Overthrowing The Network State: An Initial Critique and Alternatives
NEW SERIES: Overthrowing the Network State in collaboration with Blockchaingov In the first episode of our series 'Overthrowing The Network State' (OTNS), we dive into the world of Balaji Srinivasan's recent book The Network State. The purpose of this series is to critique The Network State while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectua...
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Transcript
Hi everyone. This is the Blockchain Socialists and this is the first episode in a new series that I'm starting that I've called Overthrowing the Network State in which in collaboration with a group called Blockchain Gov, we'll be tackling, Balaji Srinivasan's new book called The Network State. And what we're going to be doing is providing an intellectually honest criticism of the book while also trying to elucidate what are the things about it that are attracting so many people in the crypto world and sort of provide some alternatives to it because we have quite a lot of criticisms about the idea, but we acknowledge that there are a lot of things that are, interesting about the idea from a conceptual point of view. But so for this, series, it's going to be lasting probably the next couple of months in which we're going to be, releasing episodes, once a week. Each episode is going to have one other person co hosting, an interview or discussion with me. That other person will be from Blockchain Gov. And for today's episode, I have with me Primavera Di Filippi, who you may remember from a previous episode or interview where we talked about her work on executional theory. But maybe before I go on any farther, Primavera, if you want, for those who maybe haven't listened to that episode or may have forgotten, would you want to explain, who you are and what Blockchain Gov is?
Yes. Hi, everyone. I'm a researcher at, the Saint Arras in Paris as well as a faculty associate at the Bachman Center at Harvard. And, I'm a legal scholar, and, it's been now, actually ten years, where my research is pretty much all and exclusively focused on blockchain technology and, in particular, looking at the legal and regulatory challenges, but also all the new opportunities that it brings in terms of governance, and governance innovation. And, and so as part of my research, I have, initiated, in 2001, a new research project that is funded by the European Commission, which we called Blockchain Gov. And, the idea with Blockchain Gov is to look at, how blockchain technologies can be used and adopted by, existing institutional frameworks, both public and private. So instead of looking at how blockchain technology can be used to bypass institutions, We're looking at how blockchain technology can actually be instrumentalized, by existing institutions in order to improve their governance, but on the inside, but also on the outside. And so how blockchain technology can also be used as a tool for global and international coordination, addressing global challenges and so forth. And, and one of the big strands that, we're analyzing within this research project is the global governance issue. And, we're trying to analyze ways in which global challenges and coordination between multiple actors of different nature can be improved, through this technology and what are the challenges that needs to be tackled.
And so, you know, Blockchain Gov is its own separate entity in which I'll be collaborating with for this series. So I just wanted to kind of, like, let people know that not everyone, of course, from Blockchain Gov agrees or thinks, exactly the way I do for everything, in regards to the crypto world or or politics or what have you. But I think as part of this convert a part of this experiment, for doing this series, I'm hoping that this differences in ideas and thoughts will be, a fruitful way to have more engaging conversations and discussions about all the different topics and concepts that we're probably going to be covering throughout the series. But so for this series, I'm the the purpose of it is to kind of bring on experts who, and in my opinion I think, and primavera, let me know if you think differently, but, people who know more than Balaji on a lot of the things that he talks about in the book. So we can have those people come on and tell us kind of, correct takes on what, you know, in terms of geopolitics, in terms of economics, in terms of culture, all the different things that he talks about in the book, what are sort of the agreed upon sort of consensus on what these things are and how they work. Part of this series as well is we would like to explore kind of talking to people that maybe disagree with us a lot when it comes to the network state and its theses. Since it has attracted the attention of a lot of people in crypto world, I think it's going to be really interesting to have a conversation with them to kind of delve a little bit deeper into why these things are, or why these ideas are sort of attracting, a lot of different types of people in the crypto space. Yeah. And maybe just add, I think that,
the like, there is no I don't think we have any, claim that, there is something that is specifically right and wrong. It's just that there are different values. And, we want to actually dig into what is it in this book that, somehow goes against perhaps some of our values or some of our, beliefs, but also trying to explore and discuss with people that might agree, in order to really identify both whether, Terrace meets into these arguments that maybe we are not capable of seeing. But also trying to extrapolate, from those discussions, from both the people that agree and the people that disagree. Extrapolate maybe something that everyone has in common, because getting to read this book is a big challenge, for many different reasons. And yet, people are reading this book. And so what is what is the thing that, accommodate all those people? And is there this underlying principle that somehow Balaji is tapping into with the network state? And we want to try and, like, bring this underlying principle forward so that it becomes more clear that the network state is only one out of many possible instances of this principle. And, and, of course, then opening up and paving the way for different and alternative instances of this same underlying concept to come into the discussion.
