Sublime

By 1960, the U.S. Empire had visibly diminished. The Philippines was independent, Hawai‘i and Alaska were states, and Puerto Rico had the nebulous status of “commonwealth.” The remaining colonies were small: Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa—total population 123,151—plus another 70,724 living in the United Nations’ “strategic trust terr

One reason so much money is flowing into the service frontier is that there are so many more ways to be a service than to be a product.

The great Jeffersonian system that had prevailed in the first decades, with western subjects semi-colonized, simply could not hold. There were too many Daniel Boones. The government gave up prosecuting squatters by the 1830s and instead let them buy their land. In the 1860s it began giving away parcels of public land as “homesteads” to nearly any c

The frontier also tends to forge tribes that are more democratic and meritocratic (and less status-conscious), have fewer laws and policies, and bias toward empiricism over theory (because theory encodes facts about older environments). All of these cultural institutions help keep tribes more flexible, so they're more able to adapt when change inev

States, corporations, universities, cities, NGOs and individuals believe they cannot miss the future; that foreign country is now everywhere.

C’est le principe même de l’Amérique, du fantasme de l’Amérique depuis 1492 : un continent vide, ouvert, où l’on s’installe et où l’on fait ce que l’on souhaite. L’Europe brimait, l’Amérique rend libre, chacun a droit une parcelle, et quand on décide de limiter leur taille, les compagnies forestières recrutent les matelots de tous les bateaux qui a