Daily Balajisms - God-State-Network

God is Dead. Gov is Dead. Long live the Network.

Balaji Srinivasan in his book the Network State discusses three Leviathans. When Nietzsche proclaimed “God is dead”, he meant that elites of his age didn’t believe in God anymore. They started to believe in Gov instead. Boys in blue replaced the all-seeing God. Today we are experiencing a similar transitional movement, when the (counter-)elites don’t believe in Gov anymore, and they believe in Network instead.

A belief in God was like a distributed law-enforcement. Balaji explains how people in the pre-industrial period truly believed that God would punish them if they stole. Later, the invention of the printing press and the spread of literacy boosted the capabilities of the State. People didn’t steal, because they believed cops would catch them.

In our internet era and the network age, people don’t steal, because the Network doesn’t let them via encryption, in case of blockchains, or via cancelation and deplatforming on social media.

There can be various productive and unproductive Hegelian syntheses between these three Leviathans. God-State hybrid was the US in the 1950s with slogans like “For God, Country and Corps”. The network state is Balaji’s concept that could over decades gradually replace nation states.

Millions of people today hold maybe one percent of their net worth in crypto and this share will grow over decades, once the technology scales and reaches mass adoption.

Similarly, one doesn’t need to go full-in on a new Leviathan like the Network, or one particular network state, but can keep a portfolio of passports and future crypto-passports (see the rise of NFTs as an early precursor).

Balaji explains that he has a positive-sum “win and let win” ideology and is a polytheist, poly-statist and poly-numist (not just pro-bitcoin, but for other coins and web3).

Network-State hybrids will emerge bottom-up through multiple stages. Balaji writes in his book, how startup societies will emerge around one moral innovation (The One Commandment) and some will create highly-aligned online communities capable of regular collective action (network unions).

Some of these network unions will progress to crowdfund real estate and create network archipelagos connected by the ocean of the Internet and global web3 protocols. A few of network archipelagos will gain sufficient traction, provable collective income and real-estate footprint to eventually gain diplomatic recognition and become network states.

A Network-State hybrid can emerge also top-down, by traditional fiat states merging with certain networks. El Salvador and the Central African Republic adopting bitcoin is a move in this direction. Estonia with their e-Residence program, and China with sophisticated (centralized) AI and blockchain capabilities are other examples.

There can be also God-Network hybrids. Startup societies can rise to revive old languages, cultures or religions. There can be The Benedict Option startup societies for Christianity-centred lifestyles, or ones that take interest in small ancient religions like Zoroastrianism.           

God is dead. Gov is dead. But the Network can revive them. With (AI, social and web3) tech innovations and moral innovations. Merging technological and social progress.