The Network State: How To Start a New Country

Book Preface

Are you the kind of person who skims the beginning just to see whether to read the entire thing? You’re in luck.
We’ve prepared one sentence, one image, one thousand word, and one essay summaries of the concepts behind startup societies and network states. Just click those links if you’re impatient. And of course, for the full experience, you can read it one page at a time.
Speaking of pages, every section of this book is online and shareable as an individual web page. For example, the URL to this section is 1729.com/preamble. This allows you to link directly1 to any bit of the book for discussion. Moreover, unlike the typical book that’s frozen in time, think of this as a dynamic bookapp that gets continuously updated. You can see the latest version online at 1729.com, or you can follow the instructions at 1729.com/kindle.gif to get the latest version on your Kindle.
Why 1729? That’s the publisher of this work. It’s named after the Ramanujan number, which symbolizes for us the dark talent: all those people from the middle of nowhere, passed over by the establishment, with crazy-but-correct ideas, who could do great things if only given the opportunity. These are exactly the kinds of people who we expect will found startup societies and network states.
But what is a network state?

Contents
1 Quickstart 8
1.1 Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2 The Network State in One Sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 The Network State in One Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.4 The Network State in One Thousand Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.5 The Network State in One Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.5.1 How to Start a New Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1. Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2. Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3. War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4. Micronations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5. Seasteading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Network States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.5.2 Minimum Necessary Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.5.3 What Counts as a New Country? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.5.4 Most Countries are Small Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2 History as Trajectory 18
2.1 Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.1.1 Why History is Crucial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.1.2 Why History is Crucial for Startup Societies . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1.3 Why Startup Societies Aren’t Solely About Technology . . . . . 23
2.1.4 Applied History for Startup Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.2 Microhistory and Macrohistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.2.1 History as a Cryptic Epic of Twisting Trajectories . . . . . . . . 28
2.2.2 Microhistory is the History of Reproducible Systems . . . . . . . 29
2.2.3 Macrohistory is the History of Non-Reproducible Systems . . . . 30
2.2.4 Bitcoin’s Blockchain Is a Technology for Robust Macrohistory . 32
2.2.5 The Bitcoin Blockchain Can Record Non-Bitcoin Events . . . . 33
2.2.6 Blockchains Can Record the History of an Economy and Society 35
2.2.7 Cryptohistory is Cryptographically Verifiable Macrohistory . . . 36
2.3 Political Power and Technological Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.3.1 Political Power as the Driving Force of History . . . . . . . . . . 38
1

2 CONTENTS
2.3.2 Technological Truth as the Driving Force of History . . . . . . . 41
2.3.3 A Collision of Political Power and Technological Truth . . . . . 46
2.3.4 A Definition of Political and Technological Truths . . . . . . . . 47
2.3.5 A Balance of Political Power and Technological Truth . . . . . . 47
2.4 God, State, Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.4.1 What is the Most Powerful Force in the World? . . . . . . . . . 49
2.4.2 Rubber Hoses Don’t Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.4.3 The Network is the Next Leviathan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Network > State: Trump’s Deplatforming . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.4.4 The State is Still A Leviathan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.4.5 Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
2.4.6 Synthesis: The Network/God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.4.7 Synthesis: The Network/State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Positive Syntheses: BTC, Web3, Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Negative Syntheses: USG, CCP, Monopoly . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.4.8 Synthesis: God, State, and Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.4.9 New Leviathan, New States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2.5 People of God, People of the State, People of the Network . . . . . . . 61
2.5.1 American Tribes and Their Leviathans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Blue Tribe: Left-Authoritarians, Left-Libertarians . . . . . . . . 62
Red Tribe: Secular Nationalists, Internationalist Capitalists . . 69
The Realignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
2.5.2 Tech vs Media, aka PC vs PC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
The Conflict: Technological Progressives vs Technological Con-
servatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
The Enormous State, not the Entrepreneurial State . . . . . . . 77
2.5.3 The Base-Rater as a Flat-Curver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
2.6 If the News is Fake, Imagine History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
2.6.1 Distortion of the Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Patterns of Information Distortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
The Network Delivered Actual Freedom of Speech . . . . . . . . 83
The Establishment Launched the Counter-Decentralization . . . 84
2.6.2 Distortion of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
2.6.3 Jurassic Ballpark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
2.6.4 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
2.7 Fragmentation, Frontier, Fourth Turning, Future Is Our Past . . . . . . 92
2.7.1 The Fragmentation Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2.7.2 The Frontier Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
2.7.3 The Fourth Turning Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
2.7.4 The Future Is Our Past Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
2.8 Left is the New Right is the New Left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
2.8.1 Why Discuss Left and Right at All? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
2.8.2 Reunifying Technological and Moral Progress . . . . . . . . . . 101
Moral Progress is Moral Innovation is Moral Inversion . . . . . . 101

