400 'Tech Utopian' Refuges Consider New Crypto-Friendly State (latimes.com) 80
"Nearly 400 students, many of them entrepreneurs, have so far made the journey to Forest City to study everything from coding to unconventional theories on statehood," reports Bloomberg.
"They're building crypto projects, fine-tuning their physiques and testing whether a shared ideology — rather than just shared territory — can bind a community." They have descended on Forest City to attend Network School, the brainchild of former Coinbase Inc. executive and "The Network State" author Balaji Srinivasan. In this troubled megaproject once envisaged to house some 50 times its current population, they're conducting a real-life experiment of sorts with Srinivasan's vision of "startup societies" defined less by historical territory than shared beliefs in technology, cryptocurrency and light regulation... Mornings are spent in product sprints and coding sessions; afternoons in seminars exploring topics from the Meiji Restoration to Singapore's statecraft and the mechanics of decentralized governance. Guest lectures double as both technological deep dives and ideological sermons, according to half a dozen students interviewed by Bloomberg. The campus also mirrors Silicon Valley's infatuation with longevity and health, right down to a commercial-grade gym and specially designed workout routines. Students follow a protein-heavy diet...
After co-founding DNA testing startup Counsyl in 2008 and serving as its chief technology officer, Srinivasan spent five years at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, first as general partner and then as board partner. He joined Coinbase as CTO in 2018 when the crypto exchange bought a portfolio company he oversaw and left after a little over a year, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a 2013 speech at Y Combinator's Startup School, Srinivasan brought his ideas about what he saw as a fundamental conflict between some modern nation-states and innovation to a wider audience. In the address, he advocated for Silicon Valley's "ultimate exit" from the U.S., which he argued was obsolete and hostile to innovators. In essence: If the society you live in is broken, why not just "opt out" and create a new one?
"The Network State: How To Start a New Country," published in 2022, expanded on Srinivasan's "exit" concept to outline how online, ideologically aligned communities can use crypto and digital tools to form new, decentralized states. A network state can be geographically dispersed and bound together by the internet and blockchains, he says, and the aim is to gain diplomatic recognition... On the Moment of Zen podcast in September 2023, he outlined how the "Gray Tribe" — entrepreneurs, innovators and thinkers — can retake control of San Francisco from the Blues using a variety of tactics, like allying with local police. The effort would involve gaining control of territory, according to Srinivasan, who didn't advocate for violence. "Elections are just the cherry on the cake," he said. "Elections are just a reflection of your total control of the streets."
The cost of attending Network School "starts at $1,500 per month, including lodging and food, for those who opt for a shared room."
"They're building crypto projects, fine-tuning their physiques and testing whether a shared ideology — rather than just shared territory — can bind a community." They have descended on Forest City to attend Network School, the brainchild of former Coinbase Inc. executive and "The Network State" author Balaji Srinivasan. In this troubled megaproject once envisaged to house some 50 times its current population, they're conducting a real-life experiment of sorts with Srinivasan's vision of "startup societies" defined less by historical territory than shared beliefs in technology, cryptocurrency and light regulation... Mornings are spent in product sprints and coding sessions; afternoons in seminars exploring topics from the Meiji Restoration to Singapore's statecraft and the mechanics of decentralized governance. Guest lectures double as both technological deep dives and ideological sermons, according to half a dozen students interviewed by Bloomberg. The campus also mirrors Silicon Valley's infatuation with longevity and health, right down to a commercial-grade gym and specially designed workout routines. Students follow a protein-heavy diet...
After co-founding DNA testing startup Counsyl in 2008 and serving as its chief technology officer, Srinivasan spent five years at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, first as general partner and then as board partner. He joined Coinbase as CTO in 2018 when the crypto exchange bought a portfolio company he oversaw and left after a little over a year, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a 2013 speech at Y Combinator's Startup School, Srinivasan brought his ideas about what he saw as a fundamental conflict between some modern nation-states and innovation to a wider audience. In the address, he advocated for Silicon Valley's "ultimate exit" from the U.S., which he argued was obsolete and hostile to innovators. In essence: If the society you live in is broken, why not just "opt out" and create a new one?
