Based Camp - Techno-Feudalism & the Post-Collapse Network Empire

00:00:00.000 What makes it a network empire instead of a network state, and I think the core thing

00:00:05.140 that Balaji, when he came up with this concept and missed, is the insecurity of a future

00:00:10.180 world when we're dealing with wide-scale economic collapse.

00:00:14.020 That is the world that we are heading into, where it is cheaper for the wealthy class

00:00:19.180 in our society to isolate themselves from everyone else than it is for them to ensure 0.91

00:00:24.880 widespread prosperity.

00:00:26.980 Would you like to know more?

00:00:27.960 I am so glad to be recording these again.

00:00:30.960 Our audience doesn't know, but it's actually been like a week and a half since we did our

00:00:35.040 last recording, because we were at this ARC conference in the UK, which is supposed to

00:00:40.360 be, I don't know, like this new alternative to Davos sort of a thing, but I think it's

00:00:43.640 just really conservative British Davos.

00:00:46.860 But one of the people who we met while we were there and we had a long conversation with

00:00:50.920 was Curtis Yarvin.

00:00:53.060 And in that conversation, I really helped me clarify some things that I think about what's

00:01:01.140 going to happen in the future of our species.

00:01:03.220 And we may release that conversation because it was recorded at some time, but it was recorded

00:01:07.300 in like a busiest restaurant with a Greek reporter interviewing us both together.

00:01:11.420 So I can't believe that some random Greek newspaper, a monarchist newspaper, by the way, is getting

00:01:17.280 the piece where it's me and you and Curtis Yarvin talking for like two hours.

00:01:21.720 But we constantly get accused of being techno feudalists in the media.

00:01:28.640 And this to me feels not just like an unfair accusation, but almost an insane accusation.

00:01:36.980 It's a bit like if, you know, I have some friends who their family were, you know, left

00:01:43.000 Germany early and they tried really hard to convince everyone the Holocaust was coming. 0.77

00:01:47.000 And they were just basically told they were crazy.

00:01:48.880 And so this family is actually descended from a guy who broke into his girlfriend's house

00:01:52.580 at night, took the girl he was dating and ran away.

00:01:55.940 Now they made the horrible mistake of running East to Russia instead of West. 0.61

00:02:03.660 And so then they, for like a 10 year period, just constantly had to flee new places.

00:02:08.640 But anyway, it would be like calling him a Holocaustian and people would be like, well,

00:02:14.520 yeah, but even if he saw it coming, you know, they could have said, well, let's try to prevent

00:02:18.960 it.

00:02:19.300 Right.

00:02:19.500 And it's like, no, there was a certain point where he was like, look at Hitler, this guy

00:02:23.060 who was elected to power.

00:02:23.840 Look at what he's writing, read his book.

00:02:26.800 Okay.

00:02:27.260 He published this, like it's not vague what his plans are.

00:02:31.440 And, you know, I feel a bit like that when I talk about techno feudalism, where I'm saying

00:02:35.580 it is almost inevitable at this point that something like a techno feudalistic state is going to

00:02:41.760 happen.

00:02:42.120 And we need to, those of us who do not want to be churned up by the system need to prepare

00:02:50.600 for how the world is going to change.

00:02:54.980 Both in terms of our culture and our families and economically, because it's going to be absolutely

00:03:01.160 catastrophic and very, very significant.

00:03:03.540 Now, first I would say when we talk about techno feudalism, we do not mean, so there's this

00:03:08.700 like Greek economist guy who keeps, he wrote like a book on quote unquote techno feudalism.

00:03:13.920 And the way that he defines the term is vague and pointless.

00:03:17.440 Basically what we already know, which is that we live in a world in which large tech companies

00:03:21.680 control a lot of the economic system.

00:03:23.540 And it's like, yes, we know that.

00:03:26.660 That's not what we talk about when we talk about techno feudalism.

00:03:30.040 We are talking about something that is much closer to literal feudalistic states.

00:03:35.440 Exactly.

00:03:36.800 But before we go further, we need to talk a bit about where we think the overall economy

00:03:42.580 is going before we can talk about the technophilic states, which are going to be major players

00:03:48.360 within this future economy.

