0:00

had somebody actually said, oh, I'm gonna

0:02

found a currency in two thousand seventeen, two

0:04

thousand eight. Almost every VC would

0:06

have looked to them like they had four eyes.

0:10

Today, I had the absolute pleasure of

0:12

talking to who I think is one of the

0:14

most fascinating minds on the planet right now.

0:16

That is Balaji Srinivasan. who

0:18

you might recognize as the former CTO of Coinbase,

0:21

former general partner at Andres and Horowitz.

0:23

He was also the Co Founder of Genetic Testing

0:25

Company Council and earned dot com, which

0:27

was acquired by Coinbase, an annual

0:29

investor in many successful companies like Deal,

0:31

Replicant, Super Human. And today,

0:33

we brought him in to discuss his best selling

0:35

book the network state. And

0:38

as you can imagine, when you talk to biology for

0:40

three hours, you can cover a lot of ground.

0:42

In this episode, we cover the difference between

0:44

nation and a state how constant become

0:46

variables, the cloud content, the newest

0:49

Leviathan, digital power, your identity

0:51

stack, calibrating risk, polycentric law,

0:53

cloud regulations, building fast with atoms,

0:56

founding versus inheriting, the powerful

0:58

versus the powerless, and just about

1:00

everything in between. So I hope you

1:02

enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

1:05

The

1:07

content here is for informational purposes

1:09

only should not be taken as legal business

1:11

tax or investment advice or be used to

1:13

evaluate any investment or security

1:15

and is not directed at any investors or

1:18

potential investors in any ASIC sixteen

1:20

z fund. For more details, BCA

1:22

sixteen z dot com slash disclosures.

1:35

Alright. We've got Balaji on the line. Balaji,

1:37

thanks so much for being here. Great

1:38

to be here.

1:39

I have to confess. I am a Balaji

1:42

fan. I've probably consumed an

1:44

unhealthy amount of biology content, so

1:46

very excited about this. Thank you for invading

1:49

my brain. I also read your

1:51

book recently, which is what we're gonna be talking about

1:53

today, this idea of the network state. And

1:55

I also have to say that similar to

1:58

what I learned about cryptocurrency. It kind of

1:59

forced me down this rabbit hole to

2:02

reconcile what happened around me in the

2:04

outside world, how monetary policy worked

2:06

as an example. The network state

2:08

kind of did the same thing, but with other concepts.

2:11

Right? Like nation states, what are these things?

2:13

So I'm excited to dive into that, but I wanna

2:15

introduce the audience to a simple

2:17

frame that I think was, again,

2:19

an aha moment for me, which is that

2:21

technology has been able to

2:23

reshape our lives at an individual level.

2:25

I think many people can understand that. They can

2:27

grasp that. Also, at the company

2:29

level, right, we've been able to start new companies

2:32

that are digital. It's also reshaped our

2:34

ability to participate in that ecosystem. And

2:36

then more recently, currencies as well.

2:38

Right? The network has changed that.

2:41

And your book discusses how technology

2:43

can actually potentially create new

2:45

states. very interesting concept.

2:47

And in order for us to dive into that,

2:49

why don't we start off with what

2:52

we have today, which are nation

2:54

states? So how would you define

2:56

a nation? And how would you define a state?

2:58

And how do those kind of interplay together?

3:00

Actually, I have this at the beginning of chapter

3:03

five in the book. And the

3:05

thing is we hear the term nation state

3:08

as a compound, you know, like a

3:10

phrase really. And we don't really

3:12

give too much thought as to what it means, but

3:15

it's useful to think about distinction between

3:17

those two words because they're actually very different. The nation

3:20

that comes from the same fruit as natality,

3:22

like the Latin like nocities, and

3:25

it's a common birth, common descent. So with

3:27

the Japanese nation, they have shared ancestry,

3:29

shared culture going back, hundreds,

3:31

you know, of years and shared

3:33

language, all all the type of stuff. And then

3:36

separate from that is the state, which is the administrative

3:38

unit that thin layer that sits

3:40

over the nation. Okay? And the

3:42

state could be of, you know, the Japanese

3:45

people themselves or could be, for example, nineteen

3:47

forty six after World War two. the

3:49

American government was basically the

3:51

state over the Japanese nation.

3:53

Right? And so once you think

3:55

of this distinction between the nation

3:57

and the state above it, the

3:59

cons of the nation state was every

4:02

ethnic group has the right

4:04

to have its own government. Now

4:07

the thing about this, of course, is

4:09

that's like an abstraction, but in the terms,

4:11

many of the ethnic groups on the planet

4:13

do not have their own government and

4:15

or they do not have their own territory, which is

4:18

another part of it. And so if you're talking about the

4:20

Catalonians or you know,

4:22

the the Kurds. These are groups

4:24

that have long histories

4:26

and they have, like, a legitimate nature

4:28

from the perspective, like, the seventeen hundreds,

4:30

eight centers person who think about, you know, the

4:32

nation state, they'd be considered a real

4:34

nation, but they do not have

4:36

territory. in the global game of musical

4:38

chairs, they didn't get a seat.

4:41

Okay? So, like, you have this map of

4:43

the world and everybody's kind of moving around

4:45

it, and they just lost out in the seat. They're

4:47

a stateless nation. Okay? And

4:49

so, like, the Kurds, for example, their ethnic

4:51

group overlaps or their historical lands overlap

4:54

like Turkey and other tenants' place Okay?

4:56

And the Californians, for example, they overlap

4:59

modern Spain. The reason for this is

5:01

that the maps that we have

5:03

are actually very abstract

5:05

constructs. You know, if you think about

5:06

a map of

5:08

Africa or actually even in the US, you have

5:10

these straight lines on a map.

5:12

whenever you see straight lines on a map, that's like

5:14

some surveyor said, okay. I'm gonna put this here

5:16

because of the latitude. That's some like abstract

5:19

political decision. In a sense, a map

5:21

is like a digital layer above the physical

5:23

world. You don't see the lines of the map in the

5:25

physical world. Right? Often,

5:27

those boundaries on a map do not

5:29

reflect the ancestral, you

5:31

know, long running boundaries of language

5:34

and culture and so on. There is however

5:36

a feedback loop where what happens

5:38

is those borders or those

5:40

boundaries that humans impose, then

5:42

in turn, change how

5:45

humans start living. And so

5:47

you will have something where there's now a sharp

5:49

transition from French to German

5:51

as you cross the Franco German border. Signs

5:53

change, languages change, that

5:55

human digital thing has caused

5:57

a digital crease in the physical

5:59

world, whereas before it might have been more continuous.

6:02

Right? Before we have modern map making,

6:04

before the world was mapped, you sort of had a gradual

6:07

climb, a gradual shift. Right?

6:09

So once you think of the difference to the nation

6:11

in the state, that the nation is

6:13

group of people with common birth and state administrative

6:15

layer. And you think about how that relates

6:17

to maps and so on, you can start thinking,

6:19

oh, okay. The exact configuration that we

6:21

have today is not only not

6:23

how it's not always being, but not how it

6:25

always will be. Yeah.

6:26

I think that was another

6:29

aha moment for me because in

6:31

my lifetime, those lines have been

6:33

constant. For the most part, right, there's exceptions,

6:35

but you kind of accept that this is the way the

6:37

world works. Right? These are the countries And

6:39

I think another interesting concept

6:41

that you mentioned in your book is even the United

6:43

Nations is perhaps named incorrectly. Right?

6:45

It should really be like the the chosen states

6:47

or something along those lines. The

6:49

selected states. The selected states.

6:51

Yeah. There's there's a guy actually the

6:53

Kazak san head. He actually made this

6:55

remark. He's like, Look, if we

6:58

allowed every group in the world with

7:00

legitimate right to self determination to

7:02

get their own territory, there'd be chaos.

7:04

We'd go from hundred ninety three

7:07

countries to six hundred is what you

7:09

said. Right? I think it's probably way more

7:11

than six hundred. But that just

7:13

gives you a sense of, oh, okay.

7:15

I used to be against

7:17

word games for the sake of word games,

7:20

but then I got

7:22

more into it. And one way of thinking about that

7:24

is if you you know, dolly two? Yep.

7:27

Exactly. Yeah. Mhmm. So dolly

7:29

2II had this tweet, like, the age of the

7:31

phrase. Right? The short phrase,

7:33

like whether it's a tweet, you know, on social

7:35

media, or whether it's twelve or

7:37

thirteen or fourteen word phrase to

7:40

go and reset your cryptocurrency, your wallet,

7:42

you know, passphrase. Or if

7:44

it's a short phrase with, like, just

7:46

a single some of his character or

7:48

single word that's different that changes

7:51

what the computer generates. You

7:53

can actually see that changing one

7:55

word changes what is

7:57

in somebody's brain. And the concept

7:59

of brussel conjugation, eye sweat,

8:02

uberspire, but she glows. The

8:04

same behavior can be flipped

8:07

neutrally, negatively, positively

8:10

without lying, what you're just

8:12

doing is just changing the tone of it.

8:14

And so you can flip all of those variables

8:16

negative. If you wanna make somebody look bad or flip

8:18

all them positive, he is, you

8:20

know, in an uncontrollable range,

8:22

but she claps back. preciously.

8:25

You know? That kind of thing. Right? And you just

8:27

characterize the situation differently, you wrestle conjugate

8:29

it. Right? And so the point

8:31

being that that slight trace

8:33

word now with dolly two, we can see

8:36

a tiny change of folks literally a

8:38

different visual in the computer brain.

8:41

and it also evokes a different visual

8:43

probably in the human brain. So with

8:45

that, just to descend onto this

8:47

concept of the nation, the fact that people

8:49

have conflated the nation and the

8:51

state recently, like people just say a nation state.

8:53

They don't realize there's a difference in the

8:55

nation state. Many states

8:57

today are actually not nation states.

8:59

Japan is a economical example of a nation

9:01

state. Israel is others

9:03

like, let's say India,

9:05

that's like more of a civilization state. There's

9:07

lots of different ethnic groups. India is more like

9:09

Europe, you know. Like the South Indian and

9:11

North Indian are like historically

9:13

is different as like, you

9:15

know, a Spaniard or somebody from

9:17

Finland. Okay? India was not

9:19

a country until Recently, it was

9:21

a civilization. They did have things in common, but

9:23

a civilization say is different from a nation say.

9:25

That's one example. Or, you know,

9:28

something like you know, Singapore or

9:30

or the United States, which is

9:32

a multinational state where there's many

9:34

different ethnic groups. under one

9:37

administrative zone. It's not a nation state.

9:39

It is a multinational state. Now people

9:41

could argue that there was an

9:43

American nation, like, by

9:45

mid nineteen hundreds, there's a lot of

9:47

effort to kind of pack down

9:49

people. Like, and tell you Roosevelt talked about he wanted the

9:51

end of the hyphenated American, you know, he

9:53

didn't want people to be. I'm a Polish american,

9:55

a dis everybody's just an American. Right? So it's

9:57

an enormous process where the state

9:59

was

9:59

trying to pack

10:00

in and centralize and

10:03

remove those points of synced in

10:05

a survey and just think of themselves as American

10:07

only. And by mid century, you could

10:09

argue that was somewhat successful and

10:10

that was like peak centralization. And

10:14

why is that important? Well,

10:16

then people start not

10:18

thinking about the difference between the nation and the

10:20

state where all the state itself

10:22

has formed the nation. Do you see what I'm

10:24

saying? The state now says the

10:26

German state is Germany. The French state

10:28

is France. Right? The Italian state is

10:30

Italy. The American state is

10:32

America, and it waves a flag and so on.

10:34

And it's to the state's advantage

10:36

to identify itself with the nation. One

10:38

analogy I have in the book, which I think is a

10:40

funny way of re thinking it's

10:42

like labor and management. And in

10:44

a small company, they're actually literally the

10:46

same. You know, the founder is both the CEO

10:48

and the person who's going and taking out the

10:50

garbage or fixing the computers

10:53

or whatever. like, every is done by one person. Right? There's

10:55

no, you know, division of labor

10:57

or what have you. And then as the

10:59

company scales, then management and labor

11:01

arguably get more alienated

11:03

or whatever, and then people can say, oh,

11:05

management is designed with labor. And what's

11:07

interesting is, those people who will

11:09

accept that are often folks who will

11:11

contest the idea that the state and the

11:13

nation are disciplined, but it's actually a very useful

11:15

analogy to see that they can't be aligned,

11:17

but they can also be disciplined. Right? I'm

11:19

obviously not somebody who's anti management,

11:21

but I recognize that you want equity

11:23

structures and things like that to align folks.

11:25

Right? Once you kind of realize

11:27

that the nation in the state are different. You can

11:29

reexamine all these words. Example,

11:31

multinational. Right? So multinational

11:34

for multinational corporations is actually

11:36

a misnomer. it really should be called multidurisdictional

11:38

or multistate because it's

11:40

not as if Google has like a

11:42

direct ambassador to the Catalonians and

11:44

the BaaS and the Kurds and so on.

11:46

It's actually talking to the states that

11:49

have the administrative units. Right? So

11:51

it's multi jurisdictional, multi state.

11:53

The United Nations, as we just discussed, is really

11:55

best called the selected states

11:57

because it doesn't have all the

11:59

nations of the

11:59

world. Right? And in fact,

12:01

many nations missed out in the

12:04

game of musical chairs and they

12:06

don't have a seat at the accommodations. And

12:08

now you can actually realize, oh, there's

12:10

a whole queue

12:11

of people people,

12:13

really, I should say groups. Right?