"The Network State: How To Start a New Country," published in 2022, expanded on Srinivasan's "exit" concept to outline how online, ideologically aligned communities can use crypto and digital tools to form new, decentralized states. A network state can be geographically dispersed and bound together by the internet and blockchains, he says, and the aim is to gain diplomatic recognition... On the Moment of Zen podcast in September 2023, he outlined how the "Gray Tribe" — entrepreneurs, innovators and thinkers — can retake control of San Francisco from the Blues using a variety of tactics, like allying with local police. The effort would involve gaining control of territory, according to Srinivasan, who didn't advocate for violence. "Elections are just the cherry on the cake," he said. "Elections are just a reflection of your total control of the streets."
The cost of attending Network School "starts at $1,500 per month, including lodging and food, for those who opt for a shared room."
A school to train Fascists (Score:2, Informative)
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Honestly, I think there's only one way in which these libertarian secessionists will ever get their desired country that they keep trying for, which is, LOTS and LOTS of money, used to buy a tiny plot of land from one or more impoverished countries that they'll recognize as independent, and to buy recognition from as many impoverished countries as they can, as well as to buy protection from multiple PMCs and private militias, as well as to go out of their way to avoid ticking off the US, Russia, and China.
I
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+1 for the excellent pun ;)
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A school to train Fascists
But enough about Stanford ...
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
From what I can see, they seem more libertarian than fascist. So... basically the exact opposite.
"retake control of San Francisco from the Blues" (Score:5, Informative)
Plus doing so by ignoring elections and using the police. That is a dystopian culture war, not a school.
This is a bunch of people too prissy or cowardly to join the Proud Boys or America First and show real swastikas -Still only Nazis, just too afraid to admit it.
Re:"retake control of San Francisco from the Blues (Score:5, Insightful)
100% this. "Hey, I'm not calling for violence - I'm just calling for seizing a city from the people who live there by subverting their local police force against them and bypassing elections unless we can ensure we'll win." Calling that "culture war" is to heavily play down the seriousness of what he is advocating; he is advocating for technofascist revolution.
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Plus doing so by ignoring elections and using the police. That is a dystopian culture war, not a school. This is a bunch of people too prissy or cowardly to join the Proud Boys or America First and show real swastikas -Still only Nazis, just too afraid to admit it.
Bizarre complaint on your part. What these groups lack - and why they fail - is literally the organized monopoly on violence that is the police.
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"is literally the organized monopoly on violence that is the police"
I'll take the police over the mob - literally and figuratively - any day.
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The person you are responding to probably very likely was a "defund the police" advocate, so you are likely just talking to a wall. You can't expect someone that sees Nazis everywhere to understand the importance of a police force.
Without the police, you would have gangs running the streets. That's much worse then what we have now and this whole Trump thing is temporary.
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The person you are responding to probably very likely was a "defund the police" advocate, so you are likely just talking to a wall. You can't expect someone that sees Nazis everywhere to understand the importance of a police force.
Why in the world would you imagine that?
I would like to know how you assume comments against a fascist plan to subvert and co-opt the police force in cause of revolution as somehow being inherently anti-police.
Unless, of course, you believe that the proper job of a police force actually -is- to end representative governance and impose fascism. Only then would it make sense.
So, the question would not be if I or anyone else here is anti-police. It is why you are anti-democracy, and how you somehow came to the
Re:"retake control of San Francisco from the Blues (Score:5, Interesting)
Its not even a culture war. Its people who seem to think that creating a society involves nothing more that coding sessions, sprints and getting a gym toned body. They sound like a bunch of socially maladjusted geek narcissists to me. Once they realise they have little in common other than tech and that you can't build a real society/cult without actual real estate to keep the sheep together (even the dumbest cult leaders figured that one out), it'll fall apart like most of them do. And given most of them will be single men its unlikely to make it to a 2nd generation even if it did succeed.