Right. Yeah. And I I kind of think of it because the series is called overthrowing the network states. Right? It's it's not necessarily for me about, like, abolishing any talks about things that are associated with the network state or, like, similar ideas, but overthrowing it in the sense of, like, at the same time providing an alternative to it or providing sort of a moving beyond the conceptual framework that Balaji provides and instead sort of broadening that, that framework and that type of thinking to show that there are, alternatives to it, which I think we'll talk about maybe more towards the end. Yeah. Exactly. I think it's overthrowing by providing
the better alternative that people will naturally, converge towards as opposed to trying to dismantle, the concept as such. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. I'll I'll definitely be open about my bias that, I think there are much better things out there and that I find a lot of things when I was reading Balaji's book, like, I was going through my notes the other day and I read it, you know, on an e reader and I put in notes like as I went through it and I had so many like WTFs and OMGs, and just like a lot of things that like I really really like felt strongly I disagreed about. But there was still, I mean, I finished the book and I still think that there is, there are certain seeds of interesting ideas in there that need to be expanded on or that need to be yeah, to be shown in a different light and not the way that Balaji kind of shows it. And that's the thing that's interesting,
a book that creates so much, so much WTF and so much, like, discomfort. That's quite an interesting book. This is like, not every book creates so much, like, strong feelings far or against
it. Yeah. I had a lot of strong it was like it was very difficult for me to finish the book. I'm not gonna lie. But I did do it. I did do it. But, I think maybe to sort of start off before we getting get too deep into the book, I would like to give just a quick introduction of who Belagi, Srinivasan is to sort of provide the foundation for properly understanding I think what goes into the book because Balaji has been extremely consistent, I think, for a long time about what he's about, which was interesting. But for those who don't know, Balaji is US born from Indian immigrants on Long Island according to Wikipedia. He went to Stanford University for his bachelor's, his master's, and his PhD. So he's been he sort of had formative years in the, Silicon Valley area. He is pretty well, famous for being the ex CTO of Coinbase, and as well-being a general partner at Anderson Horowitz, which I think he no longer is at the moment. But before that, he founded a genomics company called Council which sold sold for $375,000,000,000. And in 2013, he started a crypto company that was bought by Coinbase which is how he originally became the CTO of the company. In 2013, he gave a talk at, Y Combinator about what he what he titled Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit, which was basically about building an opt in society outside of The US run by technology. Sort of citing the usual libertarian tropes of seasteading that people like Peter Thiel really like, space colonization which people like Elon Musk really like, and he cites a lot of Mark Anderson, in the talk. But already from, like, you know, this is ten years ago now, he was talking about and really really hyper focusing on the idea of exit. Throughout the talk he also talks a lot about the book The Sovereign Individual, which is also a lot about exits and thinking about use how do we use digital technologies for, making that exit. Another thing that I think is pretty interesting to know about him is that he was considered to be he he was like sort of proposed as someone to be a Trump's FDA commissioner, which is really interesting because at the same time he's a strong believer in abolishing the FDA. I think probably, you know, his time starting the the genomics company probably has something to do with that, but he is very very anti FDA. He does not want it to exist and he is also, when it comes to politics, pretty obsessed with sort of critiquing the idea of cancel culture. He repeatedly sort of likes to use the idea of wokes or, like, wokeism as something that has, like, control over nearly every major institution in The United States. He has a lot of sort of connections to the what's called kind of like the dark enlightenment, sort of alt right type of philosophical figures like Curtis Yarvin, like Nick Land. He had this kind of sort of controversy at one point where one of his text messages or emails were leaked. I I can't remember what exactly was it about but he kind of basically suggested doxing a particular journalist, and he sort of said, you know, if things get hot, it may be interesting to sic the dark enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter, to dox them and turn them inside out with hostile reporting sent to their advertisers, friends, and contacts. So there's kind of like this there's some evidence that he sort of has has in the past sort of attempted to collaborate with these types of right wing figures. In his, in the network states, he has a lot of references again to The Sovereign Individual, this book which is, you know, loved by a lot of different libertarians and anarcho capitalists, and he also references a lot of the work of Curtis Yarvin who is a dark enlightenment figure, a thinker, an alt right intellectual figure. He is also, I mean, funny enough, the the creator of Urbit, which, is kind of like this, alternative peer to peer, computational system. And Curtis Yarvin, had like this it was called the, Mencius Goldbug blog, where he sort of talked about a lot of his ideas. A lot of the ideas he expressed were very very racist, and also expressed a kind of sympathy with a monarchy. So he has a lot in the past proposed America becoming a type of, monarchy ruled by, billionaires or ruled by Silicon Valley and things like this. And so all this to say is that throughout all this time, what's very common in his influences is this hyperfocus on exit and downplaying, you know, voice. If we use this framework of voice versus exit, he's very very pro exit, very very kind of, hand waves away the idea of voice as a solution to society's problems. He also has an obsession with the need for a frontier and that, you know, entrepreneurial men need to go into the frontier and kind of like build their own destinies, that there needs to be a place or an outlet for these type of people, to go out and, and take control of of the world in certain in certain aspects. A lot of people have sort of framed this, milieu of people as being kind of like post neoliberalism and not so much, neoliberalism as we think of it as such, but has a lot of similar strains in terms of like the history and the ideas of neoliberalism, but there are some important differences to it as well, which I think we'll we'll sort of dive into that as we go in through the series. So yeah, this is that that's Bellaghi. I don't know if you have anything to add there Primavera.
No. I think you did a very detailed and accurate description.
Okay. So I think maybe the way we can start with the network state is I can go through I just wanted to read, what he does in the book is he provides, like, a definition of the network state in one sentence, and then he does it in one paragraph. So maybe I can go through those two and then we can start from there. But so Balaji, he defines, a network state in a sentence. He says, a network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre existing states. So in this definition, he's kind of like providing a network state as just an alternative to living in actual states and kind of also as well I think alluding to competing with other states since it would require diplomatic recognition from those other states to be, to be considered, under this definition. A network state in a paragraph, he says, A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition. So in this definition, he's just going into a little bit more detail on what, it would actually take to make a network state. And I think what's really noticeable, of course, is that there would need to be an integrated cryptocurrency, in this entire setup as well, which is why the blockchain aspect plays such a big role in the in much of the ways that he sort of expands on what a network state is, but it still, of course requires a measure of diplomatic recognition. One of the things that I noticed that I think is really interesting in these definitions for me is that he uses the words collective action, which is a word that's usually associated with kind of like the Left and usually with, you know, collective action in terms of, like, labor strikes or or making some sort of political change, which is pretty interesting because generally he doesn't actually like a lot of those things that, it's usually associated with. So just to show a little bit that he kind of, he mixes up, in certain ways, in certain aspects, some ideas or seeds of ideas from the left and the right.
