Great post, as always. Based on this line of thinking, I wonder, is the blockchain (any blockchain) the first "thing" not owned by the government? It doesn't exist within their physical jurisdiction (some functional copies of it might even be in space). Though it relies heavily on the Internet, if the Internet were shut down in a specific region it could go on living via ham radio, mesh networks, or private wide area networks. As blockchains thrive, they create an ecosystem to provide any and all services currently controlled in some way or another by government. For the first time, we might have realistic competition for government services.

Unfortunately, the blockchain isn't a "thing" in the physical sense. Though we may be members of a community online, we're still bags of meat in 3D space, needing to care for our needs within the physical jurisdiction of a government.

Reaching a consensus on reputation is perhaps the most challenging problem faced by voluntarists looking to setup a free society. If this nut can be cracked, then I believe everything else will fall into place

You mentioned previously plans to build a more detailed reputation system that would connect to an individual, not just to their posts. Care to elaborate on that further? Is it something you're working on related to Steemit or separately? Do you see it (whatever "it" might be) becoming functional within a year? 2? 5?

I agree with you, reputation is key. It's one of the reasons I don't use a pseudonym here. I'm Luke Stokes, so I'm Hive account@lukestokes. Hopefully someday the distinction between my name "in the real world" and the name I build online will not only be small, but the accuracy of the one will mirror the other as far as describing who I actually am and how I relate to the emergent properties that arise from my fellow humans around the world becoming us.