00:03:49.580 So this actually was a point that Curtis made in the conversation.

00:03:55.760 And after hearing it really clarified a lot of how I think about things, but it was in

00:04:00.700 line was what I thought already.

00:04:02.100 It just gave me more picture as to what the future is going to look like.

00:04:05.920 And he said, the future of the future of the Western world, at least, and the future of

00:04:12.620 the Eastern world is also going to be bleak, but the way it will collapse is going to look 0.98

00:04:16.160 very different.

00:04:16.740 And we can get to that in different videos, but the future of the Western world is going

00:04:21.780 to look very similar to the current situation in South Africa.

00:04:27.460 And this has nothing to do with race or even the politics of the country.

00:04:33.380 What specifically we're talking about is the on the ground reality of what it feels like

00:04:38.540 to live there.

00:04:39.080 Yeah, well, it's what real collapse looks like from a, we'll say, a modern developed 0.96

00:04:44.960 society.

00:04:46.680 So what happens when the infrastructure has been built, when there's electricity, there's

00:04:50.020 housing, there's communities, but then things start falling apart.

00:04:54.480 Infrastructure starts falling apart.

00:04:55.820 Law enforcement starts falling apart.

00:04:58.100 And that's what collapse looks like in our world.

00:05:00.380 Because I think what most people's evoked set is of collapse is a road warrior.

00:05:04.320 You know, it's like deserts.

00:05:05.880 There's nothing out there.

00:05:06.820 But no, no, no, we're, we're starting.

00:05:08.400 Our starting point for collapse is quite different from what people typically expect in their

00:05:13.180 fantasies.

00:05:13.620 Right?

00:05:14.000 Absolutely.

00:05:14.460 Yeah.

00:05:14.740 And I think a lot of people, the other thing they think of is they go, oh no, I'm being

00:05:17.900 reasonable.

00:05:18.460 It's not going to be like road warrior.

00:05:19.720 It'll be more like a developing country.

00:05:22.760 The problem is-

00:05:23.040 Yeah, but no, no, we're starting from a developed country.

00:05:25.300 No, it won't be like a developing country.

00:05:25.900 And the thing about developing countries is that they are going up from nothing. 0.99

00:05:30.660 You know, they are building incrementally with every step of development, which is very

00:05:35.760 different from a developed country collapsing.

00:05:39.920 Developed countries collapse and lead to very different cultural institutions than a struggling 1.00

00:05:45.920 developing country.

00:05:46.980 And the, the life on the ground of a developed country collapsing is astronomically worse than

00:05:55.280 the life on the ground of an equivalent, of an economically equivalent developing country.

00:06:00.960 So I'll give an example here.

00:06:02.720 One thing you see in South Africa right now is very frequent and rolling blackouts.

00:06:08.380 In a developing country, you are less likely to see this.

00:06:11.800 The reason you are less likely to see this in a developing country is, and you do still see

00:06:16.380 it occasionally, but like the regions are known, like they make sure their major cities have

00:06:20.380 electricity and then the outskirts, you know, because they're building new electrical stations

00:06:24.240 to sort of push out their electrical power generating capacity instead of having a total net of

00:06:30.020 electrical power generating capacity that is in the process of collapsing due to lack of

00:06:34.440 maintenance, due to political infighting, et cetera.

00:06:37.140 That is very different.

00:06:38.600 And what it means when you have things like electricity regularly going out in a district is it means

00:06:43.900 that many of the things that you take for granted, like restaurants or grocery stores are going to

00:06:49.960 look dramatically differently.

00:06:51.440 Restaurants really rely on refrigeration systems.

00:06:55.320 Grocery stores really rely on refrigeration systems.

00:06:58.640 These types of industries become very, very difficult to operate without private generators,

00:07:04.340 which can be very expensive.

00:07:06.400 So that's one thing that, that, that, that just like an example of the type of thing that you may not

00:07:10.800 have that you would think, oh, I would have this in a developing country where they develop 0.99

00:07:15.760 different solutions for that sort of stuff, like icebox type of stuff and, and cuisines that are

00:07:20.260 built around, you know, local produce.

00:07:23.620 Whereas in a developing, a developed country collapsing, you're not going to have that.