12:15

With long histories and cultures that

12:18

are boxed out of the United

12:20

Nations. And, you know,

12:22

one that's very prominent is like

12:24

the, you know, mention the Kurds,

12:26

Californians, one that's like sort of

12:28

becoming a nation or like the Taiwanese.

12:30

where there wasn't like historically this

12:32

huge necessarily difference from mainland China or

12:34

at least there's some difference in a lot

12:36

of folks in Taiwan came from

12:38

Mainland China because, you know, the Kuomintang,

12:40

the the national sources of civil war, you know, a

12:42

bunch of them moved out. Now,

12:44

Taiwan is like this that that's a

12:46

very famous example something that's sort of on the

12:48

boundary between just a group of people

12:50

and like a full fledged country that's

12:52

recognized for everybody because China leads

12:54

on people to not recognize Taiwan.

12:57

Right? That's like a famous example, but there's lots

12:59

of other things that are in this sort of boundary zone in

13:01

different ways where some countries recognize

13:03

them but not all, you know. So

13:05

it's not part of the club fully, but

13:07

it's also not totally not part of the club. It's

13:09

like in this another zone. This is a

13:11

book called Invisible Countries on this. I'm

13:13

getting at is once you distinguish nation

13:15

the state, you reexamine words like multinational. You

13:18

reexamine words like the United

13:20

Nations. you reexam words like national

13:22

security or phrases like national security.

13:24

Really, that's like federal security.

13:26

Right? Nation is often used to mean

13:28

the whole thing but it's like

13:30

federal, like the overall government. Right?

13:33

And you realize you've actually there's a base that's

13:35

being stolen, you know. The nation and the

13:37

state are different. And once you

13:39

realize nations are different, you're like, oh,

13:41

well, America actually is

13:43

not a single nation at a minimum it's

13:45

by national.

13:45

as you said, the nation in the state are not always

13:47

aligned and there is this gray zone.

13:49

Many people accept that these lines

13:51

are very concrete they're very binary.

13:53

And I think many of the examples you've

13:55

given show that they're not necessarily. And

13:57

I think that relates directly

13:59

into this idea of a network

14:01

state because if you accept that the lines

14:04

are binary, they're set. You

14:06

can't change them. There's no point

14:08

of even going into this

14:10

concept of a network state. But as you

14:12

dive into these gray

14:14

zones, and actually just to bring up one quick example

14:16

from your book is even just naming countries

14:18

that many people didn't realize have

14:20

emerged in the last couple of decades. Right? You

14:22

think back to, like, the largest countries

14:24

like, America, China, etcetera.

14:26

They have much longer histories, but

14:28

there are new countries on the map that

14:30

have happened within our lifetime. So that

14:32

was another example

14:34

of gray becoming part

14:36

of the existing

14:37

infrastructure. This whole concept

14:39

of concepts becoming variables,

14:41

I think is a very important

14:44

characteristic of our age, fourteen years

14:46

ago, there wasn't, like, fiat

14:48

currency and cryptocurrency. Right?

14:50

There wasn't a distinct it was just, like, you

14:52

know, it's currency. If you had walked into a

14:55

VC's office in two

14:57

thousand eight, two thousand seven,

14:59

and you said, I'm gonna have found a

15:01

new currency. Okay? Well, actually Peter

15:04

Teal and Paypal, they kinda tried to do

15:06

that. Okay? but they didn't really say

15:08

that that was the thing. They said, you know, it's

15:10

like online payments and so on, they they did their founder

15:12

currency. But the

15:14

fundamental issue, you know, which

15:16

Toshi later put a finger on, but it wasn't

15:18

obvious was decentralization. And then how you actually

15:20

make it decentralized back end and the blockchain, all

15:22

the stuff we had somebody actually said, oh, I'm

15:24

gonna found a currency in two thousand

15:26

seven, two thousand eight. Almost every

15:28

VC would have looked to them like they had four

15:30

eyes. And they would have said, where

15:32

you're gonna go petition like the IMF

15:34

and the World Bank? Oh, it's like

15:36

and it's deflationary to

15:38

haven't you read Econ 101

15:41

Paul Krugman proved that

15:43

deflation is bad and

15:45

you can never make, you know, that they just

15:47

quote these like priests to you basically

15:49

to say that it's impossible. It should be a joke. try

15:51

and do some act and so those people were thought

15:53

of this, Joe. But Cytoshi

15:55

figured out a new way that

15:58

literally started on a message board.

16:00

you know, like, you posted this on

16:02

the, like, the Metz Dow, cryptography,

16:04

message board. And what

16:06

still she realized that I don't think most people

16:08

realize is even if

16:10

this is implicit,

16:12

you can think of the

16:14

internet as basically like giving rise to a

16:16

new continent. Okay? Imagine an Atlantis

16:18

that just arose

16:20

out of the middle of the ocean.

16:22

And people were just taking commuter flights

16:24

there back and forth each day.

16:26

Okay? to spend eight hours in

16:28

Atlantis and sixteen hours at home.

16:30

That's really what the Internet is. You know how

16:32

I can prove that? Well, we're in it right now.

16:34

Well, right. Exactly. Like, one way of thinking about it is

16:37

ask themselves what percentage of their

16:39

time? They spend their

16:41

waking hours. They spend looking at a

16:43

screen of some kind. Okay? Whether

16:45

it's laptop, mobile phone,

16:47

tablet, you know, they're a smartwatch, something

16:49

like that. Right? What percentage of that time is that

16:51

for you, sir? I, unfortunately, have

16:53

to say it's probably, like, fourteen

16:56

hours a day, but I'm I'm probably not Something

16:58

like that. I'd say probably the average person, though.

17:01

Right? It's it's a third of their day, maybe eight hours.

17:02

That's right. So what that means and

17:05

that's up from basically zero

17:07

in nineteen ninety one. Yes.

17:09

Right? So, you know, this this

17:12

Atlantis, this cloud continent.

17:14

Right? So just to extend the metaphor, we're

17:16

taking these commuter planes

17:19

to the cloud continent fourteen hours a day

17:21

and coming back. And we're only

17:24

spending two hours of our waking

17:26

lives, in your case, on the land and

17:28

fourteen hours in the cloud. Right? For other

17:30

people, it might only be a few, like, three or

17:32

four hours, but, like, that's

17:34

amazing. Millions of people have

17:37

migrated huge chunks of their

17:39

lives to this cloud continent. Okay?

17:41

When I say billions, I mean,

17:43

like, three something billion just on Facebook. Right?

17:45

And you add all the people with smartphones and so on.

17:47

So let's say it's on there to three four billion people

17:49

in the world, half the people

17:51

of have are now spending half

17:54

their lives in this cloud

17:56

continent, half their waking hours. Okay?

17:59

Up from nothing in nineteen

18:01

ninety something. when we think about that, that

18:03

is actually a different way

18:05

of visualizing the whole thing. And

18:07

you realize the incident is actually on

18:09

par with the discovery of the

18:11

Americas for the Europeans. Right? Yes.

18:13

Of course, there were people in the Americas

18:15

before the Europeans got there. I talked about this

18:17

in the book actually that like, if you go and look

18:19

at the Bantou expansion or

18:21

the mongols sweeping across the

18:23

world, there's essentially no

18:26

ethnic group that has ever had some location since

18:28

time in memorial. They just killed

18:30

the previous folks and kinda took over

18:32

their territory or whatever. Right? So

18:35

leaving that whole part of things aside

18:37

from the perspective of Europeans, like,

18:39

quote, the discovery of the new world was

18:41

this huge thing. similarly like the folks

18:43

who went over the baring street.

18:45

Their discovery of the Americas was this

18:47

huge thing. It was this new frontier. Right? Which is

18:49

obviously thousands of years earlier. this Internet

18:51

frontier where we've migrated

18:53

to will over time

18:55

give rise to new countries just like

18:57

the Americas did. Right? The

19:00

people came there and

19:02

they didn't think of themselves as

19:05

American or Brazilian or

19:08

Mexican or Canadian or something

19:10

like that. Nowadays, North and South America have

19:12

they're all, you know, slodged into the same

19:14

grid as like the old world. Right? But

19:16

initially, they taught themselves as English or French

19:18

or, you know, they were colonists, they were settlers.

19:21

Right? They didn't identify with

19:23

the new land as primary

19:25

and the old world is secondary.

19:27

Right? They didn't think of themselves as

19:29

a Polish american or

19:31

English american. Right? That's also

19:34

just English. And that's similar to folks who

19:36

spend all of this time, this cloud continent, but

19:38

have not made the flip. Right? You're

19:40

spending the majority of your time in the

19:43

cloud continent But you're not thinking

19:45

yourself as a cloud person -- Yes. --

19:47

first. Yes. Yeah. It's

19:47

the keyword. Yes. I think one is

19:49

the keyword.

19:50

Right? Interesting thing

19:51

for you to share would be

19:53

I think many people, like the individual you

19:55

might have just described,

19:58

they, in reality, spend

19:59

a lot of

19:59

time in the cloud, but they don't actually

20:02

see the cloud or the

20:04

network as a true challenger

20:06

to something like the state or prior

20:08

to that religion. and you

20:10

talk about this as this idea of a new Leviathan. And

20:13

I think what would actually help people

20:15

wrap their head around this is is what

20:17

are some examples of where the network

20:20

did challenge the state where there was almost

20:22

like a head to head or

20:25

strong sway that the network

20:27

had in our wider world. So

20:29

one thing I've heard you talk about is Wall Street

20:31

bets, which people might think is kind of a

20:33

silly example, but there are larger ones. Right?

20:35

So so what are some of those examples?

20:37

So consternible

20:38

leviathan generalizes.

20:40

And, you know, this is the

20:42

least common word in Silicon Valley is

20:44

God. Okay? Or in technology is

20:46

God. Right? So basically, I'm talk I'm gonna talk about God for a second. So

20:48

the concept of Leviathan generalizes God.

20:51

And what it basically means is in this

20:53

context, it's like Hobbs of Leviathan and I'm just

20:56

kind of you know, taking that continent and taking a little bit

20:58

further. And the leviathan

21:00

is that all powerful

21:02

force that stands

21:04

above all men and

21:07

makes antisocial people behave in

21:09

pro social ways. Okay? So

21:12

I have introduced three Leviathan's

21:14

God's State and Network. And it was actually

21:16

gratifying I have this passage in there and one

21:18

of the footnotes by a guy named Jacob

21:21

Burkhardt from Force and Freedom. Did you see that

21:23

passage? I'm not sure. It's like footnote

21:25

n or whatever of it. There's a lot of footnotes. A lot

21:27

of links. but it it's great. Why don't you why

21:29

don't you share what that footnote is? Yeah.

21:31

So here is here is this pretty cool

21:33

footnote. I think it's cool. At least it's kind of thing I think

21:35

it's So this is from a book that was

21:37

written almost two hundred years ago,

21:39

okay, Force and Freedom. And

21:42

I I found this after I'd written much

21:44

of the book or whatever just like like, you

21:46

know, he's flipping through old stuff and I was like, and he identifies

21:48

essentially three forces in the world. He calls

21:50

him state, church,

21:52

And

21:53

then the third force, he calls

21:56

culture. Right? And this is way before the

21:58

Internet or anything like that,

22:00

obviously. And by the state and church are kind of

22:02

you can kinda guess what those are. Right?

22:04

Culture, he defines as all the peer

22:06

to peer interactions between people.

22:08

he didn't say quite peer peer, he says, I was gonna give

22:10

the exact quote. Our theme is the

22:13

state religion and culture in their

22:15

mutual bearings. We are fully aware

22:17

of arbitrariness of this division into three

22:19

powers. The division hour is a mere device to

22:21

enable us to cover the ground. Indeed, any

22:23

historical subject must proceed this way.

22:26

Right? The three powers are supremely heterogeneous to each other

22:28

and cannot be coordinated. And even if we were

22:30

to coordinate the two constant state and religion

22:32

culture would be still something essentially different.

22:36

The same religion, the expressions of political and

22:38

metaphysical need may claim authority at least over

22:40

their particular peoples and indeed over the

22:42

world. For our special purpose however,

22:44

culture which means material and spiritual need in

22:46

neuroscience is the sum of all that has spontaneously

22:49

arisen for the advancement of material life as

22:51

an expression of spiritual and moral life all social intercourse

22:53

technologies, arts, literature, and sciences is a

22:55

realm of variable, free, not

22:57

necessarily universal of all that cannot, late

22:59

claim, to compulsive authority.

23:02

Wow. Okay. That's

23:04

like two hundred years ago. And what he's talking

23:06

about in modern language would be

23:08

culture is the network of

23:10

peer to peer volitional interactions

23:13

between people as opposed to

23:15

the top down and positions of

23:17

the church and the state respect And this

23:19

relates to constant leviathans. So the three leviathans I describe as

23:22

god's data network. Right? And

23:24

how do you think about this? So in the eighteen hundreds,

23:26

what's the most powerful force in the

23:28

world? God. Why? You do something wrong? You

23:30

steal? God will punish you. Right? That's why

23:32

you didn't steal. Okay? By the nineteen

23:34

hundreds, enough people didn't believe in God.

23:37

you had nature writing about how God was dead and,

23:39

you know, essentially the the basis for a

23:41

lot of civilization. You had this you

23:43

went from this decentralized law enforcer

23:46

who had hit you with lightning bolts. If you did something bad, people

23:48

actually believe in that as like the super cop.

23:50

Right? People didn't believe in that anymore since

23:52

said, you had the rise to a greater

23:54

extent of the state filling that

23:56

void. Right? The uniformed police

23:58

force is the poison blue in the

24:00

extremist. It's the Soviet Union of a

24:02

totally godless state and so on. And in fact, that was huge

24:04

collision in the twentieth century between the Soviet

24:06

Union, which is a pure state, and America,

24:08

which is a god state combination

24:10

like marine corps of mid century would

24:12

say, you know, for god and country. So in the nineteen hundreds,

24:14

why don't you steal because the state would punish you?

