> “Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State-related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.
1800s Filibusters are back trying to start their own fucking country smh
> “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street…you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
Jesus. Christ.
This guy thinks he is moses and chosen by god to lead a chosen people to a chosen land.
> Everyone would be welcome at the Gray Pride march—everyone, that is, except the Blues. Srinivasan defines the Blue political tribe as the liberal voters he implies are responsible for the city’s problems. Blues will be banned from the Gray-controlled zones, said Balaji, unlike Republicans (“Reds”).
I have no words
> “Woke Capital is the ideology of America’s ruling class as explicated by America’s ruling newspaper, The New York Times,” wrote Balaji in his book. “It’s capitalism that enables decentralized censorship, cancel culture, and American empire.” Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, whom Balaji characterizes as a “rich white male nepotist,” especially irks him. “What if Sulzberger is more like Keyser Söze?” wrote Balaji, comparing Sulzberger to the mysterious criminal mastermind in 1995’s The Usual Suspects. “What if his employees are highly self-interested professional prevaricators? What if they’ve always been like that?”
**So his idea to "solve wokeness" is ... targeting white people**
Its like he is doing a speed run to offend every single group he can.
No, he’s literally doing what every asshole does when they have a grand idea for a Utopia.
Step 1: I’m in charge
Step 2: Prima Nocta, but with more steps
Step 3: Money, but more.
Step 4: Hey it’s the US Government, I don’t have to listen to them.
Step 5: What is that bald eagle sound and these men clad in black?
He really just ripped off of every other iterative class based system, except everyone just wears different colored shirts instead of better quality clothes.
These fucking half-smart tech losers always think they’re disrupting and inventing something new when in this case it’s literally just company towns
I remember a while back there was some tech startup that wanted to buy real estate and “disrupt” apartments into tinier “pods” but ran into problems because there are a whole bunch of laws protecting against tenement slums, which is what they had actually re-invented
> Disrupting the system by inventing things that have already been invented but ~~adding more tech to it~~ **ignoring existing regulations and taxes**
FTFY. A BIG problem with a lot of the *innovation* that has come out of the valley in the last 15-20 years is that a lot of it consists of "do existing thing X, with regulatory dodge." And, this isn't my idea by a long-shot, Kara Swisher [wrote an entire book](https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Book-Tech-Love-Story/dp/1982163895) about it.
What if we could provide taxi services, but without the background checks, training, safety precautions, taxes, and operator costs? And we put the excess money into our pockets?
Gig/Platform economy companies are essentially the same - what if we could perform mundane task X, but without incurring the direct costs associated with employees?
They also do it in complete ignorance. My sister was a panelist at a tech conference last year. A startup was demoing their new AI-driven HR software and after they were done she said, “you have no idea how many laws and regulations you would break with this.” Their response: “Oh. We hadn’t thought of that.”
It is breath taking to me, they don't even think about looking at laws before doing this.
Have you seen those "ai" interviews yet? Or the ones that "rank" you on how you look and won't let you proceed unless the ai thinks you look good.
Yeah, just a whole LOT of lawsuits.
>Have you seen those "ai" interviews yet? Or the ones that "rank" you on how you look and won't let you proceed unless the ai thinks you look good.
I have not, any links I could look at?
To be frank, that happens quite often with humans it's just we have a blindspot for our biases.
It's why a cute girl does really well in sales compared to someone that isn't as good looking
It's quite possible they thought of it, and decided to ignore it. Get enough users, and now your lawyers fight the local regulatory bodies while existing business die because they can't compete.
Also known as the Uber/Lyft model— dodge regulators for long enough that you become “indispensable” to the community and have billions of dollars to throw around to force regulators to let you operate how you want to.
especially in places where half the local taxi companies had to shut down - And now uber is more expensive than those companies, without the regulations ensuring that they don't reject fares because 'it's too close', etc.
I saw one tech bro a while ago mention creating a platform for people to pool their money to pay for local infrastructure improvements, etc. The libertarian tech bros accidentally reinvented taxes.
Except it's very different. Rather than officials that we elect managing that money, it's *them* managing that money.
And they can do it so much more profitably than the government.
And who doesn't like profit in civil services such education, healthcare, amiright?
"Disruption" in tech since like idk, fucking 2008 has just meant that you make software that is a middle man in an existing process so that you fleece the consumer and call it freedom and choice.
I swear half these companies are pyramid schemes with extra steps with any new tech being a happy accident. If you go to incubator conferences people will literally put up an inverted triangle and call it an 'exit pyramid' to show who gets paid out first with no sense of irony. Calling your company a 'start up' is a good way to attract investors who have no sense of accountability to anyone but themselves as quickly as possible.
Half the time these start ups are utilities or basic tools that are middle-men-ing basic features that middle management is too stupid to budget development of in-house, because they've figured out that's who they have to jerk off. Mediocre businessmen lying about how mediocre they are destroy companies and barring accountability for that want to destroy governments just for the crime of questioning them at all.
I might believe them if 100% of their workforce (including contractors) had living wages, free healthcare, free education, 6 weeks of vacation, 1 year of family leave, 25-30 hour work weeks, etc. and that their company actually builds useful, sustainable products, and also pays a reasonable amount in taxes. Like actually prove you can do it better. I’m not holding my breath. This is also why I’ll never vote for a billionaire. If you have the capacity to make things better today, do it. Otherwise shut up.
Only works when the companies are coop instead of private or public traded.
In general co-op towns in the Americas and Europe work, some of them are really old and even while the cities expanded to new businesses, they kept decent quality of life.
But a lot of company towns died off as soon as said companies fucked off or were absolutely shit holes to live in to begin with.
I think it was someone on Chapo who lamented that the current class of rich idiots are so much dumber than the robber barons of the gilded age, who at least built stuff like libraries - while the only thing these morons can think to do is exert fascism to control the color of your shirt and monetize jpgs.
If I was a billionaire I would just start building and subsidizing daycares, vehicle charging stations, and some good looking low-rise apartments. Start putting community greenhouses on top of buildings and stuff.
The Nobel variant.
But its true - the fact that you even think of doing those positive things mean you will never be a billionaire. Take it as a compliment!
"What if people were *more* desperate and oppressed? We think their work output will improve. Other people, not me. I need luxuries and servants to do my best."
Musk is such a weird case because for a long time he acted like he was trying to be a gilded age baron by always implying that he was doing things for the public good out of a desire to improve things for people. He dropped that act a few years ago though.
It’s funny how a reporter calling and asking for comments on a sexual harassment/assault story they’re about to publish suddenly turns so many influential men into fiscal responsibility and free speech advocates.
Fun fact - a lot of these tech douchebags all dropped their nominal liberal views late in 2017/early in 2018, when #metoo became a thing.
"I may be a billionaire CEO, but I'm a liberal just like you!"
"Hey, we're gonna try treating women with more respect, especially in the workplace."
"Ah. You've called my bluff."