And maybe we can give us, like, the, the recipe for disaster, if we can call it like this. So in the book, he gives, a recipe, like, a step by step Right. Instruction about how do you create your network state. For step one is found your startup society, which I think even the name is an interesting name. So it's really like a society that is based on the startup approach, where anyone that can found a company can now potentially found a state. Step number two, organize it into a group capable of collective action. So again, this this capacity to act and not just to be a community, to discuss things, but really there needs to be, a a desire and a capacity to act on particular, aspects that matter for that particular startup society. Step number three, build trust offline and a crypto economy online, which is interesting because this is not just, like, this is not just this online community. Still step three is suggests that you have to start actually having, in person meetings in the physical world, in order to build trust between the various members of this startup society, while the internal economy of this society is done virtually through cryptocurrencies. Step number four, crowdfund physical nodes. Right? So once you actually manage to create trust amongst the people that you've met, now you can actually collectively buy land and housing and apartments in order for those communities to co live together. Step number five, digitally connect physical communities. So creating this network of separate distributed physical territory, that can now interact and communicate and, of course, trade and exchange with each other through cryptocurrencies. Step number six, conduct a on chain census because there needs to be a way to prove and demonstrate that there is a population within this capital society which has, a a a decent number of people that have a sufficient amount of incomes through the cryptocurrency transactions, but also that has a footprint in the real world through the real estate. And finally, step number seven, gain diplomatic recognition, which might be the most contentious one, I would say. Yeah. In the sense that there is this kind of beautiful naivete. But if you can prove that you have a population, money, and territory, that's enough of, of of the ingredients in order to able to claim diplomatic recognition by other states that will renegade their sovereignty on their own territory in order to give it to you in a perfectly peaceful manner.
Yeah. What I think is, it's so interesting that just like how how much its hand waved away. Just that it sort of assumed like, no, no, it'll happen, you know, just one way or another. But I I get the feeling that the network state kind of falls in the tradition of the sovereign individual very much in that it seems to be trying to bridge the gap between the sovereign and the the sort of idealism in the sovereign individual with reality and needing to, like, meet people in person sometimes. Because I get the impression that the sovereign individual was definitely, was very, very sort of, like, digitally utopian or, like, techno utopian. The network state still is techno utopian, but it is it's almost like he's trying to make those, like, small little leaps or connections into being, like,
actually politically viable in some way. Which which I will I will argue this is actually this is when the techno utopianism turns into techno dystopianism. Yeah. Because it's about like, as long as you stay into your virtual techno utopia, go for it. But trying to actually bring the techno utopia into the physical world in a competing manner with existing nation states, that's when the dystopia actually come into being. So I don't know if it's more politically viable or actually less politically viable. Well, yeah. So, like,
so reading this book, I I know that you, we talked about this before and you haven't played the game before, but, I there's a game called Bioshock that came out, like, I think in 2011 or something like that, which is, I mean a very good game. I really enjoyed it. But the the whole plot of the game is basically you're someone who is a survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and you come across, basically this kind of like Atlantis looking, place of, like, this entire city that's been built underwater. And you enter it, and basically you find out that it's been sort of created, by some billionaire or, like, entrepreneur from, you know, the nineteen fifties or something like that where he had sort of been able to use his money to build out the city in which, you know, they would be free from regulation. But it basically, he was able to attract a bunch of people to come to the city, and it became a complete dystopia, in the game. And so, like, you are this character trying to find a way out of this under underwater city while also, like, learning about the story of the entire thing. The the main the guy who who built it, his name is Andrew Ryan, and he basically helped create this thing called Adam, which is like this power ups then that you inject into yourself as a character to give you powers like being able to shoot fireballs out of your hands and and things like that. So, like, it was very funny. I felt like, you know, BioShock already sort of went through the, the dystopia that the type of things that is talked about in the network state sort of, would happen. So I think, yeah, if anybody wants to kind of figure out what the network state is in some ways, maybe you could play Bioshock.
I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God. No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone. I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose
rapture.
A city where the artist would not fear the sensor, where the scientist would not be bound by any morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small, and with the sweat of your brow, rapture can become your city as well.
But so some of the, other kind of, like, criticisms or problems that that I have with the network state is, of course, that it does have a very, in my opinion, bad understanding of politics, and a bad understanding of history as well. And it sort of, like, ignores almost like 90% of or more of the entirety of the history of colonialism. Because he is so like all we have to do is kind of like purchase islands or purchase land and then we'll just be able to somehow be able to create our own rule of law within, you know, the confines of some other nation states, which I find, I mean, pretty insane, to be honest.
Yeah. I think it's like, I think the the interesting thing, like, is to which extent is this question of diplomatic recognition actually important, right? If you buy land, of course you can set up like your small little rules about do you wanna make sure that everyone that comes to your premises should sign a contract that it's only gonna eat keto friendly stuff, you can do it. You want to make a you want to make a system in which, everyone that comes here has to wear very non colorful clothing. You can do it. So the the interesting thing is that most of what you can already do from, like, a private contractual manner doesn't require diplomatic recognition. The only time in which you require diplomatic recognition is because you want to extract yourself from the existing rules and regulation, of an existing state, which means that you literally want to violate, some of those rules, Meaning, you don't want to fulfill specific probably you don't want to pay taxes to the current state. That's probably one very important reason. Secondly, you don't want to abide by specific regulation. For instance, for FDA approval. Maybe you don't like the fact that, people cannot kill each other. Think like that. You know? So, basically, the only time in which diplomatic recognition is required is when you're actually stepping into a particular field that goes against public laws. And therefore the only justification why you would want to gain diplomatic recognition is to do something that the current sovereign state doesn't like you to do. And then assuming that just because you buy the territory and put a flag, all of Sweden, the nation state will be like, oh, okay. I'm not I'm gonna let you do everything you want as long as you don't leave that territory. That sounds very unlikely, especially if we consider the potential externalities that your actions within your small distributed territory might have on the external, or on the neighboring territories.