24:16

Right? Even if you didn't believe in god,

24:18

the Boysen Blue would get you. That's why there's so

24:20

many police procedurals on TV. Right?

24:23

Because the state is portrayed

24:25

as omnipotent domestically. all of the things, even like

24:27

a small little boy, you know,

24:30

who knows what a cop and a robber is.

24:32

Right? They can see the uniforms and

24:34

so and so forth. They are

24:36

also, you know, taught,

24:38

oh, the US military abroad

24:40

can go and invade any country, blow anything

24:42

up. It's big, bad, all powerful, blah,

24:45

blah. Right? And until I think about twenty nineteen,

24:47

those kinds of things, while Ricky,

24:49

they like, people kind of believe in them.

24:51

And now what we're getting into is

24:53

the third Leviathan, which is a network. And

24:55

what that is is that's a cryptocurrency network,

24:58

that's a social network. And now the

25:00

network, you have a third thing, you you don't

25:02

seal because network won't let you. either you'll get canceled

25:04

by the social network or

25:06

you will not be able to take it

25:08

because the encryption prevents you.

25:11

And it is a third way of thinking about it. God would

25:13

fight you eighteen hundreds. State will punish

25:15

you nineteen hundreds. Never won't let you

25:17

two thousands. Okay? These are three

25:20

different theories of a prime mover. What

25:22

is the most powerful force in the world? Is

25:24

it God? Is it the US military?

25:26

Or is it encryption? All kinds of

25:28

political arguments. moral arguments,

25:30

cultural arguments, social arguments,

25:32

a lot of them reduced down

25:35

to who is

25:36

my Leviathan? Like, what

25:38

is what is the final thing that I'm

25:41

invoking that says

25:43

basically, like, My dad can be of your

25:45

dad. Like, my god is stronger than your

25:47

god. What do I think of as that, you know,

25:49

thing? And of course, there could be conflicts

25:51

within people of God. Right? And there can be that have

25:53

mentioned between people of God and people of the states.

25:55

Christians and the state like the Soviet

25:57

Union persecuted people of God.

26:00

there can be conflict between people, the state, and people of the network, like

26:02

the antitrust cases against

26:04

tech companies or the

26:07

state department versus tornado cache and and so on and so forth.

26:09

Right? Once you kinda see this, it's actually like

26:11

a vocabulary for parsing the world.

26:14

And just to generalize this this is a part that's not in v one

26:16

of the book that's coming in v two.

26:19

So with, you know, God,

26:20

we're familiar

26:21

with the concept of Atheus

26:23

monothesis, polytheus. Right? Okay.

26:26

So Atheus doesn't believe in God. There's

26:28

also agnostic and so on which is for our

26:30

purposes. Right? So Atheus

26:32

monotheus smelthias smelthias. A monotheus doesn't believe

26:35

in God. A

26:38

monotheus like a Hindu believes in

26:40

many gods. zero, one,

26:42

one and we can now

26:43

generalize this to the a

26:46

status, the monostatist,

26:48

and the polystatist. And

26:50

let's say a coin ish, monoclonist,

26:53

polycoinist, or you might say a

26:55

numerist like numerist is like a sodium

26:57

coins. Right? So let's say A status. A

26:59

status is an anarchist. Okay? They don't

27:01

believe in the state at all. So it could be a

27:03

crypto anarchist. It could be in an archicomist. They

27:05

just don't believe in the state of all. Okay.

27:07

Zero states. monostatists. That's

27:09

somebody who believes that their empire should run the

27:11

world. Right? Like a

27:13

national greatness, NeoCon, or like

27:15

somebody who thinks China should dominate the whole

27:17

world or whatever. Right? Or back in the

27:19

day, like, someone the Roman Empire, the Soviet

27:21

right, Soviet imperialist. That's like a monocetist.

27:24

Our state should run everything. And

27:26

then the poly sadist is

27:28

like somebody who's into competitive

27:30

government, digital nomads. Okay?

27:32

Switching between countries, passports. Okay?

27:35

Now, you can also apply the same framework to

27:37

coins to the network. A

27:39

coin is the no coiner. They don't believe in

27:41

coins at all. They hate coins. Right?

27:43

you know, web three critics blah

27:45

blah. Okay. Monoclonus is

27:48

like the bitcoin maximalist or

27:50

a maximalist of anyone they think their

27:52

digital currency or their network

27:55

is just the number one, everybody. Right? The

27:57

Polycoinist, I mean, there's

27:59

actually this

27:59

PolyChain. Right? There's multi coin.

28:02

Those

28:02

are literally funds that were

28:05

set up on the premise that multiple

28:07

coins will exist, which was controversial

28:09

at the time that they set it up. Right? Like

28:11

in, you know, I think PolyChain was set up in

28:13

twenty fifteen ish. They're about multi client on the

28:15

exact time frame, but around that time. I'm just naming those

28:17

as two funds which are poly chain

28:19

and multi coin. So the poly coin is,

28:22

okay? Or the polypneumist is another term.

28:24

Numus is like numerism is the

28:26

study of coins like pneumatic. Right? They believe multiple

28:28

coins. Now here's what's interesting. Once you

28:30

have this cleavage of the world, right,

28:32

you can realize so that's like

28:34

three times three times three, many

28:37

ideologies can be further slotted

28:39

into like combinations of these.

28:41

For example, you have somebody who's

28:43

the atheist, monostatist,

28:45

a coin is. Right? That

28:47

is somebody who is like your

28:50

secular East Coast establishment

28:52

person who doesn't believe in God, believes

28:54

in the US government and especially the regulatory

28:56

state and hits coins. You know, crypto

28:58

energy is bitcoin, Maximus. they're an

29:00

atheist often. Sometimes they're a monothesis

29:02

or a polytheist. Right? Let's say, often an

29:04

atheist, they are an

29:06

a status. they don't believe the state should

29:08

exist, but they're a mononomist.

29:10

okay Okay?

29:11

So that's a real conflict

29:13

that's gonna happen between the

29:16

atheist, monostatist,

29:18

a minutes newist, and the

29:20

atheist, a status, mononemus.

29:23

Right? that's like that's a collision because they

29:25

they have different gods. Right? That's gonna be,

29:27

like, the US government and the

29:29

US dollar versus Bitcoin is as

29:31

big a clash as, like, you

29:33

know, I don't know, Christian Muslim was during the crusades. I

29:35

mean, that's a that's a clash of, you know,

29:37

or like the Soviet University US. Those

29:39

are two fundamentally different class of

29:42

ideologies. I

29:42

think too many people that

29:45

would seem a little outlandish, you

29:47

know, being the devil's advocate, what

29:49

comes to mind is these are all

29:51

collective terms or

29:53

structures or things that we all believe in

29:55

or don't believe in. Right? Some level of

29:57

belief depending on where you fit in

29:59

that matrix. And for many

30:01

people, let's say if we use God as Bill

30:03

Bison, the repercussions

30:05

as you're saying of, like, not behaving in certain

30:07

ways. For them, the people who believe in that,

30:09

they're like, I'm to hell. That's like a a

30:11

lot of force or at least imagined force.

30:13

The same thing is true with the state. Yes. Right?

30:15

So if if I do something wrong, I'm going

30:18

to jail. a lot of force What's interesting about the

30:20

new Leviathan that you're describing

30:22

as the network, there's

30:24

force, but it's it's not

30:26

approach the same way if if that makes sense. Like,

30:28

it's it's actually

30:29

-- Yes. -- a lack of

30:30

force in some ways. It's it's cryptography and

30:32

it's using the network to

30:34

enforce certain things, but

30:37

without the same force that you imagine

30:39

through god or the

30:41

state. And I think that's maybe

30:43

why it's hard for some people to imagine this being a

30:45

Leviathan because a lot of people view the

30:47

network as what what is just a bunch of

30:49

semiconductors and servers and

30:51

and bytes running back and forth. But I think that's why

30:53

it's important to think through, like or to to

30:55

give these examples of where the network has

30:58

actually been incredibly strong.

31:01

relative to other lebizans?

31:03

Well, so here's

31:04

the thing. It's basically one of the things

31:06

I touched on there and I talk talk about more

31:08

in the book is fusions of

31:10

all kinds. Right? So you introduce

31:12

these pure forms of like god's seed network, and

31:14

you can have fusion. So I mentioned

31:16

like god plus state is the

31:18

American state. Right? And there's different

31:21

versions of network plus state. One

31:23

is a particular version of a book,

31:25

the eponymous network

31:27

state, which is a fusion of network

31:29

and state that you can think of as

31:31

the network. Is the state

31:34

like it's it's the government?

31:36

Right? to network is the nation that underpins the

31:38

state because you have a social network online that

31:40

is actually giving legitimacy as opposed

31:42

to a physical physically based

31:45

nation where everybody lived together It's a

31:47

digitally based nation where it thinks the same,

31:49

and they're aligned that way rather than the same

31:51

language. They have the same culture, but there's culture

31:53

is online. Different ways of

31:55

parsing But to your point, in terms of

31:57

force, well, one fusion

31:59

of a kind of network state

32:01

is sort of a China's bill.

32:03

Right? And actually with the

32:05

US Cellular's building. And so you connect

32:08

the network to drones. Right? You

32:10

connect the network to robots. for this physical

32:12

actuators, and that's, like, one way of thinking

32:14

about it. So now that absolutely is force

32:16

in the physical world. And in fact, that's already being

32:18

deployed and and so on. Right? Another

32:20

way of thinking about it is, which is already there. So

32:23

this thread that I just pasted into chat. So

32:25

this is a while back, but basically,

32:27

I was thinking about digital power and how

32:29

to articulate it. Digital power is not

32:32

really soft power. Okay? If you're a

32:34

deep platform and seeing all your money

32:36

frozen, that's more than just

32:38

influence. But it's also not what we

32:40

traditionally think of as hard power because it's

32:42

invisible. It's intangible. You can use it

32:44

on a hundred million people. There's

32:46

no optics. There's no, like, fireworks,

32:48

something blows up, there's no nuclear explosion.

32:50

Like, the human brain is not

32:52

trained to react to the use of digital power.

32:54

It's not dramatic. In that way, it's like a

32:56

bit slipping on the server. Right? So I was

32:58

trying to think about how to classify it, and then I

33:00

eventually was like, oh, you know, here's a four

33:02

part classification. Analog

33:05

soft power. analog hard power,

33:07

digital soft power, digital hard power. Right?

33:09

You could also say physical soft power, physical

33:11

hard power, digital soft power, and

33:13

what is that? Analog soft power, that's culture

33:15

and influence. Okay? Analog heart

33:17

power, that's bombs and bullets. This is the

33:19

classic soft heart power. Digital

33:22

digital soft power is ranking

33:24

and recommendation. Digital hard

33:27

power is de platforming, freezing, and seizing.

33:29

And so the key differentiation is Soft

33:31

power is probabilistic and hard power is

33:33

deterministic. Soft power you're

33:35

persuading, hard power you're

33:37

compelling. Okay? So now you start to

33:39

actually see, okay, that's another

33:41

way. Besides the obvious thing of drones and

33:43

so on or, you know, that's, like, compelling in a

33:45

very gun gunpoint that you kind

33:47

of weigh. you can compel in a

33:49

different way with the network where

33:51

you lock people out. Either

33:53

of their accounts online or

33:55

they can't access the building. Their keycard is disabled. Right?

33:58

Their funds are frozen. Their

34:00

account has permissions

34:02

reduced. Their suspended, etcetera.

34:04

that's actually a very significant punishment. In

34:06

China, for example, like people, their COVID codes

34:08

are used, the red and green zones are

34:10

often marked as like COVID red,

34:14

and then they can't travel. Their WeChat doesn't work.

34:16

And, yeah, in theory, like, it doesn't actually

34:18

affect their physical body, like, they're not

34:22

hurt. Okay? But they're basically unpersoned. They are

34:24

disconnected from huge chunks of the Chinese network. They have

34:26

to rely on a friend to do

34:28

things and so on. They are just

34:30

much less

34:32

like, independent that they were. Right? It's similar, though it's

34:34

not quite there to, like, exile. Like,

34:36

when you're exiled from the community and, like, grease sort

34:38

of. Right? So it's, like, digital exile.

34:41

think digital power should not be

34:44

underestimated. Even if it's like flips on

34:46

bits on servers, it's

34:48

growing in power. Drones are the

34:50

most having example, but locking you out of an account or digital soft power

34:52

like downranking you. These are big things

34:54

that can totally crash somebody's, you

34:56

know, company can make

34:58

or break you socially, etcetera,

35:00

etcetera. Yeah. And I think it's

35:01

it's directly correlated to our

35:04

dependency on

35:06

the network. So as more people go online, as more people spend more time

35:08

online, as we talked about before, if people are

35:10

spending eight hours of their day online, that's a

35:12

third of their

35:14

living hours.

35:16

half of their awake hours in which that

35:18

is important to them to some degree. And as

35:20

it gets more integrated with work, let's

35:22

say, that's that is a meaningful

35:24

is a meaningful sense of power

35:26

to your point. One interesting aspect to consider as well

35:29

is that with all of these forms of

35:31

powers, there's tears. Right? So,

35:33

like, you could think of the most extreme

35:35

tier of hard analog power

35:37

or force is like the

35:39

dust penalty. Right? but you can actually dissuade someone

35:41

from doing something by saying, you know,

35:44

applying a night in jail or maybe it's a month in

35:46

jail. Right?

