The Network State: How to Start a New Country

Description

discovered here: Technocracy.news, Courtenay Turner, "The Phoenix Conspiracy: How Silicon Valley’s Shadow Network Is Engineering America’s Constitutional Collapse" The Network State seemingly betrays liberal principles and seems to promote solve et coagula , lit. "dissolve & coagulate" {in the sense of "annihilate and rebuild" (against the principle of not reinventing the wheel) or the Freemasonic "order out of chaos"}.

List of books referenced or linked to in Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State book

Is this an anti-agarian, -"land movement" manifesto? No; ref:2.27: "A key concept is to go cloud first, land last — but not land never — by starting with an online community and then materializing it into the physical world."

Is Balaji a mechanist/materialist, like Madison et al.? Is politics "merely the art of conforming the conduct of societies and the laws of states to the physical laws" (Fahey, C.S.Sp., The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganization of Society, §"Economic laws become exclusively physical laws"), or does Balaji envision the discovery of new, socio-physics (& historico-physics) laws?

Anthony Sutton referenced (ref:2.483), in the context of Jewish banksters' funding of WW1 (cf. Fahey, C.S.Sp., Rulers of Russia).

Mentions the Benedict Option passim.

ref:2.1257: Zionist founder "Herzl’s work [The Jewish State] is a major inspiration for this book [The Network State]."

ref:2.1569: Gross myth: "the Catholic Church burned proponents of heliocentrism at the stake"! Clearly, he doesn't understand the history of science—e.g., the 1277 condemnations that freed modern science from slavish dogmatism, or that Galileo was only placed on house arrest or that Bruno was condemned for pantheism.

ref:2.1610: "the Internet is to the USA as the Americas were to the UK: a wide open territory that ultimately gave birth to new states and ways of thinking."

ref:2.1152: "The US establishment has put out videos and articles that come close to calling for a coup in China. George Soros broadly hints at it in speeches like this . And folks like Roger Garside literally wrote a book on it."

The book could be described as "scientific poetry".

“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met, and The Network State **may be his best.” — Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz

"We've started new currencies. Now The Network State shows us how to start new cities and new countries." — Vitalik Buterin, cofounder of Ethereum

"Balaji is a visionary, and one of the most original thinkers of our time. Many have had the experience of hearing him say something, thinking it was crazy, and then a year or two later realizing 'Balaji was right.' I think Balaji will be right about The Network State." — Brian Armstrong, cofounder and CEO of Coinbase

"The future convergence of networks and governments, from one of the most brilliant thinkers alive." — Naval Ravikant, cofounder of AngelList**

When the brand new is unthinkable, we fight over the old. That’s where we are today with governments, with politics, and with much of the physical world. But perhaps we can change that.

This book introduces the concept of the network state: a country you can start from your computer, a state that recruits like a startup, a nation built from the internet rather than disrupted by it.

The fundamental concept behind the network state is to assemble a digital community and organize it to crowdfund physical territory. But that territory is not in one place — it’s spread around the world, fully decentralized, hooked together by the internet for a common cause, much like Google’s offices or Bitcoin’s miners. And because every citizen has opted in, it’s a model for 100% democracy rather than the minimum threshold of consent modeled by 51% democracies.

Of course, there are countless questions that need to be answered to build something of this scope. How does a network state work socially, technically, logistically, legally, physically, financially? How could such a thing even be viable?

That’s why you should read this book.

Formerly the CTO of Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he is an early investor in many successful tech companies and crypto protocols, including Alchemy, Anduril, Benchling, Celestia, CoinTracker, Culdesac, Dapper Labs, Digital Ocean, Enhanced Games, Espresso Systems, Farcaster, Hadrian, Infinita, Instadapp, Luma, Minicircle, Mirror, Nucleus Genomics, Omada Health, OpenGov, OpenSea, Orchid Health, Paradigm, Perplexity, Polychain, Polymarket, Prospera, Replit, Republic, Starkware, Stedi, Superhuman, Synthesis, Varda, VoteAgora, and Zora, to name a few. Balaji also led the launch of USDC as Coinbase CTO, and was an early investor in many important crypto protocols including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Chainlink, NEAR, Polygon, XMTP, and Zcash.

Dr. Srinivasan was the cofounder of Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), Counsyl (acquired by Myriad), Teleport (acquired by Topia), and Coin Center. He holds a BS/MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.

Political Power and Technological Truth

07/14/25Political Power and Technological Truth : 77

There’s a great book by Franco Moretti called Graphs, Maps, and Trees . It’s a computational study of literature. Moretti’s argument is that every other study of literature is inherently biased.

Technoeconomic Axes

07/16/25Technoeconomic Axes : 318

The digital world is primary and the physical world is just the mirror. We’re still physical beings, of course. But important events happen on the internet first and then materialize in the physical world later, if ever.

!

American Anarchy, Chinese Control, International Intermediate

07/16/25American Anarchy, Chinese Control, International Intermediate : 340

Americans don’t believe in one god anymore, don’t believe in monotheism. So their choice is between one state and one coin, between ideological monostatism and mononumism.

07/16/25American Anarchy, Chinese Control, International Intermediate : 346

“netwar.”

or softwar

07/16/25American Anarchy, Chinese Control, International Intermediate : 349

The closest movie archetypes for the Green and Orange sides could be a more oppressive version of Portlandia and a more functional version of Mad Max.

07/16/25American Anarchy, Chinese Control, International Intermediate : 350

If you think the scenario of American Anarchy is a possibility, you probably want to get as far away from it as you can, regardless of your “sympathies” with either side.

á le St. Benedict

On Nation States

07/16/25On Nation States : 389

(Herzl’s work is a major inspiration for this book.)

On Network States

07/17/25On Network States : 468

demurrage currency

07/17/25On Network States : 471

count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States.
These had vanished by the year 2000, according to Putnam :

07/18/25On Network States : 474

the Catholic Church burned proponents of heliocentrism at the stake; it wouldn’t have invented space shuttles.

myth!

07/19/25On Network States : 489

Tiebout sorting

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