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Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century
Enter Patchwork, Mencius Moldbug’s inspiring vision of a political system for the 21st century. Patchwork’s innovative design, which relies on sovereign joint-stock republics with cryptographic governance, brings the promise of clean streets, negligible crime, invincible robot armies, and world peace.
55 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 6, 2017
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465 people want to read
About the author
Mencius Moldbug
12 books277 followersPen name of American political theorist and software developer Curtis Yarvin.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
October 30, 2023
Moldbug's distinctive approach to politics is what he calls “anti-spin.” Dismisssing any humanist appeals to the heart, the text presents “the cold, gritty gears of the naked machine.” This permits him to sidestep the rhetorical burden of persuasion: “if you don’t understand UR [unqualified reservations, the blog where this was published], you are very unlikely to believe it. And this is better for both of us.”
The book circulates around a central paradox – how to square atheism with a belief in divine right. It is therefore unsurprising that the proposed corporate state is inspired by a covenantal understanding of contract law. Moldbug denounces his opponents for propping up 'muppet states' (paradigmatically exemplified by the Soviet Union and Maoist China) arguing that the appearance of independence and individuality conceal a deeper dependency. Moldbug prefers that these power imbalances be out in the open:
“To live on a Patchwork patch, you have to sign a bilateral contract with the realm. You promise to be a good boy and behave yourself. The realm promises to treat you fairly. There is an inherent asymmetry in this agreement, because you have no enforcement mechanism against the realm.”
Perhaps we could call this the 'puppy state,' one sustained by the political equivalent of scooby snacks, inquiries into one's status as a good boy, and games of catch.
Moldbug cheerfully proclaims himself in favor of exploitation and imperialism, in the name of peace, order and security. Crucially, all three of these are seen as identical in a cod Schmittian manner, against a democratic tradition that would divide them.
The notion of responsibility is decisive. The fatal flaw Moldbug detects in democratic regimes is their neglect of financial responsibility, striving in vain to limit government by means of moral responsibility. This leads him to worry about those wards of the state who require care but cannot take responsibility for themselves. He floats the possibility of a genocide of these dependents, ultimately shrinking back from this modest proposal and arguing for the construction of immersive virtual prisons:
“Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide. That is: the ideal solution achieves the same result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable elements from society), but without any of the moral stigma... The best humane alternative to genocide I can think of is not to liquidate the wards—either metaphorically or literally—but to virtualize them. A virtualized human is in permanent solitary confinement, waxed like a bee larva into a cell which is sealed except for emergencies. This would drive him insane, except that the cell contains an immersive virtual-reality interface which allows him to experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”
Taking as his point of departure the phobias of the left, Moldbug suggests that reactionaries should work to make the conspiracy theories of leftists a reality.
What tips the text over into the realm of dystopian nightmare is ultimately Moldbug's foreclosure of man as a rational dependent animal. Missing in Moldbug's praise of self-control is an acknowledgment of the liberation accompanying the realisation that one is not the master in one's house.
***
Take two. Moldbug is a creative thinker, but any originality in his argument is derived from presupposing the very model he's trying to defend. It's easy to underestimate or mock the power of Moldbug's covenantal conception. This would be a mistake. Analogies between citizen/State and man/God are the bread and butter of political theory. The issue is that Moldbug unnecessarily restricts this contract. To tease this out, consider the contrast between Shamai and Hillel. Moldbug's jurisprudence bears striking similarities to Beit Shamai's model, popularized among contemporary conservatives by Leo Strauss. On this conception, what we owe to God is unthinking obedience. Beit Hillel's model makes room for God to be wrong. Perhaps the most interesting moment in the Hebrew Bible is when Moses refuses to carry out God's order for genocide, on the ground that genocide would be inconsistent with God's own law. The Talmud gets very excited about this, understandably. Returning to Moldbug, what he seems to have never considered is the possibility that the best form of obedience to God is to point out the contradictions in divine commands. Following the analogy, we see that a State can only be improved if there are possibilities for dissent. Virtualizing dissent leads to one of two bad outcomes: either dissent is rendered irrelevant, in which case the State stagnates, or dissent gains traction unofficially and begins to undermine the legitimacy of the State. If what Moldbug wants is undivided sovereignty, it would be in his own interest to switch from the Shamai to the Hillel model. The issue is that if he were to do this, he would have to read Spinoza, who first codified a conception of undivided sovereignty based on reason alone. But of course, Moldbug won't do this, since really he doesn't care about undivided sovereignty. What he cares about is making monarchy appear plausible again, and discussing sovereignty is just his excuse for his underlying agenda of defending the conquests of corporate kingship.
