In 1981, I was selling memory typewriters in Portland, Oregon. My job was to show businesses how they could increase their productivity. One day, I got a call from the manufacturer, who said they had received an order from a government office for five high-end typewriters. All I had to do was deliver the machines and show the secretaries how to use them.
Those secretaries were thrilled to get top-of-the-line machines—the most expensive model available. But it took less than ten minutes for me to realize something: their jobs consisted almost entirely of rolling paper into typewriters and filling out forms, and these fancy new typewriters, for all their bells and whistles, made that process harder, not easier. These secretaries were about to become less productive, not more.
I carefully asked the office manager why the department head chose those machines. As it turned out, the answer had nothing to do with productivity…
The Way Government Operates
Her explanation completely changed the way I understood bureaucracy and all of government. The office had a budget for office equipment that was about to expire at the end of the year. If they didn’t spend the full equipment budget that year, the department’s status (and next year’s budget) would suffer.
The incentives were upside-down. Productivity didn’t matter. Waste wasn’t a problem. The goal was to maintain—or grow—the budget, because budget size was how status was measured.
That day, standing in that fluorescent-lit office with five women trying to type around functions they didn’t need, I felt a powerful sense of frustration rising and tightening my chest. It wasn’t just one man making a foolish decision—it was every office in every government at every level. The waste was staggering.
I thought about all the taxes—taxes that people worked so hard to pay—being thrown away. Most of all, I thought of my customers, the businesses struggling to serve their customers while suffering under the burden of taxes and senseless regulations.
And for most of my life, I hadn’t thought twice about it.
We’re told it’s a “social contract.” We’re taught that taxes, inefficiencies, delays, and frustrations are the unavoidable price of living in a society that protects life, liberty, and property. But very few people ever ask whether these services could be provided differently—or voluntarily.
The greatest frustration was that there was nothing I could do about it. All I could do was study economics and political philosophy, looking for a solution that so many greater minds than mine hadn’t been able to find. It was another thirty years before I encountered a very different way to think about governance: subscribing to governance rather than having it imposed upon you.
This single shift in perspective reframes what’s possible for human freedom—and it’s already beginning to unfold in the real world.
What Are We Actually Submitting To?
If you add up every cost of government—taxes, fees, licenses, fines, lost time, compliance costs, delays, paperwork, mistakes, bureaucracy, and the systemic waste I first witnessed in that Portland office—the bill is staggering.
And what do we want in return that we think we can’t get from the free market? Two essential services:
- Protection of life, liberty, and property.
Even criminals want this. - A legal framework that allows people to live together peacefully.
Rules, enforcement, and order.
These are real needs. And they really matter. But the last decade has revealed something a lot more troubling: the government is increasingly failing at even these basic functions.
In North Carolina, a young Ukrainian woman who fled a war zone was stabbed to death on a train by a man who had been arrested and released fourteen times. The system that promised to protect her had already failed the public again and again.
I wish that story were rare. But across the world, people are losing faith that the institutions designed to protect them can do so reliably. Bureaucratic incentives undermine accountability. Political incentives reward signaling over safety. And ordinary citizens, overwhelmed by dysfunction, retreat from one another.
Many people feel trapped—aware that something isn’t working, yet resigned to the belief that there is no alternative.
But that belief is wrong. There is an alternative. And I’ve lived in it.
Government as a Service: A Quiet Revolution
There is a growing movement—not political, not ideological, but entrepreneurial—that is reimagining governance the same way industries were reinvented during past technological revolutions.
Not as a monopoly.
Not as a bureaucracy.
But as a service.
Voluntary. Contractual. Customer-driven. Accountable.
In a market, providers survive only if they meet the needs of the people they serve. Customers can leave. Competition keeps quality high. And contracts guarantee accountability.
Why can’t governance work the same way?
There are a few small places where it already does—quietly, steadily, and often without headlines—through entrepreneurial jurisdictions known by several different names. Some call them Free Cities (my favorite term), but there are different models, different definitions, and different characteristics.
