Network State

* Book: The Network State. Balaji Srivanasan. 2022.

URL = https://thenetworkstate.com/

"Technology has enabled us to start new companies, new communities, and new currencies. But can we use it to start new cities, or even new countries? This book explains how to build the successor to the nation state, a concept we call the network state."

Definition

May have different meanings ranging from states that are networked, networks of institutions of officials within these institutions, etc..

Also has a more narrow definition, alike to that of a Cloud Country, by blockchain entrepreneurs such as Balaji Srivanasan:

"A network state is a social network with an agreed-upon leader, an integrated cryptocurrency, a definite purpose, a sense of national consciousness, and a plan to crowdfund territory." [1]

Description

Balaji Srivanasan:

"Here we describe a peaceful, reproducible process for turning an online community premised on a proposition into a physical state with a virtual capital: a network state, the sequel to the nation state.

A network state is a social network with a clear leader, an integrated cryptocurrency, a definite purpose, a sense of national consciousness, and a plan to crowdfund territory. That clear leader is the founding influencer, who organizes the online community that eventually buys land in the physical world. Crucially, that land is not necessarily contiguous.

...

A network state is thus an archipelago of digitally-linked, interconnected enclaves. It's also a country you can start from your computer, a territory one can acquire but not conquer, a community aligned around cryptographic consensus, a DAO that materializes in patches of earth, a city-state in the cloud, a body based on math rather than science, a group organized by geodesic over geographic distance, a polity that prizes exit above voice, a state that recruits like a startup, and a nation built from the internet rather than disrupted by it.

Each of these implicit definitions illuminates a different aspect of the network state. "

(https://1729.com/the-network-state)

Characteristics

Balaji Srivanasan:

"Once we visualize a network state as a combination of (a) a digital social network with an integrated cryptocurrency and (b) a physical network of distributed enclaves, we realize that it is much easier to acquire than to conquer.

Easy to Acquire

First, why is it easy to acquire? For the digital portion of a network state, when the founder sells it to an acquirer, it's like selling Instagram to Facebook. The digital logins of the two services are integrated and citizens in each network state now have access to the other's apps and physical territory. This is a modern analog to the Louisiana Purchase or the purchase of Alaska. It's also feasible to sell not the entire network, but simply a subnetwork - perhaps all those in a defined geographical location, or all those who have expressed a collective interest in changing citizenship. This is similar to Singapore becoming independent from Malaysia. Finally, it is also feasible to spin-off a subnetwork into its own network, like the UK exiting from the EU. lousiana-purchase.jpeg

If we visualize the physical portion of a network state as like a network of Google offices, or a string of restaurant chains, or the real estate footprint of a REIT, we see how we can handle the physical component of network state M&A as well. In the simplest version, after one network state consummates the acquisition of the other, all citizens from one network state can enter the territory of the other. The smart locks just get a software update and now open all the doors and gates. The branding changes too, to be consistent with the new unified entity, much like a large chain putting up new signage when it acquires a small one. Various kinds of reciprocity relationships with other network states may need to be renegotiated, just like many corporate deals have change-of-control provisions, but this too is straightforward so long as it is anticipated. restaurant-chains-map.jpeg

In theory, all of this can be done with current legal infrastructure. It's just like one multinational acquiring the digital, physical, and human resources of another, except it extends to people's residences rather than simply their offices, and except that the acquired people become not just employees of the combined entity but citizens - though they can always leave for any new network state that admits them.

Over time, however, the digital infrastructure for each network state should live on a blockchain, which allows the recording of all real estate transactions, the maintenance of all citizen records, and the management of private keys in a globally consistent way across legacy nation state jurisdictions. The problem of post-acquisition integration mostly then reduces to porting over the records from one blockchain to another.

This is then a way to extend the corporate concept of change-of-control to polities. It's a recipe for nonviolent competition between countries, where peace treaties between would-be rebels and current incumbents are signed via M&A.

Hard to Conquer

The network state reduces violence on another dimension: thanks to their geographical decentralization and physical invisiblity, network states are hard to conquer. global-france-map.png

First, geographical decentralization. If you look at a map of France that includes its islands in the South Pacific, you realize that it's difficult to invade or nuke the whole thing at once. So the geographical distribution of the network itself is a deterrent to physical force. Just like cryptocurrency, the decentralization deters violence.

Second, physical invisibility. This is much more subtle. Right now, you can see the physical border zone between France & Germany on a map. But you can't visualize the border zone between Twitter & Facebook. That is, which people are on the "border" of Twitter and Facebook, in the sense that they have accounts on both sites? facebook-map.jpeg

This might seem like a trivial concept, but isn't. The Twitter and Facebook networks are each bigger than France or Germany - combined. However, social network membership is invisible to all but the network operators. There's no public list of all Facebook and Twitter members. Only Facebook can generate a map like this.

This has immense implications. You couldn't have nationalism itself without maps of physical space. For example, think about 54° 40' or Fight, which made literal reference to latitude. You couldn't have that kind of border dispute without being able to visualize a border. People had to see the map to be able to fight over it.

So, because citizenship in a network state is invisible to a satellite, at least without the consent of the network state operator, these imagined communities are invisible countries. It's the return of secret societies, at scale, as secret states. Network states thus have the option of reducing violence by encrypting the map itself; you can't hit what you can't see.

A Group Organized By Geodesic Rather than Geographic Distance

Snapchat lies on a straight line with the dissolution of the nation state. Why? Because people are sharing intimate moments with others 3000 miles away, while they often don't know the names of the next door neighbors in their anonymous apartment complex. This undermines the underlying assumption of the Westphalian nation state: namely, that people who live near each other will share the same values and therefore agree upon laws, such that the geographically-premised mechanism of the nation state is the right entity to govern them. Instead, what we find is that people share values with people who are close to them in their social network...not in their physical space.

We can quantify this with a little math. First, take a look at the definitions for the great circle distance and the geodesic distance.

The geographic distance is the the distance between two points on the surface of the earth. It's the distance as the crow flies. You can do a modified version of this based on practical travel constraints, but to a first approximation this fis how far apart people are in the physical world. The geodesic distance, by contrast, is a completely different metric. It's the number of degrees of separation between two nodes in a social network along the shortest path.

Importantly, the geodesic distance is just as valid a mathematical metric as the great-circle distance. That means one can generate distance matrices, and hence maps, via techniques like multidimensional scaling. In fact, there are entire conferences devoted to cloud cartography, in which research groups present maps of online social networks - mapping not nation states but states of mind. social-network-map.png

Why is the geodesic distance important? Because the network state is enabled in nontrivial part by the fact that we are transitioning from a primarily great-circle-driven world to a geodesic-driven world. And that means the fundamental division is less the visible geographic borders of the nation state, than the invisible geodesic borders of the social network. This in turn means that we need to reconceptualize the state as a primarily digital entity, a network state.

Think about the difference between Russia vs Ethereum. Russia was a geographical entity that switched its ideology in 1991, from communism to nationalism. The geography was primary, the ideology was secondary. Conversely, Ethereum is an ideological entity whose primary existence is in a network. The Ethereum community holds meetups in places like Cancun or Shenzhen, but the physical materialization is evanescent while the digital community is persistent.

Or think about the fact that Russia's borders are (mostly) fixed, while Ethereum's borders are highly fluid. It's true that Russia's borders have changed since 1991; its predecessor state, the USSR, extended farther out into Eastern Europe and Central Asia. But the Russian people have been near the Baltics, the Turks, the Eastern Europeans, and so on for quite a long time. Geopolitics doesn't vary that much; Russia's "competitors" for citizens have mostly stayed the same.