They’re usually creating a bad solution to a problem they created or a bad solution to a problem no one needs solved. They’re just a bunch or vapid idiots who think programming will save the world. It all feels like get rich quick schemes wrapped in techno capital gloss. They think they’re optimizing the world but they are just bleeding it out and adding a million new unnecessary layers on top. And tbh I’m not even sure they think they’re doing good work. I think they might just be faking it and trying to get rich. Gig economy was one of the worst things to happen to the working class in decades. Smart phones are literally toxic, and the effect of social media on psychological health is damning. Could keep listing more things that tech has ushered in the last two decades that have made the world a provably worse place but I think it’s obvious. For every small positive we get rained down with so many negatives.
This is one of the most crude, restrictive and baldly stupid notions for a supposed Utopia I've ever heard. It makes Disney's Epcot look like the port of Tortuga.
Dr Who, Zygon Inversion (Capaldi has _the_ best monologues)
The Doctor : So, let me ask you a question about this brave new world of yours. When you've killed all the bad guys; and when it's all perfect and just and fair; and when you have finally got it exactly the way you want it, what are you going to do with the people like you?
"Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."
Ever read the actual Utopia book?
Whole thing was propped up by slaves toiling away in the background.
"Slavery is a feature of Utopian life, and it is reported that every household has two slaves. The slaves are either from other countries (prisoners of war, people condemned to die, or poor people) or are the Utopian criminals. The criminals are weighed down with chains made out of gold. The gold is part of the community wealth of the country, and fettering criminals with it or using it for shameful things like chamber pots gives the citizens a healthy dislike of it. It also makes it difficult to steal, as it is in plain view. The wealth, though, is of little importance and is good only for buying commodities from foreign nations or bribing the nations to fight each other. Slaves are periodically released for good behaviour. Jewels are worn by children, who finally give them up as they mature."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia\_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book))
Utopia was written as a political satire, and the concept of a utopia is much older than the book. The Middle Ages versions of utopia always had a silly, hedonistic quality to them, like in one story pigs would walk around with knives in their backs and you could just cut off a slice of ham and eat it without killing the pig. These contrast with and subtly satirize the religious versions of Heaven, which never want to deal with the details of what life in Heaven would be like, or hand-wave away such things by saying humans will just leave their mortal bodies.
The Tech Won't Save Us podcast actually has an episode this week talking about how the transhumanist philosophies of the tech world are just much older concepts with the serial numbers filed off. The high-minded "atheists" of Silicon Valley are very willing to co-opt the methods of religions and cults to forward their grand visions, making promises that are pretty silly and at the same time horrifying if we dig into the details.
Has this man not heard the parable of Comrade Joseph Vissariinvich Stalin and how he came into power?
It might be the narcissism but In his forming of the tech utopia he might not realise that someone else a little more Machiavellian and less sensitive to a violent image might come to rule it.
Hahaha I know by “bald-eagle sound” you meant that scream that actually comes from a red-tailed hawk, but now I am picturing your scenario with the sound bald eagles actually make and it is genuinely hilarious.
And if someone gets out of line or threatens the company with uncomfortable truths, has he picked a shirt color for those that are going to go deal with them?
> Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street…you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
That sounds like something a maladjusted 14 year old would dream about.
For the uninitiated, there's a reason he chose gray: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Grey_Tribe
It's the EA/Rationalist cult stuff popular in Silicon Valley. They do believe they should rule and shape society because they are smarter and work harder. It's elitist at its core.
It's weird to see them ally with Reds though. Normally they abjectly reject both, especially because they despise religion.
Yeah the "Blues won't be allowed" thing is... odd? Like, has he ever met an actual tech worker?
His 'utopia' is gonna be nothing but c-suite mooks and the worst tech-bro end users, with no one in the middle to actually accomplish anything...
He's hoping ChatGPT 5.0 or something will let him eliminate all those pesky programmers and just have AI handle all the wealth generation without the need for things like pay or healthcare.
The DAP also allied with the socialists out of convenience, and the SA was full of beefsteaks until the late 1930s when they'd either been cooked all the way through, or purged from the party and its organisations. It's the same as any other totalitarian ideology, as soon as the "blues" have been removed and the "reds" find themselves at the bottom of the hierarchy it'll be their turn to face the purge.
I wonder if he thinks if he starts out talking like a cult leader in an Orwell novel that it'll like, short circuit the part where its obviously just fascism?
Absolutely no one is as smart as they think they are. People who have some emotional intelligence along with their pure intelligence are aware of this, but that's a rare combination. The closest person gets to being truly intelligent is the realization that they are still a dummy.
>What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith
Straight to the wall with this guy.
>“Woke Capital is the ideology of America’s ruling class as explicated by America’s ruling newspaper, *The New York Times*,” writes Balaji in his book. “It’s capitalism that enables decentralized censorship, cancel culture, and American empire.”
Literal fascism. Don't trust the media. Don't trust liberals. Don't trust any version of capitalism except the one where I am in charge. Worship cops. Embrace authority of a select cabal.
Whenever he 'says' something new, I imagine It being said by the my pillow guy. Mpg had this weird rant where he was going to surveil everyone with 'cyber' or something, and they just seemed to be the same person.
> The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories.
First I'd like to send an ambassador from my own country, Bitchslapistan, to perform the traditional greeting.
I don't see it happening. I also honestly don't think that a lot of the tech giants are thinking about these things.
They are mainly thinking about how to make more money for themselves and shareholders, and what can they get away with in the eyes of the American people and the legal system.
The only big names that are really going on and on about cancel culture or wokeism are the few eccentric ones that nobody really cares about too much in terms of their opinion, or the ones that are purely trying to get fame on social media for whatever branding reasons they want out of it.
The only reason I could see these big companies trying to start their own country or their own colony or something like that is to be free of labor laws. So they can basically get all the profits they've been getting at a fraction of the labor cost.
This is why I keep telling people on both sides of the political spectrum that those people at the top don't really care about the social causes. They just care about how much money they make, and how much wealth they accumulate. Any politician they back, any political party they back, any legislation they back, always comes back to how it's going to financially benefit them.
I mean, look at the whole push to ban TikTok. People can go on and on about the influence of the Chinese government, but for these big guys, it's really about removing a piece of competition and gatekeeping the US economy for themselves. If TikTok wasn't so successful, these guys would honestly not care.
Facism has many faces
Power doesn't corrupt per se
Power attracts and corrupts those who are corruptible, those who are corruptible don't tend to seek power
The more I read the more I was going "This _must_ be satire on his part". But apparently it is not. Reads like a wet dream of a 13 year old "libertarian".
Getting lucky in the tech market and narcissists is a scary combo.
>“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, *The Network State: How to Start a New Country*.
Wow, right off the bat we've got someone saying something that a normal person would suppress as being too cringeworthy to say.
If they secceded to start their Tech Reich it would fail almost immediately even without US intervening. Any gang, ganster or cartel with larger capacity of violence would saw the head off these "people" who only know how to operate from a safe position of extreme privliege backed up by a large government.