35:48

So there's tiers to it. And I think there's going to be as well power.

35:50

Right? Where it's not just the

35:52

extreme version at all times, but

35:54

also it can be where

35:57

you lose all access to your digital life, and that's that's quite significant. And the

35:59

thing is your

35:59

digital life just becomes your life, you know,

36:02

in a sense of it's your login to

36:04

all kinds of things. Right?

36:05

Yeah. Why don't we return to this idea that, you know,

36:07

it sounds like this digital power

36:10

concept may not resonate with

36:12

everyone, but wanna give a couple of these examples because they really resonated with

36:14

me that you've shared in in your book and

36:16

otherwise. So, I mean, I mentioned Wall Street Pets. It's

36:18

maybe a

36:20

silly example. Another example of a network

36:22

utilizing some degree of force

36:24

is Amazon H22 That's an example

36:26

that you gave where actually like

36:28

some concept

36:29

Yeah. Persuasion, though, that's the sport. Exactly.

36:32

Yes. So that that so, you know, there's

36:34

convincing and there's compelling. Yeah. I mean, something else

36:36

that you've

36:36

said is your immigration policy is your firewall.

36:39

you've also shown how networks can be

36:42

utilized in unison with

36:44

humans, of course. So another example that you've

36:46

given is the power

36:48

of twelve Instagram engineers

36:50

to beat twelve thousand from Kodak.

36:52

Right? So

36:52

Kodak. Yeah. Not not an example. that's

36:54

original to me, but yes, it's an important example. Right. And so think it

36:56

it's it's important to recognize how

36:58

the network does change

37:02

the game. it changes people's ability to participate within

37:04

these systems, to challenge the state, to

37:06

challenge previous leviathans. And

37:08

I think with that

37:10

understanding, let's return back to the idea

37:12

of the network state and

37:14

actually building these

37:16

new lines that many people assume are

37:19

very much set. Yeah.

37:20

So so I actually I start off

37:22

the book with this because people

37:25

skim nowadays, and so never

37:27

state in one informal sentence is a

37:29

highly aligned online community with a capacity

37:31

for collective action

37:34

that crowd from surgery around the world and eventually gain symptomatic recognition

37:37

from preexisting states. That's like an

37:39

informal sentence. We just kind of

37:42

describe that. highly aligned online community. Okay? So it's not

37:44

just, you know, a Game of

37:46

Thrones Facebook group. Okay? Such as

37:48

people who

37:50

are there pop popcorn. They are highly aligned. They all think of themselves

37:52

literally part of the same

37:54

community. Okay? And they've

37:56

got leadership,

37:58

and they've got an org chart of some kind and they've got

38:00

probably membership dues and a cryptocurrency

38:02

and, like, this is at

38:04

the top of their identity stack.

38:06

Okay? You know, what you do is not what you are. You may not think

38:09

of yourself as a left hander, even if you are left handed. It used

38:11

to be I'm Jim. I'm thirty two.

38:13

I like the Steelers. live

38:17

in Philly, whatever, something like that. Those are less and less common

38:19

as bios. Right? Instead, what people do

38:21

is they put pound

38:24

x you know, like pound BTC or

38:26

pound this movement, pound that movement in their

38:28

vials, they'll basically put their tribal

38:32

flags there. both their attack and their defense. Like, you you kind of

38:34

instantly know where somebody's coming from when you know

38:36

their tribe. Right?

38:38

There's various shibblets,

38:40

various words and things people put in

38:42

there that identify what gang they're

38:44

informally a part of, what social they are self

38:46

identifying with and that probably

38:48

also accepts them to some extent. They are

38:49

also ready to sort of defend that

38:52

identity. They're putting it out there on their sleeve

38:54

and often the attacks

38:56

and somebody We'll attack them. Lal, another Bitcoin

38:58

nutter or something like that. You know, the people

39:00

will say that. Right? Or,

39:02

oh, you know, how

39:04

is mess you know, some people call it Ethereum math. Right? And and, of

39:06

course, there's a zillion other things like this. So it's

39:08

a, you know, then the next

39:10

step is it

39:12

has a capacity for collective action. Right? So it's aligned and it has common

39:14

beliefs. Capacity for collective action, that's part of a

39:16

segment with respect to the org chart and the

39:19

leadership. So again, this is an extremely

39:22

selective filter. The vast majority

39:24

of online communities do not

39:26

have a capacity for collective

39:28

action. Why? because

39:30

I can you know, if you look at

39:32

a a Twitter following. Right? Let's

39:34

say somebody has a million followers on

39:38

Twitter. Okay? how many likes does this does a typical tweet

39:40

get? Actually, a pretty

39:42

good thing would be if you have a million

39:44

followers to have a thousand or

39:46

two thousand That's actually pretty good. All in the order of point one percent to point

39:48

two percent are actually engaging with it. That is not

39:50

what I'm calling a capacity for collect fraction. That

39:52

is a capacity for

39:54

popcorn action. Okay?

39:55

Yeah. It's a cool

39:56

three d boot like this. Right? Okay. A

39:58

capacity of collective action would

39:59

mean that when you put something out

40:02

to a thousand people, you get a

40:04

thousand likes. you don't

40:05

get fun. Right? You put

40:07

something out to a million

40:09

people. You get a million people

40:11

hitting the button, basically. that's

40:13

what a capacity for collective action is.

40:15

It's something where the group moves

40:17

as one. If you go and

40:19

look at the web two Internet.

40:22

Okay? You look at Hacker News, and you

40:24

look at Reddit, and you look at Twitter, there's an

40:26

aspect of it. You can't unseat once you

40:28

see it, which is

40:30

it's entropy. It's just thirty random links. Every time you

40:32

refresh the page, thirty random

40:34

links. Okay? And what that

40:36

means is, intellectually,

40:38

you're like, oh, hey, you

40:40

know, a shiny object. Oh, there's another red Dead

40:42

direction. No. That's cool. Right?

40:44

And so what happens if

40:46

you randomly

40:48

move, like, a meter in this direction and randomly in this direction and then

40:50

randomly in this direction. Right? Do you

40:52

make any progress?

40:54

Probably not. Right? That's

40:56

actually what's like the so called spherical random

40:58

walk. You you just kind of just

41:00

drift away from the origin or what

41:02

have you. And By

41:04

contrast, if you have a focused direction and

41:06

you're like, I'm learning

41:08

AI and I'm learning this today and

41:10

that tomorrow and that and that that then you're

41:12

moving in direction. Now there's ways of

41:14

combining these by the way. I'm not saying

41:16

serendipity is always bad. The

41:18

flagella of E. coli famously that have

41:20

the the tumble mode where it, like,

41:22

randomly seeks it out, and then it

41:24

finds the nearest food supply and then it

41:26

runs along that thing.

41:28

It's like tumble and

41:30

run. Okay? to combine the random search with a

41:32

directed search, and you get a good combination.

41:34

Okay? Similar in somebody who likes to

41:36

cast grade, the center, or something

41:38

like that. And so

41:42

the point being though that if

41:44

you're just doing lots of entropic stuff, you're

41:46

not making progress on

41:48

an axis. And if you have lots of people who are

41:50

just online to hit random

41:52

buttons to doomscroll to

41:54

whatever to just click this and

41:56

that and popcorn. There's

41:58

no compulsion. They're that's

42:00

why they're wasting time. Right? They're

42:02

turning an hour of just looking

42:04

at the screen into like a few clicks. It's

42:06

a very low efficiency conversion of their intellectual energy

42:09

into output. The capacity of collection changes

42:10

that. So now you have this

42:14

mid organ. Okay. What's the third part of the definition? I never say it's a highly aligned, online

42:16

community with a capacity to collect of action that

42:18

crowd funds territory around the world.

42:20

Once you've

42:22

gotten people, a thousand people in a Discord or something like that. It might

42:24

turn out to be, by the way, another kind of app

42:26

because, for example, Discord

42:30

doesn't, like, enforced tasking.

42:32

Once you've done that, once you've shown a

42:34

capacity for digital collective action, once you can get

42:36

a thousand people to like something, which is hard,

42:38

by the way, very hard to do that. Okay?

42:40

and you might need new kinds of apps. Once you can do

42:43

that, well, you can get to a very high bar

42:45

of collective action, which is not just getting a

42:47

thousand people to like something, but

42:50

thousand people to buy something. And in fact, not just buy any old

42:52

thing, but to crowds and territory and move in together.

42:54

I'm gonna pause you there because Well, obviously, I wanna

42:56

get to the rest of the

42:57

definition, but but that is

43:00

something that, you know, is quite the leap.

43:02

Of course, yes. I agree with you getting a

43:04

thousand people to do anything even if it's

43:06

liking a tweet. That that is

43:08

hard, but get me from

43:10

there to crowd funding

43:13

land. Sure. Totally.

43:14

So I had this this

43:16

article calledsoftware's Jiragnes in the world, you know, almost ten years

43:18

ago. And I had a little table in

43:20

there, which I will see if I

43:23

can find it. classification of cloud formations taking

43:26

physical shape. Right? It's a very

43:28

picturesque term. A cloud formation, I

43:30

define it as a group of people

43:32

who meets on the

43:34

Internet. Okay? And taking

43:36

physical shape means they

43:38

materialize out of the cloud and

43:40

actually all come and aggregate

43:42

in person. And even in twenty

43:44

thirteen, almost ten years ago, I was

43:46

tracking these cloud formations, taking

43:48

physical shape, and here's a table. Right? There's

43:50

scale and duration. Right? Scale is the

43:52

number of people and duration. Okay? So

43:54

the simplest is two people, scale is two. Duration

43:56

is one day. So coffee

43:58

with a LinkedIn contact. Okay?

44:01

You someone LinkedIn, get off with them, but that was I don't

44:04

know if anybody's using LinkedIn today. No

44:06

offense to LinkedIn people listening to this. Alright?

44:08

But that was happening back in the day.

44:10

Alright? So

44:11

though Alright. Coffee

44:11

and LinkedIn content. Then two people for a

44:14

month is you meet a remote

44:16

engineer, you interview them online, okay, and you

44:18

bring them in for

44:20

an on-site. Okay? Come in for a month. Okay? Two people for a

44:22

year, that's like match dot com,

44:24

even in nineteen ninety I mean, obviously, now there's

44:26

Tinder or

44:28

whatever. But point is, like, mass dot com is, like, the beginning of that, let's say, nineteen

44:30

ninety five. Two people for ten years,

44:32

that's, like, eharmony dot com, like, oh,

44:34

they come together. You know,

44:36

it's, like, very high intention form a, you know, match from one of the bottom of

44:38

something. Right? Okay. Ten

44:40

people for a day. That's like hacked on. Obviously,

44:42

we've been going on for a

44:44

while. Right? ten people for

44:46

a month. That's like a

44:48

data science type program

44:50

or one of these sort of immersive courses where

44:52

people come and meet up. They take a course for a month

44:54

that comes ten people for a year, those are

44:56

like packer houses, which have started in the late

44:58

two thousand, you're probably aware of some people

45:00

who have kinda moved in

45:02

and just get a big house. And the

45:04

the downside is communal living, but

45:06

the upside is communal living. So the

45:08

downside is there's other

45:10

people around. soon as total privacy or whatever. But the upside

45:12

is you get a much nicer house than

45:14

you would otherwise, like, economies of

45:16

scale get really good quickly

45:18

with house there's

45:19

also the digital nomad version of that too.

45:21

Right? Where you don't actually have communal

45:23

living, but kind of as you talk about

45:25

cloud first land last, the digital nomad

45:27

hubs like Chengoo or Lisbon or Shanghai are equivalent

45:29

of this. Right? Like, I would put them probably on

45:31

the, like, ten thousand

45:34

people for couple

45:36

years.

45:36

Well, it's funny because people flip

45:38

through them, but they don't

45:40

stay it's interesting. It's one of those things where

45:43

it's like, maybe the ten thousand people in the cloud,

45:45

there's like a hundred people who are in that

45:47

location at any one given time or something like

45:49

that. Right? That community is kind

45:51

of there and then it's gone. It's like a cloud

45:53

like drifting through an area versus them

45:55

all actually being pressed. Right. Well, I think

45:57

so that's an interesting perspective.

46:00

I I

46:00

would say that's true for some of them. I would also say that some

46:02

of them are actually quite stable. And

46:04

there are many nomads

46:05

that spend, you know, many years in in

46:07

a given place,

46:10

if not, their intention is for But they're but they're but

46:11

ten thousand digital nomads

46:13

in one location while it's good

46:15

and it's on the kind

46:17

of track towards this is not what I would call a

46:19

cloud formation unless all of

46:22

those ten thousand people are basically friends

46:24

with each other. I see. Okay. And this is

46:26

actually this is an important concept, but one

46:28

of the things I developed and this will be more more in

46:30

the v two. I've got a lot of graphics and stuff.

46:32

Quantitative definitions of

46:34

terms from that we've been using sort

46:36

of verbally for a long time. Right? So for example, what is a

46:39

nation? There's like,

46:41

like, a dozen definitions that I've gotten in the book or something on

46:43

that order. You know, somebody's like, it's got a

46:46

common language. Oh, no. It's it's a the

46:48

folks who lived in a territory or no. It's a common

46:50

answer street. or you have,

46:52

like, for non definition, which I really like. It's,

46:54

like, a group of people who

46:56

have done great things and wish to do great

46:58

things together. My definition is it's a

47:00

densely connected sub graph in a social

47:02

network. What exactly does that mean? A

47:04

graph in in the math sense, it's like

47:06

nodes and

47:08

edges. Right? Density connected means all

47:10

nodes are connected to all

47:12

other nodes. For example, if you have

47:16

four nodes as

47:18

a subset of a giant graph that has

47:20

a hundred nodes. And those

47:22

four nodes form a complete graph

47:25

they're densely connected if each of those four

47:27

is connected to the other three. You know, it doesn't have to be

47:29

a fully complete graph, but it's just a densely

47:31

connected graph that's much closer

47:33

to complete graph then a random group of ten thousand digital

47:35

nomads might have no connections between themselves. So

47:38

that's not what I define as a cloud formation.