CONTENTS 3
Political Arbitrage and Financial Arbitrage . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
The Market for Revolutionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Startup Societies Reunify Technological and Moral Progress . . 105
2.8.3 Two Ideologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
The Spatial Theory of Voting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Fights Create Factions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Left and Right as Temporary Tactics, Not Constant Classes . . 107
Frontiers Mitigate Factions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Two Ghosts, Different Hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
My Left is Your Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
2.8.4 Three Cycles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Left Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Right Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
The Libertarian Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
The Unified Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
New Boss: Not Exactly The Same As The Old Boss . . . . . . . 114
Holy War Wins Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
2.8.5 Four Flippenings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
The Proletarian Flippening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
The American Flippening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
The Global Flippening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
The Historical Flippenings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
2.9 The One Commandment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
2.9.1 Communities are Causes First, Companies Second . . . . . . . . 134
The Concept of a Parallel Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
2.9.2 Examples of Parallel Societies: Digital Network Unions . . . . . 135
Renewal Culture: the Cancel-Proof Society . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
2.9.3 Examples of Parallel Societies: Physical Network Archipelagos . 137
Keto Kosher: the Sugar-free Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Digital Sabbath: the Partially Offline Society . . . . . . . . . . 137
2.9.4 Examples of Parallel Societies: Recognized Network States . . . 138
Your Body, Your Choice: the post-FDA Society . . . . . . . . . 138
2.9.5 Analysis of Parallel Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Why Not More Than One Commandment? . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
What About Older Doctrines? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
2.9.6 Parallel Systems Catalyze Peaceful Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Parallel Systems Once Required Contiguous Land, Now They Don’t141
2.9.7 Four Points on One Commandments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
3 The Tripolar Moment 143
3.1 NYT, CCP, BTC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
3.2 The Dated and the Timeless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
3.3 A Bipolar America and a Tripolar Triangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
3.4 Moral Power, Martial Power, Money Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

4 CONTENTS
3.4.1 Moral State, Martial State, Money State . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
3.4.2 Moral Network, Martial Network, Money Network . . . . . . . . 148
NYT: The Moral Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
CCP: The Martial Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
BTC: The Money Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
3.4.3 Overlaps and Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
3.5 Submission, Sympathy, Sovereignty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
3.5.1 Extremes and Counter-Extremes Are Undesirable . . . . . . . . 153
3.5.2 A Recentralized Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
3.6 Conflicts and Alliances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
3.6.1 One Pole Against Another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
3.6.2 Two Poles vs the Third . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
3.6.3 Intrapolar Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
3.6.4 The Road To Recentralization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
4 Decentralization, Recentralization 157
4.1 The Possible Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
4.1.1 Analytical Axes and Scenario Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
4.1.2 Strong Form and Weak Form Models of the Future . . . . . . . 160
4.1.3 Building the Future Rather than Defaulting Into It . . . . . . . 161
4.2 Sociopolitical Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
4.2.1 International Indians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
4.2.2 Transhumanism Versus Anarcho-Primitivism . . . . . . . . . . . 163
4.2.3 The Identity Stack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Example: Twitter Bios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
4.3 Technoeconomic Axes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
4.3.1 The Internet Increases Variance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
BlueAnon, QAnon, SatoshiAnon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Social Media is American Glasnost, Cryptocurrency is American
Perestroika . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
The 100-Year Information Tsunami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
4.3.2 Naturally Physical to Natively Digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Three Phase Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Truly Digital News: Dashboards, On-Chain Event Feeds . . . . 169
Remote Work to Remote Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
From Printing to Materializing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
4.3.3 The Productivity Mystery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
4.3.4 Linguistic Borders of the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
4.3.5 Network Defects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
4.4 Foreseeable Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
4.4.1 AR Glasses Bridge Physical and Digital Worlds . . . . . . . . . 174
4.4.2 Experimental Macroeconomics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
4.5 American Anarchy, Chinese Control, International Intermediate . . . . 175
4.5.1 American Anarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