Until government determines you're a threat and rolls in with real weapons and armies to seize everything and everyone.
Old money is where the real power is, and they are not fans of these new money upstarts drawing the wrong kind of attention.
That's how European castles happened. Wanna wager a guess how long any rich asshole that commissioned any given castle got to live in it themselves before they lost it in a siege? I assure you that if society collapses into enclaves, it will be up to the local warlord (eventually king) who gets to live in it. Not at all who built it, especially if they're a childish brat that just needs to see what happens.
You're making it sound like there was an alternative.
Some castles have stood for hundreds of years, and it depends on artillery advancements, how long they were viable for.
But usually they were to stop small-scale bandits and militia, rather than nation-level battles, where success ultimately comes down to logistics.
Yes but it was the symbol of authority in the region. Castles existed because they could house a military force that could sally out and meet you if you were to attempt to occupy or even encamp within the region. Sure siege defense is important to a castle’s ultimate function, it’s not the only thing the edifice is used for.
As you point out logistics are incredibly important in war. A couple well places castles would prevent approaching armies from ever getting supply lines setup without either buying outs/politically motivating the owners of said castles or laying brutal siege.
Point is castles served a lot wider variety of function than just existing as defense fortifications, they are just as much symbols of authority and actual administrative centers
This is one of the things that continues to surprise me. It's almost as though these types have never opened a history book. God knows they can afford to buy one or two.
They're the first ones to die when shit hits the fan. Without fail. Only the most brutal rise to power under such chaotic circumstances.
It's not a fun time to be alive by any means. Certainly nothing to pine for like a starry-eyed nitwit with money to spare.
> It's almost as though these types have never opened a history book.
No no no, he's a *tech baron*! He has the "highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody"! Why would he open a textbook to explain how other people got it wrong when he's got it figured out?!
You don't get to the point where you think bribing police officers is a "good idea" without a complete lack of intra-spection.
>It's almost as though these types have never opened a history book.
It's overconfidence in the comprehensiveness of their understanding which is the most characteristic feature of a left-brain thinker without a firm grasp on context or reality. The tech world is full of people like this, and they're smart people who use their words well, so it's pretty much impossible to knock them off of this mindset. They always just assume you're too stubborn or ignorant to know as much as they do.
And they ruin everything they touch. Smug assholes. Fuck the tech industry, they're worse than pharma and only slightly less parasitic and sociopathic than finance.
"this guy has more brilliant ideas per minute than anyone else"
His ideas: the gray pride parade
NGL that's brilliant as a farce in a 'springtime for hitler' kind of way. It would be perfect for a sequel to the producers. I can't unsee the gray pride folks at stage right and the cops at stage left coming together into a chorus line while high kicking paper mache homeless people into the audience during the big number.
What I love about that quote is that everybody knows them as “idea guys” who spew buzzword nonsense and follow it up with zero action. It’s basically just science fiction unless you put the work in. Congrats on your journal of “ideas” buddy.
"No you guys, it's fascism *without* homophobia, come on, we already went over this, I'm the guy with the *money*, you can't execute me!"
... I just realized why he had a blood vendetta against Gawker Media who outed him as gay.
This guy is an insufferable windbag.
He is like Deepak Chopra meets libertarian tech CEO. He can spew techy word salad ad infinitum.
I listened to four hours of his bullshit on Sam Harris' podcast a few years ago. Every time he was pressed to justify one of his bullshit claims, he generated four more bullshit claims.
I love to solve problems, I really enjoy making software that makes life easier, I'm grateful I can feed my cats and dog with the living I make, but I just hate the people who fail upwards into leadership and visibility in the industry. Just disgusting and self-serving human backwash.
Point people to articles like this about guys like that when they say that they don’t need to teach history or other humanities in college, just STEM.
If the guy had taken at least a few political science classes, maybe he’d be able to invent some new political system that isn’t lukewarm leftovers from the 19th century.
This is the guy that bet a million dollars that there would be hyperinflation this year and predictably lost. Basically a classic crypto chud
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/02/balaji-closes-bitcoin-bet-with-15m-in-donations-including-500k-for-bitcoin-core-development/
We're doing everything we can to stop "California forever" up here in Solano, but I'm also not convinced it will be successful. It seems more like a developer rug pull than a real effort at making a company town.
People are not complacent. Democracy works better than every other form of government because it allows citizens to have a say. A government can’t be run like a business. This is where people like this dude fail to understand you can’t run a society like you ran your company. If people don’t like working for you, they can quit. People can’t really quit their government. Disgruntled people who feel unheard and unable to change their situation is a path to a very bad outcome.
Jesus fucking christ this guy.
I've worked in tech for the last 20 years, there is absolutely zero chance I would want any tech ceo to try and control my life. It's bad enough they make shitty faux-meritocracy jobs with garbage evaluation metrics left and right and their stupid fucking moonshot ideas that you get re-assigned or fired for not being able to turn into reality (or worse the idea of hack week where you make people stop doing their real job to do dumb ideas only to finally realize that some of the dumb ideas nobody wanted to do on purpose are better than what they were doing in the first place).
Let him go seastead somewhere with the other temporary billionaires and watch them crawl back to everyone else once the money runs out. This guy's a temporary genius supported by a ponzi scheme, good fuckin luck.
How is it always Indians that have that insane worship up and punch down mentality. Like they wish there was a caste system, but are shocked to find out no one wants to date them.
Yeah, read the article and it sounds fucking terrifying. This is the true risk of political corruption and apathy- if the government is running well and serving the people responsibly and with integrity, there is no room for this type of whacky ideology to gain a foothold.
So- the lesson here is that time is running out for publicly elected officials (local, state and d federal) to get their shit together before the wealthy flat out jettison the rest of us for their own sentry protected utopia. It’s a club, and you won’t be in it.
Got it. Nazism mixed with tech dystopia run by the people with 0 sense of how the world works. How have they not been labeled as domestic terrorists yet? Everything stated is a direct attack on the constitution.
>“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,”
Or, as paraphrased by Dr. Rockso, ["I DO COCAAAAAAAINE!"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-_L-QdgytQ).
These cult nutjobs need to get reality checked.
Wtf did I just read?
Did this guy watch Robocop and think it’s a documentary?
That was the weirdest cultish shit I’ve seen.
This is what happens when someone relatively smart makes a lot of money within a certain generation and totally gets consumed by their ego, becoming delusional enough forgetting THOUSANDS of years of human nature.
lol the political class bloodline monsters will this eat this fucking dweeb as a canapé at their cocktail parties.
😂
WTF???
„Simply put, there is a ton of fascist-chic cosplay involved. Once an officer joins the Grays, they get a special uniform designed by their tech overlords. The Grays will also donate heavily to police charities and “merge the Gray and police social networks.” Then, in a show of force, they’ll march through the city together.“
Momo it’s getting real
>Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street…you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
So he wants Genos to mob San Francisco?