47:40

This gets to our original

47:42

thing about people are used to

47:44

using the Internet individually

47:46

and informally collectively, and

47:48

this is now formally and

47:50

collective. If you have a densely connected

47:52

sub graph, amidst a bunch of loosely connected nodes.

47:54

That's a natural unit of

47:56

association where these folks

47:58

should be capable of

47:59

self government. Right? Because

48:02

they all kinda know each other. My my

48:04

friend, Jan Talin, who's, like,

48:06

early Skype engineer, you know, very

48:08

prominent investor, and so I'm he had a really

48:10

amazing take on this, which I'm gonna

48:12

call, this is this is Jan's phrase. He's like,

48:14

Balaji, you know, he heard paraphrasing me. He's like, you know,

48:16

I've been early to three things

48:18

in life. AI,

48:19

the i crypto,

48:20

crypto and

48:21

dance. I'm like, dance. Now,

48:23

so he's like

48:24

the investor in deep mind. Right. Right.

48:27

and, you know, we both in early on a bunch of these

48:29

steps. So say, Ankur, those I'm like, dance, what

48:31

do you mean? And so

48:33

what he meant was

48:36

basically that when you see you probably see this in movies, but maybe you see it

48:38

in real life, you know, let's say

48:40

there's a a couple who's really

48:42

good at dancing. Right? What

48:44

happens

48:44

is they're,

48:45

like, locked on, you know, like a

48:48

very choreographed kind of thing. The

48:50

entire dance floor kind of clears

48:52

back and admiration and looking at the coordination of these two

48:54

people. People like seeing

48:56

other people moving in formation.

48:58

Or put it in another

49:00

way,

49:02

when

49:03

you can get a group that is very highly aligned as

49:05

demonstrated by the fact that they've even if you're not constantly thinking

49:07

of, oh, they must have practiced a lot for that.

49:09

Right? Their motion is pleasing

49:11

to the eye. But they have

49:13

they are obviously self sacrificing, like, one person's elbow

49:16

is not where their person's faces at that time.

49:18

You know? They -- Right. --

49:20

they have coordinated

49:22

the whole thing. Yep.

49:24

k? That is now something that Gartner's

49:26

respect from

49:28

the outside because that's a unit. It's a coordinated

49:30

unit. You can visually see it's a coordinated

49:32

unit. These people are all

49:34

acting together And

49:36

so as such, because they respect each

49:40

other, they gain respect from the

49:42

outside world. So

49:44

to a non obvious

49:46

extent, this community, if it's

49:48

highly aligned, if it can do

49:50

a dance, Digitally.

49:52

Right? Where it's moving in

49:54

formation. That group, now you start

49:56

thinking of it as a unit. and

49:58

you both respect them and

49:59

you don't

49:59

wanna mess with them. If I have to rephrase another

50:01

way, it's AI, crypto, and

50:04

social. Okay. Okay? Lock me through

50:06

because social technologies allow

50:08

people to coordinate. Yes. Right?

50:11

Messaging apps, discords, you're allowing people to do this digital dance. One way of

50:13

kind of putting it all together, have you seen the movie

50:16

transcendence? I haven't. With Johnny Depp? No. No.

50:18

Okay. So I'm gonna spoil it for

50:20

the viewers. SPoilers. Okay.

50:22

Go watch it. Alright. Fine. Transcendence is a

50:24

awesome movie. It's underrated. I think I I think

50:26

it's a pretty good movie. There's a lot stuff like this

50:28

that I like like this. are a good sort of heavy. They're just

50:30

good sci fi explorations of, you know, potential future.

50:32

Even if they're a dystopian, which we can

50:34

correct, by the way. On that note,

50:37

Digression, digression. Many Hollywood

50:39

movies are dystopian because they steal

50:41

a base. They implicitly assume the

50:43

present is okay. and then some tech guy came in

50:45

and ruined it with their autonomous robots or

50:48

something. They messed it up. Oh my god. We had this

50:50

good ed and going, and they came to the garden ed and

50:52

spoiled it.

50:54

Right? And the alternative framing is that the present is

50:56

dystopian, and there's like a

50:58

few founders that just might

51:02

be able get us out of the situation if only they can get etcetera,

51:04

etcetera. Right? And that's a different framing

51:06

of, like, implicitly, is it is

51:08

a present badder than you ever. Okay. Point

51:12

is transcendance is, I don't think it's this opiant. Hence, it being this

51:14

opiant early on, but then it actually gets more

51:16

positive. One of the things in

51:18

it is you have Johnny

51:20

Depp is this AI

51:22

that coordinates all these human beings.

51:24

And I thought it thought provoking because

51:26

It extends the concept of like what you can do

51:28

with smartphones in terms of coordinating humans

51:31

to another level. Right? Well,

51:33

it's not just, you know, let let's say you're an

51:36

alien looking down at the earth and

51:38

you saw, like, somebody walking in New

51:40

York. Right? And then they

51:42

suddenly take a right angle turn and,

51:44

you know, they're just going in a totally different

51:46

direction. Why? Because somebody in

51:48

Hong Kong hit some

51:50

keys to send them a text

51:52

message saying, oh, no. Actually, the office is

51:54

down the street the

51:55

other way. Okay? that logic,

51:56

like, if you're some alien observing this, I mean,

51:58

there's an obvious logic to to from our

52:01

perspective. But, like, it seems like a

52:03

very subtle signal that moved from this person over

52:06

here. Like, backing that out is, like, really

52:08

difficult to figure that out.

52:10

Okay? But in the

52:12

network,

52:12

it's very visible. It's like, oh, this person

52:14

coordinated a certain person. They did a dance.

52:16

Okay?

52:17

And if you take that

52:19

up and it's I send a text

52:21

message every day or or hour or something

52:23

like that. We're sending packets.

52:26

Now you can have a bunch

52:28

of robots dancing in unison like this.

52:30

Right? Or a bunch of people dancing in unison

52:32

or some combination of people in robots, people

52:34

in servers.

52:36

Okay? and you can coordinate.

52:38

And so transcendent shows

52:40

like essentially many becoming one. Right?

52:42

This is actually something else that's going in v

52:44

two of the book. there's at least three different ways of

52:46

thinking about many becoming one. There is

52:49

let's call it There's democracy,

52:51

right, which is and

52:53

aggregation and election, many become one

52:56

because you all vote and then the decision

52:58

and it goes out.

53:00

There's markets where many

53:02

become one where you have an order book,

53:04

you have supply and demand, let the market

53:06

decide. Right? You get a price. And there's

53:08

actually a third version which

53:10

is harmony. Right? Many become one

53:12

because many actually become a single

53:14

organism. In the case of network

53:16

states

53:16

though,

53:18

you go from, yes, I understand this collective unison

53:21

online. What would be

53:23

the reason that

53:23

someone would want

53:26

to go from that online digital collective unison

53:28

to doing that in the physical

53:30

world. One point I make in

53:31

the book is, look, obviously, I love

53:33

digital space and so

53:35

and so forth. this is something by the way, which

53:37

I found, the v three is

53:40

hard to communicate because people will

53:42

hear something and they'll immediately bucket it into v

53:44

one or v two, but

53:46

not v Okay? So cloud first,

53:48

land last but not land never.

53:50

Okay? Why do I see this?

53:52

Whenever I

53:54

talked about the network state or something like that. People

53:56

would hear one of two things.

53:58

They'd either hear, oh, it's

54:00

totally digital. Yeah. That's great. You

54:04

the physical world doesn't matter. We're all online, cryptocurrency,

54:06

Internet, blah, blah, blah. Or

54:08

that here,

54:09

it's purely digital.

54:10

You more on,

54:12

like, you know, humans are still physical beings. We're still guns.

54:14

They're still buildings. They're gonna eat

54:16

online. What are you, you know, you're an idiot.

54:18

Like, another tech guy, stupid tech robot.

54:22

Right? Okay. So you'll basically hear that it's purely

54:24

digital, but it's not

54:25

purely digital. It is a

54:28

cloud formation

54:30

that has the ambition of projecting into the physical

54:32

world. Okay? Just like

54:35

Google has offices all around

54:37

the world and your login gets

54:39

you Google Office. Right? Why do

54:42

they have physical offices? Well, they do have

54:44

meet up points and so on. Right? You might

54:46

argue there's less need for physical offices than

54:48

there was. But there's

54:50

still a need for it. You still wanna have meetups.

54:52

You still wanna have you have data centers. You have

54:54

this kind of thing. Cloud first land last

54:56

but not land never. Right? Another version of this

54:58

are, like, the embassies of a

55:00

country around the world. Right? Another

55:02

version of this are like Starbucks

55:04

chains around the world. Right? Like

55:06

basically a chain that has restaurants or

55:08

storefronts around the world. And

55:10

the examples I've just given are those that are

55:12

basically commercial real estate or their

55:14

companies or their states like embassies. But

55:16

you could have it where it's not a

55:18

Starbucks or Google Office, but residential bill seat. You

55:21

could have essentially a network

55:23

of communities where it's not

55:25

a Google login enter and you see

55:27

a Google logo. It's not your workplace. It's your

55:30

residence. Right? You have essentially an

55:32

ethnic diaspora around the world

55:34

and you walk in and it's a little piece of

55:36

home everywhere you got. Right.

55:37

So I understand that. Why would you

55:39

want so

55:39

why would you want something like that? Well, even

55:41

more so than that, so I can imagine why a digital

55:44

community would want to have these physical locations around the world. Google is great

55:46

example for offices. I can also

55:48

imagine an example where

55:50

it's a bunch of people who want these got

55:52

these

55:54

coliving houses and they just operate

55:56

around them. But one

55:57

very important aspect

55:58

of the network state

56:00

is the need to

56:02

be diplomatically recognized.

56:04

So why that step? Why

56:06

not just operate within the

56:08

states that already exist? Where you

56:10

have these communities that are digital with

56:13

a physical element. Why that extra step to be diplomatically

56:15

recognized in your own state? Not

56:17

every business

56:18

needs to have

56:21

the ambition of becoming a public company, let

56:23

alone becoming Google or Facebook.

56:25

Right? It's totally fine to have

56:27

a sandwich store or a hardware store

56:29

or something like that. In the same way,

56:31

think that they're being a funnel. Okay? So in the book, you know, in the v

56:33

two, the way I'm defining it is network

56:36

society, network union, network archipelago,

56:38

network state. society

56:40

or start to say, that's just like one person

56:42

with a dream. Okay? It starts as

56:44

a one person with a dream and they assemble

56:46

a small group. Right? then stage

56:49

two is a network union where they're now able to have that union

56:51

being able to take collective action. Right?

56:53

Which is a huge step above,

56:55

like, ninety nine point nine set

56:57

of online groups do not have this capability.

57:00

In fact, messaging apps, Discord are not

57:02

built for tracking

57:04

collective action. this is kind of

57:06

the unification of cryptocurrency and Discord. You will get something that

57:08

actually tracks that and has leaderboards

57:10

for people and everybody can see

57:13

did what collective action and so on who participated, there's a

57:16

karma board, all the type of stuff. Right? So the short

57:18

answer to your question

57:20

is, there's things that are useful just as network unions as

57:22

network archipelagos that don't need to become full

57:24

network states just like there's things

57:26

that are useful as hardware

57:29

stores or small businesses that don't need to become

57:31

Google. Right? What's an example of a useful

57:34

network union that's that can do digital

57:36

collective action? An example I give in

57:38

the book is of, like, a professional guilt.

57:40

Okay? So it's a guilt of

57:42

designers. And why so those

57:44

thousand designers let's say

57:46

they're in network union?

57:48

Well, ninety nine percent of the time, they're just

57:50

chatting and they are exchanging

57:52

info on their latest designs.

57:54

Maybe each

57:56

day, somebody says, hey, you know, like, here's my work. I'd love a

57:58

boost. Right? And so, you

58:00

know, if you think about it, there's a thousand

58:02

people. So people

58:04

a day, each person gets, like, one booster

58:06

a year or something like that. Kaboom. So

58:08

they can ask for it. They're actually asking

58:10

for something from the community.

58:12

In return, they are expected to give exclusivity and then r t or fave

58:15

or whatever. And it's disclosed on their on

58:17

their thing. They're like, look, I'm part of this community. I'm

58:19

part of this network union. we're

58:22

all signal boosting each other. And then some

58:24

folks may not be able to put in time or they

58:26

may not have an account, they can put in capital

58:30

instead. they'd be like, look, I couldn't make it today, but I'm paying my union dues

58:32

in capital rather than time. And

58:34

that exchange rate is determined by, like, the union leader.

58:36

Right? So ninety percent of the time,

58:40

this Gild. It's boosting its members. It's helping to find

58:42

those members a job. Right? Somebody needs

58:44

a job. I'm out of work. Okay.