00:07:27.700 So things like restaurants disappear, things like food distribution begin to disappear.

00:07:31.360 Another thing that is really interesting that you see in South Africa right now that I think is going

00:07:35.020 to be very common around the world is sort of fortresses.

00:07:39.740 Yes.

00:07:39.900 Like in South Africa, there are many, what are called gated communities, which essentially are

00:07:44.780 fortresses, but then each house itself is also fortified in a pretty significant manner.

00:07:49.920 So you've basically got fortresses within fortresses.

00:07:52.460 And then in between, of course, you have sort of more dangerous dead zones, but then you're sort of

00:07:56.420 really looking at something that looks actually quite futile.

00:07:59.400 This is, this is what, when you look at an old, like, you know, medieval or even earlier

00:08:04.240 sort of fortified area, it looks like you have sort of an outer wall and sort of a slightly

00:08:09.400 protected area and then an even more fortified and protected area within, right?

00:08:13.140 And this is because I think what a lot of people think of a world with falling apart police forces

00:08:17.860 or police forces that are bought by organized crime, what they imagine is a world was just more

00:08:24.120 like regular crime, like the type of crime we see today.

00:08:27.240 And that is not what you see.

00:08:29.460 What you see is a large systemic organized crime and aggressive organized crime that will

00:08:36.540 sometimes collude with corporations, that will sometimes collude with wealthy individuals,

00:08:40.680 that will sometimes collude with the state and not so much.

00:08:44.580 I mean, you will still see random crime and much more random crime, but there is a new

00:08:47.740 type of crime and it's the type of crime we've had in the U.S. before.

00:08:50.740 Like when we were developing, you know, Mobs of New York is the movie about back in the

00:08:55.120 days when we had more organized crime or, you know, Boss Tweed or, you know, any of

00:08:59.180 the...

00:08:59.780 You mean Gangs of New York?

00:09:01.740 Oh, yes.

00:09:02.120 Gangs of New York.

00:09:03.080 I'm thinking Boss Tweed and stuff like that.

00:09:04.420 Yeah.

00:09:04.660 I mean, you know, we had the mob, we had the mafia, we had the, you know, we've had our

00:09:09.020 share of organized crime in the U.S.

00:09:11.920 We just don't really live with that right now.

00:09:14.080 We have some organized crime institutions, but they are mostly relegated to a really high

00:09:22.160 level of prominence within lower income communities, whereas when a state is collapsing, they are

00:09:29.460 part of everyone's everyday life to an extent and being able to defend against them or ally

00:09:35.300 with them.

00:09:35.740 And this is where feudalism comes into play, is you are choosing your allies within the

00:09:42.580 state because who you are allied with within the state matters a lot.

00:09:46.720 Exactly.

00:09:49.380 But we haven't really gotten to why we call this techno-feudalism, and this is something

00:09:54.880 we're going to elaborate more on in the next episode because there's a lot to talk about

00:09:58.600 in regards to this.

00:09:59.380 But when we look at fertility rates, the two dominant strategies right now, when I say

00:10:08.060 dominant, I mean the strategies that have been very, very successful at maintaining

00:10:11.040 high fertility rates are to either culturally impose traditions which lower the income of

00:10:18.940 members who practice that culture or traditions, which increases the fertility of that group.

00:10:24.080 An example here might be Jehovah's Witnesses banning their kids from going to college. 1.00

00:10:27.000 I mean, there's also practical reasons to do that because they get brainwashed and stuff

00:10:30.000 like that.

00:10:30.320 I get that, right?

00:10:31.280 But I'm saying it also helps with their fertility rates because it lowers their income. 0.61

00:10:34.860 Another thing is to prohibit the engagement with technology.

00:10:40.080 Now, both of these practices limit the technological reach of a cultural group.

00:10:47.380 I'll say the, sorry, they limit the economic potential of a cultural group.

00:10:52.060 Well, and sort of widespread influence you can have because it is those who develop tech that

00:10:56.980 is then widely adopted that are going to have a lot of influence across groups in the future.

00:11:02.500 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:03.000 So I guess I should elaborate this word because that's going to then define economic, but I

00:11:06.160 really mean economic and cultural potential a group can have.

