slov/acc refounding

Slovakia as a techno-optimistic country.

Sometimes reforming a country isn’t enough. It needs to become a startup nation again. How can a country embrace effective accelerationism (e/acc)? I lay out a scenario for Slovakia (slov/acc) that can serve as an inspiration for eu/acc and any other country that wants to be refounded on techno-optimistic principles. 

TLDR:

1. Introduce English as an official language. It’s a lingua franca of the internet. 

2. Reduce and abolish ministries and agencies with no skin in the game. Give officials English and Excel tests. If they fail, give them a generous severance package. 

3. Create digitally-native twins of public services and gradually use them in special innovation zones.

4. Create alliances with tech counter-elites and jurisdictions like Argentina, El Salvador and UAE.

5. Create special innovation zones, bootstrap them as startup/athlete villages by hosting Building Man and Enhanced Games competitions. 

6. Digital diplomacy on X instead of traveling to Western satellites. Free speech and techno-optimism instead of industrial censorship. 

7. Create Bangalore Four as an alternative to V4. As a way to bootstrap a new NAM - a network-aligned movement for techno-optimism and techno-democracy. 

8. Promote free AI, Crypto and Social tech. Buy bitcoin and stand for bitcoin as a flag of technology. 

9. Regular bounty competitions as a way to do (industrial, education, demographic) policies. Stop subsidies, use convertible grants. Use universal learning stipend and pay for results to increase and maintain (STEM) skills of citizens. 

10. DDD as an alternative to MAGA/BBB. DDD - drones, dark factories, de-urbanization as a definite and optimistic vision of the future. We can call it (doing) dark dynamism. A dark growth instead of de-growth.

from EA to e/acc

Effective accelerationism is a response to the failures of effective altruism that has turned into a bunch of decels advocating AI doomerism. 

Fake EA is FTX stealing from Africans to donate to Western EA organizations which buy lucrative properties, like castles to hold workshops. True EA is Elon Musk spending 44 billion to purchase X and save free speech and the West. Because free speech is the only comparative advantage we have against our adversaries.  

Slovakia is a symbolic country and needs to become a significant country fast. We are a satellite of the West, which is itself a satellite of blue America. Blue was good, now it’s chaos. This year we saw a clear difference between “(tele)promter politicians” and “podcast politicians”. It’s the difference between blobocracy-turned-idiocracy versus netocracy - as envisioned by Alexander Bard in 2000. 

slov/acc refounding steps:

English as a lingua franca of the noosphere

1. Introduce English as an official language because it is a lingua franca of the internet. Countries have geographic borders, the noosphere has languages as borders of minds. Slovakia has a smaller population than Nairobi. Kenya has over 40 tribes and some are bigger than the Slovak population. The biggest group of English speakers online will soon be Indians. And India is the largest democracy and might be the torch-bearer of internet values, especially if the West experiences further economic and (geo)political turmoil. Greatly incentivize teaching of all five UN languages. 

A startup country with smart regulations

2. De-bureaucratize by radically reducing or abolishing many ministries and agencies at the national level. Every public official on the ministry/state agency level should pass an English and (MS) Excel test. Those who fail, will be laid off with a generous layoff package (e.g. 12 month severance pay). They can re-apply again if there is a need, and if they improve their skills. Following the example of Argentina, we can (suddenly or gradually) abolish several ministries - especially those where no one has a "skin in the game". Like the Ministry of Education - it doesn't manage any schools directly, public officials don't teach, if the results get worse they don't feel any consequences.  Do a zero-based budgeting but for regulations - every regulation at least since 2000 (and maybe since FDR’s presidency for the US) should be updated using digitally-native versions.  

3. Create digitally-native twins of various public services at the Office of the Government run by very few people with the support of free and open AI, Crypto and Social technologies. One person has a clear responsibility and is supported by an engineer and a designer/lawyer. Test these services in small and parallel experiments, e.g. on a scale of a town or a special innovation zone. 

Attracting techno-optimists from all around the world

4. Create strong alliances with counter-elites from the red and grey tribes. People like Elon Musk are at the intersection of red and grey tribes. What Hungary is for conservatives, Slovakia can become for techno-optimists. India is a key partner because of its size, talent pool and a sovereignty to set standards and regulation in AI, Crypto and Social tech. Attract founders of technology companies from all over the world. Work with countries like Argentina, El Salvador,  Hungary, Rwanda, Serbia, Singapore and UAE. India has the third largest number of tech unicorns, after the US and China. Slovakia has zero tech unicorns. Czechia has one.   