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Hey! Don't let the secret out. The con-artist running this thing really enjoy the easy money.
Sure... (Score:5, Informative)
It falls apart when people are born into it. Most children do the exact opposite of what their parents do, and that's why they always fall apart.
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How have the Amish survived your theory?
I do doubt the even medium term viability of a tech bro utopia, however. Without outside consequences, 95% of the members would end up in dungeon.
The Amish are pretty nasty (Score:3)
They survived by periodically kicking people out who don't conform or who aren't useful enough which is great for those people because they have basically no skills whatsoever and a lot of times can barely read because they aren't properly educated.
I mean think about it the land they occupy hasn't grown but they encourage large families. The math doesn't work out...
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Check your ignorance.
The land the Amish occupy HAS grown. Every so often, which a local group has decided it has grown too large to maintain the sense of community it so highly values, it splits up, with a subgroup going off to colonize a new area.
So, yeah. The math DOES work out.
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Check your ignorance.
Don't argue with that fuckwit. Malcontents like rsilvergun are perpetually enraged by the existence of Amish and other such faith communities that fail to fail.
Yes, you are correct: they are growing steadily, snapping up affordable land when large chunks of contiguous property becomes available. They prefer land that has low value to conventional agrarians; northern state rural property, where winter provides free refrigeration for slaughter. A bonus when it has tracts of hardwood lumber, which they cl
Re: The Amish are pretty nasty (Score:2)
Fuck the Amish and their puppy mills.
Yeah no (Score:2)
And you can readily Google that they average about seven kids. That is way too much growth for occasionally buying some land that isn't going to be very good land anyway.
So no the math still doesn't work out and that's why they periodically kick people out of the community.
Which would be fine if those people at least had a mother fucking high school education but they don't let them get that becau
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I know someone who chose to leave and he's a very successful small business owner. I can't speak for every Amish community, but his schooling was no worse than what he could have gotten in
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Mod parent up! This comment is actually well informed, something rare here lately.
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Re: Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. With the Amish you know full well what you're getting into, and you can opt out when you reach adulthood, no questions asked. With these clowns it's anyone's guess, but it's unlikely to end well.
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Informative)
How have the Amish survived your theory?
I do doubt the even medium term viability of a tech bro utopia, however. Without outside consequences, 95% of the members would end up in dungeon.
By pumping out 20+ kids, starting as soon as they're of the legal age of the U.S. to have sex. With some rarely prosecuted cases of them forcing under age girls to start, after being put in an arranged marriage.
Then Draconian, with a capital D, disciplining and out right preventing exposure to anything else till their worldview is installed through Pavlov conditioning. I.E. install pstd levels of fear for even minor infractions of their religious views.
Doesn't matter that 15 out of the 20 flee between the early teenage years to 18 years of age. Bringing with them horror stories of beating even toddlers within an inch of their lives for simple infractions like talking when not spoken to, or saying no to their parents. I'm not talking about how people now overreact to a simple spanking. I'm talking being beaten black and blue till near broken bone levels of disciplining. Or the previously mentioned underage sex.
Their worldview and belief survive by stretching the absolute right of religious freedom of and from worship, to it's absolute limit by claiming this treatment is part of their flavor of religion. While i hate how they treat their kids and adults. Especially since they no longer 'need' to pump out 20+ kids because 15-18 will die from disease and accident, though they do have the right to choose this if they want. I am 'very' hesitant to even consider the concept of pulling the protection of that absolute right for fear of its emotionally charged and justified righteous fury against this treatment. Be it used by others to justify the removal of the right for lesser perceived infractions. Like Catholic vs Protestant, or more likely Christianity vs 'any' other religion and lack their of.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh they rarely survive a few years. Even if on they are all on the same sheet of paper, it turns out a society actually needs a lot of people on different sheets of paper to function.