00:11:08.460 You are severely economically and culturally limited as you make these restrictions.

00:11:14.100 And the thing about these restrictions that's important to note is some religious organizations

00:11:19.520 are like, oh, we'll just minorly restrict this stuff, right?

00:11:22.220 Like some cultural groups.

00:11:23.800 We'll just minorly restrict it.

00:11:25.140 Or we'll just make some minor things which lower the economic potential of our members.

00:11:28.820 The problem is, is that if there are different fractions of your organization, which make

00:11:34.260 more extreme limitations of their members, they will out-compete yours.

00:11:39.220 Yeah, we've heard this, for example, with Mennonites, that the groups that are more permissive

00:11:43.600 around technology also tend to see more social ills that undermine the integrity of that particular

00:11:51.900 religious, social subculture.

00:11:53.440 So the moment you lean into this at all, intergenerationally, what will happen to your group as a cultural

00:12:00.340 strategy is you will essentially be wiped out by the most extreme Luddites.

00:12:05.240 And I don't mean Luddites as like a derogatory term.

00:12:07.600 I mean Luddites as people who disengage with technology.

00:12:11.080 You would have heard it as like the most air-gapped subcultures.

00:12:15.180 Yeah, the most air-gapped subcultures.

00:12:16.860 And it is because on a pretty linear, or I'd almost say logarithmic level from what I've seen

00:12:22.540 in the data, the more iterations of your tradition disengaged with technology, the higher their

00:12:27.840 fertility rate will be. 0.51

00:12:28.820 So as soon as you lean into this as a strategy, the iterations of your culture that go all the

00:12:33.160 way with it are the ones that will be represented in the future.

00:12:36.120 And so then there's other groups that don't lean into this strategy at all.

00:12:39.740 Like our group, you know, we might even lean in the other direction with this.

00:12:44.620 And these are the groups that are going to really determine where our species is going.

00:12:50.820 And this is where techno-feudalism comes from, because these groups will be far and in between

00:12:55.680 on the world stage.

00:12:57.580 So we talk about the concept of like a network state, right?

00:13:00.660 Like the, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the concept of it.

00:13:02.940 Do you want to go into it, Simone?

00:13:03.740 Sure.

00:13:05.700 A network state is basically a fully digital community that may use similar currency, have

00:13:11.880 similar social mores or similar regulation, but there is no particular geographic concentration

00:13:18.160 of where they're going to be.

00:13:19.380 There may be like geographic correlation.

00:13:22.240 Yeah.

00:13:22.420 Simone, you had talked to me in one of your books about like time zone based.

00:13:26.620 Yeah.

00:13:27.180 Cory Doctorow wrote a book called Eastern Standard Tribe a while ago that I think somewhat predicted

00:13:32.260 the way that communities are going to sort out.

00:13:34.760 And it sort of, it talked about a near future in which social groups correlated more by the

00:13:39.280 type of time zone that you kept, because that's when people were online at the same time you

00:13:43.980 were, and that's when you were all hanging out.

00:13:45.780 And that's obviously where the title comes from.

00:13:47.920 So network states remind me a lot of that kind of community rather than what we're really

00:13:52.500 describing, which has a strong geographical basis.

00:13:55.600 So what we would call, what we're describing is a network empire.

00:13:58.840 We actually went over a few names here and we're like, well, it's not really top down.

00:14:02.140 And I'm like, so it's more like the Holy Roman empire, but unlike the Holy Roman empire,

00:14:06.000 for people familiar with your history, the Holy Roman empire was a German empire made

00:14:11.260 up of a bunch of like feudal players that were often largely under the rule of a single

00:14:16.740 individual, but on the outskirts, they weren't.

00:14:19.180 So like 80% would basically be under a hierarchical rule and 20% wouldn't be.

00:14:23.360 What we suspect the network empire to look like is it's going to be about 10 to 15%, maybe

00:14:29.680 even as high as 25% under a single rule, but most of it will be independently ruled.

00:14:34.660 So it'll be much more like a fractured sort of Holy Roman empire.

00:14:38.120 You can think of it.

00:14:39.400 And what makes it a network empire instead of a network state.