The book circulates around a central paradox – how to square atheism with a belief in divine right. It is therefore unsurprising that the proposed corporate state is inspired by a covenantal understanding of contract law. Moldbug denounces his opponents for propping up 'muppet states' (paradigmatically exemplified by the Soviet Union and Maoist China) arguing that the appearance of independence and individuality conceal a deeper dependency. Moldbug prefers that these power imbalances be out in the open:
“To live on a Patchwork patch, you have to sign a bilateral contract with the realm. You promise to be a good boy and behave yourself. The realm promises to treat you fairly. There is an inherent asymmetry in this agreement, because you have no enforcement mechanism against the realm.”
Perhaps we could call this the 'puppy state,' one sustained by the political equivalent of scooby snacks, inquiries into one's status as a good boy, and games of catch.
Moldbug cheerfully proclaims himself in favor of exploitation and imperialism, in the name of peace, order and security. Crucially, all three of these are seen as identical in a cod Schmittian manner, against a democratic tradition that would divide them.
The notion of responsibility is decisive. The fatal flaw Moldbug detects in democratic regimes is their neglect of financial responsibility, striving in vain to limit government by means of moral responsibility. This leads him to worry about those wards of the state who require care but cannot take responsibility for themselves. He floats the possibility of a genocide of these dependents, ultimately shrinking back from this modest proposal and arguing for the construction of immersive virtual prisons:
“Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide. That is: the ideal solution achieves the same result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable elements from society), but without any of the moral stigma... The best humane alternative to genocide I can think of is not to liquidate the wards—either metaphorically or literally—but to virtualize them. A virtualized human is in permanent solitary confinement, waxed like a bee larva into a cell which is sealed except for emergencies. This would drive him insane, except that the cell contains an immersive virtual-reality interface which allows him to experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”
Taking as his point of departure the phobias of the left, Moldbug suggests that reactionaries should work to make the conspiracy theories of leftists a reality.
What tips the text over into the realm of dystopian nightmare is ultimately Moldbug's foreclosure of man as a rational dependent animal. Missing in Moldbug's praise of self-control is an acknowledgment of the liberation accompanying the realisation that one is not the master in one's house.
***
Take two. Moldbug is a creative thinker, but any originality in his argument is derived from presupposing the very model he's trying to defend. It's easy to underestimate or mock the power of Moldbug's covenantal conception. This would be a mistake. Analogies between citizen/State and man/God are the bread and butter of political theory. The issue is that Moldbug unnecessarily restricts this contract. To tease this out, consider the contrast between Shamai and Hillel. Moldbug's jurisprudence bears striking similarities to Beit Shamai's model, popularized among contemporary conservatives by Leo Strauss. On this conception, what we owe to God is unthinking obedience. Beit Hillel's model makes room for God to be wrong. Perhaps the most interesting moment in the Hebrew Bible is when Moses refuses to carry out God's order for genocide, on the ground that genocide would be inconsistent with God's own law. The Talmud gets very excited about this, understandably. Returning to Moldbug, what he seems to have never considered is the possibility that the best form of obedience to God is to point out the contradictions in divine commands. Following the analogy, we see that a State can only be improved if there are possibilities for dissent. Virtualizing dissent leads to one of two bad outcomes: either dissent is rendered irrelevant, in which case the State stagnates, or dissent gains traction unofficially and begins to undermine the legitimacy of the State. If what Moldbug wants is undivided sovereignty, it would be in his own interest to switch from the Shamai to the Hillel model. The issue is that if he were to do this, he would have to read Spinoza, who first codified a conception of undivided sovereignty based on reason alone. But of course, Moldbug won't do this, since really he doesn't care about undivided sovereignty. What he cares about is making monarchy appear plausible again, and discussing sovereignty is just his excuse for his underlying agenda of defending the conquests of corporate kingship.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 10, 2025
It is usually the case with reactionary thinkers that their proposed cures for social and political ailments turn out to be a hundred thousand times worse than the disease. Moldbug proves to be no exception. His solution for the fiscal irresponsibility of a typical democratic government (whether liberal, social democratic or otherwise) is to put joint-stock mini Leviathans on the blockchain. Moldbug's faith in the clientele's power to make these mini Leviathans behave is misguided at best. Alas the promise of "full exit" will not come to fruition in such a hellish world. However, notwithstanding Moldbug's reservations the notion of a patchwork is not inherently reactionary or neocameralist, if we're talking alternative, non-Westphalian modes of sovereignty.