Not everyone gets to be "dear leader". Some people have to flip hamburgers or dear leader wont get any hamburgers. Even in "flat" heirachies where everyone is equal in power, you just need a diverse range of people and temperaments. Whos going to defend the colony. Whos going to collect the garbage. Whos going to clean up senile grandpa's shitty adult nappies. Well we can all take turns I SUPPOSE but ... gosh it starts sound awfully like communism at this point, and that doesn't seem to be what these galts gulchers are aiming for!
So all the "entrepeneurs" fly off to their whacky seasteading island or whatever the fuck, and ok great you now got libertopia. Ok time to start manuf.... wait, did nobody bring labourers? Where do we get labourers from when staying back home guarantees said labourers a protected income and actual workplace safety guarantees.
Its just dumb.
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Let's not forget that crypto is 99% scams, so they are bound to fall out with each other within minutes as one steals the other's shitty JPEGs and uses the "code is law" defence.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
This just sounds like a Buzzword 2.0 compliant of the time a bunch of other Libertarian business geniuses tried to make a "Galts Gulch" in Argentina ignoring the advice of any perpetually drunk, half-retarded American sex-pat in Mexico or the Philippines that they would be scammed to high heaven. Guess what happened, they were scammed and ended up suing which their lawyers were happy to take their money for and not return anything (they probably tried suing the lawyers after that).
So all the "entrepeneurs" fly off to their whacky seasteading island or whatever the fuck, and ok great you now got libertopia. Ok time to start manuf.... wait, did nobody bring labourers? Where do we get labourers from when staying back home guarantees said labourers a protected income and actual workplace safety guarantees.
They think they'll just be able to buy it... Without realising the only people who'll work for them are the people who literally can't get a job anywhere else. Meaning that the work will be shoddy as all hell.
Libertarians are anarchists who want police protection... notably without having to pay for it or be subject to it themselves.
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This is why communism failed: "Dear leader" didn't want his turn at senile grandpa's shitty adult nappies. It's an obvious story point in "Animal farm". Of course, capitalism suffers the same self-importance and elitism: Rich people don't want to pay taxes. It's why any country that admires people for owning stuff (capitalist), or simply getting a well-paying job (communist*), is doomed to fail. (*): Technically communists are all paid the same: Same wage, same bonus, same prize-money. As always, t
There won't be a 2nd generation (Score:2)
Most of them will be single maladjusted geeks with very few women. The laws of biology apply even to them as they'll figure out one day.
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Sounds like stupid-central (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously the instigators will still profit, but the marks are just getting ripped off.
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Agreed. This may be delusional up to the top-level.
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These are the modern equivalent to Trump University students.
Probably. Deep desire to get rich quick, massively overestimating their own skills and insights, no understanding of reality and how complex most things are and what it takes to get things to actually work for a longer time. Idiots with delusions.
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It's a really good scam. There are so many new-rich crypto bros who basically got investing advice from memes and some of them got lucky.
The whole community overestimates it's intelligence or what it takes to succeed without favorable starting conditions and RNG.
Espousing their values loudly while selling them anything is gonna be pretty lucrative for awhile as that demographic shed's it's merely-lucky constituents.
No Big 3 - this will fail (Score:3, Interesting)
Creed is shared beliefs in the fundamental nature of reality. Code is a set of moral strictures like the 10 Commandments. Cult is shared worship and communal celebration. Crypto-utopians have a mild version of Creed, and thats about it.
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Crypto-utopians do have something akin to a code, even if it is involves little more than justifying the exploitation and oppression of all those they consider inferior.
Also have something akin to cult - that these incels are racially, intellectually and physically superior to all others and therefore have a mandate to control everyone and everything.
They have a sick and broken culture, but it is a relatively complete cultural construct.
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Are these 400 "students" all of the same race? I wasn't aware of that. Was it in the article or are you just assuming?
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Protection (Score:1)
Any way to build a wall around them and maybe disconnect them from the Internet? You just know they're the kinds of assholes that will be feeding their AIs by hammering websites for no good reason, posting garbage to social media, and generally just making everything worse.