Right. I think I think that is, like, definitely true in countries where there is a, you know, a strong state or there is, you know, if I could call it this rule of law in, throughout the sort of territory that it, extends to. I think, what that kind of, like, have, like, believing that, dealing with the reality, what that means, I think, is that you have to go to basically poor countries. You have to go to countries in the Global South that will allow you to do those things for one reason or another, either, like, they have a neoliberal government and they're just kind of, like, okay with, being people being able to just purchase land and, you know, they're lax with the regulation and they'll let you do whatever you want. But this has, like, you know, this basically is another form of neocolonialism. At the end of the day, I get the I I get the feeling.
Yeah. Basically, you're you're negotiating with the state, for additional freedom in exchange of, like, paying them to leave you alone.
Essentially. Yeah. It's basically, like, they want to buy their buy their way out of the system as it exists so they don't have to follow, you know, whatever thing that they're trying to avoid. Like, in in Balaji's case, he talks a lot about, you know, forming a network state that doesn't have an FDA or that doesn't follow the rules of the of the FDA. So what I think is interesting as well to maybe bring up is that he talks about the that a network state needs to have one moral innovation. So, like, he takes the idea of forking. So this is, like, the idea of copying open source code or, you know, that hap this happens a lot in blockchain world where, there's a fork in the chain, which, people can either choose to follow the old chain or a new chain. But he sort of takes this idea and tries to apply it within, like, the the geopolitical sense, I guess, to where you could somehow be able to fork, for example, The United States Of America, but, you know, just in your network states, there is no, FDA or something like that.
Right. And this is like, you know, if we if we apply, like, the the activist theory of, the different ways in which you can express disagreement with the current system, where you have on the one hand, you have the insiders, which, get embedded within the system. They get inside of the system as a mechanism, And they get power within the system as a way of actually changing the system from the inside, which is what we will call the usual modality of politics. Then you have the outsider, which, tries to actually rebel and, destroy, deconstruct the system that they dislike by, like, weakening it and, like, really, like, making it, like, destroying its foundations so that you can build again upon it. And then you have the beyonders. And the beyonders are those that are like, actually, I don't even want to have anything to do with that system. I'm just gonna create another system on the side. And if that system actually is better for people, then I don't even need to fight the existing system because it will collapse under its own weight as more and more people just leave it, exit from the system number one, to come into this new system that I've just created. Mhmm. Which is really interesting because, of course, you kind of need a little bit of tree because they are kind of like playing each other game. The the insider have power because of the outsider that are, like, doing noise. But, of course, the outsider only can guess destroy a system if there is another system that is that that can that people can go to. So they are all kind of helping each other into this, this expression of this agreement. And it seems that, of course, Balaji is taking a little bit of that beyond earth approach of, like, let's not really try to engage into politics and fix the failing nation states. Let's also not try to destroy them. They are not worth it. Let's just create something new that ideally will attract all the people that are highly aligned with this new territory.
Yeah. Yeah. Very, third way esque, type of approach.
Which is interesting, but to me, it's also when we talk about forking and exit based governance Mhmm. This is obviously very appealing especially for, like, digital communities, open source software, and all those things. Because, obviously, this is great that you can take something, fuck it, experiment with something else, and then see whether you wanna merge back or whether you just wanna, go along a different path, and then people choose the one that they like the most. I think there is a problem when we talk about territories. Mhmm. Because, unfortunately, we only have a limited amount of land in the world. Right. And, fucking if fucking means buying new territories and deploying a new government into this territory, not everyone has the ability to fork, first of all. So you're already limiting the exit. You know, you it's nice to claim exit, but only the people that can afford the the money to exit, if exit is based on purchasing land and acquiring diplomatic recognition. You need money and you need power in order to actually exit. Meaning that who is the people that are gonna exit is obviously the most wealthy and the most powerful people that wants to create their own government. But then what about the people that that cannot afford exit because they cannot afford crowdfunding territory around the world and gaining diplomatic recognition. And so in some way, this becomes kind of like a a plutocratic model in which all the wealthy and powerful people can have their own state, and then the others have to pick one of those multiple states. Right.
Yeah. That's kind of what, comes to mind for me as well. It's it seems to me kind of like an outgrowth of kind of his it's almost like he can he just has, like, Silicon Valley brain. Like, his brain is just so morphed into, like, everything that is good within a Silicon Valley context or, like, a very, techno utopian context, and he tries to apply that to literally everything, it seems. Because, like, the idea of forking is, of course, like, you know, it's a nice thing that you can do, in a digital space because there is no, like, limitation, you know, for the most part. But it isn't something that we can do, so easily when it comes to real real life. So it by sort of not contending with the fact that by forking land, you are essentially taking away land, you're ignoring all these different externalities, and you're trying to basically eliminate, like, the idea
of, like, taking political action in a lot of ways. And, yeah. There's this interesting distinct distinction also between, like, governance and politics. And I think, like, politics is about recognizing that there is an intrinsic conflict and, different interests that need to be compromised because there is simply no possible consensus. And this obsession towards governance and coordination and actually just consensus building around highly aligned individuals is completely eliminating the politics from the pictures.
And if you just disagree with me, let's not talk about it. Let's just fuck. Right. And let's pause Now you go make your other network states with your but now you fork your slightly different opinion about this one thing. We cannot, like, possibly come to a conclusion because we don't want to engage in politics.
