
The Network State – Balaji Srinivasan [video] - jordn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiLUPvUsdXg
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api
I think he's hugely underestimating the power of violence. Physical force
can't break math, but it certainly can quite easily force you to surrender
your key or physically take possession of any infrastructure. All the digital
stuff he's discussing is actually very fragile and very dependent on a ton of
complex infrastructure including but not limited to power and wiring, and all
that is very easy to physically possess or physically destroy.

He's also forgetting about the majority of humanity. The other major problem
here is inequality. If all the best and the brightest secede from nation
states and go borderless and trans-national, that leaves the remainder of
humanity to suffer in poverty. Eventually this condition would evolve into
serfdom. Enforcement of a feudal serfdom relationship will require just the
kind of totalitarianism that these cyber-libertarians don't like, and
totalitarianism doesn't really work unless almost everyone submits to it.
(Even the leaders of totalitarian regimes are subjects in that they are not
free to oppose their own system. Kim Jong would be killed by his generals if
he questioned his own system too much.) Failure to enact totalitarian control
to enforce and maintain extreme wealth disparity will result in violent
revolution. So your choice in the end will be submit to a totalitarian
cyberpunk panopticon or be lynched by the masses that you have abandoned.

In short I do not think these ideas are viable as presented. This "cyber-
Platonism" forgets about physical reality. Information systems are physical
embodied things. Bits actually do take up space. "Virtual" is an illusion.

Case in point: Bitcoin, which he extols as an example of a borderless post-
state information system, consumes a gigantic amount of energy that must be
supplied by physical mines, power plants, solar panels, etc.

I don't want to totally dismiss everything Balaji says. It's definitely true
that information technology changes the nature and balance of power. But he
vastly overstates his case when he starts talking about post-statehood.