58:47

and then everybody just, okay, have another nine hundred and

58:49

ninety nine people, someone can find them a job right

58:51

away. Right? It starts to be a very powerful

58:53

support member, a professional guild. That's why

58:55

these things existed for many years. We're kind

58:57

of rebuilding them online. Okay? And that's useful. And so and

58:59

then one percent of the time, that person is

59:02

under attack online. And

59:04

then the

59:06

union leader looks at their bylaws

59:08

and, you know, it's not an unqualified

59:10

defense of them. Right? But most of

59:13

the online attacks or distortionary or, you know, they're distorting of of

59:15

some some kind. Say basically, say, okay. This

59:18

guy is being attacked or canceled

59:20

or something

59:22

unfairly. Here's their version of the story. We're gonna signal boost that to get them out.

59:24

Get get that up there because it is actually

59:26

in somebody's time of need when

59:29

their status is lowest. that

59:31

they need the boost the most. And if everybody in

59:33

the community acts together, the other nine

59:36

ninety nine people cannot be attacked for

59:38

supporting this person. Right? So you essentially join

59:40

the union ninety eight percent of the time. It is

59:42

for, like, kind of, upside.

59:44

One percent of the time, it's, like,

59:46

cancellation insurance protection against

59:48

downside. Right? that's an example of a structure that should exist, that will exist,

59:50

that we're gonna see lots of, that's a purely

59:52

digital structure, and you can do that for

59:54

designers, you can do that for

59:56

electrical engineers, basically, you'll

59:58

see all kinds of gills like this. Right?

59:59

Okay. And that's digital

1:00:00

only though. You don't have to have any physical

1:00:03

for that. The next step is like

1:00:05

a network archipelago, which takes that capacity for collective

1:00:07

action that the network union has demonstrated.

1:00:10

And now applies, as I mentioned, to crowdfunding

1:00:12

territory in the physical world, and having people

1:00:16

live together. Now when even two people from

1:00:18

an online community start living together, let

1:00:20

alone ten people, it completely

1:00:22

changes everything. Right?

1:00:24

You know, one concept that I mentioned is,

1:00:26

like, companies have logos,

1:00:28

but communities

1:00:30

have flags. And an important thing is if you go to the network c

1:00:32

dot com, if you see the logo in the

1:00:34

upper left, it is what we call the

1:00:36

plus flag. the plus flag

1:00:38

stands for new country.

1:00:40

Okay? Mhmm.

1:00:40

That's kinda clever.

1:00:41

I I thought it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. because,

1:00:43

you know, the plus every day

1:00:45

you're hitting that, in the upper right of Chrome. Right there, what

1:00:47

do you see the plus new tab? Right? Every single app,

1:00:50

the plus is new to this, new tab.

1:00:52

Right? So

1:00:54

It stands for the principle that

1:00:56

one can create a new country. Right? It also

1:00:58

stands for win and help win. Right?

1:01:00

Positive sum. So

1:01:02

you could

1:01:03

imagine each of these people, they're part of

1:01:05

this network union, and they want to

1:01:08

become part of the network

1:01:10

archipelago, as they're hanging the flag of their

1:01:12

community in their

1:01:13

room. They're seeing it every

1:01:15

day. They've got it on their profile.

1:01:17

And eventually, they save up the

1:01:19

money or the time they're able to

1:01:21

get to a remote work job or something like that. And they're able to find one of

1:01:23

the other nine hundred ninety nine people in the community and

1:01:25

be like, hey. Look. Why don't we go and get

1:01:27

a group house together? And

1:01:29

now, let's say, there's six people who are associated with this

1:01:31

in Boston. They start doing meetups and stuff. They

1:01:34

don't live together right away, but they do

1:01:36

meetups and other kinds of things. So I mentioned this, but

1:01:38

they start doing meetups built trust.

1:01:40

And you might like three of the people there,

1:01:42

but only wanna live with two of the people or

1:01:44

something like that. Okay? This council of

1:01:46

group house hacker houses room. All that stuff is a big thing among, you know, kind of

1:01:48

younger generation as you know. Or as your scale

1:01:50

increases, you buy an entire apartment building with like three

1:01:52

hundred people, or you buy like

1:01:54

essentially a

1:01:56

small town. and guess what? Now you've got self driving car down.

1:01:58

Because you have unitivity, you're the

1:01:59

self driving car community.

1:02:04

You put four

1:02:04

hundred people into middle of nowhere in Nebraska. Okay?

1:02:06

A thousand people, whatever. And now the

1:02:08

roads are all zoned for self driving cars. You can rip

1:02:11

up the roads. You can do whatever you

1:02:14

have route access to the physical world because you have

1:02:16

alignment. If you're building a network

1:02:18

archipelago, you want to build it on

1:02:20

like burning man style territory,

1:02:22

probably. Right?

1:02:24

or at least territory that nobody else wants. There's a website called

1:02:26

like land and farm dot com, but you

1:02:28

can see that there's like properties which on

1:02:30

a per square meter basis are like

1:02:34

one thousand cheaper than Palo Alto. You know, why is why is

1:02:36

Cornell? Why does Ithaca have higher property

1:02:38

values and other things nearby? It's

1:02:40

because lots of smart people

1:02:42

move there. and thereby increase property values by moving there. So

1:02:44

these thousand people can

1:02:46

make something out of nothing into

1:02:48

something in

1:02:50

the same you can take a domain name that doesn't have any value turn

1:02:52

to something because all these pointers are now looking

1:02:54

at, all these backlinks are looking at. So capacity

1:02:58

precollective action You have this thousand people,

1:03:00

they take a territory in the middle of nowhere, the

1:03:02

disimmunity thing, and they make it into something. And now

1:03:04

suddenly it's valuable.

1:03:06

Right? This this dance, right, that collective action,

1:03:08

turns something that any one person could

1:03:10

not have done in something that a thousand people

1:03:12

can do together when they're moving as a

1:03:14

multicellular organism. Just

1:03:15

one example, by the way of that is

1:03:17

is Tenguin, which I mentioned earlier. Back, and I think

1:03:19

it must have been around, like, twenty thirteen or

1:03:22

so. Tenguin

1:03:24

was very empty. You know, there's pictures of it back in the day where there's

1:03:26

like deus and one other building and and then a

1:03:28

bunch of rice fields. And it took one person

1:03:30

who ran a co working

1:03:32

or wanted to open one, and he worked with the locals. He built

1:03:34

a fiber line there. And now if you look at

1:03:36

Chengdu, it's I mean, it's it's completely full,

1:03:39

thousands of nomads. And to your

1:03:41

point about property values, I think I saw a tweet

1:03:43

the other day of someone, a friend of mine who lives there,

1:03:45

who basically said that his rent there was more

1:03:48

expensive than his rent in Singapore. where he used to And

1:03:50

so yes, that's a perfect example of

1:03:52

where property is you're saying that

1:03:54

no one cares about can be turned into

1:03:56

property that people care about. But

1:03:58

do a lot of people want to do this? How many

1:03:59

people do you need to do Google? What

1:04:01

percentage of the world moves

1:04:03

to the United States?

1:04:06

tiny percentage. Right? That completely

1:04:07

changed the world. Yeah. I mean, it strikes me

1:04:10

that that there are people who will wanna do

1:04:12

this, but will they want to move

1:04:14

to like rural, Utah, or some land that no one cares about. I

1:04:16

guess, you just need a few is what you're saying. A

1:04:18

tiny percentage of the world

1:04:19

moves to the US. And

1:04:21

the example of the United States though has

1:04:24

been because there was new land,

1:04:26

right, so to speak, at least from the perspective of the

1:04:28

Europeans, there were

1:04:30

social experiments in

1:04:32

democracy and capitalism in

1:04:34

particular that then propagated back to

1:04:36

Europe and to the rest of the world. Like, the French

1:04:38

revolution ball

1:04:40

is bad. was influenced by the American revolution. All the

1:04:42

democratization, lots of the market stuff, all

1:04:44

kinds of things happened in the new world and came

1:04:46

back to the

1:04:48

old world. Right? To an extent that I don't think people fully appreciate. You know, it's

1:04:50

like the Margaret Meade thing. Right? Never

1:04:52

doubt that a small group of highly

1:04:54

motivated people can change the world. Indeed, it's the

1:04:56

only thing that

1:04:58

ever has. Right? I mean, one thing I think that's kind of

1:05:00

interesting is just to hover on that point

1:05:02

for a second. Mass appeal

1:05:04

comes last.

1:05:06

Right? That's, like, after somebody is completely being

1:05:08

proved out and and so on and so

1:05:10

forth. And nothing ever goes from zero percent

1:05:12

to mass movement or I should

1:05:14

say nothing ever. It is hard to

1:05:16

get it to mass movement overnight. And even

1:05:18

if it does seem to do that, it is because

1:05:20

lots of prerequisites were installed.

1:05:22

Billing's of people with smartphones, and

1:05:24

they've got experience with

1:05:26

Instagram, and you've got five g

1:05:28

LTE, and you've got the app

1:05:30

store, and you've got this and you've got that.

1:05:32

That's why TikTok could ride behind

1:05:34

all those prerequisites because people knew

1:05:36

what social networks were, they knew what smartphones were, they

1:05:38

knew what app stores were, they knew

1:05:40

what a feed was,

1:05:42

blah blah. So sliding behind all of those things, I mean, TikTok

1:05:44

is, like, you know, a good company or whatever.

1:05:46

It's it's well executed. I'm sure people also

1:05:48

say it's Fireware, blah

1:05:50

blah, but leaving that aside. They were not just an overnight success, ten years

1:05:52

in the making. There were like ten companies

1:05:54

in the making. It's very easy to dismiss this

1:05:56

idea

1:05:56

of

1:05:58

startup societies and then eventually in network state because there are going to be

1:06:00

many failures, just like there are many failures with

1:06:02

startups. And then we look at the successes

1:06:05

today, but there's almost infinite numbers of people who

1:06:07

tried to build the next Google somewhere in

1:06:10

the last thirty years. Right?

1:06:12

And, of course, we see the

1:06:14

eventual success. And

1:06:16

I wonder how you think about that in terms of the

1:06:19

number of experiments that need

1:06:21

to happen in order to you

1:06:23

know, see this network state. How valuable

1:06:26

do

1:06:26

you think plane flight is? I don't know.

1:06:28

Very valuable. Yeah. Very valuable.

1:06:30

Right? Okay. So click this link.

1:06:32

and this is a century of aircraft accidents. And so you

1:06:34

can literally see in this graph, it's

1:06:36

like as of, you know, August twenty

1:06:40

twenty two, twenty eight

1:06:42

thousand eight hundred ninety six accidents

1:06:44

with a hundred and fifty nine thousand eight hundred and

1:06:46

fifty nine fatalities in basically the

1:06:48

last hundred something years

1:06:49

of aviation. Okay? Twenty thousand accidents, fatal accidents.

1:06:52

Right? And a lot of non fatal accidents.

1:06:54

Okay? So the point I mean, no

1:06:56

plane crashes,

1:06:58

no planes. No trains crashes. No

1:07:00

trains. Right? No explosions.

1:07:02

No internal combustion engines.

1:07:04

Right? Basically no risk,

1:07:06

no reward. And so, you know,

1:07:08

in a big way, like, we

1:07:10

have virtualized all risk, and that's

1:07:12

progress. Right? And certain of all risk, but a lot

1:07:14

of risk is being virtualized. where it's just

1:07:16

financial risk and so on and so forth. I I kinda

1:07:18

think people are foolhardy about

1:07:20

physical risk where people

1:07:22

will, you know, like, do

1:07:24

bungee jumping or skydiving

1:07:26

or things like that. They'll take

1:07:28

risks in my view with no reward beyond

1:07:30

just the thrill of it or whatever.

1:07:32

but they'll be averse to, okay, let me try experimental drug

1:07:35

that could save your life.

1:07:37

Right? You know, euthanasia is legal.

1:07:39

In fact, it's like six

1:07:41

leading cause of death in candid, like you can kill

1:07:43

yourself, but you can't take an experimental

1:07:46

drug. Mhmm. Okay? That's

1:07:48

that's actually a misallocation of risk in the

1:07:50

physical world. Instead, an

1:07:52

alternate society would

1:07:54

lionize those people who

1:07:57

took one for the team and

1:07:59

took a risk on

1:07:59

an experimental drug. This is actually at the beginning of the pandemic, by the way, we could have

1:08:02

had a vaccine in a week.

1:08:04

Why?

1:08:05

Because

1:08:06

because MRNA

1:08:07

vaccines could be printed out all

1:08:09

that time over those nine months was

1:08:11

not spent, I mean, some of it was spent

1:08:13

manufacturing or whatever. but a lot of

1:08:15

it was spent information gathering on whether the thing worked. There's a way

1:08:17

to fast forward all of that, and that would have been with

1:08:20

challenge trials. what's

1:08:22

a challenge trial? You have a bunch of healthy, brave

1:08:24

volunteers at the beginning of the

1:08:26

pandemic. Okay? And they get

1:08:29

the vaccine. and they volunteered to expose themselves to it. I mean,

1:08:31

you could've you could've drafted the military for this, by the way. If

1:08:34

you wanted to have

1:08:36

groups who said people who said, I will

1:08:38

risk my life for the country or whatever. Right? Soldiers, you could have asked for military volunteers. You would have

1:08:41

gotten soldiers who would

1:08:43

have volunteered. Okay? and you could have gotten

1:08:45

it from different demographics because some because some people are in the forties and fifties or whatever even in the

1:08:47

military. Right? You could

1:08:51

have you could have done extremely good data

1:08:53

very quickly and iterated on it. If you had people who were willing to risk their

1:08:55

lives for the

1:08:58

greater good, for the health of the population. And of course, you pay them and

1:09:00

so on just like you pay soldiers in a

1:09:02

in a battle and and you reward them

1:09:05

for taking this risk for the whole team. and they're not doing it

1:09:07

to kill other people who are doing save lives. Right? Look, I'm not saying

1:09:09

that you don't need a military at times.

1:09:12

Okay? But this

1:09:14

is actually the kind of thing, which is is like

1:09:16

a brave thing to do. Right? Now

1:09:18

that kind of society, which is

1:09:21

clear eyed about physical risk taking. Okay? And

1:09:23

that is considered the pros and

1:09:24

cons. But what it does is it

1:09:26

basically says, again, no plane crashes, no

1:09:29

planes. I mean, there's a book called the CRC handbook

1:09:31

of chemistry and physics. You're you're what this

1:09:33

is? I

1:09:34

have not read that yet. The CRC

1:09:36

handbook of chemistry and physics, is

1:09:38

the kind of thing that I would flip through in high school.

1:09:40

Why? It was basically like printed

1:09:42

out math world or printed

1:09:44

out the math portion of

1:09:47

Wikipedia before that all

1:09:48

the compounds, especially the older compounds,

1:09:50

you'd see, you know, smell

1:09:51

and taste like

1:09:54

cyanide, how did we know that cyanide smells like almonds? There's some

1:09:56

guy who took a hit for the

1:09:58

team. He was like,

1:09:59

almonds, you know,

1:10:02

croaks after that. Right? Because

1:10:04

like,

1:10:04

the old school chemists were

1:10:06

crazy enough to, like, smell and taste the compounds. That's why we

1:10:11

have you know, that that's why we know how do flavors in foods.

1:10:13

It is because somebody is taking

1:10:15

the head to take

1:10:17

that test at some point, it needs contact with this girl,

1:10:19

someone must take a risk at some point. Right? No risk. No reward.

1:10:22

No risk. No reward. Now

1:10:23

the thing is, this is being pathologized to

1:10:25

be like, oh, you're encouraging me to take

1:10:27

a risk to your ex. exploiting

1:10:29

them. You're exploiting them to take a risk and so on. Okay. Well, like, the issue

1:10:31

with this is it kind of assumes

1:10:33

that there's

1:10:34

no informed consent as possible.

1:10:37

you know, if you're if you're not

1:10:40

paying somebody to do something, you're exploiting them. If you

1:10:42

are paying them to do something, because you're paying them,

1:10:44

you're convincing them to do it, and they wouldn't have

1:10:46

ever seen it. So you're also exploiting them. Everything is exploiting other

1:10:48

than letting people go bunched up and

1:10:50

take purposeless risks and self destructive risks

1:10:53

and military risks, and that's all fine.

1:10:55

But but you can't have calculated risk. Right? Okay. So I disagree with

1:10:57

that philosophy. And I understand why people have

1:11:00

that philosophy that all

1:11:02

other people's physical risk is

1:11:04

expectation. But I think it can be

1:11:06

done in a proper way. And I think the way to do it is, you start with this online community, you start with the network union.

1:11:08

You develop lots of movies.

1:11:10

It's basically a content union. Okay?

1:11:14

You develop movies, you develop books, you

1:11:17

develop short films, all the stuff

1:11:19

is open source. Okay? Why?

1:11:21

why It's

1:11:22

almost like, have you heard the term content? like in content.

1:11:24

Lots of folks on Twitter are

1:11:26

cranking out what I consider devotional content.

1:11:31

for their hashtag. They're cranking on devotional content, which is, here's

1:11:33

why my cause is good. Here's why

1:11:35

you're bad. Right? Here's why I want

1:11:37

to abolish the police. Here's why

1:11:39

I want to like, social security or

1:11:41

something like that. Okay? That's Bosch plays a more, like, the kind of thing that gets you to

1:11:43

Zellis level. Right? Bitcoin gets you to

1:11:46

Zellis devotional content. Okay?

1:11:48

So what

1:11:50

you have is lots of

1:11:52

movies like Dallas Firestorm.

1:11:54

Okay? Not

1:11:55

exactly in that register, in

1:11:57

that tone, but like,

1:11:58

some Dallas virus club and some

1:11:59

limit still limit list. I've heard of it. I haven't sure.

1:12:02

I'll let you describe this one. Yeah. Please do. I've seen Dallas

1:12:04

virus club, but please for those who

1:12:06

haven't. So why don't you describe

1:12:08

Dallas virus? So the movie is

1:12:09

about a man who happens to get HIV. And at the

1:12:11

time, I think there are drugs that potentially

1:12:15

could cure him, but he cannot get access

1:12:17

to them. Am I remembering this correctly?

1:12:19

That's right. Yes.

1:12:20

Yeah. And and it's

1:12:22

his fight to to basically get that access

1:12:24

and also get that access for other people.

1:12:26

And I think he basically ends up breaking

1:12:28

the law, getting in trouble because he's

1:12:30

getting these drugs to himself and other people

1:12:32

ends up dying, I

1:12:33

think. But sorry, another spoiler. But am I remembering that correctly? That's right. But

1:12:35

basically, the primary agency preventing him from

1:12:37

getting the drugs is the

1:12:40

FDA. Right? And

1:12:42

this is based on the true story

1:12:44

of like ActUp, where people would do dyes, where the

1:12:46

FDA is preventing them from getting access to these

1:12:50

I mean, these people were, you know, had this life threatening

1:12:52

condition, obviously. Fundamentally, they're miscalibrated

1:12:54

on terms of risk. Right?

1:12:58

They

1:12:58

want to minimize PR risk for themselves,

1:13:00

the agency, as opposed to

1:13:02

allowing people to take a

1:13:04

risk on their own. Right? And

1:13:07

why is that? It's because media

1:13:09

only covers it when a drug doesn't work and doesn't

1:13:11

cover it when a drug

1:13:13

does work but has

1:13:16

been delayed. calculations of so called

1:13:18

drug lag. I mean, like Alex Tabrock and others have pulled things together on

1:13:20

this. Right? You know, Daniel

1:13:22

Heminger has written about this depending

1:13:26

on how you calculate it, the number of lives that's being caused by the FDA, basically if you have a drug and it was held up

1:13:31

by ten years, And then

1:13:34

once it's approved, it produced morbidity and mortality by x percentage. That means FDA's

1:13:36

delay of ten years multiplied by

1:13:38

that is how many lives it cost.

1:13:43

relative to just taking the risk at the beginning

1:13:45

and shipping it. Right? Now there

1:13:47

is risk. Okay? But

1:13:49

by once

1:13:50

you start having the ability to take

1:13:52

calculated risks, you can move at the speed of

1:13:54

software. Basically, do you know for example who

1:13:56

banking investor?

1:13:57

I they're familiar, but why don't you

1:13:59

share? we need

1:13:59

to get banking and best

1:13:59

zones. Okay? Banking and best, they won

1:14:02

the Noble Prize in the twenties, nineteen

1:14:06

twenties. Why? because they came with the

1:14:08

concept for insulin supplementation

1:14:11

to treat diabetes. They

1:14:13

had the hypothesis. they tested it

1:14:15

on dogs. Okay? Then they

1:14:18

tested it on themselves.

1:14:21

Then they tested on patient

1:14:23

volunteers and like, you know, it's like a miracle drug,

1:14:25

like people jumping out of bed type stuff.

1:14:27

Right? And then

1:14:29

and then Eli

1:14:30

Lilly had, like, scale production for the

1:14:32

entire North American continent in, like, two years, and

1:14:34

they won the Nobel Prize in, like, two

1:14:36

years after they start. Okay? That is

1:14:39

when pharma moves at the speed of software. That is what is possible in

1:14:43

the physical world once

1:14:46

we can get a zone outside the FDA, once we can exit the FDA. People don't understand how FDA

1:14:49

is. Your

1:14:52

entire life It's

1:14:54

like tens of trillions of dollars of values being held back by Feet. It's bad

1:14:57

they are as

1:15:00

an agency. and we

1:15:02

saw this during COVID where they were holding back. I mean, FDA is why we're flying blind in

1:15:07

February twenty twenty. because they

1:15:09

were holding back the tests. That's why the journals were reporting that, oh, there's

1:15:11

no problem. It's not in the US

1:15:14

yet. Actually, it was in the

1:15:16

US. Why

1:15:18

was it in the US? Because

1:15:20

it actually come in via China. And

1:15:22

people were not able to run tests

1:15:24

to confirm it. because they had to

1:15:26

get the so called emergency use authorization from FDA,

1:15:28

which was delayed. So what happened was actually some labs actually

1:15:30

did civil disobedience just like Dallas Byers Club and

1:15:35

they defied FDA, and they just went and ran the

1:15:37

test. And later, they got sort of a

1:15:39

blessing from journals, which was,

1:15:41

okay, Dave Russell conjugated

1:15:43

it as simple immediate versus earning an illegal trust blah

1:15:45

blah blah. Right? So they they basically blessed it

1:15:48

retroactively. So FDA did not go and crack

1:15:50

down on those labs that actually managed to

1:15:52

get the

1:15:54

testing data out there. Okay? Vaccine could

1:15:56

have been had in a week. Okay? The

1:15:58

tests could have been there

1:15:59

immediately. Fundamentally,

1:16:02

FDA

1:16:02

is -- the problem with

1:16:05

it is it's got controller of

1:16:07

the entire world. The single

1:16:09

most important the logical problem to solve

1:16:11

in the world is a problem of regulatory harmonization.

1:16:13

Regulatory

1:16:13

harmonization is a process by which a group of unelected bureaucrats in

1:16:16

the US write

1:16:19

the regulations for the entire world. You just look at

1:16:21

a small website, right, will outsource its

1:16:23

login to Facebook

1:16:26

login. Okay? because,

1:16:27

hey, Facebook's big, you know. Right? But in

1:16:29

so doing its beholden to Facebook, you know,

1:16:31

I I respect Chuck, but I

1:16:33

also don't necessarily want the login assume to be completely

1:16:35

at the discretion of some engineer there. Right? In the

1:16:37

same way, a small country, you know,

1:16:39

Czechoslovakia or, like, some

1:16:41

some small country will outsource their

1:16:44

regulation to the

1:16:46

FDA, the SEC,

1:16:49

FAA. Right? And they'll say, oh, well, look,

1:16:52

America's regulators should be good

1:16:54

enough for us. We're a

1:16:56

small country of a few million people. This

1:16:58

is a big country. It's got a big market.

1:17:00

Therefore, if a company can get through FDA regulation, then

1:17:02

we'll approve the product for sale in our country. If the plane can get through FAA,

1:17:06

we'll approve for sale. If it can get through SEC, then it seems

1:17:08

like a decent financial product we might list so in

1:17:10

our stock exchange or some or allow

1:17:13

our citizens to buy or something like that. This is

1:17:15

actually something that is sought by FAA

1:17:17

SEC FDA, respectively.

1:17:20

If you go to their

1:17:22

website and look for harmonization, they

1:17:25

intentionally convene in working groups with all the rest of

1:17:27

the regulators in the world to say use US regulations, harmonize,

1:17:29

have everybody singing

1:17:32

in unison. Nothing is both big

1:17:34

business and big government like this. Obviously, the regulators like it because when you

1:17:36

become a

1:17:40

federal regulator, You're

1:17:40

not doing it for profit. You're doing

1:17:43

it for Ambit. Right? Ambit in, like, the the scope, like, you

1:17:45

know, Ambit Samroot

1:17:48

is ambition. Right? You know, it's

1:17:50

like a relatively uncommon word, but it's like the scope, extent, or bounds of something. Right?

1:17:55

so So If

1:17:56

a CEO wants maximum profit for their

1:17:58

company, a regulator wants maximum

1:17:59

ambit for

1:18:03

their regulatory agency. They just want scope. I'm

1:18:05

like the most baddest, you know, biggest regulator around. Right? FDA

1:18:08

brags, they

1:18:10

regulate something like thirty cents out of every dollar. They like brag about

1:18:12

this. How big their regulatory impetus,

1:18:14

the most powerful regulators were up. It's

1:18:16

a food and drugs administration. Literally everything

1:18:19

you put in your body every

1:18:21

bite you take every single day is regulated by FDA in the

1:18:23

U. S. and around the world. Right? So power is

1:18:26

absolutely immense. We have

1:18:30

Bionic Guys. They exist.

1:18:32

We have Super Soldier Serum. It's already real.

1:18:34

Do you see that poster mic? No, I

1:18:36

didn't. There's a little mouse on the

1:18:38

left hand side, and there's a myostatin null mouse on the right hand side. Okay. And second row,

1:18:43

that's the chest. of

1:18:46

the mouse on the left and the mouse

1:18:48

on the right. And that's literally like Captain America before and after. That paper

1:18:50

came out like fifteen years ago. People have known about Myastatin all literally

1:18:55

this one if you just inhibit myostatin, there's ways

1:18:57

of doing you can do knock down other

1:18:59

stuff. And there's other

1:19:01

things, full yourostatin blah blah blah. you could make

1:19:03

somebody basically naturally jacked. And you know

1:19:05

the side effect would be because

1:19:08

muscle is

1:19:10

metabolically expensive, they'd be able

1:19:11

to eat whatever they want. And of course, people say, oh my god,

1:19:13

you know, they'll have to be side effects.

1:19:15

It's like, pancreas, we flew

1:19:17

too close to the sun. actually, no. They don't have these side

1:19:19

effects. Yes. It might be plane crashes, but we actually

1:19:21

figured out how to get aviation basically without

1:19:23

plane crashes. In the same way, you could

1:19:26

figure out dosage and with enough volunteers, enough

1:19:28

people you could probably

1:19:30

get, like,

1:19:30

very effective, either natural or artificial steroids

1:19:36

or equivalents that would make somebody naturally

1:19:38

muscular and fit. Just like we take caffeine every day. It's a known drug

1:19:39

with known plus and minuses.