By contrast, the Ethereum-to-XYZ exchange rate does vary quite a bit, for different values of XYZ. Solana is a new digital currency that has popped up on Ethereum's boundary and taken a good chunk of "citizens" from it, just as Ethereum itself rose in BTC terms since its inception.

This is similar to how early Facebook arose out of nowhere and took many citizens from Gmail, before Google "closed the borders". Of course, unlike territorial disputes, these games are not strictly zero-sum, as the space of cryptocurrency and internet users keeps expanding, as does the wealth to invest in different services.

It is the geodesic distance that enables this fluidity. Individuals and entire networks can instantly become adjacent to anyone else in a social network. Individuals can also move around the map to become adjacent to others in the physical world. But unlike individuals or networks, nation states cannot do this. They cannot just move around the map at will. The Russian state is mostly stuck with its neighbors in a way that individual Russians, or the Telegram and Ethereum networks (both founded by people of Russian descent), are not."

(https://1729.com/the-network-state)

How-To

Primaveri de Filippi:

"Primavera mentioned a step-by-step guide, according to Srivinasan’s book, to build a network state:

• Found your startup society

• Organize it as a group capable of collective action (capacity to act is essential, being a community is not enough)

• Build trust offline and a crypto economy online (need in-person meetings to build trust between various members).

• Crowds found physical nodes. Collectively buy land and housing to live together as a community

• Digitally connected physical community

• Conduct an on-chain census. It needs a way to prove there is an online population (a decent number of people and a sufficient number of incomes and a footprint in the real world)

• Gain diplomatic recognition (the most contentious one)"

([2])

Summary

By Dan Becker:

Multichapter summary at https://x20s.com/the-network-state-for-really-busy-people/

Part I – Definition, Introduction and Frontiers

Definition

“A network state is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states.” (The Network State)

Introduction

The Network State argues that startup societies will harness an internet technology stack to navigate around state erected roadblocks to experiment with governance models. Building governance structures from a blank slate will allow startup societies to unbundle citizens of current nation states and re-sort them into coherent online communities with a shared consciousness. These new communities will eventually engage in collective action and foster innovation in politics and the physical world (health science, fusion etc.). Ultimately, The Network State outlines a path towards building a 100x better World.

Frontiers

By the late 15th century, the Ottomans were blocking trade passing through the Eastern Mediterranean to Western Europe. Indeed, Columbus’ trip in 1492 sought to circumvent the Ottomans’ trade barriers and re-establish commerce with India by finding a western trade route. Rather than finding India, however, Columbus discovered something arguably even better: a new frontier!

Columbus’ discovery of North America ushered in a period of significant growth and greatness for Europe and America. The closing of the frontier in 1890, on the other hand, unleashed a necessarily zero-sum period and age of total war. Ambitious individuals could no longer become “founders” on their own plot of land. Instead, they gravitated towards roles such as union organizers and revolutionaries. An argument could be made that the communist revolutions and the hell they unleashed on the World in the 20th century are connected to the closing of the frontier.

Open frontiers provide individuals with options, while placing checks on exploitation by corporations and trade unions. Dissatisfied workers can vote with their feet and escape oppressive work and social environments. Frontiers additionally provide blank slates for social experimentation. During the 18th and 19th centuries, North American settlements and colonies brought innovation and shaped what it meant to be on the “cutting edge” of governance.

The Network State argues that web3 and Bitcoin will be leveraged to secure the internet as a new frontier. Similar to the frontier Columbus discovered, this new digital frontier will foster extraordinary social and economic growth and usher in a potential golden age. Eventually, startup societies will translate their success on the network into new physical frontiers via network archipelagos and states."

(https://x20s.com/the-network-state-for-really-busy-people/)

Part II – On Leviathans: God, State, Network

"In feudal Europe (1000AD to 1500AD), power was organized locally and at a small scale. Numerous hereditary fief holders held significant sway over military, political, legal and tax policy. In this regard, the feudal world was somewhat decentralized. The Church, on the other hand, operated at large scale and across borders. The Church influenced policy, collected revenue streams from across Europe and, on occasion, raised multinational armies. God, via the Catholic Church, became the first European leviathan.

In 1517 Martin Luther, fed up with the corruption of the church, posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the Church door. He condemned church practices such as the sale of “indulgences” as counter to God’s law. In doing so, he kicked off the Protestant Reformation. At the same time new technologies, such as gunpowder and canons, significantly impacted the organization of power. Guns allowed foot soldiers with relatively little training to defeat knights in battle. Canons turned castles, the defensive masterpiece of the feudal period, into death traps. In order to effectively deploy guns and canons, however, societies needed to operate at a larger scale. Feudal society, operating at a small scale, rapidly lost military relevance. Thus, the beginning of the 16th century marked the collapse of the feudal period, along with the erasure of the foundations of power that the God leviathan depended upon.

As new power imperatives emerged, the Church’s influence waned while that of the nation state grew. Military effectiveness now required large, expensive armies supported by industrial scale production. It further relied upon large centralized kingdoms/empires to tax and conscript soldiers from large population pools. Bigger societies proved effective at developing manufacturing supply chains needed to sustain industrial era armies. The resulting “Nation States” became the new leviathan.

Like the Catholic Church of the late feudal period, the nation State leviathan of the early 21st century is devolving into corruption and incompetence.

...

Simultaneously, technological innovation is once again reshaping power and how it most effectively organizes. The transformational impact of the internet is just the beginning. Few pre-internet institutions (business, social or government) will survive the transition to a networked world, and those that do will look entirely different.

The network enables small teams to generate tremendous value, and to do so remotely with a laptop. Capital intensive industrial scale production as the key source of value generation is being replaced by digital information workers. Mobile workers can easily relocate and benefit from jurisdictional arbitrage. By changing location, workers and businesses can control the legal framework under which they labor. This reality directly reduces the power of the state leviathan.

The network further allows substantial portions of value creation to be separated from manufacturing and moved into the cloud. Consider the value added by a new iPhone design, for example. How much of the value is created by the manufacturing process and how much is created via design and software? The high value digital portion will be separated into the cloud, outside of “physical location” where governments’ rule. The network also effectively disintermediates financial institutions and threatens to replace them with decentralized, open and trustless applications. The network is rising to challenge the state for the title of the most powerful force in the universe. The outcome of this battle will define our times.

Why does Balaji describe leviathans in such great detail in his book? I think there are a couple of reasons: First, the leviathan model highlights the titanic mechanisms of social organization that exist and shift over time. Understanding the forces of social organization at a high level acts as an important prerequisite to understanding The Network State. Second, it demonstrates how technological changes (–i.e., gunpowder, the internet) impact how societies organize. Third, A person’s chosen leviathan reveals a great deal about their preferred tactics. Those who appeal to God as their leviathan, for example, say “God will smite you” for wrong behavior; statists, on the other hand, pass laws and regulations; while networkers write code and build apps. Finally, the leviathan model underpins Balaji’s tripolar world model discussed below. "

(https://x20s.com/part-ii-on-leviathans-god-state-network/)

Part III: Balaji Srivanasan on the Three Competing Ideologies of the Networked World

Dan Becker:

"Balaji presents an interesting Tripolar model of three important ideologies currently vying for power in the World. To one degree or another, most people are influenced by at least one, if not more, of these ideological poles.