00:14:43.780 And I think the core thing that Balaji, when he came up with this concept and missed is the

00:14:49.380 insecurity of a future world when we're dealing with wide-scale economic collapse.

00:14:54.300 By the way, if you're wondering why we're so certain there's going to be wide-scale economic

00:14:57.600 collapse, you can look at any of the videos where we talk about what falling population

00:15:02.000 means for the world economy.

00:15:03.620 If we enter a stage in which the world's economy is shrinking on average, we are entering a

00:15:09.620 stage in which most Western economies begin to collapse.

00:15:14.040 Alternatively, if we enter a stage in which the world's economy is continuing to grow, but

00:15:19.360 it's continuing to grow almost solely because of AI, then we enter a stage in which the bourgeoisie 0.87

00:15:24.500 officially no longer need the proletariat.

00:15:26.740 That chain has finally been cut.

00:15:29.400 And everyone under maybe like a standard deviation or two standard deviations from the mean in

00:15:35.380 terms of IQ or who doesn't have connections is going to be frozen out of the economic system

00:15:40.460 because people just don't need them.

00:15:42.480 And they're like, no, they'll be nice.

00:15:44.160 When have they ever been nice?

00:15:46.180 Like historically, when have ever the powerful been nice to people unless it was in their best

00:15:51.400 interest?

00:15:51.700 And then you'll be like, oh, well, the people will rebel.

00:15:54.340 And it's like, yes, there are, for example, wealthy people in South Africa.

00:15:57.900 They just buy better security.

00:16:00.260 OK, they just build better fortresses for themselves.

00:16:04.520 That is the world that we are heading into where it is cheaper for the wealthy class in

00:16:09.640 our society to isolate themselves from everyone else than it is for them to ensure widespread 0.99

00:16:15.940 prosperity.

00:16:16.700 So either AI is great, it ends up solving the economic problem, the rich end up getting

00:16:22.600 even richer, but we still end up with this wide scale systems collapse, or we end up in

00:16:28.820 a situation.

00:16:29.560 It may not happen in a few countries.

00:16:31.080 Like there may be a few countries like Sweden or Norway or something that through their like

00:16:34.820 national sovereign fund find a way out of this.

00:16:37.180 Right.

00:16:37.940 Fine.

00:16:38.580 It's going to happen in a lot of places, although it will probably happen to them due to,

00:16:43.240 well, we don't need to get into that.

00:16:45.820 But anyway, or we're just dealing with a global economic collapse because it turns out that

00:16:51.100 AI doesn't replace the fact that populations are collapsing and we end up with a shrinking

00:16:54.540 world economy.

00:16:55.700 And due to all the debt and leverage that we've taken out at every layer of the economy, things

00:16:58.580 begin to fall apart.

00:16:59.440 Again, we've talked about this in other places.

00:17:01.220 So anyway, this is just likely going to be what happens is wide scale economic collapse.

00:17:05.920 And this is what it looks like.

00:17:07.240 Now, the reason why it matters so much that the winning strategies are these technophobic strategies

00:17:12.320 and the reason why Balaji's predictions aren't going to turn out the way he thought they

00:17:17.660 would is in a world in which security is a thing of scarcity, it makes sense for economically

00:17:25.400 productive groups to cloister together.

00:17:28.520 Like just a lot of sense.

00:17:30.380 Like if you're an economically productive group, you hang out with other economically

00:17:33.580 productive people, both for your kids and family safety and for cultural reasons and for

00:17:39.200 the purposes of more economic production, because you're going to be more economically

00:17:42.800 productive as a group.

00:17:45.460 And so this will lead to small what we call havens, essentially communities where high

00:17:52.280 technology is produced, but that are otherwise defended, that likely have their own power generation

00:17:57.700 and everything like that, networked with other havens that exist around the world.

00:18:03.900 And that is what we mean by the network empire.

00:18:06.600 Each of these havens represents a city-state in sort of this network lattice of empire.

00:18:12.660 And that is where we think things are going.

00:18:15.820 We do not think it is a great thing that things are headed in that direction.

00:18:19.420 We think it will be a, during the period, this is happening, a darker world than the world

00:18:24.420 we live in today.

