Something something raw milk.

Something something grass fed beef.

Parasovereign Litmus Test Note: This is not an ethical or utilitarian judgment. A system may be highly useful, innovative, or ethical and still not qualify as parasovereign. This framework is purely classificatory. ⸻ Step 1 — Ownership • Does a company, foundation, board, or identifiable group own or legally steward the system? • Yes → Not Parasovereign • No → Step 2 ⸻ Step 2 — Protocol Authority • Can a single actor or small group decide or dictate changes to the rules or parameters? • Yes → Not Parasovereign • No → Step 3 ⸻ Step 3 — Permission to Participate • Can anyone run a node, validate, transact, or publish without needing approval, licensing, or gatekeeping? • No → Not Parasovereign • Yes → Step 4 ⸻ Step 4 — Suppression Resilience • If suppressed in one place, can the system reappear elsewhere by redeploying code or reviving the idea, without institutional permission? • No → Not Parasovereign • Yes → Step 5 ⸻ Step 5 — Persistence as Idea • If all instances vanished, could the system be reconstructed from the concept alone (like language, proof of work, public–private key pairs)? • No → Not Parasovereign • Yes → ✅ Parasovereign

Engineered parasovereign systems (Bitcoin, Nostr, Tor) are deliberately designed to resist capture and suppression. Their seed is explicit—a protocol, a proof, a key pair—that anyone can rediscover, reinstantiate, and propagate without institutional approval.

Emergent parasovereign systems (family, language, religion, commodity money) arise spontaneously through human interaction. Their seed is woven into culture itself, carried forward unconsciously, and revived again and again, even across collapses of civilization.

Parasovereign systems are ideas—like the wheel, fire, language, proof of work, or cryptographic key pairs. They have no owner and no governing institution. Like dormant seeds, they may lie forgotten or unimplemented for centuries, but they never vanish. Once conditions allow, they reawaken, take root again, and spread without requiring permission or authority.