July 10, 2020
Moldbug has a wicked sense of humour, and a lot of this is certainly “cool”, in a morbid, sci-fi way, but underneath the shocking propositions and gleeful edginess is a poor argument composed of preposterous Randian assumptions about rationality, puerile racism, and willed ignorance of any problem this system might face (slavery? impossible! no patch could conceivably trade with a slave state! global warming? well, it’s not real of course, and nor are any other supposed barriers to endless growth you progressives have dreamt up...)
I’m not even saying Moldbug’s Patchwork is worse than our decaying democratic system. Nor do I think it’s impossible to implement (and, in fact, the mechanism by which a patch is administrated got me precisely because it dares to imagine the changes to a political structure that might occur when power properly catches up with modern tech)—I simply reject Moldbug’s utopian assumptions about the boon in living standards he expects neocameralism would bring about—except for the “undesirables” (read: black people) he expects to see sealed in wax honeycombs, of course.
In reality, Patchwork is likely identical in every meaningful way to our present world. This is so clear to me that I wondered multiple times whether this whole thing was a joke. But it’s not. Moldbug, I’m afraid, is.
I’m not even saying Moldbug’s Patchwork is worse than our decaying democratic system. Nor do I think it’s impossible to implement (and, in fact, the mechanism by which a patch is administrated got me precisely because it dares to imagine the changes to a political structure that might occur when power properly catches up with modern tech)—I simply reject Moldbug’s utopian assumptions about the boon in living standards he expects neocameralism would bring about—except for the “undesirables” (read: black people) he expects to see sealed in wax honeycombs, of course.
In reality, Patchwork is likely identical in every meaningful way to our present world. This is so clear to me that I wondered multiple times whether this whole thing was a joke. But it’s not. Moldbug, I’m afraid, is.
June 7, 2022
Quite probably the worst piece of political writing I have ever read. Moldbug has beaten Rothbard in that regard. I would like to say I at least like the provocative and edgy style and the political extremism, but even in those respects Moldbug just comes off as a tryhard. I'll be reading some more of Moldbug simply because he's works are short, giving one book a low rating doesn't seem enough, and surely not all of it can be this bad... right?
July 27, 2024
A juvenile description of an authoritarian techno dystopia with blind faith in the efficiency of capitalism that supposedly fixes all problems of our societies. It is full of gaping holes in its logic. The interesting thing here is that this line of thinking seems to be popular in some parts of the US right (JD Vance?).
June 25, 2018
C'mon, you know you want to read it
September 4, 2025
*Read for my Thesis*
If this had been adapted into a sci-fi novel it would have been 5 stars lol. As political theory? eh. There's def some interesting takes in here and to be honest I think his account of world peace is equal in merit to Kants (which isn't saying much). I def empathize with the whole remodeling the world into teeny-tiny states idea and I also appreciate his anti-gloabization takes. He's pretty spot-on about the global liberal order just being a reflection of american values. Theres also a lot of pretty wak shit in here I won't lie. Read at your own risk.