Balaji defines the poles as follows:

• Woke Capital– The ideology of America’s ruling class as explicated by America’s ruling newspaper, The New York Times. It’s capitalism that enables decentralized censorship, cancel culture and American empire. Requirement – You must sympathize.

• CCP Communist Capital – The ideology of the Chinese Communist Party; capitalism checked by the centralized power of the Chinese party-state: Leninist, Confucianist, Capitalist, and Nationalist.

Requirement – You must submit.

• BTC Crypto Capital – The international ideology of Bitcoin and web3. Stateless capitalism, capitalism without corporations, decentralized censorship-resistance, and neutral international law. It is the second pole within both the US and China, the one that domestic regime opponents align around.

Requirement – You must be sovereign.

Each of these political ideologies presents extreme positions, rendering any of them unattractive. The CCP pole, for instance, requires total submission, creating great difficulty for those with even a partially independent mind. Woke Capital demands sympathy for victims and acknowledgement of one’s role as an oppressor. Crypto Capital espouses complete sovereignty which in the extreme means making your own shoes and pumping your own water. None of the poles are attractive individually; and currently, no acceptable mix of submission/sympathy/sovereignty exists."

(https://x20s.com/part-iii-problems-solved-by-the-network-state/)

Problems which the network state could solve

 The power of corporations, corporatism and the “Davos Man” are not reflected in the model or the book.  How does corporate power interact with the network leviathan?

Dan Becker:

"Reforms to large institutions, like governments, impossible from the inside might be possible from the outside. By increasing competition and choice within the governance space, network states can become powerful catalysts in the formation of parallel institutions. Citizens will no longer be glued to one of the three poles. Rather, they will exercise choice regarding where they want to operate from a submission/sympathy/sovereignty standpoint. Through competition, the poles will move closer to the center and that is what effective reform looks like in the future.

* Problem #3 – Innovation – “If you do not agree on anything, you cannot do anything.”

“Consensus is upstream of innovation” Balaji Srinivasan

Current regulations significantly choke innovation in all areas except technology. We could and should be living in George Jetson’s world. The opportunity cost of slowing innovation has been tremendous. Network states offer an opportunity to turbocharge innovation via the establishment of small innovation zones ( –i.e., FDA free zones) where less stringent and costly regulatory procedures apply. To reignite innovation, zones with a fundamentally different understanding of and tolerance for risk are required. Innovation poses risks; but so, too, does failing to innovate. Far more people died from FDA regulation than were saved by it. Why should one level of risk tolerance be applied to all? Network states open the door to renewed innovation for a host of reasons, but principally because they facilitate consensus.

Currently people are sorted into communities based upon their birthplace (national citizenship). Does sorting people in such a system make sense in a networked world? A century ago it may have been the only option. People born in the same location were often genetically, culturally, linguistically and religiously similar. However, in a networked world, people exchange ideas with people across the globe. Relying on “citizenship by birth” foments nasty social environments and action paralysis as consensus often no longer exists. Network states solve this problem by allowing people to sort themselves into coherent communities based upon consensus and voluntary agreement. Almost everyone would have more of what they want in a network state world because consensus becomes possible.

* Problem #4 – Fake History

“We need a form of truth powerful enough to stand outside any state and judge it from above.” Balaji Srinivasan

The foundation for each of the poles described in the tripolar section above (problem 1) is based upon an establishment “story” about history. That is, history as relayed by the establishment is just a politically expedient story outlining what they say happened, why and who the villains/heroes were. This story is presented as fact, where political rivals are inevitably evil. Balaji describes these regime validating parables as “political truth” or “top-down truth.” When history is recorded for the benefit of the establishment, the populace becomes disoriented. A bottom-up version of macro-history would go a long way towards providing a truer history story. History recorded to a blockchain would become uncensorable, digitally signed and time stamped. Thus, network states extract the ability to define truth from power by recording events to the ledger, and in so doing, will go a long way towards checking “political truth”.

* Problem #5 – Pre-Internet Institutions are Collapsing

Statists think their god can never fail. They are in for a surprise.

Under even cursory examination, many government programs produce the opposite of what they profess. The war-on-drugs cannot keep drugs out of prisons; the war-on-terror increases terrorism; and anti-inflation efforts rely on printing money. Studying government policy is like watching a “fails” video on YouTube.

The many and complex reasons governments are failing is beyond the scope of this article. One trend worth mentioning, however, is the extraction of value from the physical realm. Governments make their daily bread by carving out a portion of the value created between borders. As the internet moves towards maturity, high value digital work (–i.e., design, engineering, data analysis) can and will be separated from lower value activities such as manufacturing. This higher value work will move into the cloud, outside the reach of inhospitable governments. The implications of this trend regarding government revenues are substantial.

Imagine what would happen if high value work classifications (–i.e., programmers guild) organized into network unions. They would create huge pools of value they could leverage to negotiate for an optimal digital domicile. The full arrival of the internet in a way that negates the value of place will transform the sovereignty marketplace, while completely reshuffling which nations are considered winners and losers.

I also wonder about the continued viability of many industrial era corporations. They appear to be intertwined with governments and I question their ability to operate at internet speed. Also, corporations are very much creatures of “place” in that they rely heavily on legal agreements and intellectual property protection tied to place. They also benefit from regulatory barriers to entry, access to cheap capital, tax breaks and subsidies. These benefits will not be forthcoming in a network state world. How will corprations be impacted by a world where place is much less important?

* Problem #6 – Special Interest Infiltration

Legacy institutions have a terrible record of remaining true to their founding vision. Consider the United States as an example. The country was founded as an experiment in limited government and explicitly acknowledged the need to protect citizens from the government. A little over 240 years later, the U.S. government has become the largest government in history and recognizes no limits on its authority. Institutions of justice dispense injustice, media organizations peddle propaganda and consumer protection agencies deliver consumer exploitation. How did this happen?

As Klaus Schwab of The World Economic Forum likes to say, “We have penetrated many government cabinets.” Whether it be via the WEF, WHO, FED, CIA or multinational corporations, a variety of tactics are used to penetrate decision making bodies. Once captured, these institutions produce massive financial and power gains for those controlling them. Imagine what might happen if drug company scientists sat on regulatory approval bodies or if executives moved regularly between regulatory and drug company employment. Wait a minute, you don’t have to imagine – that is how the system currently operates! In most cases, legacy institutions present easy targets for “single point corruption.”

Once key decision making positions intended to hold institutions accountable are captured, little can be done to save the organization. Surprisingly few questions are asked, such as: What is the organization’s stated purpose? Is it achieving that purpose? How are decisions made and what decisions have been made, to date? Do decision makers have conflicts of interest; and if so, what steps are taken to eliminate the conflicts? Answer – major conflicts of interest are ignored and profited from. Ultimately, almost all legacy institutions operate in secret.

In a network state world, a top-down monopoly of institution creation will not survive. People can and will rebuild open and auditable institutions from the bottom-up. Instead of relying on single point decision makers operating behind closed doors, stakeholders will participate directly in decision making and the entire process will be open for examination by anyone. Without a single point of corruption, new bottom-up institutions will do a much better job of serving their stakeholders’ interests. (Problem #6 – Not from The Network State)"

(https://x20s.com/part-iii-problems-solved-by-the-network-state/)

Discussion

Balaji's Metapolitics

Vitalik Buterin:

"Team NYT basically runs the US, and its total lack of competence means that the US is collapsing. Team BTC (meaning, both actual Bitcoin maximalists and US rightists in general) has some positive values, but their outright hostility to collective action and order means that they are incapable of building anything. Team CCP can build, but they are building a dystopian surveillance state that much of the world would not want to live in. And all three teams are waaay too nationalist: they view things from the perspective of their own country, and ignore or exploit everyone else. Even when the teams are internationalist in theory, their specific ways of interpreting their values make them unpalatable outside of a small part of the world.

