Balaji Srivanasan on the Three Competing Ideologies of the Networked World

Discussion

Dan Becker:

"Balaji presents an interesting Tripolar model of three important ideologies currently vying for power in the World. To one degree or another, most people are influenced by at least one, if not more, of these ideological poles.

Balaji defines the poles as follows:

• Woke Capital– The ideology of America’s ruling class as explicated by America’s ruling newspaper, The New York Times. It’s capitalism that enables decentralized censorship, cancel culture and American empire. Requirement – You must sympathize.

• CCP Communist Capital – The ideology of the Chinese Communist Party; capitalism checked by the centralized power of the Chinese party-state: Leninist, Confucianist, Capitalist, and Nationalist.

Requirement – You must submit.

• BTC Crypto Capital – The international ideology of Bitcoin and web3. Stateless capitalism, capitalism without corporations, decentralized censorship-resistance, and neutral international law. It is the second pole within both the US and China, the one that domestic regime opponents align around.

Requirement – You must be sovereign.

Each of these political ideologies presents extreme positions, rendering any of them unattractive. The CCP pole, for instance, requires total submission, creating great difficulty for those with even a partially independent mind. Woke Capital demands sympathy for victims and acknowledgement of one’s role as an oppressor. Crypto Capital espouses complete sovereignty which in the extreme means making your own shoes and pumping your own water. None of the poles are attractive individually; and currently, no acceptable mix of submission/sympathy/sovereignty exists."

(https://x20s.com/part-iii-problems-solved-by-the-network-state/)