If this had been adapted into a sci-fi novel it would have been 5 stars lol. As political theory? eh. There's def some interesting takes in here and to be honest I think his account of world peace is equal in merit to Kants (which isn't saying much). I def empathize with the whole remodeling the world into teeny-tiny states idea and I also appreciate his anti-gloabization takes. He's pretty spot-on about the global liberal order just being a reflection of american values. Theres also a lot of pretty wak shit in here I won't lie. Read at your own risk.
November 28, 2019
Moldbug’s attempt to explain how a “patch” would work is either poetic libertarianism or libertarianism taken to its most vulgar conclusion. The man is interesting, the book was dripping in references to History’s greatest, his writing was not only extremely sharp but also witty.
Moldbug is worth your time.
Moldbug is worth your time.
July 24, 2024
In this astonishingly arrogant and ignorant work of political theory, the author argues that the world needs less democracy not more. Indeed, we will all be happier if we lived lives free from moral responsibility, in totalitarian technocratic societies armed with undefeatable robot armies, that make us slaves so that our shareholder overlords can make a little more gold. Moreover, human rights are no more: we are not all equal, and our worth depends on our wealth.
That this political theory appeals to certain trendsetters in Silicon Valley is deeply disturbing. For more, see Kaitlyn Tiffany's "Meet Me in the Eternal City" in The Atlantic (March 2024).
That this political theory appeals to certain trendsetters in Silicon Valley is deeply disturbing. For more, see Kaitlyn Tiffany's "Meet Me in the Eternal City" in The Atlantic (March 2024).
July 29, 2020
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
"Go to sleep. Everything is all right."
Reactionary right authors are so much more entertaining than anything I've ever read on the left I swear to god. Moldbug is great except when he's talking about Kant.
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
"Go to sleep. Everything is all right."
Reactionary right authors are so much more entertaining than anything I've ever read on the left I swear to god. Moldbug is great except when he's talking about Kant.
June 2, 2025
Capitalist hellscape masquerading as a utopian think piece
Couldn’t take it, had to write a review:
While there are plenty of things that are interesting, any book that looks for a path toward ethical genocide is hard to take seriously. He waves his hands and says the market will take care of it. Or Don’t worry, the market won’t be parasitic, or predatory when we can sit here and watch the market be both.
There is no question that the bureaucratic state needs a take down but capitalist city state anarchy isn’t the next obvious selection no matter how confidently he talks about “really we won’t gas your loser cousin Steve”
So many concepts make sense and then you THINK.
“Require real estate owners to assess their own property, offering it for sale at the assessed price, and set the tax at a percentage of that price. No muss,
no fuss, no IRS. Since no one can live or work without real estate, it should be straightforward to tune this selfassessed property tax (SAPT) to extract the Laffer maximum.”
As a former tax professional, this is a super interesting concept, unfortunately with so many unintended consequences. This is especially true since grandma is going to be put into a home for socially acceptable genocide the minute she stops working as she won’t be able to support the SAPT for her home that has risen in value beyond reason since she bought it. At least he acknowledge human tendency to game to system for personal profit. (I.e. passingly thinking about tax cheats).
His treatise for peace is so poorly thought out it basically is trivialized to “trust me it will work”. Bio-locked guns! Super smart bit-coin operated robots!
Take your royalist garbage to the dustbin of history where it belongs. I’ll take inefficient government every day over this anti-empathetic shareholder nonsense. Like all utopias this one falls short in the realism department. Unlike a lot of utopia’s this one doesn’t leave much to look forward to
Couldn’t take it, had to write a review:
While there are plenty of things that are interesting, any book that looks for a path toward ethical genocide is hard to take seriously. He waves his hands and says the market will take care of it. Or Don’t worry, the market won’t be parasitic, or predatory when we can sit here and watch the market be both.
There is no question that the bureaucratic state needs a take down but capitalist city state anarchy isn’t the next obvious selection no matter how confidently he talks about “really we won’t gas your loser cousin Steve”
So many concepts make sense and then you THINK.
“Require real estate owners to assess their own property, offering it for sale at the assessed price, and set the tax at a percentage of that price. No muss,
no fuss, no IRS. Since no one can live or work without real estate, it should be straightforward to tune this selfassessed property tax (SAPT) to extract the Laffer maximum.”
