Gray Tribe

One other thing that worries me is how a lot of recent SV tech rhetoric is much more nationalist than before. Ensuring "we" win the global competition. People being tribal is inevitable and can sometimes be channeled toward good, but it's not the sort of thing you want from a global technological vanguard community. I much prefer the old SV that idealistically identified itself with the progress of all of humanity.

One reason I really appreciate crypto is that I think it still has that spirit.

Isn't this just incentive alignment, though?

The arc of traditional SV tech is big data / AI, which has heavy energy and hardware cost components, as well as great supply chain risk. You need a nation state's muscle to be able to "win" that game effectively

Whereas crypto is more virtualized (by design) and incentives actually promote global / cross-border cooperation (that's the best use case for the tech)

This is a weird inverse form of Conway's law