And we don't have any deliberation anymore. We don't even need to engage into decision making because we just we just want to be with people we agree with. And and to me, like, one of the most, perhaps, gap and, like, some some naivete, I think, that that emerged from this is really this this obsession, which, again, I think comes from, like, the Internet vision, Silicon Valley vision of, like, you know, the declaration of independence and of the cyberspace. And, like, that you actually can create a space that is completely independent from the rest. And, of course, it is not. And we have seen very well how much the Internet is inherently dependent with existing geopolitical and nation state, powers. And here, it's kind of the same. It's like this this this belief that you can create something that is independent, autonomous from the rest of the world, and therefore completely ignores the the first of all, the externalities that exist and therefore the interdependencies that inherently exist in in every single person and entity that exist on this single planet. But, also, eliminating by trying desperately to eliminate any need for political debates and political discussion inside the state, in the the network state in this case, then all of a sudden, you're not really solving the problem. You're not eliminating politics. You're just taking politics out of the network state and and putting it outside between network states between network state and nation states. Because as long as you are doing something that I really don't like and you're my neighbor, even though you somehow belong to a different state, you're still doing something that I really don't consider to be okay. And therefore, politics will happen anyways. It's just gonna be geopolitics by definition because there can be no internal politics anymore. But this but the problem is just there. It has not been eliminated at all. It has maybe been exacerbated by converting it into a geopolitical issue instead of an internal political issue. Right. Yeah. It but to me, this
this is what makes the net the idea of the network state so insidiously, like, authoritarian. Like, it's either you agree with exactly, you know, our moral innovation or whatever of our network states, and if you don't, you leave or you can't be a part of it. Mhmm. Exactly. So, like, you you like, there is because there is no room for discussion, for debate, it's like he's taken the cancel culture that he hates so much. He's taken it to the extreme. Like, he is like he's, like, leaning into cancel culture to where everyone segregates themselves, to where, you just go into your own, like, uncancelable bubble because you're inside with people that you solely agree with. But in practice, that means probably that, like, because what what he talks about in in and doesn't well, what he doesn't talk about really only kind of mentions it is that that these network states would have founders and those founders would be rulers, and these founders would have access to, like, the I forgot what he called it, but, like, the, you know, the mainframe of the network state. So they would be able to control, you know, turn off and on sort of privileges for people within their network states. So it's all kind of, like, very authoritarian. It's like very despotic. It very much reminds me of basically choose your you just choose your the the feudal lord that you want to live under, really.
Yeah. Choose your own dictatorship. But it's not a real dictatorship because you can potentially exit it. And then, though, you can only exit it if you can actually afford it. Theoretically. Theoretically. Yeah. Yeah. Which is really funny because it's like while he's tapping a lot into the concept of cryptocurrencies and blockchain based sensors and all those things, somehow the government structure that he proposes for those network states is, like, so antithetic to these distributed governments, distributed consensus that is actually, like, part of the huge narrative and and promises of blockchain technologies and somehow is actually taking the digital feudalism of existing large online operators and bringing it back into the network state instead of actually leveraging those alternative visions that the blockchain space is providing us and trying to create a network state that also has not only distributed territories but also distributed governments.
Right. So I think I think that's part of the reason why, both of us maybe were so annoyed or just like you know, the the issues that we found with the book is that the way in which he proposes in using, for example, blockchains or know, this type of technology was so it to me, it just felt very uncreative. Like, it just felt like, of all the things that we could possibly do that would could be beneficial in a positive sense socially, He seems to miss all of those ones and only choose the ones that were like, yeah, not that great. Hey, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and join the crypto leftist communities on Discord or Reddit, which you can find links to in the show notes. If you're enjoying the episode or find the content I make important, you can pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to help me out and join the newest patrons like Jason and Jorge, which really helps since making this stuff isn't free in terms of money or time. As a patron, you'll get a shout out on an episode like I just did and access to bonus content like Q and A episodes where you could submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer, and I'll give my thoughts in roughly twenty minutes. In the last bonus episode, I analyzed applying an anti CAPTCHA framework made for DAOs, but towards left wing organizing, thinking about the specific challenges that they face. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this episode to help spread the message that blockchain doesn't need to be used to further entrench capitalist exploitation, like as what is described in the network state, as long as we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out.
Well, and I think to me, it's it's it's not creative and it's also to some extent problematic and potentially dangerous in the sense that it is actually advocating for something and for good or bad reasons, perhaps mostly bad reasons. What he's advocating for actually has a lot of resonance in in in many milieu, which is kind of surprising to me at least. And because it is, like, as a Silicon Valley person, obviously, it is promoting the Silicon Valley concept of, like, you know, large unicorns where you have, like, this fantastic CEO that is taking care of everything and, like, doesn't can finally emancipate the the large tech company from the crisp of the nation state that are preventing them from innovating and whatnot. So this is a very specific vision of innovation that is very Silicon Valley. To me, that is very different from, at least the vision of the blockchain space that I am more acquainted with, which is really not about the tech founder being the the the the king and the dictator, but rather, let's eliminate this notion of the tech founder and let's actually create a more distributed network of, inclusive participation from all the members and so forth, which is which is not the Silicon Valley approach at all. This is maybe like the some this is a part of the Web three space that at least advocate for that. Whether they manage to implement it perfectly is another question. But but at least the narrative is a different one. Yeah. Yeah.
But like like you mentioned, I mean, this narrative is getting the attention of a lot of people in crypto. Like, the they're I think, you know, definitely you definitely see it on crypto Twitter with a lot of people having, like, been super excited about reading his book. Like, we definitely know a couple of people that are deep in the crypto space who are, very inspired by his book, who do or are actually coordinating with other, you know, wealthy crypto people to buy land somewhere and begin to create their network states in, very naive ways. You had, you know, even Vitalik Buterin did a review of the book, or at least the idea of a network state in which Vitalik kind of tried to give a almost like a balanced review of, like, yes, some things are bad, but, you know, some things are pretty interesting and maybe we should, you know, have non Balagian network states is what he calls it so you don't have to agree with Balaghi's kind of like, libertarianness or whatever, but you can still find, you know, things that are good within it. But that, like, I think he's generally slightly more positive. I mean, I think he's a lot more positive than I am on the idea for sure.