As a former tax professional, this is a super interesting concept, unfortunately with so many unintended consequences. This is especially true since grandma is going to be put into a home for socially acceptable genocide the minute she stops working as she won’t be able to support the SAPT for her home that has risen in value beyond reason since she bought it. At least he acknowledge human tendency to game to system for personal profit. (I.e. passingly thinking about tax cheats).
His treatise for peace is so poorly thought out it basically is trivialized to “trust me it will work”. Bio-locked guns! Super smart bit-coin operated robots!
Take your royalist garbage to the dustbin of history where it belongs. I’ll take inefficient government every day over this anti-empathetic shareholder nonsense. Like all utopias this one falls short in the realism department. Unlike a lot of utopia’s this one doesn’t leave much to look forward to
July 29, 2020
An engineering plan for the unconventional way of doing government with a critique of the modern way of governing and democracy mixed in. As everything Moldbug ever wrote this work should be digested with a grain of salt, although the book reads nicely and has quite a bit of humour. Moldbug proposes a technical and economical solution basically converting a state into a corporation that functions as a state assigned to a certain land having contracts with its customer inhabitants. He touches subjects of order, security, unproductive population and its support, peacemaking and most importantly the drives that would make such a system better than what we have at hand right now. Even though the plan sounds a bit dreamy and hard to implement in reality given the existence of aggressive states that are not tied by the same restrictions Moldbug's corporations are, the book gives the reader a focused perspective of how the countries could function in a drastically different way from usual.
June 8, 2021
There are not enough works of vision being produced today. Moldbug at least gives us one.
Those new to his philosophy of Neo-Reaction may be surprised to note his ideal world is not some sepia-toned vision of an ideal past or a morbid, blood-drenched ode to dark gods. There is, in fact, no suggestion of one race or religion being superior to the others outside his occasional digs at Protestantism.
Moldbug's interest is in crafting a world where liberty for the greatest number is consistent with order and at least somewhat compatible with the state of technological progression and varieties of human organization we have grown accustomed to.
Like all Utopias, the question to be asked is what it would take to get there. He doesn't entertain that question in this text. He only entertains the possibility and the probability, which I would rate as 1 out of 52 in my lifetime (I'm 31 at the time of this writing).
Those new to his philosophy of Neo-Reaction may be surprised to note his ideal world is not some sepia-toned vision of an ideal past or a morbid, blood-drenched ode to dark gods. There is, in fact, no suggestion of one race or religion being superior to the others outside his occasional digs at Protestantism.
Moldbug's interest is in crafting a world where liberty for the greatest number is consistent with order and at least somewhat compatible with the state of technological progression and varieties of human organization we have grown accustomed to.
Like all Utopias, the question to be asked is what it would take to get there. He doesn't entertain that question in this text. He only entertains the possibility and the probability, which I would rate as 1 out of 52 in my lifetime (I'm 31 at the time of this writing).
June 30, 2020
Terrific read for the red pill inclined. Despite, or even because of, their medieval origins, Moldbug's ideas are a fresh take on what a future international order based on security could look like. What a refreshing intellectual departure of the tired praises of liberalism and Enlightenment values which have duly delivered the demoralised corrupt society we inhabit. This book will shake the foundations of your belief, but you'll thank the author for it. If you're looking for a different conception of the future and aren't afraid to tread on what The Cathedral considers "dangerous" ideological grounds, 'Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century' will entertain and intrigue you for a couple of hours.
February 23, 2023
Moldbug no longer holds this "Patchwork" view, but the book is a good idea of what a breakdown of the current democratic-republics might look like in our apparent Amazon/Facebook/Google lead future. It's a good read to see how a corporate-led micro-country might work in reality, even though it would actually be pretty terrifying. You should also read Democracy the God that Failed by Hans Herman Hoppe if you're interested in this anarcho-monarchy stuff.
I literally can't wait for my county sized micro-country to eventually hold to divine right where the divine is our deus ex machina made by heckin Elon Musk!