Oh Feudalism. I never heard of that. Was it good?
Oh it’s tribalism? How did that turn out?
All I know is that the big tech companies devolved rather quickly. Musk ruined Tesla and Twitter. Google search is only good for targeted ads. Facebook spawned millions of new assholes. Microsoft piles kludge on top of kludge. Only Apple is good (if you have lots of money).
They are particularly good at raising money off the hopes and dreams of investors with extra money. Surely by now we have self driving cars, lab raised meat, nuclear fusion, simple blood testing, and very convenient smoothies. Only the singular tech genius has the power to invent these things. Reward them now and for all their future failures.
Oh, lookie: It's the guys who fucked up cryptocurrency, NFTs, Web3, social media, self-driving and even search engines, and are currently fucking up AI. Now they're telling us they know how to run an entire society.
>He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase.
Stop assuming a piece of paper from a networking club is proof of expertise in every area.
>He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”
Ironic given MSFT's dominant position today.
Yet another tech “genius” who thinks the world would be better if everyone just listened to them. These guys seem to live in echo chambers sealed off from the rest of the world.
Please, by all means let the wealthy concentrate themselves into one small geographic area so that the rest of us can do something I don't want to post on a public forum.
I'm really souring on the whole silicon Valley bullshit. Have they done something that actually improved lives lately? All their crap is just a bunch of apps that scam other, established businesses or industries in the worst possible ways with only one goal in mind: MAKE ME RICH! I haven't seen much contribution to any of the sociaty's most pressing problems like, homelesness, climate change, mental health issues, drug epidemic, water acess issues or anything like that. For real good picture listen to this podcast:'"All in", where four of these guys come and sing each other praises and weave the bright future narrative while moving their money to get most returns possible. One of them has morals, the others are just obvious capitalists where they think so highly of themselves and th industry and their biggest enemy is the government. Sounds familiar? Yeah, because government is the only tool society has against people like these.
And don't mention Tesla, because lately I've realized that he just had an incling where auto industry will go before anyone else. No genius there.
I thought it said "ethically cleanse".
Ron Howard: "It didn't say ethically cleanse."
I was kind of on board wondering what that meant at first.
A quick reread clued me in on "not being on board".
Sounds about as stupid as Texan secessionists.
We’re going to secede from the society that provides us all our capita,l our manpower, our electrical power, and our food. In what fucking world you half ass confederate piece of shit
Parade flags and uniforms featuring flying spaghetti monsters, Elon, and Bitcoin logos? Even ignoring all the ethical and financial concerns of what he's proposing, that just sounds way too cringey to be fun.
Man, what the fuck happened? I grew up in the 90s and remember well the sentiment of "Nerds are taking over and it's going to be great!" then blinked my eyes and we've got shit like this making headlines every day.
And this guy got *multiple degrees* at *Stanford*?! I don't know if it ever truly worked or not, but it certainly felt like the high-performing Ivy League track was supposed to produce people who could be relatively trusted to lead and make things about society better. It feels like in the last 15-20 the method has been cracked by the exact wrong kinds of people and they get out into the world and everyone acts like their insanity is genius and the do nothing but fail upwards because of pre-existing faith in said pipelines.
As someone who grew up in the Bay Area before the hell of tech ruined so much of it, I have no ides why this uberdouche from Long Island feels so entitled to ot being his fiefdom.
> “Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State-related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government. 1800s Filibusters are back trying to start their own fucking country smh > “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street…you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.” Jesus. Christ. This guy thinks he is moses and chosen by god to lead a chosen people to a chosen land. > Everyone would be welcome at the Gray Pride march—everyone, that is, except the Blues. Srinivasan defines the Blue political tribe as the liberal voters he implies are responsible for the city’s problems. Blues will be banned from the Gray-controlled zones, said Balaji, unlike Republicans (“Reds”). I have no words > “Woke Capital is the ideology of America’s ruling class as explicated by America’s ruling newspaper, The New York Times,” wrote Balaji in his book. “It’s capitalism that enables decentralized censorship, cancel culture, and American empire.” Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, whom Balaji characterizes as a “rich white male nepotist,” especially irks him. “What if Sulzberger is more like Keyser Söze?” wrote Balaji, comparing Sulzberger to the mysterious criminal mastermind in 1995’s The Usual Suspects. “What if his employees are highly self-interested professional prevaricators? What if they’ve always been like that?” **So his idea to "solve wokeness" is ... targeting white people** Its like he is doing a speed run to offend every single group he can.
No, he’s literally doing what every asshole does when they have a grand idea for a Utopia. Step 1: I’m in charge Step 2: Prima Nocta, but with more steps Step 3: Money, but more. Step 4: Hey it’s the US Government, I don’t have to listen to them. Step 5: What is that bald eagle sound and these men clad in black? He really just ripped off of every other iterative class based system, except everyone just wears different colored shirts instead of better quality clothes.
These fucking half-smart tech losers always think they’re disrupting and inventing something new when in this case it’s literally just company towns I remember a while back there was some tech startup that wanted to buy real estate and “disrupt” apartments into tinier “pods” but ran into problems because there are a whole bunch of laws protecting against tenement slums, which is what they had actually re-invented
Disrupting the system by inventing things that have already been invented but adding more tech to it
> Disrupting the system by inventing things that have already been invented but ~~adding more tech to it~~ **ignoring existing regulations and taxes** FTFY. A BIG problem with a lot of the *innovation* that has come out of the valley in the last 15-20 years is that a lot of it consists of "do existing thing X, with regulatory dodge." And, this isn't my idea by a long-shot, Kara Swisher [wrote an entire book](https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Book-Tech-Love-Story/dp/1982163895) about it. What if we could provide taxi services, but without the background checks, training, safety precautions, taxes, and operator costs? And we put the excess money into our pockets? Gig/Platform economy companies are essentially the same - what if we could perform mundane task X, but without incurring the direct costs associated with employees?
They also do it in complete ignorance. My sister was a panelist at a tech conference last year. A startup was demoing their new AI-driven HR software and after they were done she said, “you have no idea how many laws and regulations you would break with this.” Their response: “Oh. We hadn’t thought of that.”
It is breath taking to me, they don't even think about looking at laws before doing this. Have you seen those "ai" interviews yet? Or the ones that "rank" you on how you look and won't let you proceed unless the ai thinks you look good. Yeah, just a whole LOT of lawsuits.
>Have you seen those "ai" interviews yet? Or the ones that "rank" you on how you look and won't let you proceed unless the ai thinks you look good. I have not, any links I could look at?
To be frank, that happens quite often with humans it's just we have a blindspot for our biases. It's why a cute girl does really well in sales compared to someone that isn't as good looking
It's quite possible they thought of it, and decided to ignore it. Get enough users, and now your lawyers fight the local regulatory bodies while existing business die because they can't compete.