Network states, in Balaji's view, are a "de-centralized center" that could create a better alternative. They combine the love of freedom of team BTC with the moral energy of team NYT and the organization of team CCP, and give us the best benefits of all three (plus a level of international appeal greater than any of the three) and avoid the worst parts.

This is Balajian megapolitics in a nutshell. It is not trying to justify network states using some abstract theory (eg. some Dunbar's number or concentrated-incentive argument that the optimal size of a political body is actually in the low tens of thousands). Rather, it is an argument that situates network states as a response to the particular political situation of the world at its current place and time."

(https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/07/13/networkstates.html)

John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus:

"Questions of state change and sovereignty are becoming intimately linked with issues of global security, with talk of "failing states," "lawless zones," and "ungoverned spaces" increasingly dominating public discussion. While valuable, the state decline perspective has come to dominate public discussion at the expense of alternative ideas about change in the state system. Because concepts about state change are increasingly the basis of political-military debate, considering a wider range of futures provides a much wider range of options for current strategy. Security analysts should be aware that it is not at all clear that the state itself is necessarily collapsing-and that many political-military scholars and economic sociologists are analyzing potential state changes with far-reaching implications. We may be, as Paul Rogers observes, witnessing a A World in Revolt but its nature is far more complex than many analysts believe.

Network theory is increasingly being applied to terrorism, but the most exciting analysis about state change looks at the network effect on the state. Like Manuel Castells, the economic sociologist Saskia Sassen's work points to a changing world at best dimly acknowledged in national security analysis. Her seminal book The Global City revealed the rise of a global economy built around a series of nodal points. Sassen, and other human geography scholars, discuss what Scott Lash calls "disorganized capitalism," a system distinguished by increasing deterritorialization and overlapping commercial, legal, and political networks. It is these "global cities" and the networks that connect them that are increasingly the centers of economic power. In a recent article for OpenDemocracy ^{[ citation needed ]}, Sassen also notes that far-reaching economic trends have resulted in a structural "hollowing" of many state functions that has paradoxically enhanced state functions.

One military implication of the framework from which Sassen writes is that capture, control, or disruption of strategic nodes in the global system and the intersections between them can have cascade effects. Sassen's focus is mirrored by recent American geostrategic thought focusing on the notion of the "contested commons," a series of strategic frontier zones(air, sea, and cyberspace) that states and hybrid forces contest for control of commerce and resources. Sassen takes a wider view, expanding on the notion of a growing "frontier zone," a zone of difference where identities, allegiances, and organizational forms exist in a state of constant flux.

Geostrategist Thomas P.M. Barnett has similarly argued that the true struggles of the 21st century are about the penetration of certain kinds of globalization into states dangerously disconnected from the outside world. Sociologist Benjamin Barber goes even further to posit a conflict between notional zones of traditional or neo-traditional practices and a postmodern globalized state. Philip Bobbitt, a professor of law studying the evolution of war and the state, sees terrorists as a kind of "plague at a feast" that must be conquered to preserve the integrity of a growing "market-state" emerging across the globe.

The idea of the network state, however, goes far beyond the social and economic sphere. Some scholars analogize the new state to a kind of distributed computer network. Military and information society scholar David Ronfeldt, for example, sees the new state as a proliferation of transnational network forms he calls the "cyberocracy"; Ronfeldt's conception of the cyberocracy is rooted in a primarily cybernetic vision of the government that rules by the use of information and of society, a vision reminiscent of the cybernetic sociology of Talcott Parsons. Elites derive power from control of information and the tools associated with it, much in the same way as elites in the industrial era employed mastery of certain scientific, economic, and technological modes of practice to wrest power out of the hands of traditional authorities such as the aristocracy and the Church.

The core of Ronfeldt's research involves the concept of the "nexus-state," a new networked state entity enabled primarily by technology and networks. While many tech boosters see technology as a primarily liberating force that empowers individuals and groups, Ronfeldt argues convincingly that there is an equal potential for centralization of power. Centralized control of information can lead to the construction of a systematic apparatus of control that uses information collected on the populace to keep them in check. In a more decentralized system, the state becomes the arbiter that sets the protocol that defines a complicated set of networks, actors, and relationships.

If we are to take Ronfeldt's speculative idea on its own terms, we must go beyond the simplistic web 2.0 slogan that "information is power." Rather, the problem lies in transforming certain kinds of information into power. There is a large disparity between the "soft power" represented by the global networks, social media groups, and non-governmental organizations and the critical and overwhelming mass needed to contest political power, especially when faced with a force that holds an overwhelming military advantage. All of the hype about the Iranian "twitter revolution" placed a naïve faith in the ability of technology to overcome the loyal security forces of an authoritarian state. Twitter, in the end, could not overcome the truncheon, gun, and bayonet.

Ronfeldt and his frequent writing partner John Arquilla suggest in their RAND monographs on information-age "noopolitik" that power politics will increasingly revolve around attempts to shift the structural norms of a the global system on the ideational level. However, such a task will remain a grave challenge for most would-be revolutionaries. It is far easier to disrupt the political bonds through violence. Military theorist Robert Bunker has often argued in his essays on "Revolutions in Political-Military Affairs" that contested zones of political and state power lie in what he calls the "trinitarian" bonds between the state, the people, and the armed services. Bunker suggests that non-state actors can manipulate these bonds in a much easier fashion than the state. The 9/11 attacks' ripple effects on American politics and grand strategy are an obvious case of his thesis, but the media-induced fear generated by the activities of the DC Sniper in 2002 are a subtler reminder of the growing power of individuals to generate fear through the (mostly inadvertent) use of information as a weapon." (http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/state-change-sovereignty-and-global-security)

Authors

John P. Sullivan is a career police officer. He currently serves as a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism (CAST). He is coeditor of Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a Global Counter-Terrorism Network (Routledge, 2006)

Adam Elkus is an analyst specializing in foreign policy and security. He is currently Associate Editor at Red Team Journal. He blogs at Rethinking Security, Dreaming 5GW, and The Huffington Post. He is currently contributing to the Center for Threat Awareness’ ThreatsWatch project. )

Martin Carnoy and Manuel Castells

The following is a 1999 commentary on the seminal book on state theory by:

* Poulantzas, Nicos (1980) State, power, socialism, London: New Left Books, Verso edition.

Source: Globalization, the knowledge society, and the Network State: Poulantzas at the millennium. MARTIN CARNOY and MANUEL CASTELLS

URL = http://www.scribd.com/doc/22569972/Globalization-the-knowledge-society-and-the-network-state-M-Castells-and-M-Carnoy

" 'Excerpt: Crisis and reconstruction of the state: the Network State'

"Towards the end of the twentieth century the state was confronted with a series of challenges: the process of globalization; the transformation of the work process, and its consequences for the welfare state, one of the pillars of state legitimacy; the centrality of knowledge in economy, and society, thus affecting the education system, a key source of control for the modern state; and a deep crisis of legitimacy, resulting from all the above, plus the damage inflicted upon the state by the rise of identity politics (Castells 1997/2000; Guehenno 1993). Let us briefly review these different dimensions of the contemporary crisis of the state without reiterating the arguments already presented in this paper.

