I don’t hate blockchain tech but the idea of having a bunch of land where laws don’t apply is fundamentally anathema to me. We did kings, and we’re doing dictators, and that’s not for me. (Or I’d prefer it was not for me. I may not get a choice, which is the point.)

🙂 All right. Let’s go a few rounds. Our mutual friend @mazmhussain can adjudicate.

(1) First: startup societies are based on 100% consent. No one is there who hasn’t chosen to be there. No one is in a hierarchy if they haven’t opted into that hierarchy. Signing the social contract to join a community is much like signing a contract to join a company: you view the docs, make an informed decision, and opt out if it doesn’t work. That right to exit is the fundamental right.

(2) Second: not all existing laws are good laws, like the PATRIOT Act. Sunsetting *some* laws doesn’t mean you don’t believe in laws in the abstract.

(3) Third: you likely have views on what your ideal community would be. Maybe it’s a vegan village. Maybe it’s modern Amish, where tech is paused at the level of flip phones and people enjoy each other’s company. If you ever decided to build such a peaceful, opt-in community, then we would support you. And that’s what startup societies are about.

Writer, podcaster, and commentator on foreign affairs and politics. Runs /dropglobalnews

韬光养晦

Author of the Network State.
Founder of the Network School.
Work with us at jobs.ns.com.

Reporter at Drop Site News, co-host at Breaking Points/Counter Points

(4) With respect to trying again: we've established that startup societies have worked astonishingly well. But even if they *hadn't* yet worked, it's worth trying again every few years with new ideas — so long as it's an opt-in experiment. For example: for all of history, humans couldn't fly. And then, after the Wright Brothers, we could. It was worth trying again.

(5) With respect to cleaving yourself off from society, it's all on a continuum. But I think there is a pretty big difference between (a) anyone "dictating" anything to you vs (b) people going off and building a society on their own. No one is your CEO/president unless you sign a literal social contract making them your CEO/president.

(6) Regarding the Honduras situation, as I think you may know, the previous government passed a ZEDE law [see below]. So Prospera didn’t “try to take it over”. The Latin American founder legally invested millions in a largely uninhabited area near Crawfish Rock, Roatan. That's what development looks like.

A few points.

(1) The history of startup societies is actually one of great success. William Penn’s Pennsylvania worked. The Massachusetts Bay colony worked. Oneida worked. The United States of America, for all its flaws, worked for 250 years. Really, virtually every major city and country in the Americas was essentially founded from scratch in the last few hundred years.

(2) Moreover, these new startup societies were responsible for many of the democratic innovations we take for granted. Concepts like representative democracy, written constitutions, and universal suffrage were pioneered, popularized, or reinvented in the New World. These social innovations then filtered back to Europe.

(3) Yes, no doubt many societies did fail, like Roanoke, and many of the new political ideas failed, like Prohibition, but in general without trying (and sometimes failing) there is no progress whatsoever — whether social or technological.

[continued]

You’re probably already deeply familiar with the sordid history of utopian communities in the 19th and 20th century but for those aren’t, basically all of them collapsed or worse. That doesn’t mean nobody should be able to try again it doesn’t bode well. 

And of course, there’s no such thing as fully cleaving yourself off from society. What you allow to happen there will require external resources and will influence the rest of the world. 

And usually there will also be people already there. I’ve interviewed several residents of the Honduran island prospera has tried to take over and they never opted in and are appalled by it. 

I didn’t directly address some of your other points but will try again later.

Let’s have this on Monday so we can have a day to hype it up. @ryangrim  @mazmhussain You could do a journo vs tech bro series of discussions and id expect them to be of a high quality on Farcaster not to mention the commentary and side dialogues.

Fuck yeah, let's go - crypto bros vs journos on Farcaster. Should be fun

Yeah but where does Thiel's Dark Enlightenment, Palantir, "Lavender" murder-AI, and all that stuff fit into it?

the issue remains that there are spoken hierarchies and unspoken hierarchies, having personally experienced this in one network state I don’t see any reason they wouldn’t also exist in others

Lol you got him buddy. Duh radical left wants vegan tech free cities.

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”

You gotta go easier on the journos, they aren't going to want to play if you just stomp them in the first round

Is this round two of network states?  Are we still looking at network states?

/salty /fufu
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and i still wanna know why you put NS as near Singapore, instead of Malaysia