Getting to Dubai

Last century was about centralization, this century is about retribalization.

Last century was about centralization, this century is about retribalization.

The internet increases variance says Balaji Srinivasan. The end of history vision in the West was “getting to Denmark” in the words of Francis Fukuyama.

Now we have three dominant (meta)tribes – a red tribe of pro-commerce conservatives, a blue tribe of progressives and bureaucrats, and a grey tribe of techno-optimists and tech entrepreneurs.

These tribes have three different dreams, visions or (subconscious) directions. For the red tribe it’s getting to Dubai (Singapore, El Salvador…), for the blue tribe it’s getting to Venezuela (see Chesa Boudin’s Chavez for Life) and for the grey tribe it’s Elon’s getting to Mars.  

History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes – the industrial revolution replaced God with a rational Gov. And the internet revolution makes it increasingly clear that Gov is dead, and Network is becoming the prime mover.  

The smart detectives employed by the state solved every case, or at least that is what we were told as kids. Now SF and blue cities practically legalized street crime, while the West prosecutes Christians for posting online.

Getting to Denmark is a dream of a Western rational state that has strong institutions and good governance – a conservative vision of a stern father with a liberal vision of a caring mother – combined in a powerful and just entity – a kind of social democracy capable of providing order, economic security, equality of opportunity, and innovation.

Balaji Srinivasan says history is running in reverse – once the US was center-right and Europe was center-left, economically speaking, while both China and Russia were socialist. Now the US is the most culturally leftist country in the world, while China is the most culturally rightwing.

Everything is downstream of San Francisco politics. California is the future of the US, and SF is the future of California. And what happens in the center of the empire spreads fast through the Anglosphere and then to the Western satellites. From Five Eyes to all ears.  

The Occupy Wall Street was a head fake says Balaji. Instead of an economic left revival, we got a decade of a great awokening – a cultural left revival. In the same way the cultural right in the form of anti-woke culture wars we see online is a head fake, thinks Balaji. We will get a decade of economic right – and bitcoin maximalism today is a foreshadowing of what is to come.

Lee Kuan Yew founded the modern Singapore, that served as a model for Deng Xiaoping’s re-founding of China, based on the moral innovation that “profit is good” and “entrepreneurship is good”. Deng swapped the backend from communism to capitalism, while keeping the frontend intact, says Balaji.

China’s Shenzhen success then served as a model for special economic zones all around the world, including Dubai. Even Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher who can’t be accused of being a friend of capitalism, wrote some two decades ago, that Lee Kwan Yew will have statues all around the world 100 years from now.

Singapore and Dubai are uncomfortable for the cultural left, economic left, and cultural right alike. They show that multiculturalism can work – when you swap the software from woke ethics to work ethics and a win-win global commerce.

Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Francis Suarez in Miami and Javier Milei in Argentina are like a v2 of these special economic zones. And the recipe for this v2, a digitally native Dubai, seems to be a win-win culture plus crypto. A culture of anti-communism and global free commerce, plus the embrace of multiple religions. These places, and places like Malaysia, are close to what Nassim Taleb calls fractal localism, an idea close to polycentric law.   

The red tribe has a vision of getting to Dubai, the blue tribe seems to be getting to Venezuela and the grey tribe is all in on getting to Mars.

Western social democracy, in places like Denmark, operates in the paradigm of rights and citizens not services and customers. It aimed to provide free and universal education and healthcare to unite the middle and working classes – whose children supposed to visit the same schools and become friends.

While Singapore and China after Deng were strong on pragmatic solutions – going across political and ideological boundaries – these special economic zones, and magnets for tech talent entrepreneurs like Dubai, show that sovereignty and neutrality is actually very important – you are not a citizen if you are not free to speak and pursue your faith and commerce – you are a subject of regulators who pursue global harmonization of their ever sillier regulations.  

The liberal individualistic subject after 2016 and especially after covid was wholly crushed by state bureaucrats - and is increasingly aware that the West turned into a kind of Velvet Occupation - the opposite of the Velvet Revolution in the Eastern Europe of 1989.

Some satellites in the Eastern Europe are even more for online censorship than the center of the Western Empire - this is what I call Bratislava Winter - the opposite of a Prague Spring of 1968.

People behind the Iron Curtain wanted blue jeans and rock’n’roll - and the liberal individualism. People escaping the Silicon Curtain of online censorship and the Velvet Occupation of the West by the Blob (a nexus of the old establishment from the military, intelligence and foreign affairs) want their grey tribe - their pro-crypto and pro-tech e/acc folks to be able to speak freely, code freely and transact freely.

And they meet these days in Dubai, not Denmark.

We came a long way from an industrial age to the internet era. From getting to Denmark, to getting to Dubai, Venezuela, or Mars.

The old establishment NGMI. People working on parallel services and institutions, WAGMI.