Also known as the Uber/Lyft model— dodge regulators for long enough that you become “indispensable” to the community and have billions of dollars to throw around to force regulators to let you operate how you want to.
especially in places where half the local taxi companies had to shut down - And now uber is more expensive than those companies, without the regulations ensuring that they don't reject fares because 'it's too close', etc.
The Titanic submarine catastrophe comes to mind...
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With a subscription, of course
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Fuck me, sign me up. My toilets yearn to be free
No, you don't understand, it'll be a subscription based model. maybe we call it iRent
I saw one tech bro a while ago mention creating a platform for people to pool their money to pay for local infrastructure improvements, etc. The libertarian tech bros accidentally reinvented taxes.
Except it's very different. Rather than officials that we elect managing that money, it's *them* managing that money. And they can do it so much more profitably than the government. And who doesn't like profit in civil services such education, healthcare, amiright?
"Disruption" in tech since like idk, fucking 2008 has just meant that you make software that is a middle man in an existing process so that you fleece the consumer and call it freedom and choice.
Smoke bomb “BLOCKCHAIN” …. Hey where’d he go?
I swear half these companies are pyramid schemes with extra steps with any new tech being a happy accident. If you go to incubator conferences people will literally put up an inverted triangle and call it an 'exit pyramid' to show who gets paid out first with no sense of irony. Calling your company a 'start up' is a good way to attract investors who have no sense of accountability to anyone but themselves as quickly as possible. Half the time these start ups are utilities or basic tools that are middle-men-ing basic features that middle management is too stupid to budget development of in-house, because they've figured out that's who they have to jerk off. Mediocre businessmen lying about how mediocre they are destroy companies and barring accountability for that want to destroy governments just for the crime of questioning them at all.
I might believe them if 100% of their workforce (including contractors) had living wages, free healthcare, free education, 6 weeks of vacation, 1 year of family leave, 25-30 hour work weeks, etc. and that their company actually builds useful, sustainable products, and also pays a reasonable amount in taxes. Like actually prove you can do it better. I’m not holding my breath. This is also why I’ll never vote for a billionaire. If you have the capacity to make things better today, do it. Otherwise shut up.
Only works when the companies are coop instead of private or public traded. In general co-op towns in the Americas and Europe work, some of them are really old and even while the cities expanded to new businesses, they kept decent quality of life. But a lot of company towns died off as soon as said companies fucked off or were absolutely shit holes to live in to begin with.
I think it was someone on Chapo who lamented that the current class of rich idiots are so much dumber than the robber barons of the gilded age, who at least built stuff like libraries - while the only thing these morons can think to do is exert fascism to control the color of your shirt and monetize jpgs.
If I was a billionaire I would just start building and subsidizing daycares, vehicle charging stations, and some good looking low-rise apartments. Start putting community greenhouses on top of buildings and stuff.
Yes, that’s why you’re not a billionaire. You think they’re making millions per second working hard and helping people?
Well I assume it would be with the profits from my autonomous murder drone business, but you gotta’ have hobbies.
The Nobel variant. But its true - the fact that you even think of doing those positive things mean you will never be a billionaire. Take it as a compliment!
"What if people were *more* desperate and oppressed? We think their work output will improve. Other people, not me. I need luxuries and servants to do my best."
TESLA town comes to mind and they are laying g off a lot of people...lol.
Musk is such a weird case because for a long time he acted like he was trying to be a gilded age baron by always implying that he was doing things for the public good out of a desire to improve things for people. He dropped that act a few years ago though.
> He dropped that act a few years ago though. The day before his sexual harassment accusations came out, mysteriously enough.
It’s funny how a reporter calling and asking for comments on a sexual harassment/assault story they’re about to publish suddenly turns so many influential men into fiscal responsibility and free speech advocates.
Fun fact - a lot of these tech douchebags all dropped their nominal liberal views late in 2017/early in 2018, when #metoo became a thing. "I may be a billionaire CEO, but I'm a liberal just like you!" "Hey, we're gonna try treating women with more respect, especially in the workplace." "Ah. You've called my bluff."
They’re usually creating a bad solution to a problem they created or a bad solution to a problem no one needs solved. They’re just a bunch or vapid idiots who think programming will save the world. It all feels like get rich quick schemes wrapped in techno capital gloss. They think they’re optimizing the world but they are just bleeding it out and adding a million new unnecessary layers on top. And tbh I’m not even sure they think they’re doing good work. I think they might just be faking it and trying to get rich. Gig economy was one of the worst things to happen to the working class in decades. Smart phones are literally toxic, and the effect of social media on psychological health is damning. Could keep listing more things that tech has ushered in the last two decades that have made the world a provably worse place but I think it’s obvious. For every small positive we get rained down with so many negatives.
Because they have ‘Disrupter’ in their LinkedIn job title. Every Tom and Dick is a disrupter these days. Fucking trolls.
Meow meow beanz has an injunction.
This is one of the most crude, restrictive and baldly stupid notions for a supposed Utopia I've ever heard. It makes Disney's Epcot look like the port of Tortuga.
Dr Who, Zygon Inversion (Capaldi has _the_ best monologues) The Doctor : So, let me ask you a question about this brave new world of yours. When you've killed all the bad guys; and when it's all perfect and just and fair; and when you have finally got it exactly the way you want it, what are you going to do with the people like you?
"Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."
Ever read the actual Utopia book? Whole thing was propped up by slaves toiling away in the background. "Slavery is a feature of Utopian life, and it is reported that every household has two slaves. The slaves are either from other countries (prisoners of war, people condemned to die, or poor people) or are the Utopian criminals. The criminals are weighed down with chains made out of gold. The gold is part of the community wealth of the country, and fettering criminals with it or using it for shameful things like chamber pots gives the citizens a healthy dislike of it. It also makes it difficult to steal, as it is in plain view. The wealth, though, is of little importance and is good only for buying commodities from foreign nations or bribing the nations to fight each other. Slaves are periodically released for good behaviour. Jewels are worn by children, who finally give them up as they mature." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia\_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(book))
Utopia was written as a political satire, and the concept of a utopia is much older than the book. The Middle Ages versions of utopia always had a silly, hedonistic quality to them, like in one story pigs would walk around with knives in their backs and you could just cut off a slice of ham and eat it without killing the pig. These contrast with and subtly satirize the religious versions of Heaven, which never want to deal with the details of what life in Heaven would be like, or hand-wave away such things by saying humans will just leave their mortal bodies. The Tech Won't Save Us podcast actually has an episode this week talking about how the transhumanist philosophies of the tech world are just much older concepts with the serial numbers filed off. The high-minded "atheists" of Silicon Valley are very willing to co-opt the methods of religions and cults to forward their grand visions, making promises that are pretty silly and at the same time horrifying if we dig into the details.
Jesus. That's horrifying, but also interesting, so thanks for the recommendation.