5. Create special innovation zones (SIZ) with polycentric law and something like reverse Charter Cities idea by Paul Romer - by importing (inspirations from) jurisdictions like Prospera, UAE, Israel, Argentina, El Salvador, Singapore, Palau, India, Hong Kong, Rwanda (google "Rwanda drone delivery" )... in a limited geographical  area - a startup village. Something like an industrial park, where you can also live. These startup villages will be built anew, around autonomous driving, in a modular HIMBY-style. SIZ can be bootstrapped by holding Building Man and Enhanced Games competitions (Builders competing how quickly one can build infrastructure for an enhanced athletes' villages). They can be gradually built in the proximity of each other and connected by a hyperloop or (Boring company) tunnels. The SIZ will experiment with triple-entry accounting (a local entity will mirror its activities globally on a blockchain such as Ethereum or Solana).

Towards techno-democracy

6. Digital Diplomacy focused on free-speech. Diplomacy and attracting investors and tech founders  is done almost exclusively online - on X, Farcaster, Nostr and similar open protocols. Radically limit the travel of bureaucrats to blue tribe areas -  like Brussels and the Western jurisdictions that are just satellites of blue America. Because they have zero "agency" and innovation potential and are in an unmanaged decline. Everything can be solved via zoom, mail or twitter/X spaces. We want to be green and eco-friendly, don't we? But do travel to the jurisdictions of the red and gray tribe - from Texas to UAE and Rwanda.

7. Create Bangalore Four as an alternative to V4. Bangalore, Belgrade, Bratislava and Budapest can form a techno-optimistic group of countries, the basis of something we can call the new NAM. A network-aligned movement, which has internet values ​​and  techno-optimism at its core and promotes open and free AI, Crypto and Social technologies. Something like the Concert of Democracies proposal from 2004, but the focus of Bangalore Four will be improving techno-democracy (aligning politicians and citizens with tech and moral innovations) and the lives of median voters. 

Free computation, commerce and conversation

8. Promote free AI, Crypto and Social tech. Buy bitcoin and stand for bitcoin as a flag of technology. Attracts bitcoiners from all over the world like Salvador. Make cities like Kremnica the center of bitcoin tourism for "bitcoin pilgrims".  Thanks to nuclear energy and geothermal energy we can attract live players in AI and Crypto - by behaving like a live player. The central bank will start buying gold and bitcoin. We will tax bitcoin like gold - at 0%. We will attract investors from all over the world with ETFs for various time-tested cryptocurrencies - such as bitcoin, ethereum and solana. We can let people save in bitcoin and accumulate bitcoin every time they transact. We can use an example of US sanctuary cities and simply ignore several dumb EU regulations, including GDPR and DSA. We can work with the incoming US administration, tech counter-elites and red states in the US to build sanctuary cities for techno-optimists. If the EU has a problem with that - we need to have India on our side (which is one of a few sovereign countries) as a backup and a leverage. We can also have a backup plan to use the Indian tech stack, in case the West/blue tribe would want to cut us off banking infrastructure.

9. Organize regular bounty competitions online. Most policies - from educational to industrial and demographic - are carried out through regular online competitions aimed at Slovaks and the whole world. Something like the X Prize - which is organized by the president or the prime minister (instead of their official visits to the West) in cooperation with people like Elon Musk. Most of the subsidies can be abolished and replaced by a much larger financial reserve of the prime minister, the president and a few key ministers - and invested as convertible grants that fund tech and moral innovations and bootstrap startup societies and startups. Convertible grants are converted into equity if a milestone is reached (e.g. a startup is founded). This will create a sovereign wealth fund with a few decentralized fund managers and a future income. The idea here is to run a startup country, like FDR during the Manhattan Project would. Instead of universal basic income we can try something like a universal learning stipend - paying for results through proctoring exams annually, especially in STEM - to uplevel the skills of citizens. 

Dark Dynamism

10. DDD - drones, dark factories, de-urbanization as a definite and optimistic vision of the future. Many people talk about debureaucratization, deregulation and decentralization in abstract terms, promoting a kind of indefinite optimistic future, to use Peter Thiel’s framework. Drones stand for all kind of robots, AI and automation. Dark factories are fully-automated factories, requiring no lightning, that can be put underground, opening a subterrain domain for business. De-urbanization can stop population decline and means building startup villages and Special Innovation zones thanks to tech innovations like Starlink and moral innovations like remote work and network states. DDD can be an alternative to Make America Great Again and Build Back Better. We can call it Doing Dark Dynamism. The Internet increases variance, as Balaji Srinivasan says, we can promote both 996 culture, the remote work culture, and the big family work-life balance culture. 

An obvious place to start is attracting a Tesla factory to Slovakia to build Tesla Robotaxis and deploy them in SIZs/startup villages. Then we need to attract drone startups or a new drone company that Elon Musk might create as a missing link between Tesla and SpaceX. Then we need to attract startups in the dark factory space. China is ahead here, but we might do this as a joint challenge together with Bangalore Four countries. And de-urbanization through startup villages specifically (and network state movement in general) might be also an interesting way to reverse population decline. And Elon Musk, among others, might be interested.  

Feel free to challenge or add your own ideas by commenting here on Substack Notes or on X (@jakubsimek).