Patchwork

"Patchwork is something new. It will not feel like the past. It will feel like the future."
Curtis Yarvin

Patchwork, also called Urbism or Ultramunicipalism, is a political ideology that either seeks the maximum possible increase in City-States and Microstates in general, Ideally seeing a world in which every locality is its own sovereign state. It can also mean advocacy for the independence of a single city or another small area.

History

The first states in human history were formed primarily around urban and agricultural centers and were at a first way smaller than the modern nation-state. A case in which a number of these states formed yet one state failed to conquer and subjugate all the other states can be considered the first example of a working urbist system, as can be seen in Ancient and Classical Greece.

After the end of the Roman Empire examples of urbist systems took hold in parts of Europe under Feudalism and lasted as late as the rise of modern nation-states during and after the Age of Enlightenment. The most famous examples are Germany and Northern Italy, but also included much of Eastern Europe before the expansion of Russia.

Patchwork systems largely declined after the rise of Nationalism and Colonialism (and the fall of the latter) from the 17th to 20th with nothing much left except for a small number of microstates scattered around much of the old world such as the 6 microstates in Europe and Singapore, with all these states being wealthy, proving that city-states can function in the modern age.

In the 21st century the notion of organizing the world around city-states and microstates became popular among a number of political circles, including Libertarian, Neoreactionary and local nationalist circles. Notably including the right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin who coined the term "Patchwork" to describe the system in which a specific region is made up entirely of microstates. Patchwork is also popular among the HK pro-democracy camp, with many believing that the only way to have full democracy without the PRC overriding their actions is to make HK fully independent.

Beliefs

In an urbist system, all localities on within a region have their own jurisdiction residing over them and primarily only them, in an even more radical version of this system this is even applied to the seas and oceans.

Arguments

A common for a patchwork system is the belief that market competition over competing states creates an incentive for good leadership over a polity, as such the opportunity to compete within a market framework should be maximized as much as possible. Under this argument, patchwork is commonly combined with Neocameralism, the belief that the state itself should be run for profit under a joint-stock framework.

Complementary arguments to the market argument are the experimentation argument and liberty argument. The former is the belief that having multiple small jurisdictions rather than large-small ones leaves a greater opportunity and incentive for experimentation in policy allowing and allowing for good new policies to be implemented faster and the bad ones discarded faster. The latter is the belief that a small state under competition has a lesser incentive to infringe on the rights of its citizens than a larger state without much competition.

Another argument for ultramunicipalism is the belief that the nation is too much of an artificial unit to base sovereignty around as compared to the much more "real" unit of the city, and as such it would make more sense to base sovereignty on the city rather than the nation.

Strategy

The primary strategy for people who align themselves with patchwork is generally taken to be unconditional secessionism at all times, supporting every secession movement and every single break-away state that there is, including those that are not ideologically aligned with the movement.

Another proposal for creating a society of independent city-states is seasteading, meaning creating new settlements in the sea away from the reach of current states.

Personality and Behaviour

Patchwork as a character isn't usually portrayed in any unified character. Although he can, but doesn't have to be shown as an enthusiast for microstates currently in the world as an enthusiast for creating micronations.

How to Draw

Patchwork's design was created by the discord user Kapitein Kanker#7156, on the Polcompball discord. The grey represents city infrastructure while the blue represents the seas on which city-states form on.

Draw a ball,
Draw a diagonal line with rather dark grey on the ball,
Above the line draw fill with dark grey and below with dark cyan,
Add the eyes, and you're done!

Color Name		HEX	RGB
	Dark Grey	#707070	112, 112, 112
	Dark Cyan	#007BC1	0, 123, 193

Relationships

Friends

Hoppeanism - "EUROPE OF A THOUSAND LIECHTENSTEINS."
Neoreactionaryism & Neocameralism - A patchwork of microstates? Very based.
National Anarchism - Supports local rule.
Libertarian Municipalism - Free municipalities are big.
Distributism - Subsidiarity forever!
Athenian Democracy - This guy gets it!
Elective Monarchism - Fellow HRE enjoyer.
National Libertarianism - Death to globalism!
Confederalism - Maximum decentralization is based.
Feudalism - All these principalities.
Separatism - Faster, FASTER!!!
Lee Kuan-Yew Thought - Proof why city-states work.
Catholic Theocracy - You don't need to have a big state to have power over 1.2 billion people.
Helvetic Model - Liechtenstein is ultra-based.

Frenemies

Most other ideologies.

Enemies

World Federalism - You are literally the opposite of what I want.
Globalism - Did I hear "global federalization"?
Pan-Nationalism - We need to work towards smaller municipalities, not larger nations!
Pol Potism - I AM NOT URBANISM! GET AWAY FROM ME!!!
Dengism - Free Hong Kong! (and every other city)
Agrarianism - Don't call me a "city slicker" ever again!
Wilsonianism and Kemalism - "The messy multi-ethnic empire, the so-called Austro-Hungarian Empire, vanished after the great war, along with its Ottoman neighbor and rival (and, to a large extent, sibling—don’t tell them), to be replaced with crisp, clean nation-states. The Ottoman Empire with its messy nationalities—or, rather, what was left of it—became the state of Turkey, modeled after Switzerland, with nobody noticing the inconsistency. Vienna became trapped in Austria, with whom it shared very little outside the formal language. Imagine moving New York City to central Texas and still calling it New York. Stefan Zweig, the Viennese Jewish novelist, then considered the most influential author in the world, expressed his pain in the poignant memoir The World of Yesterday. Vienna joined the league of multicultural cities such as Alexandria, Smyrna, Aleppo, Prague, Thessaloniki, Constantinople (now Istanbul), and Trieste, now squeezed into the Procrustean bed of the nation-state, with its citizens left in the grip of intergenerational nostalgia. Unable to handle the loss and integrate elsewhere, Zweig later committed suicide in Brazil. I first read his account as I was put in a similar situation of physical and cultural exile when my Levantine Christian world was shattered by the Lebanese war, and I wondered whether he might have stayed alive had he gone to New York instead."