Globalization limits the sovereignty of the state. But it also does something else: it redefines the social boundaries of the state (Held 1991). If nations are intertwined, the community to which the state is accountable becomes blurred. How can a strictly national state respond to transnational communities? The classic nation state requires a bounded national community as its frame of reference. When globalization forces the state to redefine this frame of reference, then national communities lose their channel of political representation. What follows is the development of nationalism against the state. The separation between nation and the state is a fundamental process characteristic of our time (Calhoun 1998).

The individualization of work, the development of networking and flexibility as forms of economic activity, the instability of employment, all undermine the institutions of the welfare state that were built on stable partnerships between representatives of capital, workers, and the state. The state reduces its role as a guarantor of social protection, and individualizes its relationship with most citizens. The ensuing crisis of the traditional welfare state undermines the legitimacy of the state because it loses its appeal as the provider of last resort.

The centrality of knowledge in the new economy enhances the role of schools as productive forces. Consequently, the role of the school as a national ideological and domination apparatus recedes, undermining one of the key elements of social control and ideological reproduction on the part of the state.

The rise of identity politics challenges citizenship as the sole source of political legitimacy. The state has to respond to a series of cultural demands, often contradictory, from a plurality of sources that supersede the individual citizen as the basis of political representation.

In addition to structurally induced crisis of legitimacy, the state also suffers from the crisis of legitimacy of the political system. This crisis is induced by the practice of media politics, closely associated to the politics of scandal. This is, the widespread use of character assassination and diffusion of damaging information as the main weapons in a political competition simplified into snap shots, and sound bites in the media, as media become the decisive space of politics (Castells 1997/2000; Rose- Ackerman 1999).

States, however, react to this multidimensional crisis. They react by reconfiguring themselves to try to accommodate to new pressures and new demands. This recon- figuration develops, primarily along two axes. First, nation states build international, supra-national, and co-national institutions, in order to manage together the process of globalization that threatens to overwhelm individual states. Let us take, as an example, the European states as the clearest expression of this new historical trend. They have constituted the European Union, with the historical project of incorpor- ating the whole of Europe, minus Russia. The 15 member European Union is already a new co-national state. It is co-national because the decision-making power is in the hands of the Council of Governments, in which all member states are represented, with veto power over key decisions. But this is not the extension of the member nation states. It is a new instance of shared sovereignty. As European states they have also created supranational institutions – institutions that, while ultimately dependent upon the member states, have their autonomy (European Commission, European Parliament), and even their independence (the European Central Bank). They have also trusted their defence to a supra-national organization with a high degree of autonomy in the conduct of the war: NATO.

A similar process is taking place at the world level, with institutions overlapping across areas of the world in key areas of policy making. The G-7 group (a co-national, informal institution) takes major decisions in managing the global economy. The execution of these decisions is entrusted to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. But these institutions also have a large degree of autonomy vis-à-vis their member states at large, although they work in close cooperation with the US government. International institutions also play an increasing role in handling social, environmental, and political problems around the world. These are institutions created by the nation states, with no real power, but with considerable influence in public affairs, as they become the space of negotiation and co-intervention for governments. They are the United Nations agencies, the regional associations (such as the Organization of American States, Organization of African Unity, Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation, ASEAN, the Arab League etc.). These organizations are half a century old, but their role is increasing, as shown by the growing number of military interventions and the observation of political processes under their flags. Besides, critical questions for humankind, such as environmental problems, public health, human rights, and emergency relief, are being treated internationally by a complex web of ad hoc agreements and organizations.

The other axis of the nation state’s reconfiguration is its attempt to regain legitimacy and to represent the social diversity of its constituency through the process of decentralization and devolution of power and resources. This translates primarily into revitalizing sub-state national governments (such as Scotland or Catalonia), regional governments, local governments, and non-governmental organizations. Indeed, the dramatic expansion of non-governmental organizations around the world, most of them subsidized and supported by the state, can be interpreted as the extension of the state into civil society, in an effort to diffuse conflict and increase legitimacy by shifting resources and responsibility to the grassroots. In the 1990s, Europe has seen an extra- ordinary development of regional and local politics, together with the expansion of citizen participation, and the growing recognition of national cultures and specific identities. These movements can be observed throughout the world (Borja and Castells 1997).

The two trends of supranationality and devolution go hand in hand. Nation states are surviving, and indeed strengthening, their position by going global and local at the same time and by trying to found their legitimacy both in citizenship and cultural plurality. In the process, they assure their historical continuity, but they contribute to the demise of the nation state as it was constituted during the Modern Age, and exported to the postcolonial world (Guehenno 1993; Hoogvelt 1997). This is because the modern nation state was based on the twin principles of national representation of citizens, and territorially-based national sovereignty. With shared sovereignty, and shared sources of legitimacy, the social foundations of the classic nation state are irreversibly undermined by supranationality from above, and transnationalism from below (Smith and Guarnizo 1998).

What emerges is a new form of the state. It is a state made of shared institutions, and enacted by bargaining and interactive iteration all along the chain of decision making: national governments, co-national governments, supra-national bodies, international institutions, governments of nationalities, regional governments, local governments, and NGOs (in our conception: neo-governmental organizations). Decision-making and representation take place all along the chain, not necessarily in the hierarchical, pre-scripted order. This new state functions as a network, in which all nodes interact, and are equally necessary for the performance of the state’s functions. The state of the Information Age is a Network State.

Can this Network State accommodate the pressing demands of adapting the welfare state to the new work process, and ensuring knowledge-production through the school system? Here is where Poulantzas’ teachings become invaluable. Let us conceptualize the state as on the one hand performing the functions of facilitating accumulation of capital and reproduction of labour power and on the other hand ensuring domination (of social interests), and legitimation (of state institutions). Based on this conception, we can hypothesize a set of new historical modalities of fulfilling this complex set of tasks via the Network State. Accumulation and domination are facilitated globally by co-national and supranational institutions. Legitimation and reproduction are ensured primarily by regional and local governments and NGOs. New, global dimensions of legitimation (human rights), and reproduction (environment, health) are fulfilled by international institutions, under the hegemony of accumulation-oriented supra-national institutions. The welfare state is downsized by supra-national, accumulation-oriented institutions (e.g. the International Monetary Fund), thus lifting the burden of responsibility from the nation state. The school system is gradually pushed away from national ideological domination toward generating knowledge based on global, not national values. The ideological functions of schooling are increasingly localized and customized to subsets of the national collective. Thus, the state diversifies the mechanisms and levels of its key functions (accumulation, reproduction, domination and legitimation), and distributes its performance along the network. The nation state becomes an important, coordinating node in this interaction, but it does not concentrate either the power or the responsi- bility to respond to conflicting pressures.

Now, who is ‘the state’? Does the state react by itself and reconfigure itself in full consciousness of this process, independently from social classes and other social actors? Here is where Poulantzas’ concept of relative autonomy becomes essential. Governments acted and reacted under the pressure of economic forces and social actors in the 1970s–1990s period. They made key decisions that induced global- ization, and allowed the emergence of a knowledge economy, and they reconfigured state institutions. Thus, states acted on their own. However, they acted under pressure from dominant capitalist groups within the framework of preserving/expanding capitalism and accepting liberalism as the hegemonic ideology. The ideological battle had been won in society by cultural libertarianism and by the demise of statist ideologies, associated with the collapse of Communism in the minds of people around the world. States that did not join this global network were increasingly marginalized. Governments which tried sharply different, nation-oriented policies were compelled to change course (e.g. France under Mitterrand in 1981), or were pushed aside by crisis (e.g. Peru under Alan Garcia in 1986). The Network State was integrated into global networks of accumulation and domination, while responding to pressures and demands from national/local societies. State policies were selected by dominant interests and legitimized by citizens in various degrees. The process of trial and error determined the course of political transformation. The Network State resulted from the outcomes of social struggles and geopolitical strategies fought in the transition period from the industrial era to the information age in the last lap of the millennium.

