One of the most surprising discoveries to emerge from Liberty Minecraft was what NullCase called the "private commons" -- privately owned spaces that their owners voluntarily opened to the public. These were not mandated by any rule or incentivized by any server mechanic. They emerged spontaneously, created by property owners who found it worthwhile to share their land. The concept sounds like a contradiction in terms, but NullCase saw it as one of the strongest validations of the server's core philosophy.

The Concept

In conventional political thinking, "commons" and "private property" are opposing ideas. A commons is shared by all; private property is controlled by one. Liberty Minecraft demonstrated that this dichotomy is false. A private owner can choose to grant access to everyone while retaining ultimate control. The critical difference between a private commons and a public commons is that the private owner can revoke access, set conditions, maintain the space, and make decisions about its future without requiring consensus or bureaucratic approval.

Just saying that, it sounds like a contradiction in terms. It works because the owner decides and sometimes they permit everyone.

This insight -- that private ownership and public access are compatible when the owner freely chooses to share -- became one of the defining observations of the Liberty Minecraft experiment.

Decentral Park

The most prominent private commons in Liberty Minecraft was Decentral Park, located in New Stockholm, the server's most successful private town. The name was a deliberate play on New York's Central Park, and the parallel ran deeper than wordplay. Just as Manhattan's most valuable residential properties cluster around Central Park, New Stockholm's highest-priced builds surrounded Decentral Park.

The site had a history of creative destruction. It began as the Puncher's Guild Logging Camp, a working lumber operation. Over time, as New Stockholm developed and the surrounding area became more valuable, a group of players reimagined the space and planted crops, transforming it into a community garden.

Decentral Park was open to the public and unprotected -- anyone could farm, harvest, or modify the space. This openness came at a cost:

Originally the site of a Logging Camp, after a year of creative destruction a group of players has decided to re-imagine the park and plant crops. Decentral Park is open to the public and unprotected. As a result, the site has been griefed many times and spends long stretches in disarray. It changes consistently and sometimes looks quite nice.

The griefing was the price of openness, and the park's owners accepted it. Decentral Park was never pristine for long, but it was always alive -- always being remade, replanted, and reimagined by the community that used it. NullCase saw this as part of the story, not a flaw in the design.

The park's effect on surrounding property values was notable. New Stockholm properties near Decentral Park commanded premium prices, with some parcels listed at $810,000 -- enough in-game currency to purchase 65 million cooked chickens. NullCase drew the real-world parallel explicitly:

On this day, Manhattan island's highest valued residential properties are beside Central Park. Time will tell, but I can't help wondering how far comparisons of this sort will go.

Oak Hills and Beyond

The private commons model spread beyond New Stockholm. Pancen, the owner of the town of Oak Hills, created his own privately owned public space -- more orderly than Decentral Park, with a manicured aesthetic that reflected different priorities. By mid-2020, NullCase was noting the growth of the phenomenon across the server:

You're investing in more Private Commons. Oak Hills is really looking wonderful.

Other property owners contributed to the pattern in smaller ways. NullCase himself built a hedge maze on the north side of Spawn -- a modest garden with an apiary inside a greenhouse, sitting on what had become one of the highest-valued parcels of land in the world. He described it simply:

Privately owned, publicly accessible.

These projects shared common features. They used inexpensive materials. They were often completed quickly. They improved the aesthetic and functional value of surrounding properties. And they were all voluntary acts by property owners who gained nothing from sharing except the satisfaction of contributing to a community they valued.

Why Private Commons Emerge

The emergence of private commons in Liberty Minecraft was theoretically significant because it challenged a common objection to libertarian and anarcho-capitalist thought: that without public funding and government ownership, shared spaces like parks, gardens, and gathering places would not exist. The argument goes that rational self-interest would prevent anyone from creating spaces they could not charge for.

Liberty Minecraft demonstrated the opposite. Property owners created public spaces because they wanted to. Some did it to increase surrounding property values. Some did it for aesthetic reasons. Some did it because they enjoyed seeing other players use and modify spaces they had created. The motivations varied, but the result was consistent: privately owned public goods appeared wherever communities formed.

The key mechanism was property rights themselves. Because owners retained control, they could manage the tension between openness and degradation. A private commons could be griefed, and the owner could clean it up. A public road could be built, and the owner could restrict access if it was abused. The freedom to revoke access -- even if it was rarely exercised -- made the act of granting access sustainable.

The Relationship to the One Rule

The private commons concept was deeply connected to the one rule -- resolve nonviolent disputes nonviolently. In a system where property rights are absolute and violence is prohibited, the only way to create shared spaces is through voluntary action. No one could be compelled to open their land. No one could be taxed to fund a park. Every public amenity in Liberty Minecraft existed because someone chose to create it and chose to share it.

This voluntarism gave the private commons a quality that coerced public spaces lack: authenticity. Decentral Park was not the product of a committee or a tax levy. It was the product of individual decisions by people who cared enough to build something and then give others permission to use it. When NullCase called these spaces "great showpieces for our tiny communities," he was noting that they revealed something about the character of the people who built them -- and about the system that made such building possible.

I really love the option to visit a town and do some helpful work without even having to ask permission. It's all set up in advance: farming a bit of wheat to sell, or whatever.

The private commons stood as evidence that community-mindedness and private property are not enemies. They are, in fact, natural partners -- provided the community operates under a framework where voluntary action is the only permissible kind.

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