The Network State

This week I am thinking about Balaji S. Srinivasan’s book, “The Network State,” a project that introduces the idea of a country you can start from your computer, and a state that recruits like a startup.

There are already all kinds of decentralized ideas taking shape on the global horizon, and these concepts are gearing up to influence our thinking for the future.

At the time of this writing, Srinivasan’s book is not out yet, but the fundamental idea he has is to introduce crowdfunding for physical territory spread around the world, much like Google has global offices or retail/restaurants have locations.

Balaji S. Srinivasan is an angel investor, formerly the CTO of Coinbase and an early investor in many successful tech companies and crypto protocols, so it is with experience that he explores the ideas of a social network with an agreed-upon leader, an integrated cryptocurrency, a definite purpose, a sense of national consciousness, and a plan to crowdfund territory.

Just reading over some of the topics to be covered in the book, I have many questions about how the network state will shape human identity, freedom, leadership and protections under law.

My thought is that as these network states arise, there will still be a need for some authority and protection for citizens, no matter what network they belong to at any time. Even today so much corporate time and finances must be directed towards security protocols, only to have these fences jumped by hackers demanding ransom. In the future, will the ransom be citizens instead of crypto?

Perhaps in the future there will be a need for judges like those in the 1995 movie “Judge Dredd” with Sylvester Stallone. In this movie, mankind has become so out of control that judges with power to instantly enforce law are put into place to protect people from oppression.

Srinivasan asserts that network states will eliminate violence since no one government could eliminate all the citizens of a network in a decentralized nation. Knowing what I know about human nature, though (especially with current events) I think those prone to violence will only find new ways to assert themselves in a society built entirely on digital assets.

Without a globally agreed-upon course of remedy, whistleblowers would not be able to prove anything. There would be no checks or balances. In this case, global watchdogs are in order. And if you are the one that couldn’t buy groceries or gas or had your smart locks changed because your citizenship in one network got lost when it was sold to another network, Judge Dredd starts looking like your hero.

When you consider that Twitter and Facebook networks are each bigger than France or Germany combined, the storm clouds sure look like they are growing.

The good news is that generosity and kindness are not against any law.

For now, let’s connect on Twitter @shervin.