Conclusion: the theory of the state at the turn of the millennium

The theory of the state must tackle the issues posed by the history of the state. At the turn of the millennium, the three major issues concerning the state are the following: how social domination is enforced; how legitimacy is established; and which kind of autonomy the state has vis-à-vis dominant classes and social actors at large.

Because of the individualization of the work process, the state’s role in disorgan- izing class struggle has changed. The state is no longer required to individualize workers as citizens to undermine class consciousness, as Poulantzas brilliantly perceived to be the case in the era of industrial mass production. The production process does the job for the state. Class domination is now enforced at two fundamental levels. Vis-à-vis dominant classes (that is the collective capitalist), class domination is ensured by managing and spreading globalization. The capitalist state is the globalizing state. Thus, in order to represent the interests of capitalism, the state has to overlook the interests of the nation and of its national citizens. Still, it will have to deal with legitimacy problems arising under this new pattern of domination. But domination is exercised through globalization, and through the networking of nation states that become syndicated in defense of globalization. Vis-à-vis domestic social classes, the state exercises domination through the education system. In a society where education, information, and knowledge are the critical sources of wealth and influence, class formation takes place in the classroom. Who gets what in the education system determines who gets what in capital, communication, and political influence. But as we have argued, class domination through education is increasingly passed to more localized political units.

Domination cannot survive for long without legitimacy. People must feel some degree of allegiance to the state, or domination will become synonymous with dictatorship. The betrayal of national interests, the rise of media politics, and its close associate the politics of scandal, all contribute to undermine the legitimacy of the nation state. Its strategy to escape de-legitimation is two-pronged: it strives to stimulate economic growth, national employment, and domestic consumption; and, simultaneously, it decentralizes political responsibility by increasing local/regional autonomy.

For most people in the world, fully aware of what is going on, and ready to stay home, the critical matter is personal security. Security ultimately translates into economic growth and improving living standards. In this sense, even social inequality is not a major issue. If people see their lives improving, they will not be ready to lose what they have only to correct the injustice of the rich getting richer. So, steady improvement of living standards for the large majority of the population, via informational productivity, and globalization-induced economic growth, is the main axis for building state legitimacy. We are not saying this will work. We are simply observing that this is a widespread state practice, and is, in fact, the only option once the choice has been made to adapt to the rules of global financial markets. In addition, redistribution through welfare, pensions, taxation, and other efforts to equalize income, whenever and wherever possible, would increase legitimacy. But this is an afterthought for the Network State. Redistribution is only implemented under substantial pressure from social movements.

The second way to establish legitimacy in the new historical context is decentral- ization of state power to sub-state levels: to sub-national groupings, to regions, and to local governments. This increases the probability that citizens will identify with their institutions and participate in the political process. While nation states cede power, they also shift responsibility, in the hope of creating buffers between citizens’ disaffection and national governments. Legitimacy through decentralization and citizen participation in non-governmental organizations seems to be the new frontier of the state in the twenty-first century.

Still, the state will have to respond to social movements’ demands to avoid a legitimacy crisis. Some of these demands may not be easy to accommodate within the existing state institutions. This is particularly the case with demands emerging from the women’s movement, as the crisis of patriarchalism as a hegemonic institution will lead to the calling into question of the patriarchal dimension of the state.

The greatest historical change for the state is the dramatic decline in its autonomy. The state becomes dependent on the collective capitalist represented by global financial markets. It becomes dependent on the process of globalization of production, trade, technology, and communication. It becomes dependent on other states, as it links up with state institutions to constitute the new, network state. It becomes highly dependent on the ideological apparatuses constituted around global media. It is dependent on lower levels of the state, as these levels increasingly perform key legitimation functions previously in the hands of the nation state. And it continues to depend on the institutions of patriarchalism, and particularly on the patriarchal family, the corner stone of ideological hegemony (‘family values’). When and if captured by specific interest groups, states become predatory states (like in Russia, Mexico and Nigeria, among so many others), losing all autonomy. Last, but not least, when captured by fundamentalist identity movements, be it religious or nationalist (as in Iran or Serbia) they lose all autonomy vis-à-vis religions or ideologies. Overall, the relative autonomy of the state is fading away, to a large extent because relatively autonomous states chose their own historical demise.

At the same time, the legitimacy of the nation state and its capacity to enforce the underlying rules and regulation of national market economies through democratic means and smoothly running political apparatuses, as well as to support a well- developed market information system, are important to global finance capital. They lower risk for capital and raise profit/risk ratios (World Bank 1999). Global capital’s ‘co-dependence’ on smoothly functioning civil-political societies offsetssome of the decline in national autonomy we have described; it provides even those nation states in supranational arrangements some leverage vis-à-vis both global capital and pressures for more local autonomy.

We are thus entering a world that is very different from the one in which Poulantzas lived – together with us. Thus, many of his/our former analyses do not apply to new historical realities. But this is not a major flaw for social theories. Only metaphysics pretends eternal validity. Social theories are not supposed to provide answers forever. Instead, their value is tested on the relevance of the questions they allow us to ask. That we are tentatively able to explore the state at the turn of the millennium by asking questions inspired and conceptualized by Poulantzas’ theory is a tribute to the perennial value of his thought. Nicos Poulantzas lives in our minds, and he will continue to live in the minds of political theorists during the twenty-first century." (http://www.scribd.com/doc/22569972/Globalization-the-knowledge-society-and-the-network-state-M-Castells-and-M-Carnoy)

Discussion 2: CoordiNATIONS instead of Network States ?

These are the summaries of a four-part episode series critiquing Srivanasan's approach, i.e. Overthrowing the Network State, conversations conducted by Primavery de Filippi and the Blockchain Socialist podcast:

Episode 1: Primavera De Filippi on the Critique of the Network State Concept of Balaji Srivanasan

Podcast via https://theblockchainsocialist.com/overthrowing-the-network-state-an-initial-critique-and-alternatives/

"In the first episode of our series ‘Overthrowing The Network State’ (OTNS), we dive into the world of Balaji Srinivasan’s recent book The Network State. The purpose of this series is to critique The Network State while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures.

For this episode I’m joined by Primavera De Filippi (@yaoeo), a long time researcher on blockchain and the director of Blockchaingov as a co-host. We give a brief overview of who Balaji Srinivasan is, some of the main concepts in his book, our initial criticisms, and some alternative book recommendations. By OTNS we don’t want to only provide critique, but we want to provide a very different conceptual framework that answers why people people seem to be tapping into the book. For us this is about exit-based governance (lack of politics with an idealistic view of autonomy ) vs. commons-based governance (which recognizes the inherent ‘interdependence’ of the world and global society)."

Summary of transcript:

"The Network State approach presents a major problem as Balaji Srinivasan believes that owning land is sufficient to impose any rules on it. However, according to Wikipedia, "A state is a centralized political organization that imposes and enforces rules over a population within a territory." Therefore, owning land on a territory already governed by a state does not give the landlord the right to escape the state's rules and establish their own.