1:19:41

You have something that's like

1:19:44

that. Right? This

1:19:46

is just like one example. I can give

1:19:48

like fifty more. Okay? The point is the FDA is holding back so so

1:19:50

so much. So that is like why you want a network state.

1:19:55

Okay? So

1:19:55

network union, as I mentioned so, you know, the

1:19:57

progression. Network union just does things digitally and collectively. So

1:19:59

it's like a like

1:20:02

a guild working together. Right? a

1:20:04

network archipelago, now you're getting offline territory. But some

1:20:06

things do, yes, require changes in law. So that's the highest level

1:20:10

in network state. is something that has collective action, kept

1:20:13

capacity, and the content, which

1:20:15

aligns people, has

1:20:18

the physical footprint and it has like the square meters of physical

1:20:20

space. And then the last step

1:20:22

is it gets big enough and

1:20:24

strong enough and morally enlightened enough

1:20:27

it can do the dance Right?

1:20:29

That a

1:20:30

city or state or

1:20:31

country recognizes it and

1:20:34

does a deal with

1:20:36

it. Okay? And what are

1:20:38

the precedents for this? So, like, Wyoming has its Dow lock. It's literally built an interface effectively

1:20:41

to the Ethereum

1:20:44

network. Right? or El Salvador, Bitcoin's

1:20:46

national currency there. So it's built in interface, the Bitcoin network. Or a Nevada

1:20:48

has, you know, done a deal

1:20:50

with a lawn for the GEICO factory.

1:20:54

Right? So that's like there. Okay? Or

1:20:56

Amazon with HQ2. Google tried something like this with

1:20:58

sidewalk labs that got pushed back, but the

1:21:00

concept was there. Okay? Point is, that lots

1:21:02

of these sovereign entities, cities,

1:21:05

states, countries, or let's

1:21:07

say not lots, enough of

1:21:09

them, okay, have been doing

1:21:11

deals with companies and digital currencies that there

1:21:13

is feasibility there. And so

1:21:15

what you'd want is you want

1:21:17

a group of people which is

1:21:20

large enough motivated enough. Maybe it's a thousand

1:21:22

people, maybe it's ten thousand, maybe it's a hundred thousand, maybe you need

1:21:24

a million people. I don't know the

1:21:26

scale of it. That's an empirical question.

1:21:30

that they can go to

1:21:32

all of the different mayors and governors and

1:21:34

maybe presidents of the world because they're

1:21:36

they're it's a parallel process. That's

1:21:38

the awesome thing. you're no longer just negotiating with just the US

1:21:41

government, etcetera. Right? Forget them. Like,

1:21:43

the US federal government will

1:21:45

be the last mover

1:21:48

on everything Like, everybody's over indexed on. We

1:21:50

need to reform the US government. No. You need to exit the US government. I shouldn't say ignore,

1:21:52

but just assume they

1:21:55

can do nothing good. Okay?

1:21:58

Assume they can do nothing good basically just on the other six percent the

1:21:59

world, right, of

1:22:02

who are not American. and

1:22:05

the enormous part of the US, which is breaking away from the US government. Meaning, you

1:22:07

you wanna try to

1:22:10

get

1:22:11

a sanctuary city

1:22:14

for

1:22:14

for biomedicine biomedicine,

1:22:16

a sanctuary city for cryptocurrency,

1:22:17

a sanctuary

1:22:19

city for self driving

1:22:21

cars, where federal law

1:22:23

is not

1:22:23

enforced. Right? Officially. And

1:22:25

is it

1:22:26

not enforced

1:22:27

only along that

1:22:29

plane or is

1:22:31

it you are you are creating completely new sets of laws?

1:22:33

Well, it's both. So basically,

1:22:35

the thing is you can

1:22:37

do this both

1:22:38

within and outside the US. Right?

1:22:40

Outside the US, harmonization is rejected, inset,

1:22:42

so basically, the unelected bureaucrats of Silver Spring, Maryland

1:22:45

no longer have power. But why

1:22:47

do I see that? Because Those

1:22:49

bureaucrats I mean, for example, when Facebook is criticized, you know who runs Facebook at Zoc.

1:22:52

Right? You know he's

1:22:54

in control of it. He's

1:22:57

like attack by name constantly. People personalize it. It sucks company blah

1:22:59

blah blah. Can you name a single person who

1:23:01

works

1:23:02

at FDA? No.

1:23:04

Right. despite the fact

1:23:06

that every single bite you take every day is regulated by them. There's zero personal accountability. Okay?

1:23:09

If they're

1:23:12

ever criticized, It's this abstract thing

1:23:14

of the agency, which has billions of dollars in annual budget, and essentially infinite hit points can't

1:23:19

go bankrupt. Right? has appropriations from the

1:23:22

government. Right? You know, so no individual is ever accountable there. They're not accountable

1:23:24

to the electorate.

1:23:27

There's no elections Okay?

1:23:29

And they're not accountable to the market because they have career tenure and can't be fired. And they're anonymous. They're not

1:23:31

even accountable in terms of public criticism. So

1:23:35

this is totally unaccountable

1:23:38

agency that determines everything you

1:23:40

eat and drink, your vaccines, your drugs,

1:23:43

your this and that. And has

1:23:45

de legitimated itself in its performance over COVID, where it held back to vaccines. And also, you know, the Johnson

1:23:47

Johnson vaccine got held back by, like,

1:23:50

a few weeks over some stupid scare,

1:23:52

like, you

1:23:55

know, the problem, by the way, with the COVID conversation

1:23:57

around, like, vaccines is either

1:23:59

being, like, Yay, everybody, you

1:24:01

know, is forced to take

1:24:03

the vaccine or you know, oh my god,

1:24:06

vaccines are world economic forum, conspiracy, classroom, etcetera. And what there hasn't been

1:24:08

is option three, which is

1:24:10

we needed this in a week

1:24:13

and we could have, like, essentially, gotten them

1:24:15

to the vulnerable first. Even if needed some time to

1:24:18

scale, which it would have,

1:24:21

you get them to, like, the elderly rapidly.

1:24:23

Right? And you could have avoided like a million dead. That million

1:24:26

dead is on the FDA's

1:24:28

head. like because

1:24:30

challenge trials could have been done, you know? And so that's like a different interpretation of the problem

1:24:33

with this. Right? Now

1:24:35

the thing is, that

1:24:38

no country around the world has

1:24:40

this formulated in quite this way. That

1:24:42

has to say, despite the fact that

1:24:44

these are you

1:24:45

know ostensibly sovereign countries, they don't have the narrative that

1:24:47

a, FDA is illegitimate and or delegitimate.

1:24:52

And

1:24:52

b, also, and this is important. I

1:24:54

want to make this important point. I'm not saying zero regulations

1:24:56

and a total

1:24:58

free for all of all

1:25:00

kinds. I'm actually saying

1:25:02

a V3, right? So I'm not saying just end the FDA. I'm saying exit the FDA. didn't

1:25:04

just end the Fed

1:25:06

and replace it with nothing.

1:25:10

you're ending the Fed or exiting the Fed

1:25:12

and replacing the Bitcoin. The reason being, just

1:25:13

to talk about this point for a second, because I

1:25:15

think it's important. I've just spent all this time

1:25:17

tearing the thing down, allowing me give something to it to build

1:25:19

it back up again. People

1:25:21

want a regulated

1:25:23

marketplace. In the sense

1:25:25

of they want a regulator

1:25:27

that will do star ratings, like quality ratings

1:25:29

of, you know, most actors and bands of bad actors. Right? So you get

1:25:31

a star rating one to five stars on

1:25:34

something, you know, it's a product in the

1:25:36

market. and

1:25:38

the zero star bad actors and scammers are

1:25:40

just like kicked out of the market entirely.

1:25:42

One way of doing that is a

1:25:45

national state based regulator. like FDA, FAA, SEC,

1:25:48

etcetera. Another way of doing it, which is actually

1:25:50

not thought of as such, but it's really important,

1:25:52

is a cloud

1:25:55

based international regulator like

1:25:56

Amazon, eBay, actually even Gmail, Apple, etcetera. How

1:25:58

are those regulators? What do you

1:25:59

mean? Well, obviously,

1:26:02

Amazon

1:26:03

has star ratings. eBay

1:26:06

has star ratings, and they also kick bad

1:26:08

actors. Right? And they kick bad actors

1:26:10

on the merchant side, Uber and Airbnb

1:26:13

are also regulators. They're

1:26:15

international regulators. They're better than the taxi medallions

1:26:17

or the hotel regulators because Uber is tracking

1:26:19

every trip. Right? They're giving star

1:26:21

ratings on both the

1:26:23

driver and the passenger. they're

1:26:25

checking that payment can go through and that the passenger is good for it and so on.

1:26:27

And then they are decommissioning people who

1:26:29

have low ratings on either side

1:26:32

or abuse. This

1:26:35

is just, in a sense, a much more intrusive regulator.

1:26:37

No taxing medallion could possibly do

1:26:39

anything like that.

1:26:41

Right? They they do I

1:26:43

mean, a very cursory inspection every six months that

1:26:45

the windshield wiper still works. They're not

1:26:47

getting reviews from every rider, certainly not collecting

1:26:49

them in real time. It has to be

1:26:51

like an accident for them

1:26:53

to actually write up that taxi driver. So that's to be a

1:26:55

right tail kind of thing. So the state based paper based

1:26:59

regulators fundamentally less efficient than

1:27:01

the cloud based international regular, which also has data from around the world. Moreover,

1:27:03

it's inefficient in a different

1:27:05

way

1:27:08

where Typically, we think of the state based regulator

1:27:10

as adversarial to the industry. Right? Oh, the tax regulator is supposed to be adversarial to

1:27:13

the tax companies, keep them in check. What actually happens is they

1:27:16

form a duopoly against the

1:27:18

customer, whereas a cozy relationship

1:27:20

between the taxi regular and

1:27:22

the taxi drivers, since the taxi to know the regulator,

1:27:25

but the taxi riders just flip in and

1:27:27

out. You know? Like taxi riders

1:27:29

have nothing in common

1:27:31

besides driving taxi, the drivers keep meeting

1:27:34

with regulators eventually farm social bonds in the same way. The FDA is, in many ways,

1:27:36

adversarial to pharma

1:27:39

companies, but it's also cooperative

1:27:42

with them against startups and against patients who want novel treatments. Okay?

1:27:44

So Uber and Lyft actually

1:27:46

changed this, Airbnb

1:27:47

changed this because

1:27:48

Now

1:27:51

you have a regulator, customer provider

1:27:54

complex. It's Uber,

1:27:56

the regulator, the Uber

1:27:58

driver, and the

1:27:59

Uber passenger. versus

1:28:01

lift the regulator and the lift driver for

1:28:03

the passenger. Right? So the star

1:28:05

rating and the provider are

1:28:07

linked together and efficiency

1:28:10

comes from competition between regulators. It is is what's called polycentric law. Okay? So it is within

1:28:12

the same jurisdiction, you

1:28:15

have choice of law. Okay?

1:28:19

I pick the graph or the left app

1:28:21

or in another country go check or

1:28:23

graph. Right? You have choice

1:28:25

of regulator. Right? Now even two choices better than

1:28:27

one. Yeah. I get that it's too optimistic in

1:28:30

in some ways, but there's other, like, ride

1:28:32

sharing apps and so on. Right? that's

1:28:34

a model where you're not saying no regulation whatsoever. You're saying a choice of regulator. Regulators are

1:28:36

actually incredibly valuable.

1:28:39

Like, these are multibillion,

1:28:41

multi because the reason being, because people wanna pay one price to enter a

1:28:43

market, they diligence say a legit regular, that one

1:28:46

isn't. And then they don't wanna

1:28:50

go and test every product in the market. They

1:28:52

wanna know it's at a basal level of quality

1:28:54

and and look through it. Otherwise, you

1:28:56

have a situation where every coffee you get

1:28:59

at Starbucks, you need to put a dipstick in

1:29:01

it to see, you know, is this poisonous or not? So

1:29:03

the point is the v three combines

1:29:06

aspects of the v one and the v to get like third version. example, has aspects

1:29:08

of gold, which people talk about,

1:29:10

but it also has aspects of fiat.

1:29:15

can it borders. You can represent digitally. You can program

1:29:18

with it. And so it's about you

1:29:20

can't do any of those things

1:29:22

with an inert block of gold. So

1:29:24

it's digital gold. Right? It is not just

1:29:26

a dumb, you know, throwback to v one. It's

1:29:28

not competitive as

1:29:29

V1V2 beat v one

1:29:31

for a reason. V

1:29:34

three takes the good aspects of v one and the good aspects of v two to make something that's better than be

1:29:37

AV3

1:29:40

where

1:29:42

yeah,

1:29:42

you don't want the totally unregulated market

1:29:44

for patent medicines and scans and

1:29:46

so they had great upside and they

1:29:48

had great downside. We also don't want

1:29:50

this you

1:29:51

know, harmonized environment where unelected

1:29:53

bureaucrats just impose uniformity

1:29:55

and everything and no

1:29:57

one can take any risks

1:29:59

and

1:29:59

it's so risk

1:30:00

intolerant that it's the

1:30:01

riskiest of all. Right? Because if you don't take small

1:30:03

risks, you end up

1:30:04

taking the biggest risk which is not

1:30:06

taking risks and then you just never

1:30:10

exploring anything new and you can't adapt. Right? So

1:30:12

the v three says no regulation

1:30:14

is bad, but this regulation is

1:30:17

also bad, and we can do

1:30:19

better with cloud regulators. right, international regulators. And what would

1:30:21

that look like again just to go into the FDA example? Because the reason I go

1:30:23