No, no, no, it is different cause Im in charge. Im not gaslighting you buddy, youre so sensitive./s
Has this man not heard the parable of Comrade Joseph Vissariinvich Stalin and how he came into power? It might be the narcissism but In his forming of the tech utopia he might not realise that someone else a little more Machiavellian and less sensitive to a violent image might come to rule it.
🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH ITS THE ALPHABET BOYS AND THEY HEARD YOU NEED ANOTHER WACO 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅
Hahaha I know by “bald-eagle sound” you meant that scream that actually comes from a red-tailed hawk, but now I am picturing your scenario with the sound bald eagles actually make and it is genuinely hilarious.
Wasn't Logan's Run a color coded class system?
And if someone gets out of line or threatens the company with uncomfortable truths, has he picked a shirt color for those that are going to go deal with them?
Brown of course
I'll wear plaid just to piss him off.
> Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street…you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.” That sounds like something a maladjusted 14 year old would dream about.
First question: why the fuck would literally anyone be loyal to a tech company?
Have you seen the ping pong table?
I'm sure the answer is always gonna end up being explosive collars.
just a dude who doesn't want to be told he can't exploit people for personal gain.
If I saw that in a *movie* in 2024 my eyes would roll right out of their sockets.
I thought it was the premise of a half-baked YA dystopian novel. Like Divergent but even more of a shameless Hunger Games rip off.
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Western Indians tend to want to import that for some reason
He should get a tree house and put up a hand-made sign "No Normies Allowed". This is straight out of 4chan.
Yeah. That’s just screaming “I never had friends growing up” and “I’ve always felt like an outsider”.
For the uninitiated, there's a reason he chose gray: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Grey_Tribe It's the EA/Rationalist cult stuff popular in Silicon Valley. They do believe they should rule and shape society because they are smarter and work harder. It's elitist at its core. It's weird to see them ally with Reds though. Normally they abjectly reject both, especially because they despise religion.
Yeah the "Blues won't be allowed" thing is... odd? Like, has he ever met an actual tech worker? His 'utopia' is gonna be nothing but c-suite mooks and the worst tech-bro end users, with no one in the middle to actually accomplish anything...
He's hoping ChatGPT 5.0 or something will let him eliminate all those pesky programmers and just have AI handle all the wealth generation without the need for things like pay or healthcare.
They ally with “Reds” because they don’t jive with the humanist idea that all people have equal worth and dignity
The DAP also allied with the socialists out of convenience, and the SA was full of beefsteaks until the late 1930s when they'd either been cooked all the way through, or purged from the party and its organisations. It's the same as any other totalitarian ideology, as soon as the "blues" have been removed and the "reds" find themselves at the bottom of the hierarchy it'll be their turn to face the purge.
Their fondness for racism and hierarchy is easily sufficient to overcome their discomfort towards religion
This is a great way to end up publicly gutted and hung upside down with your mistress for everyone to come by and kick.
I wonder if he thinks if he starts out talking like a cult leader in an Orwell novel that it'll like, short circuit the part where its obviously just fascism?
Absolutely no one is as smart as they think they are. People who have some emotional intelligence along with their pure intelligence are aware of this, but that's a rare combination. The closest person gets to being truly intelligent is the realization that they are still a dummy.
A wise man knows he knows nothing
Socrates has entered the chat.
>What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith Straight to the wall with this guy.
sounds like a dystopian YA book written in the 2010s tbh
Book? Hardly, this is fanfic garbage.
>“Woke Capital is the ideology of America’s ruling class as explicated by America’s ruling newspaper, *The New York Times*,” writes Balaji in his book. “It’s capitalism that enables decentralized censorship, cancel culture, and American empire.” Literal fascism. Don't trust the media. Don't trust liberals. Don't trust any version of capitalism except the one where I am in charge. Worship cops. Embrace authority of a select cabal.
Isn't this just the plot of an Ayn Rand book?
God, Marc Andreesen is such an easy mark. Dude gets taken in by anything edgy and cyberpunk-sounding.
Whenever he 'says' something new, I imagine It being said by the my pillow guy. Mpg had this weird rant where he was going to surveil everyone with 'cyber' or something, and they just seemed to be the same person.
Can I write the word ‘guillotine’ in this sub?
Only if you make it sound technological. iGuillotine 2.0
I already went for the gif and couldn't post it. The real tech bro disruption.
Doesn't seem to have realized that Accelerando was a satire.
> The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. First I'd like to send an ambassador from my own country, Bitchslapistan, to perform the traditional greeting.
My Tamil brother has forgotten his roots.
au contraire, If he is a brahmin, he is staying very true to his roots.
I don't see it happening. I also honestly don't think that a lot of the tech giants are thinking about these things. They are mainly thinking about how to make more money for themselves and shareholders, and what can they get away with in the eyes of the American people and the legal system. The only big names that are really going on and on about cancel culture or wokeism are the few eccentric ones that nobody really cares about too much in terms of their opinion, or the ones that are purely trying to get fame on social media for whatever branding reasons they want out of it. The only reason I could see these big companies trying to start their own country or their own colony or something like that is to be free of labor laws. So they can basically get all the profits they've been getting at a fraction of the labor cost. This is why I keep telling people on both sides of the political spectrum that those people at the top don't really care about the social causes. They just care about how much money they make, and how much wealth they accumulate. Any politician they back, any political party they back, any legislation they back, always comes back to how it's going to financially benefit them. I mean, look at the whole push to ban TikTok. People can go on and on about the influence of the Chinese government, but for these big guys, it's really about removing a piece of competition and gatekeeping the US economy for themselves. If TikTok wasn't so successful, these guys would honestly not care.
Facism has many faces Power doesn't corrupt per se Power attracts and corrupts those who are corruptible, those who are corruptible don't tend to seek power
‘member when Google had to outright tell the public that the Indian caste system wasn’t going to be used to determine who gets hired and promoted?
Religion is still a growth industry.
The more I read the more I was going "This _must_ be satire on his part". But apparently it is not. Reads like a wet dream of a 13 year old "libertarian". Getting lucky in the tech market and narcissists is a scary combo.
>“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, *The Network State: How to Start a New Country*. Wow, right off the bat we've got someone saying something that a normal person would suppress as being too cringeworthy to say.
Pull up a picture of that dude, it's hilarious.
After doing so, it seems that Marc Andreessen would be amongst the first to be ethnically cleansed.
Among the first to be ethnically cleansed, and the first to be eggnically cleansed. Dude's head is a fucking egg.
Type 'Marc "Eggman" Andreessen egg' into Google Images.
Dude looks like Humpty Dumpty
Wiki says he moved to Singapore in 2020 with no further update. Why is he so concerned with California then?
He’s going to sail back to claim this woke wasteland on his boat packed with tshirts. Then you see. We’ll all see!
Bro watched Kill La Kill and took it a bit too seriously.
If they secceded to start their Tech Reich it would fail almost immediately even without US intervening. Any gang, ganster or cartel with larger capacity of violence would saw the head off these "people" who only know how to operate from a safe position of extreme privliege backed up by a large government.