Moreover, simply declaring oneself a state by hoisting a flag on a piece of land is not enough to be recognized as such. Other states must give it a certain legitimacy. Attempting to seize a part of an existing state, imposing one's laws on it, and bypassing the former will not aid in achieving recognition.

In his book, Srinivasan defines the governance structure of this state as "exit-based governance." Based on the forking concept, if a person or group disagrees with the dominant group in the Network State, they can fork and create their own Network State. This exit-based governance is authoritarian as the founder sets the rules, and one must agree to stay in NS.

BioShock comparison: The Blockchain Socialist makes an interesting comparison between the book and the game BioShock. It is a video game where the player embodies someone exploring an abandoned city underwater. Along the game, the player discovers this place was built in the 50s by a billionaire named Andrew Ryan because he wanted to exit existing laws and regulations. Thus, the city, called “Rapture,” was governed under an ultra Capitalism system but seemed to have collapsed after people tried to go on strike and escape. This game criticizes the philosophical system theorized by Ayn Rand in the 50s, called Objectivism. Objectivism is about Rational Egoism, which means that a man should always focus on his happiness above all. In practice, it leads to a society with no social aids, no religion, and no interventionism.

Finally, The Blockchain Socialist said, "BioShock could be seen as a Network State manifestation.”

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Episode 2: Glen Weyl on Overthrowing the Network State‎

Podcast via https://blockchaingov.eu/overthrowing-the-network-state-forming-new-publics-and-pluralism-with-glen-weyl/

"In this episode, Primavera de Filippi and The Blockchain Socialist welcome Glen Weyl, the founder of RadicalxChange and co-author of Vitalik Buterin’s article on Decentralized Society."

Summary:

For the second episode of Overthrowing the Network States, the podcast series hosted by The Blockchain Socialist and Primavera de Filippi, they welcome Eric Glen Weyl, an economist and a researcher at Microsoft Research New England, where after being a Web3 CTO advisor, he now leads the Plural Technology Collaboratory, the world’s largest plural technology research group. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Economy at Princeton. Then he taught at Harvard and Yale. He co-authored the book « Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society » with Eric Posner. This book has gained recognition in the Web3 community, including Vitalik Buterin's interest, bringing him to crypto. Later, he founded RadicalxChange, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to building a community and education about democratic innovation. He is also the founder of Plurality Institute, which aims to gather people from various fields, such as computer science, political ethics, sociology, and government, to develop and experiment with Plural Technologies. How to broadcast a disruptive idea?

Primavera de Filippi underlined a similarity between « Radical Markets » and « Network States » because their two books became famous because of the underlying concepts they carry. Eric's book is based on the idea that market design can be redesigned, while Balaji's book proposes the possibility of exiting society and creating a new one.

About this, Weyl described the journey that crosses an idea from the creation to the application in two ways:

• The optimistic one: people are more likely to follow and believe in an idea when it is carried and embodied by a person who acts like a guide. According to Eric, the guide here is Balaji, who eliminates his enemies with his sword.

• The pessimistic one: sometimes, even for well-intentioned groundbreaking concepts, they can’t be cleaned from the drips from the sword. To illustrate this purpose, Eric takes the example of Marxism, which suffered from a bad image more than a century later, mainly because of USSR totalitarianism, and the thousand of dead made by Lenine and Staline regimes to impose their conception of communism.

The problem with current governments

Balaji believes that governments were created to manage interdependence between people that markets could not regulate, but according to Eric, markets cannot address most of the challenges people face. Governments have never been able to manage all the issues arising from the links between people.

Balaji suggests that new publics need to emerge and be empowered to govern relevant issues. Many edge cases are appearing, showing that states aren’t always efficient. Eric’s example of rivers that flow through multiple countries shows that state management is inefficient regarding everyday resources.

The need for alternatives

As previously mentioned, "The Network State" inspires the Web3 community to envision a more efficient alternative to the current system of states and nations, a world they would prefer to inhabit. Balaji proposes to bring together highly aligned communities based on shared values or interests. This requires sufficient alignment among individuals to enable collective action.

The limits of The Network States

But later in the episode, the three speakers stroke that it is impossible to find something fundamental enough to unite a good amount of people capable of collective action only because they agree on one basic thing since they can disagree on a lot of other things. Even at the end, they made jokes about practical cases to show to what extent the idea of a network state cannot work. By the way, Balaji never explained in a concrete way how all this networks states are interconnected. Indeed, because the Network States are based on governance, how is it possible to benefit from service from another Network State if your two network states are based on different alignments (which are not necessarily opposite, just different)? He does not write about the precise implementation, even if it would be desirable since many paradoxes appear just by quick, simple thinking exercises.

It also shows the limit of exit-based governance. Indeed, exit in the tech world can work: if people are unhappy with a service, they can still choose another one. But Balaji wants to apply this to state governance: he wants to throw politics out of the picture by the assumption that « if everybody is highly aligned, whatever the founder (who is also the commander) of the NS will do, the community will agree. And if not, people can leave. But, unfortunately, the exit-based governance proposed leads to a highly centralized society, which makes The Blockchain Socialist thinks that people from the Web 3 community that agree with this book have not read it. Also, exit-based governance just eliminates the diversity that exists in actual states. But if one takes a step back, a Network State world is a world with a plurality of communities instead of a majority of individuals, so politics do not happen inside the network state, between all the Network States, where exit does not exist anymore. So « The Network States » has not deleted the problem of agreeing on a compromise; it has just moved it to another place…

Finally, The Network States vision appears to be a simplistic application of the tech startup mindset to state governance, overlooking many inconsistencies and paradoxes, even if the underlying idea of trying to find a more efficient way for people to gather around the similar interest to be more efficient than states currently are. Eric Glen Weyl proposes a more comprehensive alternative called "Network Society." In this system, every individual is part of a plurality of governance networks democratically governed by participants, making them decentralized. Also, every member is part of other networks, which kind of defines identity because nobody can have the same pattern. This means, by creating plurality and diversity, still brings people together."

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Episode 3: Douglas Rushkoff

Podcast via https://theblockchainsocialist.com/overthrowing-the-network-state-survival-of-the-richest/

"For this episode, Primavera and I speak with Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff). Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, which we found to be relevant for understanding The Network State.

Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is a series in collaboration with Blockchaingov where we critique The Network State by Balaji Srinivasan while also pulling out the salvageable parts and concepts in discussion with a variety of guests. We are overall critical of Balaji’s specific ideas in the book, but we want to discuss it with intellectual honesty and highlight the larger concepts around how these technologies are and could subvert state structures."

Summary:

"In this episode, The Blockchain Socialist and Primavera de Filippi chatted with Douglas Rushkoff, a renowned writer, and documentarian who studies human autonomy in the digital age. Rushkoff, named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, joins the conversation to discuss “The Network State” by Balaji Srinivasan.

He has written ten books on media, technology, and culture.

Rushkoff is a Media Theory and Digital Economics Professor at the City University of New York, Queens College. He is a prominent media theorist and writer whose work has focused on the impact of technology and media on society. Rushkoff's early work was inspired by the San Francisco rave scene of the early 1990s and the emerging world of cyberculture. His first book, Cyberia, was initially planned for publication in 1992 but was delayed since Bantam says the internet would end in 1993. But it was eventually released in 1994. Since then, Rushkoff's views on media and technology have evolved from a techno-utopian perspective to a more nuanced critique of cyberculture discourse. He explores themes such as media interaction, media literacy, intention and agency, and the impact of media on religion, culture, politics, and money.