00:18:25.140 But I do think that from this networked connection of havens, we can rebuild a better civilization

00:18:31.460 and one that is not likely to collapse in this cycle of civilizational rise and civilizational

00:18:36.220 collapse.

00:18:36.680 We just need to go into building the next one very intentionally, using the lessons we

00:18:42.120 have learned from this one, which is-

00:18:43.680 Well, it's very much carrying the torch of free markets through what could otherwise be

00:18:48.460 described as a dark age, because you have these different techno feuds and fiefdoms, essentially,

00:18:54.800 carrying forward different economic specializations, but in a way that's far more sophisticated

00:18:59.760 thanks to the existing technology into which we're entering this age.

00:19:04.120 So we're able to sort of carry the torch of what we have.

00:19:06.800 And then everyone is still able to accelerate, I think, a lot of development, maybe even in

00:19:12.180 ways that we haven't been able to in the past, because in a post-collapse world like this,

00:19:16.520 regulatory oversight is going to ease up a little bit.

00:19:20.880 There just won't be governmental resources sufficient to police people, which could actually

00:19:26.640 lead to a sort of weird dark age plus renaissance at the same time.

00:19:30.840 So it's a dark age everywhere you look, but when you go behind some highly fortified walls,

00:19:35.680 you see some amazing innovation taking place.

00:19:38.760 And that's why we're both doomy, but also optimistic.

00:19:44.980 You can be both at the same time.

00:19:46.380 It's a weird mix of doominess and optimism.

00:19:48.200 I would also say that this prediction better explains why we are so interested in far north

00:19:54.000 charter city settlements.

00:19:55.540 So people have heard our ideas around charter cities before, and one of the queries that

00:19:59.540 it is in an inhospitable, easy to defend region, not adjacent to other population settlements.

00:20:05.260 Yeah, you don't want to be where everyone like raids to get supplies or agricultural land

00:20:09.940 or something like that, you know.

00:20:11.280 Right, yeah.

00:20:11.960 If you build like a high technology settlement in the center of an area that has a large population,

00:20:17.940 that means large, well-armed gangs or governments that want what you have, which is technology

00:20:24.000 or wealth.

00:20:25.860 Alternatively, if you have one that is in the far north somewhere that a group would have

00:20:30.060 to travel a very hard time to both get to and get out of, especially one that was known

00:20:35.940 for extreme austerity outside of their technology, there would be no reason to ever raid it.

00:20:41.300 I mean, what are they going to get are axiotal tanks, as we were joking about with Razib.

00:20:45.900 They're unusable by most other cultural groups.

00:20:49.220 So that's another reason why it makes sense to, and some people will go the other route.

00:20:55.180 Some wealthy people will create sort of opulent gated areas where they try to let in only

00:21:02.360 the best and the brightest by their definition.

00:21:04.940 And these communities will, I think, flourish for a short time until people realize how unsafe

00:21:13.760 they are in terms of a long-term place to base yourself if you want anything other than

00:21:19.080 short-term hedonism and vanity, because they are incredibly difficult to fit.

00:21:24.240 And this is especially true of islands.

00:21:26.280 Islands, you know, growing up before they lost everything, my family had an island in the

00:21:31.460 Bahamas that I would go to all the time.

00:21:33.020 And, you know, now when I go back to it, it's all shot out by pirates and stuff like

00:21:35.780 that.

00:21:35.960 And even when we were there, you know, we had to have guns and everything for pirates.

00:21:38.680 It was creepy.

00:21:40.120 It was really creepy to see.

00:21:42.120 Yeah.

00:21:42.520 Yeah.

00:21:42.820 So, I mean, people do not realize islands are about the least defendable thing you could

00:21:47.200 possibly have.

00:21:48.400 Yeah.

00:21:49.160 Well, and it's not just that.

00:21:50.920 It's the extreme weather, you know, it's climate change.

00:21:54.300 And we've spoken with people who are like, yeah, I'm going to build my, you know, city

00:21:58.160 state on an island.

00:21:58.980 And we're like, I don't know, like, what are you going to do about hurricanes?

00:22:00.940 And like, oh, we're just going to like raise everything on platforms.