Yeah. For me to me, I I had this interesting experience, which is I started to be a little bit, I became a little bit obsessed by, overthrowing the network state, I guess. And it's interesting because I highlight that a lot of people that I love and admire, actually resonate with this book. But but what's interesting is as soon as we start engaging in the discussion about what's what's resonating, none of it is about the way in which Balaji is describing the network state. Mhmm. Right? So the resonance is there for sure. But the resonance is not the resonance with Balaji network state or even with the network state as such as a concept that is described by Balaji. There is another thing that people are resonating with, which I think is also something I might be resonating with and maybe that many other people are are resonating. And the point is that because we don't have a vocabulary beyond the vocabulary that Balaji has provided about the network state, we can only speak of this underlying concept by using the terminology of the network state. And then all of a sudden there is that this conflation and you think that when people say, yeah, I like the network state, they say, oh, I like the Balaji network state. But actually, they are liking something else that they cannot name with that because because of lack of a vocabulary. And and I think it's very important to deconstruct the Balaji description of the network state and try to understand what is that what is it that people actually resonate with? Which which layer? And, is it the actual instantiation that is provided by Balaji? Or is it the foundational layer that Balaji has built upon? Or is it something even more deep that that people actually really like and resonate with? And I think we not only we need to deconstruct that in order to be able to have a conversation so that you can you can speak of things without just calling everything the network state, but also because if we manage to understand and tap into this underlying foundational layer that many people resonate with, then we can also understand what they don't resonate with, and we can start to think about how we can build upon the same foundational layer, things that are quite different from Balaji's instantiation of a network state. Maybe it's something that are not a network state at all and yet are still building upon and tapping into the same underlying principle.
Yeah. I I think, like, generally with kind of, in my experience at least being, you know, a Socialist speaking to a lot of, Libertarians and Socialism and Socialists and Libertarians being kind of similar in the sense that they both kind of like believe that they want a, like, radically different world or believe that the institutions that currently exist are kind of failing, the world at the moment. Like, I feel that, the nation states or the network states, what it's proposing is kind of like a just some type of theory of change for people. It's, of course, people, the way that it's described by Balaji is they're thinking of it as like, you know, let's get the fuck out with all of our money and let's run away without engaging in politics or engaging any type of revolution. But I think, you know, it's also resonating in the sense that it's an attempt at using the Internet and sort of like this global layer for coordination as a way to do some type of collective action. Although the collective action that Balaji is describing is not the type of collective action that I'm really interested in, it is at least like this, you it's at least like acknowledges the idea of the collective that I think a lot of people are attracted to. And, you know, he, you know, like we mentioned before, I mean, the fact that he's using these words like collective action, he also describes, something called a network union, which is like a pre network state. He uses some, like, different vocabulary and, like, different, like, bits of left wing theory that he kinda, like, you know, seeds in there that make it somewhat more interesting than, like, maybe your standard, you know, I don't know, libertarian seasteading thing. I think that's kind of, like, what what what is attracting me and and probably you as well. It just comes with so much baggage. Yeah. And and also to me, like, I think the
there is this question also. There is, like, I think we we as a society, there has been this kind of, like, loss of trust in, political institution and governments and national states as we know them, essentially because, you know, as, as as many people would claim, is like, the network sorry, the nation state, is but too big in order to actually properly deal with internal issues and too small in order to deal with global issues. And so we have this kind of structure, which is this kind of middle ground hybrid, which is actually failing both internally and externally. And especially today as we see, like, the emergence of global and weak challenges that cannot be tackled by one single actor at a time. There is a need for this kind of international and global, transnational, in fact, coordination in order to tackle those those problems. Climate being perhaps the most obvious one, but not only. I think there is also this this resonance about the nation state as we know it as this kind of, like, single entity on one territory that only cares about its own territory might not be the right solution to to engage into these global challenges, and global coordination. So I think there is this resonance of, like, can we create these more networked systems, which, by the way, don't need to be a state, but networked go networked collective action, global governance, and all these questions that, of course, resonate a lot in the Web three and in the in the Internet, but also in many people that, that don't that are not necessarily focused on the digital, but also the physical. But there is this this very important resonance, I think, around that. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I didn't I didn't I hadn't thought about that. But yeah. Like,
trying to come up with something that is trying to answer for the things that the state is too small for and too big for. Mhmm. But so, I guess, going along that line, like, we want to, of course, provide some alternatives to thinking around some of the things that are being touched on here when it comes to the network state because it is something that is being tapped on and Blockchain Gov has been doing some, pretty interesting work on that. But do you want to maybe, Pirrovera, talk a little bit about kind of what you're thinking about when it comes to alternatives or, like, what the decisions are right now? What the two choices, I guess, we have.