I literally can't wait for my county sized micro-country to eventually hold to divine right where the divine is our deus ex machina made by heckin Elon Musk!
February 16, 2025
I think the author has some very, very serious deep-seated issues of unimaginable proportions. Someone hurt him really bad and I even kind of feel sorry for him. The book may as well be renamed as : patchwork: the ramblings of a mentally unstable person. It reads like a rage fueled writing of a teenager or a young adult who got rejected by everything and everyone and now craves to establish for himself through writing at least a meagre speck of „power“ to alleviate his feelings of inadequacy. Think of tryhard edgelord.
Won‘t be breaking down the political system presented in the book, not worthy.
All I’ll say about it is that under the guise of achieving “world peace and security” is actually just a perverse new world order in which himself and the rest of the tech class can live like kings while you (“a regular joe”) slave away for them with no say in anything. It’s very indicative that lately we had a chance to find out this political system and his author are being supported by American tech billionares(one of which did a nazi salute recently) .Pretty obvious what’s going on. A group of people infected with insatiable greed and hunger for power. + a narcissism diagnose of course. For them it’s NEVER enough.
Won‘t be breaking down the political system presented in the book, not worthy.
All I’ll say about it is that under the guise of achieving “world peace and security” is actually just a perverse new world order in which himself and the rest of the tech class can live like kings while you (“a regular joe”) slave away for them with no say in anything. It’s very indicative that lately we had a chance to find out this political system and his author are being supported by American tech billionares(one of which did a nazi salute recently) .Pretty obvious what’s going on. A group of people infected with insatiable greed and hunger for power. + a narcissism diagnose of course. For them it’s NEVER enough.
December 11, 2025
psued chud slop from someone who thinks he is much smarter than he actually is. unfortunately his ideas are very influential, so this is important reading for anyone researching the rise of silicon valley fascism.
May 20, 2019
I like Moldbug's analysis, but I fear it's too libertarian in nature for a solution.
February 6, 2021
Must read
Read and read again and read more of the authors works. I'm very impressed and definitely will be learning more
Read and read again and read more of the authors works. I'm very impressed and definitely will be learning more
May 9, 2025
A beautiful vision for those that don't believe all people to be innately valuable.
Read
November 11, 2025Mt merda
December 18, 2025
Идеи о политическом устройстве будущих государств - неореакционном, феодальном
February 21, 2025
To rate this book is little hard, it is absolutely disgusting rambling by psychopath who not only doesn't care about humanity, but who actively despises it. There is little to no argumentation (no argumentation actually) why the proposed system should be better simply for the reason that the author knows it won't be (or he doesn't know, in which cases his ignorance is crime by itself)
Still, read the book, because the broligarchs trying to control us love it, so you know what you stand against
Still, read the book, because the broligarchs trying to control us love it, so you know what you stand against
December 21, 2025
Patchwork is the political manifesto of Curtis Yarvin. It argues for techno-authoritarianism, where government is literally run as a corporation with the President as CEO and running the country as his personal fiefdom with little to no restrain on his power. He is now the darling of the MAGA movement. I wrote of his philosophy as the last stage of corruption of the right wing of the libertarian movement in this essay. The Enigma of Donald Trump Part 2 That essay stands alone and is independent of Part 1.
The book is available free at Yarvin's website.
The book is available free at Yarvin's website.
March 8, 2018
I have so often been told that Moldbug and the "Dark Enlightenment" are bad, bad, BAD, that I had to read his prescription for utopia myself. He expounds a strange conception of a return to city-states, and government run as a business. (I can only wonder what he thinks of Ian Wallace and the "Galactic Limited" of the Croyd series.)
February 17, 2022
Borrowing from Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Moldbug speculates about what a "no voice, all exit" government would look like, with the "exit" part of it enabled by a context of many (small?) competing states (viz. the "patchwork").
In other words: a government run like a company.
In other words: a government without separation of powers over time (elections), but limited by (1) shareholder influence and (2) the spatial dimension (borders).
In other words: a government run like a company.
In other words: a government without separation of powers over time (elections), but limited by (1) shareholder influence and (2) the spatial dimension (borders).
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews