NullCase was the sole creator, operator, and philosophical architect of Liberty Minecraft. Over the course of five years, he built and maintained a Minecraft server that functioned as a living experiment in libertarian governance, private property, and free markets. He was simultaneously the server's administrator, its chief writer (producing over 300 blog posts for libertyminecraft.com), its economist, its judge, and -- somewhat reluctantly -- its ruler.

Vision and Philosophy

NullCase designed Liberty Minecraft from first principles. Rather than imposing a complex rulebook on players, he distilled governance down to a single rule: "Resolve nonviolent disputes with nonviolence." This deceptively simple axiom formed the foundation for everything that followed -- property rights, free markets, capitalism, and justice all emerged as consequences of that one constraint.

His philosophical influences were eclectic. He drew from Ludwig von Mises on markets, Lao Tzu on the art of non-intervention, and Machiavelli on the pragmatics of leadership. He was not, by his own account, a libertarian -- he rejected the Non-Aggression Principle on the grounds that aggression can be consensual (as in boxing or chess), and he considered the label strategically disadvantageous. Instead, he described himself as someone reasoning from first principles about morality, logic, and evidence.

I'm not a genius billionaire with a high social IQ. Anyways, I genuinely tried to do a good job here.

His approach to server economics was grounded in Austrian economics. He maintained sound money with no inflation, resulting in what he described as a hundredfold increase in purchasing power almost every year. He never taxed players, and he refused to subsidize anyone or distribute arbitrary rewards. Players earned wealth by providing value to one another.

NullCase and Haksndot

NullCase and Haksndot were two different people. NullCase created and operated the server, enforced the one rule, managed plugin development, and wrote the blog. Haksndot was a player -- one of the server's most active and influential, but a player nonetheless, subject to the same rules and constraints as everyone else.

Haksndot built Origo Station, developed New Stockholm, operated the Rack Exchange, and funded the TARP reforestation program. NullCase wrote about Haksndot's activities on the blog the same way he wrote about any player's -- with appreciation and sometimes admiration, but from the outside. Their relationship was one of the server's defining dynamics: the philosopher-operator and his most ambitious citizen.

The Operator's Burden

Running Liberty Minecraft gave NullCase an unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable education in what it means to hold power. He was candid about the psychological experience of authority, even on a small scale.

It's hard to imagine that being lord over a small community on a silly game would give someone the feeling of power. Thinking that way is probably why I was surprised. It's a little embarrassing too, because it's exciting and this reaction, my reaction was disturbing to me.

He admitted that banning rule-breakers felt good, and that this reaction troubled him. His one rule served as a check on his own authority as much as on player behavior. He recognized that real-world leaders face this temptation at vastly greater scale, and he valued the constraint that principled governance placed on his own impulses.

NullCase also discovered that explaining decisions to players was costly and often futile. Players wanted justifications but were frequently unsatisfied even when given thorough answers. He speculated that charging money for explanations might be the only way to align incentives -- if the knowledge was truly valuable to them, they would pay for it.

The Mansion Gift

After a full month of operating the New World, NullCase was still living in a hole in the ground beneath Spawn. In September 2018, Haksndot noticed this and decided to do something about it. He commissioned the builder Rehns to construct a mansion at Spawn -- and then gifted it to NullCase.

Haksndot: I was sad to see that you were living in a hole in the ground under spawn, so I thought that I would get you a proper house.

NullCase: what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Haksndot: yes, NullCase, a small token of appreciation for all your hard work.

The moment of revelation -- with Rehns and other players present -- became one of the server's most celebrated stories. NullCase was genuinely surprised. In his blog post about the event, he wrote that the day before, he had been "burned out and run down," struggling with challenging problems. Haksndot's gift was a gesture of gratitude from a player to the person who had built the world they all inhabited.

Capital Management and Developer Relations

NullCase ran Liberty Minecraft on player donations without losing money, though he valued his own time at zero. He was strategic about spending, treating server development as a capital management exercise. He commissioned work from plugin developers like RoboMWM, Pheonix919, and Stonar96, and he timed his investments to avoid paying inflated rates during periods of high demand.

Competition among buyers drives up prices.

When Minecraft's 1.13 Aquatic Update drove a spike in developer demand, NullCase deliberately held back spending, preserving capital to invest when other server operators had exhausted their budgets. This counter-cyclical approach to development spending was characteristic of his broader economic thinking.

Media and Outreach

NullCase appeared on at least two libertarian podcasts -- Kenn Williamson's Reality Anxiety and Laura Blodgett's The Happy Libertarian -- to discuss Liberty Minecraft's design and purpose. He maintained an active presence on Twitter (@NathanLibertyMC), Facebook, Reddit (r/LibertyMinecraft), and through the libertyminecraft.com blog, which served as the primary record of server life, economics, and philosophy.

Lessons and Legacy

In his final post, "Lessons from Liberty," NullCase reflected on five years of operating a free society. He was characteristically self-deprecating, noting that he was "much sharper" when the project began and had come to realize he was "kind of an idiot." But the essay revealed hard-won insights about governance, property, conflict resolution, and the limits of persuasion.

He wrestled openly with Machiavelli's assertion that unarmed prophets are always destroyed -- that persuasion without the ability to compel ultimately fails. NullCase found this claim haunting precisely because he could not refute it through practice, even as he believed the argument disproved itself logically. His inability to resolve this tension was, by his own account, one of the reasons he chose to close the server.

I was much sharper when I started this project. At least, that's how I remember it. Over the last 5 years I've come to realize that I'm kind of an idiot. The strategy I used to run Liberty Minecraft was well suited to me. For this reason alone you might want to do something different.

Despite the self-effacing tone, NullCase presided over a server that ran for five years without losing money, maintained order through a single rule, witnessed the organic emergence of towns, markets, and social institutions, and produced a substantial written archive documenting the entire experiment. His vision for the future -- cryptographic commodities, player accounts existing outside games, property that no operator can seize -- anticipated developments in blockchain gaming that would gain mainstream attention years later.