It seems to be. So basically, to to to to me and, like, this is the work that we that we started to do, like, since a few months now with Blockchain Gov, which is kind of like if, the network state as described by Balaji is, presenting this exit based type of governance where you eliminate politics because you only have a line individual. And then that comes with this ideal of autonomy, independence, etcetera. And, essentially, it's creating a competitive framework. So you're creating more and more plurality of, states, but they're all competing with each other for population, for power, and whatnot. And so the exit based government is actually in increasing competition at the state level. And all of a sudden, now you have conflict between state because of very different value system because they never engage into compromise and politics. And what we want to propose is tapping on the same underlying principle, which yet we cannot fully formalize, is a different instance, which is not exit based governments, but which is rather commons based governments, which basically recognize the the inherent need for interdependencies and interconnection that we, as the citizen of this global planet, have to engage with in order to create these more societies interdependent and and global society. And, and and I think to me, the and and we've been trying to think very hard with a little task force and little group of people like, what is it that we want to promote, and what is the alternative vocabulary? And that's why, to me, it's important not to say just this is not Balaji's implementation of the network state. For me, what we're actually working on as the alternative is not a network state to begin with because it's actually not a state, Because it's not even intended to compete with existing nation states. It's not intended to reproduce the same institution of the governmental, authority of a state, but rather it's focusing more on the nation part of the nation state, which is more this question of, what is this shared, and common culture and, this sense of collective identity, this sense of belonging, and also the collective action that comes with that. So we're still trying to find a name for it. Currently, we have a few contenders. I think none of them are perfect. One is communations, as in for communes. The other is commons nation. And then the third one, which seems to be the most popular one, is coordi nation, which I think is very beautiful. It it expressed very clearly what is the wall point. And the specificity, like, if we want to kind of compare and contrast, this notion, this coordination or combination, how it's I would distinguish itself from the nation state is that it also taps into the question of this voluntary community of individual, but focusing a lot more on the shared culture, principle, and values, and also the idea that they have a a common, often implicit agenda for achieving a particular societal vision. Right? So in that way, it's not so different from the, from the network state. There's also the idea that a combination operates both at the local and at the global level and as the capacity to engage in collective action. But collective action in principle with the the notion of commoning, of actually creating collective governance and shared use of resources within the combination, and then, of course, the collective identity, which ideally constitutes itself, through self determination and self sovereignty. And then perhaps the most important distinction is that as opposed to the network state, which exists as a separate entity alongside existing nation states and therefore are competing for territory, for population, etcetera, And for diplomatic recognition, a combination or a coordination actually exists as an additional layer on top of existing nation states. So it is transnational. It it it it completely, autonomize itself from the boundaries of a nation state. But it actually exists as an additional layer of sovereignty, which actually tackle all those domains that are not inherently belonging to a territorial approach. So in some way, you can distinguish between the state, whether it's a nation state or a network state, which is pretty much like the landlord and which is dealing with all the things that that really, cannot be cannot be disconnected from the territory. It's like public infrastructure, public safety, like, all all the things that the territory cannot, that that cannot escape from the territorial approach. But then you have a lot of other things that are not inherently based on a territorial approach. And this is the the potentially also the field of the com the combination or the coordination where collective and communities can choose to coordinate around this kind of collective resources and, and actually engage. And and the interesting part is that because it's no longer competing with the nation states, it's actually cooperating with it. It's actually filling the gaps, but also it's not escaping from taxation. It's not escaping from the various laws that the state is actually imposing on a particular territory. But it's creating those additional layer in order to provide additional services, which can also be either commons service, but also public services to people that exist within a particular jurisdiction. And so in this sense, we are we are tapping into the same thing of, like, how do we achieve better distributed coordination at the global level? How how do we actually deal with the current failure of network state in terms of global coordination, but also in terms of potentially providing common goods, providing, specific public services and utilities, and creating those additional systems that can that can fit into those interstices and and fills the gap, but not in a way that is autonomizing, not in a way that is completely independent, but rather in a way that is interdependent with existing jurisdiction existing nation states and try to cooperate with them in order to create some betterment of society as opposed to just exit and abandon the nation states to its own demise.
I'm glad that you guys are more focused on, like, specifically thinking about governance, and not purely through this lens of of exit, of course. Like, I to me, it's just, I I'm not I'm not sure. I'm, like, I I haven't read the book, but I'm not sure I really like the framework of, like, voice versus exit as being kind of, like, two different things. But actually, like, exit being just another form of voice. It's kind of like how I think of it because no matter how you exit, you're still going to have some sort of relationship to, you know, whatever previous entity or organization you're a part of anyways.
Yeah. I mean, I think I think those are government tools. Right. Right. I think, I wouldn't say exit is a is a is a form of voice. I would say both voice and exit as a form of governance, which, of course, the exits has an still, you can never exit completely. Whatever you do, your hallways is still in the planet. So exit is a way of saying, I don't like it and I'm creating something else or I find something better. Whereas voice is is is sticking to it and trying to change it from the inside. Right. Unless we can upload our brains into the matrix,
we can't really, until then, we can't really exit from the world so well. And ever and then. But I think, like, when it comes to, you know, how Balaji thinks about Exodus, like, one of the things that I think is, for me, like, the biggest major hole in the entirety of the book, is that he uses this, this conceptual framework, with what he calls leviathans, Hobbesian leviathans. And he has the god, the states, and the network as, like, the three leviathans or things which have a lot of power over the way which people live their lives. And it uses, you know, different combinations of these things in order to come up with, the sort of, like, three major, entities in the world right now. One was, woke capital, which is which he defines as being, basically the New York Times. You have communist capital, which he says is like the Chinese Communist Party. And then you have crypto capital, which is, basically everyone else who is interested in crypto and who doesn't want to, you know, fall within these these, authoritarian, regimes or whatever of either wokeism or or Chinese communism or something. But what's interesting about that framework that he then uses is that all three of them are different types of capital. So to me, I feel like throughout this entire book, there's a missing Leviathan which is capital. The entire concept of the network state sort of just leans into already existing alienation that people feel and sort of, like, justifies itself by basically saying that we should turn everything over to some sort of form some form of capital, really, mostly a technologized form of it for him. And he never really explicitly talks about capital and, like, the power of capital and how capital itself has shaped history or the way that people act or or things like this. So I think this sort of, like, major hole sort of relates to, you know, this obsession with an ultimate exit of just being able to get out of things as if you can just, as if you can fix your problems by just buying it away and simply finding everyone who agrees with you. So, yeah, this this this is, it just made me think of that, like,
when you were when you were talking. Yeah. Yeah. And I and I think this and the the the idea that, it is it is enough to exit in order to solve every problem and not recognizing that when you exit, well, now you're creating a new entity that will create disagreement. And, you know, if you exit, it means that you disagree. And now if you're disagreeing inside or if you're disagreeing outside, you're still disagreeing the disagreement is still there. How do you cope with it? And for me, this is like a complete, lack of addressing this issue as if, like, exit is the solution because I'm exiting and I'm no longer connected with anything. Right. Which is obviously extremely naive. And so how do you deal with the geopolitics? How do you deal with the disagreement when the disagreement is happening amongst states as opposed to within states?