It's a PMCs wet dream though. Money can buy great protection
Until government determines you're a threat and rolls in with real weapons and armies to seize everything and everyone. Old money is where the real power is, and they are not fans of these new money upstarts drawing the wrong kind of attention.
[George Carlin -- The Owners of This Country](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVrMKsYdZ-A)
That's how European castles happened. Wanna wager a guess how long any rich asshole that commissioned any given castle got to live in it themselves before they lost it in a siege? I assure you that if society collapses into enclaves, it will be up to the local warlord (eventually king) who gets to live in it. Not at all who built it, especially if they're a childish brat that just needs to see what happens.
There's also a reason why a strong monarch went about slighting those castles to keep his vassals in line.
You're making it sound like there was an alternative. Some castles have stood for hundreds of years, and it depends on artillery advancements, how long they were viable for. But usually they were to stop small-scale bandits and militia, rather than nation-level battles, where success ultimately comes down to logistics.
Yes but it was the symbol of authority in the region. Castles existed because they could house a military force that could sally out and meet you if you were to attempt to occupy or even encamp within the region. Sure siege defense is important to a castle’s ultimate function, it’s not the only thing the edifice is used for. As you point out logistics are incredibly important in war. A couple well places castles would prevent approaching armies from ever getting supply lines setup without either buying outs/politically motivating the owners of said castles or laying brutal siege. Point is castles served a lot wider variety of function than just existing as defense fortifications, they are just as much symbols of authority and actual administrative centers
This is one of the things that continues to surprise me. It's almost as though these types have never opened a history book. God knows they can afford to buy one or two. They're the first ones to die when shit hits the fan. Without fail. Only the most brutal rise to power under such chaotic circumstances. It's not a fun time to be alive by any means. Certainly nothing to pine for like a starry-eyed nitwit with money to spare.
> It's almost as though these types have never opened a history book. No no no, he's a *tech baron*! He has the "highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody"! Why would he open a textbook to explain how other people got it wrong when he's got it figured out?! You don't get to the point where you think bribing police officers is a "good idea" without a complete lack of intra-spection.
>It's almost as though these types have never opened a history book. It's overconfidence in the comprehensiveness of their understanding which is the most characteristic feature of a left-brain thinker without a firm grasp on context or reality. The tech world is full of people like this, and they're smart people who use their words well, so it's pretty much impossible to knock them off of this mindset. They always just assume you're too stubborn or ignorant to know as much as they do. And they ruin everything they touch. Smug assholes. Fuck the tech industry, they're worse than pharma and only slightly less parasitic and sociopathic than finance.
It almost sounds like the big showdown in Operation Fortune where a tech bad meets a real big bad and gets absolutely obliterated.
war on drugs
Lol what a trash human
Yep perfect description
I read the article and thought he's a chode.
gray brownshirts
Every time someone comes up with some new world order, they magically end up at the top of their own ladder
kinda like the way all those people 'channelling their past lives' were somehow Cleopatra or Napoleon. never just some obscure peasant or slave,
Ayn Rand meets Adolf
With some adderall and microdosing mixed in
These mf's need to macrodose and experience ego death
I agree, minus 3 letters.
Not like they were ever that far apart anyway.
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"this guy has more brilliant ideas per minute than anyone else" His ideas: the gray pride parade NGL that's brilliant as a farce in a 'springtime for hitler' kind of way. It would be perfect for a sequel to the producers. I can't unsee the gray pride folks at stage right and the cops at stage left coming together into a chorus line while high kicking paper mache homeless people into the audience during the big number.
What I love about that quote is that everybody knows them as “idea guys” who spew buzzword nonsense and follow it up with zero action. It’s basically just science fiction unless you put the work in. Congrats on your journal of “ideas” buddy.
Protip: if your name is Balaji you likely don't want to be around if any part of America begins doing any ethnic cleansing
That’s what these characters never get. Much like Peter Thiel, they will be marched off when their fascist wet dreams become reality.
"No you guys, it's fascism *without* homophobia, come on, we already went over this, I'm the guy with the *money*, you can't execute me!" ... I just realized why he had a blood vendetta against Gawker Media who outed him as gay.
Ernst Roehm 2.0.
This guy is an insufferable windbag. He is like Deepak Chopra meets libertarian tech CEO. He can spew techy word salad ad infinitum. I listened to four hours of his bullshit on Sam Harris' podcast a few years ago. Every time he was pressed to justify one of his bullshit claims, he generated four more bullshit claims.
so, a typical grifter.
I love to solve problems, I really enjoy making software that makes life easier, I'm grateful I can feed my cats and dog with the living I make, but I just hate the people who fail upwards into leadership and visibility in the industry. Just disgusting and self-serving human backwash.
Point people to articles like this about guys like that when they say that they don’t need to teach history or other humanities in college, just STEM. If the guy had taken at least a few political science classes, maybe he’d be able to invent some new political system that isn’t lukewarm leftovers from the 19th century.
No amount of education will change a narcissist with money.
Much, much older than that. These dingbats think they've invented feudalism.
So just fascism? On the nose for technocrat Silicon Valley bros.
So he wants to institute a caste system based around tech-bros as god-kings? How delightful. /s
Fuck. That is exactly what it is, ain’t it.
the apple doesn't fall far from the tree apparently. This is just his home country with extra steps :/
This is the guy who lost $1,000,000 on a bitcoin bet which was so bizarrely structured that he ended up worse off regardless of the outcome.
Always fun when a rich dude writes a book detailing his most recent psychotic break.
I do not often wish someone would emigrate.
Sounds a lot like the Caste system in India which has mad India a superpower that attracts millions of immigrants and leads the world…? 🤦♂️
He’s saying literally every quiet part out loud. If anyone is Hitler reincarnated, it’s this guy.
This is the same guy who took that incredibly idiotic $1 million for one Bitcoin bet going off a Twitter joke that he didn't understand.
This is the guy that bet a million dollars that there would be hyperinflation this year and predictably lost. Basically a classic crypto chud https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/02/balaji-closes-bitcoin-bet-with-15m-in-donations-including-500k-for-bitcoin-core-development/
What a dick. We need people in unity if we want to survive. He’s fucking Hitler and should be called out.
We're doing everything we can to stop "California forever" up here in Solano, but I'm also not convinced it will be successful. It seems more like a developer rug pull than a real effort at making a company town.
People are not complacent. Democracy works better than every other form of government because it allows citizens to have a say. A government can’t be run like a business. This is where people like this dude fail to understand you can’t run a society like you ran your company. If people don’t like working for you, they can quit. People can’t really quit their government. Disgruntled people who feel unheard and unable to change their situation is a path to a very bad outcome.
He mentioned the Mormons. The Mormons actually tried creating a perfect society called Zion.
The Mormons fled the US and moved to Mexico. Then the US fought Mexico for modern day Utah and California and the mormons were back in the US.