At the podcast's beginning, he returns to the ’90s, with the birth of the Internet. He was convinced these technologies could be let to people and “[...] can help make things better”. But moreover, he asserts, “If we don’t understand what is going on, we will lose the benefit from it.”

The Concept of 'Exit': From Startup Culture to Governance and Responsibility

According to Douglas Rushkoff, "exit" is rooted in centralized currencies and financialization. In the early days of P2P markets, money was made through exchange, but modern societies now rely heavily on a service economy. Rushkoff notes that many Silicon Valley tech startup CEOs understand that their businesses are not built to last but rather to be sold at a high price for a significant profit. This stands in contrast to the traditional model of a pizzeria owner who opens a business to serve quality food to customers rather than sell it later on.

However, the concept of exit is no longer limited to startups. There has been a recent rise in exit governance for two reasons: individuals who seek exit due to a different vision and those who seek exit because they feel they have destroyed their world. Rushkoff provides the example of a journalist who writes an article their editor refuses to publish. Rather than attempting to persuade the editor with convincing arguments, the journalist may choose to leave and claim their right to write what they want. But Rushkoff cautions that there are times when it is important to withhold publishing until the appropriate moment, as exemplified by the Watergate scandal.

Exit-Governance, towards total freedom?

In the discussion, Dr. de Filippi delves into the comparison between exit-based governance and voice-based governance, particularly in terms of the cost of governance. She asks Rushkoff if the recent interest in exit governance is due to disillusionment in voice-based governance or a decrease in the cost of exit-based governance.

Rushkoff notes that in "The Network States," individuals who wish to escape must be wealthy enough to purchase land, meaning that the exit cost is naturally lower for those with the means to do so. He emphasizes that being part of a community incurs high exit costs, as one must rely on others while simultaneously being relied upon.

Rushkoff aims at wealthy tech CEOs who see exit governance as the best means of governing, suggesting they are solely interested in it because they fear debt. According to Rushkoff, it becomes a fear of commitment, leading these CEOs to seek total freedom from debt, commitment, and constraints. In contrast, a community involves owning something to someone else, thus creating relationships between individuals.

Rushkoff concludes by likening "The Network States" to a group of young boys who build a treehouse and put up a "BOYS ONLY" sign, but at the state level.

Governance Models and Proposing a Vision for the Future

After criticizing exit-based governance, Douglass Ruskoff acknowledges the weaknesses of voice-based governance. He highlights the danger of a significant portion of the population believing in something totally false and using their voice to shift an election. He then points out that some Silicon Valley CEOs have a techno-elitist vision, believing they understand technology better than most people. Therefore, they should make choices for themselves. World leaders have also been known to agree with this vision, arguing that people don't want to be burdened with making political decisions every day, and thus, they delegate their voices to those who deal with politics.

Primavera then shares her opinion on The Network States. She believes people are interested in the book because they recognize that current governments are not equipped to handle global issues. Therefore, they are seeking alternative mechanisms for coordination.

Douglass then proposes his own vision, suggesting that a Renaissance occurs when things once repressed in the past are reborn while others are diminished. He believes we do not need over-globalization and can deal with many aspects of our lives locally. Douglass suggests creating overlapping layers of sovereignty, allowing people to govern and be governed. Living more locally can reduce the stress on the global system, which could be a way to solve existing problems, such as global warming, by reducing the exchange and journey of goods all over the world. Additionally, being local can empower people and enable them to address issues they can directly impact rather than trying to deal with global problems.

Conclusion

In the end, the conversation highlighted the need for innovative thinking and approaches to governance that can address the challenges of our complex and interconnected world. While there may be no one-size-fits-all solution, exploring alternative forms of governance and considering the costs and benefits of exit and voice-based approaches can help us create more effective and sustainable governance systems."

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Episode 4: Quinn DuPont on Digital Polycentric Governance

Summary:

"In this episode, the hosts interview Quinn DuPont, a technology historian who recently talked about his criticisms of TNS at the Commons Stack Unconference. DuPont also published an article titled "A Progressive Web3: From Social Coproduction to Digital Polycentric Governance". The discussion focused on Balaji's misunderstandings of history, which are problematic.

Balaji’s historical misunderstandings

At the start of the podcast, the speakers question Balaji's preoccupation with the nation-state and its legitimacy and suggest exploring alternative options like DAOs. They criticize Balaji's idea of projecting a particular future and his belief in a single trajectory of history, which they find outdated. Quinn points out that Balaji's vision of the history of politics is based on mid-20th-century scholarship, which is a narrow and limited perspective. They also bring up the historical inaccuracies in Balaji's book, making it hard to take seriously. The speakers advise fact-checking the information to avoid falling under an ideology. They find it amusing that Balaji accuses the New York Times of this while his book is filled with inaccuracies.

Balaji has a poor understanding of human societies and organizations' creation. Balaji argues that every organization starts with a strong leader gathering people around him, contradicting anthropological studies. Dupont points out that nations and other collective activities don't start that way, and he disagrees with Balaji's claim that people need a strong leader to speak for them. Quinn argues this type of thinking only leads to totalitarianism.

Then they shift to the concept of "human pattern" and acknowledge that some sociology studies support the idea that humans follow specific patterns. However, there are no academic references or citations to those studies in Balaji's book. Without proper scholarly support, taking Balaji's ideas seriously is difficult.

Governance of Commons

During the podcast, Kelsie prompts Quinn to discuss his paper and explore why the idea of community networks resonates within the web3 community. First, Quinn introduces the concept of "Polycentric Governance," which was theorized by Elinor Ostrom. While he acknowledges that it is not an efficient model, he notes that it provides an alternative framework for governance. However, Quinn later comes back to this subject, saying that in polycentricity governance, monitoring every center of governance can be highly costly, making it generally inefficient. However, the blockchain offers a solution to this problem by making monitoring free by design. This is why we can observe examples of polycentric governance on the blockchain, such as DAOs. Next, they compare this governance model to the Network State and note that according to Balaji's book, the Network State has only one way of organizing (which is not really clear according to The Blockchain Socialist). In contrast, polycentric governance can be adapted to each case, making it more flexible and enforceable.

Another aspect of polycentric governance is that, in many ways, it appears to be an excellent way to govern commons. So later in the podcast, the topic of "digital commons" arises, referring to online resources such as Wikipedia or those on the blockchain. Quinn Dupont notes that digital commons face different challenges compared to real-life commons. For example, physical commons are often subject to congestion or overuse, which is less likely to occur on the digital front, or at least not to the same extent. However, digital commons are more susceptible to scaling issues and security breaches, which are more prevalent online. Fortunately, blockchain technology solves these problems, offering greater security and scalability for digital commons. Kelsie revisits the paper mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, "A Progressive Web3: From Social Coproduction to Digital Polycentric Governance," and asks Quinn to delve into it further. Quinn begins by touching upon the two critical aspects of technology and culture, highlighting how the Web3 landscape has transformed drastically in recent years. He points out that the people involved, their interests, and their interactions vastly differ from when he first began exploring Bitcoin in 2012.

Finishing with blockchain governance, Quinn notes that there are several attempts at governance and dispute resolution mechanisms, although they may not always be sophisticated. However, he cautions against centralization with governance tokens, as many individuals tend to delegate their governance power to delegates, thereby giving more influence to entities like Easy 16, a VC firm from Silicon Valley, which is increasingly gaining prominence in the Web3 space."

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More information

• See also the Cloud Country approach:

"The network state is built cloud first, land last. Rather than starting with the physical territory, we begin with a digital community."

- Balaji Srinavasan [7]