# Frontiers only work when they are permissionless ### An emotional argument An awkward truth is that the people who open frontiers are often not the most tasteful of people. Leif Erickson was an outlaw. Ernest Shackleton was a crackpot. Brigham Young was a heretic. The puritans were assholes. The people who first left Africa or set out onto the Pacific in catamarans probably weren’t well-liked either. (And this isn’t even touching how bad many intellectual frontier openers were). These aren’t the people who win spots on heavily publicized space flights, make it through a rigorous astronaut selection program, or convince people with power to give them a shot. ### A deductive logical argument If going past a current frontier was clearly a good idea, someone would have done it. Therefore, going into/past/opening a frontier is by definition a ‘bad idea’ at the time. Bad ideas have lots of reasons why they shouldn’t work, so if you need permission to pursue them you will not be allowed to most of the time. Even if there are some foresighted permission-granters there are some ideas that even *they* think are bad so the argument is fractal. ### Related * [[Opening frontiers requires self-sufficiency]] * [[Frontiers lead to absolute games instead of relative games]] * [[Government monopolizing any role is dangerous]] * [[Robust Technology]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Frontiers+only+work+when+they+are+permissionless) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Frontiers+only+work+when+they+are+permissionless)