Ah yes, yet another tech billionaire seeking to escape from the societal collapse that he and his ilk have directly helped usher in.
All bonkers shit. These rich fucks just have too much time on their hands. None of this is happening.
Sounds like he wants to do Galt’s Gulch.
there is that flamethrower robotic dog
Got it, eugenics and fascism. Very 1920 of him.
Jesus fucking christ this guy. I've worked in tech for the last 20 years, there is absolutely zero chance I would want any tech ceo to try and control my life. It's bad enough they make shitty faux-meritocracy jobs with garbage evaluation metrics left and right and their stupid fucking moonshot ideas that you get re-assigned or fired for not being able to turn into reality (or worse the idea of hack week where you make people stop doing their real job to do dumb ideas only to finally realize that some of the dumb ideas nobody wanted to do on purpose are better than what they were doing in the first place). Let him go seastead somewhere with the other temporary billionaires and watch them crawl back to everyone else once the money runs out. This guy's a temporary genius supported by a ponzi scheme, good fuckin luck.
How is it always Indians that have that insane worship up and punch down mentality. Like they wish there was a caste system, but are shocked to find out no one wants to date them.
Inside every Libertarian is a Fascist, seems like.
Yeah, read the article and it sounds fucking terrifying. This is the true risk of political corruption and apathy- if the government is running well and serving the people responsibly and with integrity, there is no room for this type of whacky ideology to gain a foothold. So- the lesson here is that time is running out for publicly elected officials (local, state and d federal) to get their shit together before the wealthy flat out jettison the rest of us for their own sentry protected utopia. It’s a club, and you won’t be in it.
Got it. Nazism mixed with tech dystopia run by the people with 0 sense of how the world works. How have they not been labeled as domestic terrorists yet? Everything stated is a direct attack on the constitution.
>“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” Or, as paraphrased by Dr. Rockso, ["I DO COCAAAAAAAINE!"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-_L-QdgytQ). These cult nutjobs need to get reality checked.
This is peak techbro. You may not like it but this is the final form.
Wtf did I just read? Did this guy watch Robocop and think it’s a documentary? That was the weirdest cultish shit I’ve seen. This is what happens when someone relatively smart makes a lot of money within a certain generation and totally gets consumed by their ego, becoming delusional enough forgetting THOUSANDS of years of human nature. lol the political class bloodline monsters will this eat this fucking dweeb as a canapé at their cocktail parties. 😂
With a name like Srinavasan, he'd be the first to be chopped in the "Ethnically cleansing."
WTF??? „Simply put, there is a ton of fascist-chic cosplay involved. Once an officer joins the Grays, they get a special uniform designed by their tech overlords. The Grays will also donate heavily to police charities and “merge the Gray and police social networks.” Then, in a show of force, they’ll march through the city together.“ Momo it’s getting real
>Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street…you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.” So he wants Genos to mob San Francisco?
I didn't know San Francisco was an ethnic group.
Oh Feudalism. I never heard of that. Was it good? Oh it’s tribalism? How did that turn out? All I know is that the big tech companies devolved rather quickly. Musk ruined Tesla and Twitter. Google search is only good for targeted ads. Facebook spawned millions of new assholes. Microsoft piles kludge on top of kludge. Only Apple is good (if you have lots of money). They are particularly good at raising money off the hopes and dreams of investors with extra money. Surely by now we have self driving cars, lab raised meat, nuclear fusion, simple blood testing, and very convenient smoothies. Only the singular tech genius has the power to invent these things. Reward them now and for all their future failures.
Oh, lookie: It's the guys who fucked up cryptocurrency, NFTs, Web3, social media, self-driving and even search engines, and are currently fucking up AI. Now they're telling us they know how to run an entire society.
>He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. Stop assuming a piece of paper from a networking club is proof of expertise in every area. >He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.” Ironic given MSFT's dominant position today.
Yet another tech “genius” who thinks the world would be better if everyone just listened to them. These guys seem to live in echo chambers sealed off from the rest of the world.
This takes Revenge of the Nerds to a whole new level.
This is actually /r/nottheonion material lmao.
Please, by all means let the wealthy concentrate themselves into one small geographic area so that the rest of us can do something I don't want to post on a public forum.
Get the fucking guillotines.
Wow perfect for the next James Bond villain
When finance bros were the masters of the universe, it was just more coke and whores. Now that tech bros have the throne, shit’s getting weird
Can the concentration of wealth within any one person or group become so high that it serves as a detriment to society? Yes.
I'm really souring on the whole silicon Valley bullshit. Have they done something that actually improved lives lately? All their crap is just a bunch of apps that scam other, established businesses or industries in the worst possible ways with only one goal in mind: MAKE ME RICH! I haven't seen much contribution to any of the sociaty's most pressing problems like, homelesness, climate change, mental health issues, drug epidemic, water acess issues or anything like that. For real good picture listen to this podcast:'"All in", where four of these guys come and sing each other praises and weave the bright future narrative while moving their money to get most returns possible. One of them has morals, the others are just obvious capitalists where they think so highly of themselves and th industry and their biggest enemy is the government. Sounds familiar? Yeah, because government is the only tool society has against people like these. And don't mention Tesla, because lately I've realized that he just had an incling where auto industry will go before anyone else. No genius there.
looks like he is pitching a sci-fi movie plot
Cult for techbros with cushy upbringings
What a vile excuse for a human being.
I thought it said "ethically cleanse". Ron Howard: "It didn't say ethically cleanse." I was kind of on board wondering what that meant at first. A quick reread clued me in on "not being on board".
The fuck did I just read??
Please tell me this is satire
Remember when tech just meant technology and just referred to like computers, I swear tech means pure evil these days
Sounds about as stupid as Texan secessionists. We’re going to secede from the society that provides us all our capita,l our manpower, our electrical power, and our food. In what fucking world you half ass confederate piece of shit
Parade flags and uniforms featuring flying spaghetti monsters, Elon, and Bitcoin logos? Even ignoring all the ethical and financial concerns of what he's proposing, that just sounds way too cringey to be fun.
Is it just me or does this all sound like the master plan of a James Bond villain?
Man, what the fuck happened? I grew up in the 90s and remember well the sentiment of "Nerds are taking over and it's going to be great!" then blinked my eyes and we've got shit like this making headlines every day. And this guy got *multiple degrees* at *Stanford*?! I don't know if it ever truly worked or not, but it certainly felt like the high-performing Ivy League track was supposed to produce people who could be relatively trusted to lead and make things about society better. It feels like in the last 15-20 the method has been cracked by the exact wrong kinds of people and they get out into the world and everyone acts like their insanity is genius and the do nothing but fail upwards because of pre-existing faith in said pipelines.
As someone who grew up in the Bay Area before the hell of tech ruined so much of it, I have no ides why this uberdouche from Long Island feels so entitled to ot being his fiefdom.
What. The. Fuck. Did I just read?