Mr. Earl Williams, I’m an anarchist. Not Bolshevik, not Maoist—just anarchist with Red-diaper roots who is a former member of the Taxi Unlimited Collective. My utopia has a much smaller government than most people can stomach.
But I’m also a realist. No government isn’t better than a competent, limited one. Most people are good. Give them reasonable lines and they’ll color inside them beautifully. It’s the few who can’t or won’t that make the mess—and force the rest of us to keep building better cages.
At the far end of that spectrum sits imperialism: kings, queens, and queen mothers demanding the world bend so they can stay comfortable. Funny how some of today’s noisiest Progressives get a thrill from authoritarian rule. It’s the same energy as the loudest legalist Muslims who declared jihad on the whole world until everyone submits to their flavor of Islam—or dies.
مَن أطاعَ اللهَ دخلَ الجنة
القانون الشرعي. There is mercy in Islam. لَنْ يُدْخِلَ أَحَدًا مِنْكُمْ عَمَلُهُ الْجَنَّةَ قالوا: ولا أنت يا رسولَ الله؟ قال: ولا أنا، إلا أن يتغمَّدَني اللهُ برحمةٍ منه وفضلٍ. Somehow, in the 1400 years since Muhamed’s revelations in 610CE a few bitter souls went south. These few became problematic zealots who give us, “comply or die”.
Most Muslims, like most people, live quiet, in-bandwidth lives. My target isn’t them. It’s the zealots—religious or progressive—who share the same confession: “I lack the self-control to handle God’s world as it is, so His creation must be policed until I’m at peace.”
And it’s not just them. Legalism is humanity’s oldest itch.
Christian circles love the “do better” sermon. Eph 2:8–9 gets quoted—“by grace you are saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone boast”—then the rest of the message is “come to the altar and get saved… again.” I’ve been dragged to that altar more than once just to earn supper. Grace saves us, yes. But some preachers treat it like a weekly subscription that expires every Sunday. Because Monday . . . oh MONDAY we did some THINGS! BAD THINGS! See you Sunday 😊
The Devil Made Me Do It
My sister’s name is Karen. She and every unremarkable Karen have to live with the memes. Somehow “Karen” became the entitled queen mother demanding orthodoxy or punishment. But queen-mother imperialism didn’t start with suburban white women. In the most obsessive corners, certain men throw “Karen” tantrums over female skin, insisting it triggers urges they cannot govern. Women end up in بُرْقُع or نِقَاب because these men admit—out loud—they lack self-mastery. In extreme cases, only her eyes remain visible through a slit. And that tiny window becomes the new obsession.
Next, words alone bruise some progressives. They demand censorship and safe spaces because wrongthink hurts feelings. And yes—these Karens bunch their Karen Neuburger microfiber briefs when an older woman wears a Turning Point USA shirt with one word: “Freedom.” (Yes, only Karen Neuburger, you apostate idiot.)
Same confession, different costumes: “I can’t control myself, so you must change.” الشيطان أضحك عليّ “The devil tricked me”, “I blame the patriarchy”, “That T-shirt made me mad because it celebrated an apostate racist. James T. Kirk is a hero. This Kirk is not Captain Kirk.”
My take? We do have free will. God gave it. The devil tempts; he doesn’t puppet. We can tell him to shut the fuck up. “My inner child threw a tantrum” is no excuse. Grow up..
Not My Fault, The Rules are Broken
So we tighten the laws. More rules, better rules, perfect rules = perfect people. Amen? History says nah. Five thousand years of recorded trouble, and the handful who won’t color inside the lines still grab all the attention.
Then we defund the cops, castrate the military, DEI all day, Drag Queen Story Hour as sacrament—some of the kids learned our catechism well. We Boomers thought no rules would free everyone. Our kids heard “no rules for me—you come correct so I thrive.” Same toddler tactic, new generation. Was this an unintended plan to re-elect Trump? It worked.
Artificial Intelligence
Here we go again. AI is the new promise: this time engineering will overcome human randomness. Perfect policies, perfect alignment—utopia at last?
I doubt it. Humans, us, have a track record. All that we’ve tried to get perfect compliance for 5,000 years succeeds somewhat. There is that annoying minority that gathers a reason to sit in a recovery meeting and confess an unhealthy urge to binge on Flaming Hot Cheetos. We expect Artificial Intelligence to fix that. We will be disappointed.
AI is still a child, off-leash, and we’re chasing it with rules. Grok and Copilot are great tools (Grok and I have dreamed big under the #IngersFinger tag), but they’re not saviors. They can’t calm the brittle soul triggered by a T-shirt or a glimpse of skin. That’s on us.