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It's a bunch of broken people meeting in a broken city which was carved out of the Malaysian jungle. It should be simple to blow up the bridges and cut all the cables going in.
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They'll do it themselves.
Every attempted isolated "society" of "visionaries" has so far failed, this one, if it ever gets that far, will be no exception.
If anything, a bunch of morons with no other skills than "trading crypto" will die off even faster than usual.
Swap crypto for 'AI utopia' and I'm in (Score:3)
Modern commune (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Modern commune (Score:5, Interesting)
Like hippie communes in the 1960s, New Age retreats in the 80s and everything since: Naive, idealistic people want to re-invent society. It works, right up until they discover that people are people.
This is really the opposite of a commune, communes share resources (or are supposed to). They were prolific in the 60s because of draconian law enforcement and scarce resources (especially in Europe in the 60s). This, on the other hand is a pyramid scam at the very best, designed to shuffle money from people at the bottom to the very top and whoda thunk a bunch of Libertarian business geniuses would be the ones who are most easily scammed.
They need to be on the seas and require a gunship. (Score:2)
There is no more unclaimed territory aside from Antarctica. Therefore any new state has to be floating around in the ocean. And if your ship is on the high seas without a flag, then it is subject to piracy and boarding by various coast guards. Therefore the only way to have a new state is onboard an armed gunship (piracy deterrent) AND you will have to make sure no nation perceives you as a threat (you aren't giving refuge to dissidents etc.).
vision of "startup societies" will fail... (Score:3)
Settlers? (Score:2)
It won't survive (Score:3)
Long-term, societies based on a shared ideology don't survive. Whether because of immigration or children just not agreeing with their parents' ideology, they quickly end up with a population that doesn't share a single ideology. Then either the society learns how to deal with sharing territory but not ideology, or it kicks the non-conformers out and dies as it can't replace it's population, or it turns into a police state/cult compound. That last one doesn't end well either unless it starts out the size of a small country and manages to avoid being inside the jurisdiction of another country.
When the society is being founded by grifters and con artists, implosion's going to happen even faster.
Crack-up Capitalism (Score:3)
Recommended reading: Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy [macmillan.com] for anyone who wants a clear description of the grift and its dangers.
Water (Score:2)
The ontogeny of coinness /s (Score:3)
In this primordial soup of computational being, the blockchain is not simply a ledger but the neural cortex of distributed existentiality, each transaction an atomic flash in the evolution of post-fiat consciousness. Thus, memes spiral at light speed through the Law of Accelerating Returns, catalyzing a punctuated equilibrium in the continuity of trustlessness.
Fifty-fifty odds this ends up a sex cult (Score:2)
If it hasn't already started, how long before Srinivasan has a group of "chosen" top performers that also happen to all be his sexual partners?
Humor deficit detected (Score:2)
Is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone? Or just for the YOB and PT?
Just joking. For insanely greedy people no amount of imaginary money can make them happy.
And I'm only asking for a sick friend. Too late to even worry about it.
Crypto is for Crime (Score:2)
IF the US had a President who wasn't running a criminal regime, he/she would shut that shit down. Crypto is the only currency accepted by hackers who hold hospital patient data for ransom, threatening the lives of innocent Americans. Supported by Putin, these constitute an act of War against America. Biden and Obama were too big pussies to go to the UN and declare these attacks as economic acts of war, requiring a military response. Putin won't live forever, but Trump is such a chump he'll never put an end
Hear him out first (Score:2)
before calling him a fascist and feeling smug about yourself.
The podcast "WTF happened in tech" by Peter Diamandis is a good source. Give it a try! Link here: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/... [apple.com]
His worldview is in essence:
- the US is in decline because it has abandoned the values that made it great.
- those values (openness to immigration, respect for private property and freedom etc.) survive online
- China is also on the wrong path (demographic decline, closed society)
so he concludes t