00:22:04.760 And it's like, well, okay, what about the electricity?

00:22:07.800 That does not work.

00:22:08.920 You are, these are people who have, who are thinking very short term.

00:22:13.020 They're like, how are they?

00:22:13.680 They haven't spent a lot of time.

00:22:14.900 They haven't like spent a full year or a couple of years in the Caribbean, I'm guessing.

00:22:19.520 Oh my God.

00:22:20.000 And I can tell you another thing about islands.

00:22:21.580 They are not a good place to do anything technological because everything corrodes.

00:22:25.340 You can't even have like a desktop PC for more than a couple of years.

00:22:29.260 Yeah, seriously.

00:22:29.820 Like all the electronics.

00:22:31.140 Well, and not to mention like all your other supplies.

00:22:33.640 If we're talking about also a post-collapse world in which like, you know, getting more

00:22:38.240 towels is a little tough, right?

00:22:40.540 Like, you know, even we.

00:22:42.400 Your clothes, your towel, everything.

00:22:43.900 Yeah.

00:22:44.020 When we lived in Peru, like right, right on the coast, which is kind of like any island

00:22:47.980 environment would be constantly, everything was covered in mold.

00:22:51.100 Everything was degrading.

00:22:52.060 All of our electronics were breaking down.

00:22:53.680 So like, imagine this, like it's a post-collapse world.

00:22:56.520 You can't easily get electronics, supplies, like clothing, fabrics, et cetera.

00:23:00.860 And then it's just everything like you're making the lifespan of all of your supplies

00:23:06.600 artificially, you know, unnecessarily short.

00:23:09.520 It is bonkers.

00:23:11.180 But alternatively, if you are in the far North, everything is artificially links in its

00:23:16.420 lifetime, which is, and you can do sorts of processing that may not be possible in other

00:23:22.220 areas due to the cooling resources.

00:23:24.140 Like, it's just so obviously the right choice if you are optimizing for literally anything

00:23:29.140 other than immediate personal comfort.

00:23:31.640 And what, honestly, what a lot of network states right now are optimizing for without

00:23:35.240 really admitting they're optimizing for is areas with a high level of government instability

00:23:39.340 because that's where they're able to make the deals.

00:23:41.680 And typically far North governments or far South governments are the most stable governments

00:23:46.360 and the governments in warmer regions are the less stable governments.

00:23:50.280 And again, why unstable governments?

00:23:52.460 You know, yeah, they're going to say yeah now, but they're totally not going to say yes

00:23:55.380 later.

00:23:55.700 You know, they'd be taken over by some other group.

00:23:57.380 Anyway, just those are.

00:23:58.280 You're actually better off setting up an illegal settlement in the area of a stable government 0.99

00:24:02.520 where you can predict their actions than setting up a legal settlement in an unstable

00:24:06.600 government area.

00:24:07.660 Yeah.

00:24:07.840 But anyway, I'm very excited to go further into this vision for the future.

00:24:13.220 And I think the next of these episodes, it'll be a bit of a two-parter, but also a bit

00:24:17.300 separated.

00:24:18.060 And Simone, I love talking with you about this.

00:24:20.000 Do you have any final thoughts?

00:24:21.340 I love your beautiful face.

00:24:23.720 That's all.

00:24:24.320 That's a sweet thing to say.

00:24:25.740 I love your beautiful face too.

00:24:27.600 We were on just pearly things recently and we were being sweet on each other.

00:24:32.340 And I think we made everyone deeply uncomfortable because this is not, you know.

00:24:35.380 Yeah, the guy was like, should I not be in between you?

00:24:37.680 Because they sat this guy in between us.

00:24:39.420 They're like, we're choosing where everyone sits.

00:24:41.280 So more, if you're wondering why we sat apart on just pearly things, that was because we

00:24:45.140 were directed to by the producer.

00:24:47.060 Yeah, we wanted to sit together.

00:24:48.280 Not because we wanted to.

00:24:49.080 Yeah.

00:24:51.720 Love you, gorgeous.

00:24:52.980 I love you too.

Based Camp - November 08, 2023

Techno-Feudalism & the Post-Collapse Network Empire

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