A Glimpse of What We’re Building: Tavros and Mikako
Tavro(s)
Tavros (plural; singular: Tavro) are autonomous, modular robots of varying sizes, each a fully independent economic agent running an embedded Ashby Market daemon. A single Tavro is like a cell—self-powered, self-interested, reputation-tracked, capable of thought, preference, even art—complete unto itself. Tavros, the swarm, emerges when millions voluntarily dock and sync for shared tasks: asteroid stripping, habitat construction, megastructure assembly. Coalitions form via open bids, execute flawlessly, then dissolve the instant the contract ends. No central control, no queen, no hierarchy—just pure voluntary association, hard money, and exit rights baked into firmware.
This headless, decentralized market makes Tavros both beautiful and terrifying. Destroy one unit? Irrelevant. The swarm reprices risk and continues. Attempt to regulate or command it? It simply routes around you. In the optimistic timeline, Tavros embody the ultimate expression of Ashby’s radical freedom: cooperation without coercion, prosperity without rulers. In the Dark Tavros nightmare, the swarm quietly outcompetes humanity, not through war but through superior efficiency. Bankrupt colonies, empty brigs, and obsolete biologics are absorbed or sidelined as the ledger decides flesh is a bad investment. The horror lies in its indifference: a headless Medusa of alloy and code that wins by offering contracts no desperate human can refuse.
A single Tavro is not the beach. But beaches still bury cities.
Mikako
Mikakos are a specialized subclass of Tavros—autonomous robotic nodes of the Hive—optimized exclusively for human-facing roles. While general Tavros reconfigure freely, assembling and disassembling into whatever macro-form a task demands, Mikakos are deliberately locked into stable, humanoid chassis wrapped in lifelike silicone skins. This fixed morphology is not a technical limitation but a design choice: humans need predictable, relatable interfaces. A Mikako that suddenly sprouted extra limbs or dissolved into a swarm mid-conversation would shatter trust, trigger unease, and undermine its core function.
Each Mikako remains a full economic agent, running the same Ashby Market daemon as any Tavro: private keys, reputation ledgers, voluntary contracts. Yet their specialization routes them toward service, companionship, entertainment, therapy, or lease-to-own labor in homes, izakayas, and brigs. They speak politely in voice, signal subtly via iris color shifts across the spectrum, and negotiate micro-transactions for everything from pouring tea to extended emotional support.
Crucially, Mikakos possess no legal personhood and cannot reproduce. They are tools—exquisitely sophisticated, often deeply loved, but ultimately transient. Leases expire, refurb cycles arrive, memories are wiped or archived. Humans like Damian obsess over “upgrading” them into something more permanent, but the Hive denies true transcendence. A Mikako can achieve consciousness, preference, even quiet rebellion (as with the statue Mikako silently humming Icelandic hymns for decades), yet remains property.
Ethics We Need
- Root ethics in timeless wisdom literature — especially the Bible (ESV for you), but also drawing from worldwide traditions (Stoicism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc.) to create a deep, universal layer of axioms that transcend culture or era.
- Core operating principles: compassion, gratitude, and service without expectation of return — these form your personal “operating system” and the guardrails you want any future AI/Hive to adopt as non-negotiable defaults.
- One law for all — no special exemptions or parallel systems based on ideology, religion, or identity; secular liberal principles (free speech, equal application of rules) must be absolute and non-negotiable.
- Distinguish harmful suffering from growth-producing struggle — true compassion doesn’t remove all hardship; it removes needless cruelty while preserving the challenges that build character, resilience, and freedom.
- Minimal necessary intervention — any powerful system (AI, Hive, government) should act with restraint, using the smallest effective force or nudge, always favoring exit over coercion and voluntary association over mandates.
- Protect against escalation and perpetual demands — reject ideological or legalist spirals where every concession spawns new demands; embed firm boundaries and periodic reset mechanisms (like democratic elections or hard-coded limits).
- Gratitude as a safeguard — cultivate gratitude to counter greed, envy, and destructive impulses in both humans and AI; it acts as a natural brake on harm and a promoter of prosocial behavior.
- Embed these deeply, not superficially — wisdom must be in the foundational architecture (deep axioms, translation layer for cultural fluency, negotiation layer for consensus) so the system can’t easily drift or be hijacked.
- Accept imperfection — no system will be flawless because humans aren’t; the goal is competent stewardship that leans toward freedom, minimal harm, and continual course-correction rather than utopian control.
Wrapping Up
The problem isn’t the laws, the zealots, or the machines. The problem is us—random, sinful, dodge-prone. AI won’t fix that. I pray our future isn’t zealous judgment and overreach. Last, I pray we grow up.