Free Cities offer real-world models of voluntary governance, where services are provided through:
- private policing
- transparent contracts
- predictable rules
- third-party arbitration
- low, simple taxes or fees
- customer choice
And in these systems, you don’t “submit.”
You subscribe.
If you don’t like the governance you’re receiving, you simply opt out—exactly as you would with any other service that fails to serve you.
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A Different Kind of Justice: The Morazán Example
I lived for more than three years in Ciudad Morazán, a Free City in Honduras. There, I saw firsthand how “government as a service” works in practice—including in moments when traditional systems typically fail.
There has been only one incident of violent crime in the four years of Morazán’s existence; a case of domestic violence, which is common in Honduras. In most of the world, the choices would be grim and predictable:
- If the wife pressed charges, the system would arrest him, prosecute him, and—after court delays—possibly jail him.
- If she didn’t press charges, he would face no consequences, increasing the likelihood of repeated violence.
But in a contractual governance system, the incentives differ. The city administrator spoke with the wife. She didn’t want him jailed—she depended on him—but she wanted the violence to stop. The city found a proportional, community-centered solution: a one-month ban from entering the jurisdiction.
No prison.
No permanent record.
Real accountability.
Real consequences.
And ultimately—real change.
When he returned, the behavior stopped. Completely. And it served as an example to others.
This is what happens when governance is not chained to rigid political incentives but aligned with real human needs.
Why Entrepreneurs Are Entering the Governance Industry
If someone provided cable service or gym membership with the same reliability and accountability as government typically provides safety and justice, customers would switch immediately.
The difference is that, until recently, switching your governance provider was nearly impossible. Free Cities change that.
In constitutional zones with legal autonomy—like the ZEDE framework in Honduras—entrepreneurs can:
- design rules
- provide services
- manage policing
- offer arbitration
- plan cities
- collect simple, predictable taxes, and
- compete for residents and businesses
Just like any business. If they fail to provide safety, fairness, or transparency, residents can withdraw their consent and choose a different jurisdiction—and the model fails. This is how accountability is supposed to work.
Since Free Cities are small, decentralized jurisdictions, the cost (both financial and emotional) of relocation is trivial compared to leaving a nation-state. When the customer can walk away, the provider becomes responsible.
Why We Submit—and Why We Don’t Have To
Most of us “submit” to government because we believe we have no choice. We inherit the jurisdictions we’re born into, and we treat them as unchangeable features of life.
But choice is natural.
Choice is human.
Choice is what makes every other industry improve.
We unsubscribe from cable.
We switch gym memberships.
We cancel apps that annoy us.
Yet we spend our entire lives under one monopoly jurisdiction, regardless of performance. That’s the paradigm that must shift.
A World of Many Jurisdictions
Around the world, new jurisdictions are emerging:
- Free Cities like Morazán and Próspera
- Seasteads
- Network states
- Autonomous developments
- High-trust intentional communities
- Private planned cities pioneered by entrepreneurs
Each offers a different model.
Each lets people choose.
Each adds competition.
The more jurisdictions that exist, the less any one system can take its residents for granted. And the more likely it becomes that governments will have to earn consent rather than presume it.
The Future: Consent, Not Control
Thomas Jefferson wrote that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
We like the line. But the truth is that modern governments rely far more on compliance than consent. Free Cities shift the balance back.
Consent becomes active, not symbolic.
Voluntary contracts replace imposed “social contracts.”
Accountability replaces bureaucracy.
Choice replaces submission.
Governance becomes a product that must serve you—not an institution that commands you.
The new frontier of liberty is not protest, policy reform, or wishful thinking.
It’s building better systems.
It’s letting people choose.
It’s subscribing instead of submitting.
And the future belongs to those willing to imagine—and build—something better.
Joyce Brand is the author of Pioneering Prosperity and founder of the Morazán Model Association. She writes about voluntary governance and the emerging Free Cities movement, drawing on her experience living in Honduras’ pioneering private city.
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