balajis

@balajis.eth

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273035 Followers

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Welcome to the Network School. Apply online at ns.com. Doors open on Sep 23, the day after the Network State Conference in Singapore. Full announcement is below. Oh, and everything we're doing is built on Farcaster. I look forward to seeing you there! https://x.com/balajis/status/1824533037780201580

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Is technocapitalism the same thing as Western civilization? https://frame.weponder.io/api/polls/6600

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Opportunity is on the Internet.

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Did you know Western troops are withdrawing from Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Chad…while Russians and Chinese are moving in?

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The UAE deserves more study. It is technocapitalist. And a top location for global investors. It’s truly a nation of immigrants. Less than 15% Emirati, >85% foreign. It’s in hypergrowth. From 75k to ~10M people in 75 years. It’s like a Mars colony. Built a metropolis from nothing. Very impressive place.

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I like Murtaza. Years ago I thought we had completely different views. But over the last decade I’ve become much more left-libertarian, after seeing naked abuses of corporate power. And he’s become more tech-libertarian, as he’s seen cryptography protect rights when laws can’t. Glad to have him here.

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Move from the two-party system to the N-city system.

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FARCASTER LOGIN What is Farcaster good for? It’s good for devs. It’s good for data analysts. And it’s good for social login. The last is the thing I’m most interested in. When you start a new site you can use Google or Apple login. And that’s fine. But it just gives you an email. And maybe Google Drive access in Google’s case. You can also use X/Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. But those APIs change so quickly and adversarially that you can’t really build features on your site that rely on them. So you end up using them similarly to Google login, where you get a username only. Now arrives Farcaster. The first fairly large scale decentralized crypto social protocol. Where people aren’t in it solely for the money. Now, for all users who log in with Farcaster, suddenly you can provide encrypted messaging between accounts and pull their full social context. And if they’ve connected a wallet and ENS, they have a balance and can spend and receive money in your app. This changes everything.

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Amy Chua's book from 25 years ago is worth rereading. It covers what happens when the group that wins in the market is not the same as the group that wins in politics. Generally, the envious political majority tries to kill the market-dominant minorities. Unless the market minorities exit in time. "Market-dominant minorities — Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia — became objects of violent hatred." https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385721862

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Even more people were killed on the basis of class than on the basis of race in the 20th century. That's what communism was. And of course class and race correlate. For example, more than 50% of tech is Asian or immigrant. So, when leftists post "die techie scum" they also mean "kill Asian immigrants."

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No, woke. Remember, tech immigrants can’t vote! It was white leftists that destroyed San Francisco. They got billions for their NGOs by addicting poor people to drugs. And they didn’t defeat the Internet anymore than Detroit defeated cars. They just ruined a city and blamed it on immigrant programmers.

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Democrats burned the flag. Vandalized the Freedom Bell. And even tore down statues of George Washington. So...tell me who's anti-American again?

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Dan is correct. Products will be built on Farcaster. I want to use it as the social login for crypto. For both online *and* offline worlds. Which is different from all pre-existing use cases of other networks. Twitter login is closest, but it's nowhere near as open.

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UN FAO ranks China as #1 in food. [1]: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QV [2]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/100615/4-countries-produce-most-food.asp

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China dominates the physical world. #1 in trade #1 in steel #1 in rail #1 in ships #1 in cars #1 in energy #1 in concrete Here are the graphs on trade and steel:

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It’s a good post. I think we can add something to it by thinking at the tribal level, not just the individual level. 1) First, rightism is straightforward tribalism. They are for their tribe. So they are against everyone outside their tribe. 2) Leftism is backdoor tribalism. They are against bigotry. Also, everyone outside their tribe is a bigot! So they are against everyone outside their tribe. 3) This is how the rightist gets to National Socialism while the leftist gets to Socialism in One Country. The rightist invokes master morality to dominate. The leftist invokes slave morality to *dominate the dominators* — like the dictatorship of the proletariat. And then they also ruthlessly dominate. 4) The alternative to both rightism and leftism is actually internationalist capitalism, which has win/win baked into it. 5) So, merchant morality or founder morality is the positive-sum alternative to both master and slave morality. Yes, you do seek to win. But you only win if the other guy also wins.

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This is a good post by Dalio, but doesn’t really contradict my view in any way. Xi’s view is essentially: what does he have to do to not end up like Saddam, Qaddafi, and everyone else who got regime changed? 1) First, he was starting with a much stronger country than Iraq, Libya, or even Russia. China can’t truly be sanctioned as it’s the world’s factory. 2) Second, Xi has doubled down on the Great Firewall and existing tools for internal control. From China’s perspective they successfully defeated the color revolution attempted in Hong Kong in 2019, where Julie Eadeh and the State Dept backed Joshua Wong. 3) Third, Xi has de facto nationalized many tech companies like Alibaba and ensured that the entrepreneurs aren’t too friendly or dependent on the West. This is one of China’s biggest weaknesses because those founders drove China’s high-tech rise. However, Xi’s bet is that a younger generation of ultranationalist founders will step up.

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The Russians didn’t expect the Bolshevik Revolution. Sure, there was growing radicalism. Yes, they were losing a war. But Russia had such potential. It had so many great men! It didn’t deserve communism. But sometimes the bad guys win. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01MZDZAE8/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

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The greatest strength comes from knowing your own weakness. My overarching thesis is that history is running in reverse. So the countries that had a great 20th century are on track for a tough 21st, and vice versa. For example: China, Russia, India, Eastern Europe were crushed by socialism. Now they are capitalist and unified to varying degrees. So their overall trajectory is up. Meanwhile, Woke America and Western Europe were once capitalist and unified. But now they’re woke with broken borders and bankrupt states. So their overall trajectory is down. Like Dalio and Elon, I believe the coming sovereign debt crisis will end 500 years of Western dominance (and also take down Japan). Failing states will get extremely nasty. I think China rises. I think the Internet succeeds the West, and opposes China. I also think Bitcoin Republicans can maybe turn Florida into a Taiwan equivalent, where capitalists take refuge. But most aren’t ready to hear this. They still think the postwar order will last.

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Internet 📈 Indians 📈 China 📈 DC 📉 Those are the four forces on the world as I see them. The Internet, Indians, and China are rising. DC is falling. And America is split between the American Network (rising with the Internet) and the American State (falling with DC).

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