Yeah. Yeah. There's, and, yeah, from Balaji, it seems like there is no answer, at the moment. But yeah. So, like, the his entire book, he what I will say that he is pretty decent at is that he's very good at creating his own conceptual frameworks and then, like, moving on from there. Like, he he's somehow, like, able to make these, like, very very paradoxical stories and concepts combining them in ways in which he's obviously doing it as a way to kind of, like, shock the reader to get them out of, you know, trying to convince them like, hey, the way that we understand the world right now, it's totally wrong and actually, like, as as a way to be able to profess his own conceptual framework. It's just that that conceptual framework is something that, yeah, still, if you put it under scrutiny, has a lot of problems.
And the I think the the the dangerous thing, and I think this is why this podcast on overthrowing the network state is very important is, because even though, of course, there is so many flows in that particular framework, the memetic power, even just of the name Yeah. The network state is so powerful that many people are just willing to abide to it just because they love the name and they love the mimetic power of it. And that's why I think it's important to overthrow that so that we need to we need to either identify all the flows into that particular framework so that the network state is no longer that salient, or we need to create an alternative meme. It's like this kind of, this meme war between, like, those different concepts that are trying to instantiate something that people resonate with and with different with different focus. And I think it's okay. Like, you know, it's okay to have the notion of the network state, and I'm sure some people do resonate with that particular thing. But the problem is that many people resonate with something else. But because there is only one meme, then they just resonate with the meme. Right. And I think we need a plurality of memes, diversity of frameworks that people can choose your meme and and, you know, abide for the one that you actually believe in.
Yeah. That's, we're we are engaging in memetic warfare. We are declaring memetic warfare.
Memetic land planning.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I wanted to just mention that as well. Like, so many concepts in this book, we will we can't cover all of them right now, of course. We will slowly get through them as we go through the series, as we talk to more people, as I have others from BlockchainGov also joining in, with me in these conversations. I did just wanted to at the at the very end, you know, I can imagine people who really love the network states. They they thinking, you know, well, you know, you're criticizing it but, like, you know, what what am I supposed to read now? Like, what where can I find direction, on similar types of concepts and ideas around the network states? And so I figured I would maybe we could give just, like, a couple of, alternative book recommendations to kind of, yeah, I guess, lead people towards some reading that they could do maybe, that covers similar topics. So, like, the the two books that I wanted to recommend, they're ones that I recently read. The first one being The Dawn of Everything, which was the book, that David Graeber and David Wengrow wrote, you know, before David Graeber passed away, which I think it was really interesting because it talks about it goes through, like, the actual history and anthropology of different types of what ultimately I think could be considered just governance mechanisms within different tribes in The Americas, within different civilizations, throughout history. There's a lot of historical evidence which, you know, in Balaji's book, like, there is essentially none. There's there's very, very little historical evidence for a lot of the things that he claims. The Dawn of Everything is basically entirely history and and anthropology, which is why I would recommend that book instead. If you're interested in thinking about alternatives to, you know, the way we manage resources, the way we govern within each other, the way that we relate to each other, I think having, you know, knowing the history of of these things can be really really useful. And then another book recommendation that I would make is, the book Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal by Rodrigo Nunez. I'm I'm still finishing up right now, but I'm really really enjoying it. Essentially the book covers, sort of left wing organizing and thinking about, or sort of pushing back on the way that the Left generally frames organization as it being, you know, something that is completely vertical through the party form, through, like, you know, Leninist tactics or completely kind of anarchist, horizontalist, nobody has power, organizational forms. You know, sometimes we think about these two extremes as being, like, we have to choose between one or the other as being a superior form to organize to make political change. But in fact, he says that, we should be instead embracing political complexity or thinking about using, you know, instead of whether or not to use something but thinking of it as how much should we use something. That these things, you know, some amount of verticality or horizontality always exists. It's just a matter of how much, they exist and not whether or not that they exist in this kind of like binary terms. So I think those two books are some are two pretty interesting alternatives if you're interested in an alternative to the network states.
Yeah. And, and then maybe, like, two more books, whose author but will be on this podcast. One is Survival of the Richest by, Douglas Hushkoff, which, pretty much describe, I think, very accurately the mindset of people that do engage into these exit based governments, which most of the time are those rich, rich people that can afford to exit the system because they don't need to rely on any, and has this very interesting, narrative of the survival of the riches is actually about the riches building systems that are destructive and then trying to escape from the system that they have created into a new system that will also eventually destroy itself and then constantly trying to escape to the next system that they are building, which eventually destroys itself and leads to a new need for escapism. But of course, only the most rich and powerful people have the capacity to escape the first one to the system that they actually have created. And the other one is Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota, which is a science fiction anthology of a few books, which all describe a world where the nation state has, failed and, new alternative, government structure emerge with which somehow has some striking similarities with the notion of the network state because those are also non territorially based or distributed territorially based, type of, states or of government systems. But much more, interestingly enough, even though it is sound much more carefully found in the design of the governance, in the design of the geopolitics, and all all the things that are missing completely, within the network state book are actually addressed very carefully, in these, in these various, science fiction, stories. And, yes, we will have Ada Palmer on the podcast. We will have, Douglas also on the podcast to to discuss those ideas as well. It's, yeah. It it says something that a a sci fi book is able to answer more of these questions in Balaji's book.
But we'll, you know, go more deeply into that, throughout the series. So for the next, couple of months, the goal is hopefully we'll be able to publish an episode every week until the end of the series. And for the next, episode in the series, we'll first be talking to Glenn Weil who was the, founder of RadicalxChange, who was a common well, I guess he just has worked a lot with with Vitalik Buterin in the past. And he has some, criticisms himself about the network states and, yeah, how everything is is framed there. So, yeah, are there any last words from you, Primavera that you wanna leave the listeners with or put you in there? No. I think we covered,
plenty. And, yeah, I'm really looking forward to all those next discussions.
Yeah. Me too. I think it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting. Thanks a lot, guys. And we'll yeah. We'll see you next time.