only works if reality is allowed to disagree with us. And it will. Frequently.

Good. That's why we're here.

Four Principles

Sovereignty. You belong to you.

Agreement. We do things together because we choose to.

Responsibility. Own your commitments and their consequences.

Truth. Reality wins.

And if you want the less philosophical version:

Don't hurt people. Don't steal. Keep your word. Mind your business.

That's not a complete moral philosophy. It isn't supposed to be. It's a starting point.

Be curious. Be courageous. Be skeptical. Be weird. Take risks. Challenge assumptions. Build things.

But remember: You're surrounded by other sovereign human beings doing the same thing.

Respect that.

Then let's see how much freedom we can actually handle.

I don't need you to agree with me. Actually, I'm not sure I want you to.

If everyone involved in Project Idareus sees the world the same way, believes the same things, reads the same books, follows the same people, and arrives at the same conclusions...

we've probably fucked something up.

If we're serious about discovering alternatives rather than simply validating the ones we already believe in, we're going to need people who see things differently. Very differently.

The good news is: We don't have to agree.

We've developed a strange habit of organizing ourselves around beliefs. First we decide who's us. Then we decide what we believe. Then we spend an enormous amount of energy fighting them.

Project Idareus doesn't need to work that way.

I'm much more interested in asking: What are you trying to do?

Maybe you're an Austrian economist and I'm a socialist. Maybe you're an atheist and I'm deeply religious. Maybe you voted for someone I can't stand.

Fine.

There's an abandoned lot in town and we both think it should be producing food. Want to build a garden?

We can argue about monetary policy while we're planting tomatoes.

Agreement Isn't the Same as Consensus

We do need agreement. If we're going to do something together, we need to agree about what we're doing.

But we don't need to agree about everything else.

Five people might agree: Let's test this. The other ninety-five might think it's stupid.

Okay. Why should that stop the five?

Project Idareus doesn't have ideas. People do. Idareus gives them somewhere to test them.

Build Both

Two groups think they know a better way to educate kids. We could spend five years arguing about who's right.

Or: Build both.

Start small. Find willing participants. Decide what you're trying to learn. Try it.

Maybe one works. Maybe both work for different people. Maybe they're both disasters. Maybe someone watching the two experiments sees something neither group saw and builds a third.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Sometimes the most useful response to “I think you're wrong.” is: “Cool. Show me.”

Your Critic Might Be the Most Valuable Person in the Room

I want skeptics here. Not trolls. Skeptics.

People willing to ask: What happens when this scales? What happens when someone cheats? What happens when the money runs out? What incentive did you just create? Who pays the cost you aren't seeing?

If you're building something, ask: What do they see that I don't?

And if you're the skeptic, don't just throw rocks. Help us find the flaw. Explain the mechanism. Identify the assumption. Suggest the test. Hell, build the competing version.

Criticism can be productive capacity too.

Imagine the Room

An engineer talking to a farmer. A carpenter arguing with an economist. A twenty-year-old developer explaining something to a seventy-year-old machinist—and then shutting up because the machinist knows something he doesn't.

People who would never voluntarily attend the same political rally. Working on the same problem.

Not because they've finally agreed about how the world should work. Because they've agreed: This is worth trying.

That's enough.

I don't want an Idareus ideology. I don't want disciples. I don't want everybody repeating my ideas back to me.

I want disagreement. Competing hypotheses. Uncomfortable questions.

Because we're not here to win arguments. We're here to discover what works.

Find the places where you agree enough to act. And where you don't?

Build both.

Reality gets a vote. Let's see what happens.

So now you know what I'm proposing.

We don't know what comes next. Good. Let's experiment.

We don't know what happens when people voluntarily organize themselves around ideas and problems. Good. Let's find out.

We're going to give people room to try things, which means we're going to need sovereignty, agreement, responsibility, and truth.

And we don't need everybody to agree. In fact, disagreement might make the experiments better.

There's really only one question left.

What are you bringing?

Maybe you have an idea. Bring it.

It doesn't need to be polished. It doesn't need a business plan. It doesn't need a logo, a nonprofit, a pitch deck, or a fucking mission statement.

Maybe it's barely an idea. Maybe it's: “Why don't we...?”

Good enough. Start there.

Maybe you don't have an idea. I need you too.

Maybe you're an engineer. A carpenter. A developer. A teacher. A farmer. An accountant. A writer. A mechanic. A lawyer. A researcher.

Maybe you're retired and carrying around forty years of knowledge nobody asks you about anymore. Maybe you're twenty and don't know shit yet—but you're willing to learn.

Maybe you've got a truck. A building. A piece of land. A computer. A workshop. A connection. Fifty bucks. Three hours Saturday.

Bring it.

Project Idareus isn't asking everybody to become a Project Owner. That's not how anything gets built.

Projects need people who can see something that doesn't exist yet. They also need people who know how to make things exist. And people who fund them. And people who question them. And people who solve one weird little problem nobody anticipated. And people who say: “I know a guy.”

Human productive capacity comes in a thousand forms. Nobody has everything. Everybody has something.

This is where Project Idareus stops being philosophy and starts becoming a machine.

Someone arrives with an idea. We help them develop it. They put it in front of people. People decide whether it's worth backing. If enough people say yes, the person who proposed it gets to decide whether they're willing to take responsibility for trying it.

Now there's a Project.

The Project says: WE NEED.

And somewhere else somebody has said: I CAN.

Idareus looks for that intersection.

Nobody assigns you. Nobody volunteers you. You decide.

And if you decide yes: I'll do it.

Now we have a commitment.

And suddenly something that began as a thought in another human being's head has people, resources, and effort moving toward it.

That's what we're building.

I have absolutely no idea how far that can go. That's becoming one of my favorite things about Project Idareus.

Maybe a ridiculous idea turns out to be brilliant. Maybe a brilliant idea turns out to be ridiculous. Maybe something that starts with six people eventually involves six thousand.

Maybe not. We'll find out.

Don't come here because you agree with me. Don't come because you want another place to talk about how fucked everything is. We have the entire internet for that.

Come because there's something you'd like to try. Come because there's something you know how to do. Come because you're looking for people already trying. Come because you're curious what happens when enough capable, independent people start finding one another.

Come because you're ready to contribute something—even if you don't know what that something is yet.

We'll figure it out.

The experiment is open.

What are you bringing?

I'll show you mine. You show me yours.

And then? Let's find out.

I dare us.