CONTENTS 5
Prosperity, Tyranny, or Anarchy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Maximalist vs Woke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
How America Builds Towards Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
A War for Minds, Not Lands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Maximalist vs Woke Rotates Left and Right . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Who Wins? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Wars Aren’t Romantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
4.5.2 Chinese Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Attempted Coup Leads to Total Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
China Blocks the Exits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
The Path to Chinese Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
China Caveat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
4.5.3 International Intermediate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
4.6 Victory Conditions and Surprise Endings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
4.6.1 The Victory Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
The “Base Rate Fallacy” Fallacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
China Can Make a Pencil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
4.6.2 The Surprise Endings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Duopoly of Digital Despotism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Bitcoin Ends Human War, but not Robot War . . . . . . . . . . 195
4.7 Towards a Recentralized Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
4.7.1 In Defense of Recentralization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
5 From Nation States to Network States 198
5.1 Why Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
5.2 On Nation States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
5.2.1 What is a Nation State? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
5.2.2 What is the Nation State System? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Assumptions of the Nation State System . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
5.2.3 The Nation State as a Term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
5.2.4 Micronations and Multinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
5.2.5 0-nation, 1-nation, N-nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
5.2.6 What is a Nation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
A Definitional Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
An Empirical Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
A Philosophical Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
5.2.7 What is a State? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
The Definitional Approachw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
The Comparative Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
The Pragmatic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
The Philosophical Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Statecraft Strategies and Programming Paradigms . . . . . . . . 210
5.2.8 What does a Nation State look like on a Map? . . . . . . . . . . 211
5.2.9 How were Modern Nation States Founded? . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

6 CONTENTS
The Historical Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
The Patronage Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
The Military Angle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
5.2.10 Why were Nation States Founded? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
5.2.11 How does a Nation State Expand and Contract? . . . . . . . . . 215
5.2.12 How did States Influence Nations, and Vice Versa? . . . . . . . 215
5.2.13 What is not a Nation State? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
5.2.14 What Technological Developments underpin the Modern Nation
State System? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
5.3 On Network States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
5.3.1 What is a Network State? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
The Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Breaking the Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
5.3.2 What is the Network State System? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Assumption: Digital Primary, Physical Secondary . . . . . . . . 232
Assumption: The State Becomes An Admin Dashboard . . . . . 232
Assumption: Divide Networks Rather than Land . . . . . . . . 233
Assumption: Consent and Cryptography Constrain . . . . . . . 233
5.3.3 The Network State as a Term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
5.3.4 Micronetworks and Multinetworks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Startups create Networks, but Nations create States . . . . . . . 234
Startups create Networks, but Startups aren’t States . . . . . . 235
Startups create Centralized Networks, but Chains create Decen-
tralized Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Only Decentralized Networks can give rise to Network States . . 236
5.3.5 0-network, 1-network, N-networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
5.3.6 What is a (National) Network? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
A Verbal Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
A Computational Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
5.3.7 What does a Network State look like on a Map? . . . . . . . . . 239
The Physical Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
The Digital Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Example: Physically Proximal, Digitally Divergent . . . . . . . 240
5.3.8 How is a Network State Founded? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Startup Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Parallel Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
The Network Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
The New Tokenomics is Nation Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Path to the Network State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
The Bootstrap Recognizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Digital Civil Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Recognize Why We Need Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
5.3.9 Why Would we Found a Network State? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Network States for the Technological Innovator . . . . . . . . . 247

CONTENTS 7
Network States for the Political Progressive . . . . . . . . . . . 248
5.3.10 How does a Network State Expand and Contract? . . . . . . . . 249
5.3.11 What is not a Network State? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
5.3.12 What Technological Developments enable Network States? . . . 253
6 Appendix 256
6.1 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25