[HN Gopher] The Network State in one sentence, one paragraph, an...
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       The Network State in one sentence, one paragraph, and one page
        
       Author : 1cvmask
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2021-11-21 01:12 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (1729.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (1729.com)
        
       | Jeff_Brown wrote:
       | Expropriation should be foremost in the mind of anyone who wants
       | to invest in such a state. It would be easy enough for any state,
       | particularly an unproductive one, to let you play with some land
       | to start. It would be much harder, once it's successful, to keep
       | them from redistributing it to the elites (or conceivably even
       | the masses).
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | A few posts ago, I mentioned how I'm not a fan of Learning
       | Management Systems, because they try way too hard to shoehorn
       | together a bunch of things into a cohesive whole, and as a result
       | pretty much everything suffers.
       | 
       | By extension....yikes. I'm sure there are aspects of this that we
       | will see in the future, but trying to do this "top down" is
       | laughable.
        
       | SavantIdiot wrote:
       | Every generation has their utopians, from the Pythagorean's vegan
       | communes, to the US hippies in the 1970's. The only time massive
       | change has happened relatively overnight has been revolution with
       | enormous, unified support of an impoverished population, see:
       | France.
       | 
       | This is the latest incarnation of the the 1970's SF hippy commune
       | ideology. In that it makes broad sweeping claims without many
       | citations or substance beyond oversimplified truisms. I expect to
       | see "BioSphereX- _Now with more crypto!_ " any day now, except
       | without Steve Bannon (yes, he was actually involved in BioSphere
       | 2 in the 80's).
        
         | oh_sigh wrote:
         | I looked up the Bannon connection you mentioned, and ran across
         | another fun Bannon fact: He gets paid every time Seinfeld airs.
         | His investment firm helped sell Castle Rock Entertainment to
         | TBS back in the 90s, and as part of that deal he waived part of
         | his advisory fees in lieu of partial royalties to some current
         | TV shows, one of which was Seinfeld.
        
       | pphysch wrote:
       | If you have a "clear leader", that is, a trusted authority, why
       | do you need a Bitcoin-esque cryptocurrency and other anarchic
       | blockchain/DeFi/"Web3" technology? Just use a central database,
       | man. Cut out the tremendously wasteful PoX nonsense. The
       | President could even be the DBA-in-Chief.
       | 
       | Some of these ideas of 21st century techno-nationalism are great,
       | but falls short when trying to shoehorn $techfad into it.
        
         | ben-ray wrote:
         | Network states can fire their 'clear leader,' which is not true
         | for all democracies.
         | 
         | Centralizing the database introduces key trust vulnerabilities
         | that can be eliminated in a decentralized trust-less system.
        
           | pphysch wrote:
           | No, "trust" cannot be eliminated. You can smear it around,
           | like pretending that 51% attacks are impossible, or pretend
           | that no one will ever put fraudulent data on the blockchain.
           | 
           | Frankly, it's less trouble to trust a transparent central
           | authority that can be held accountable rather than trust 100%
           | of the population to always obey the rules.
        
             | errantspark wrote:
             | This is the fundamental truth that creates the isomorphism
             | between cash and crypto, something a younger me didn't
             | understand. Fundamentally there is no hard "truth" in a
             | crypto system anymore than there is one in a fiat system.
             | At the end of the day it's just one particular reification
             | of a useful societal construct. Or to put it more
             | succinctly:
             | 
             | We live in a society.
        
               | derekjdanserl wrote:
               | That, and war is not only a real-life phenomenon but
               | states are are nothing if not monopolies on violence
               | relative only to empires. Competing with either is going
               | to require either overtaking it or cooperating with it.
               | The common case is both at the same time, i.e. a terrible
               | plan that has failed before it began. And mere
               | cooperation is not competition at all.
        
       | jl6 wrote:
       | In what sense are they describing a state, rather than a club (or
       | corporation or society or whatever)? States acquire sovereignty
       | through military violence.
        
         | nice_byte wrote:
         | yup. boggles my mind how one person can simultaneously
         | understand that the aggression trumps non-aggression AND put
         | their faith into "crypto-civizilation". any cryptography,
         | regardless of how advanced it is, is utterly powerless in the
         | face of simple techniques like thermorectal cryptoanalysis :-)
        
         | sva_ wrote:
         | What about Iceland? They have no military as far as I know.
         | 
         | But yeah, the article seems very far "out there".
        
       | drivingmenuts wrote:
       | I can tell you why it won't work in one word: China.
       | 
       | China wants centralized control and will use any means to achieve
       | that in the long term. Even if you somehow bypass Western
       | Democracies, China will always be lurking, ready to use physical
       | means.
        
       | xg15 wrote:
       | ...aaand feudalism, here we are again...
        
       | Traster wrote:
       | I think this suffers from the same problem that most technology
       | based proposals suffer from: it reinvents something that already
       | exist.
       | 
       | >First, form a social network around a clear leader, a proven
       | centralized mechanism for dispute resolution in a decentralized
       | world.
       | 
       | Yay! Monarchy!
       | 
       | >Since anyone can found a network state, just like anyone can
       | found a tech company or cryptocurrency, the legitimacy of this
       | leader comes from whether people have opted in to follow them.
       | 
       | And if you don't like it, go off an invent facebook yourself!
       | 
       | If you're tech-literate _surely_ you understand network effects
       | and first mover advantage.
       | 
       | Hell, why are you even centralizing at all, if the whole thing is
       | centered around a decentralized blockchain? Why not decentralize
       | adjudication (oh shit, I invented trial by a jury of your piers).
       | 
       | I really wish people would focus on exploiting what technology
       | does well, rather than focusing on re-implementing what we've
       | already done, but worse. Local governance isn't great, but I
       | suspect no one involved in this understands anything about the
       | problems, hence why they spend no time thinking about how to
       | solve them.
        
       | nice_byte wrote:
       | anything written by balajis can be safely ignored. guy's a loon.
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-22 23:00 UTC)