Based Camp - Will New City-States Replace Nations？

00:00:00.000 Hello! So we're going to get a very special episode today, which can almost be thought of as a lost interview,

00:00:07.000 because it was one of the early interviews we did, but it was in a very different format than our other episodes,

00:00:13.000 and so we didn't want to release it until we had a bit more of a following.

00:00:17.000 It was with Patrick Friedman who runs Pronos Capital, the first venture capital fund that focuses on charter cities and network states.

00:00:26.000 So when people are trying to start new countries, this is the main funder of that.

00:00:31.000 And Patrick Friedman, who we've known for a very long time since Silicon Valley,

00:00:36.000 is the guy who would have been at the center of the seasteading movement when that was really growing.

00:00:43.000 He coded at Google for 10 years, runs a small angel fund since 2011, has degrees in CS and business,

00:00:49.000 and has been a leader in the competitive governance scene for over 20 years.

00:00:53.000 Yeah, leader is understatement there. He was basically, he's the, was the early charter city guy when most of the charter city movement was seasteading,

00:01:02.000 which was this idea that people would go live on sort of floating boats that would be made up of autonomous components

00:01:08.000 that could like break apart and recombine.

00:01:10.000 So like, even your house, you could easily leave one government system and go to another government system very easily.

00:01:16.000 So, some other stuff here I have.

00:01:18.000 2001, began thinking about a new approach to upgrading governments as a side hustle.

00:01:22.000 2008, started the Seasteading Institute with funding for Peter Thiel.

00:01:25.000 2009, co-created Ephemerates, a self-organizing festival on water still running annually.

00:01:32.000 So for Ephemerates, this is another thing.

00:01:34.000 So this is actually a really important event within Silicon Valley culture,

00:01:37.000 which was seen as sort of like the rationalist slash less wrong version of Burning Man,

00:01:43.000 but it was done on boats, which honestly seems much more appealing to me.

00:01:47.000 2011, co-founded Future Cities Development, which have had the first MOU for a modern charter city in 2012.

00:01:56.000 In 2018, started Pronomos Capital.

00:01:59.000 Patrick has board memberships and advisory positions across the charter city network state space.

00:02:05.000 He does talks, interviews and events regularly around the world.

00:02:08.000 Very excited to bring this lots of bit of content for you.

00:02:12.000 And we have a few other interviews we might be able to put out this way.

00:02:16.000 So very excited about that.

00:02:19.000 Would you like to know more?

00:02:21.000 Hello, Simone. It's wonderful to be here with you today.

00:02:24.000 And Patrick Friedman, Patrick Friedman.

00:02:27.000 He is and has been for a long time known as one of the most preeminent thinkers of what future cities may look like,

00:02:36.000 what future society may look like.

00:02:38.000 And given that we've been talking so much about the future of the world economy

00:02:42.000 and the future of what human civilization may look like in ways that are very orthogonal

00:02:47.000 to the way people think about civilization today, we are so excited to have him on.

00:02:52.000 I would love you to give a bit more of your background if you think any is necessary.

00:02:55.000 And the first question I will prompt you is, is, has any of your thinking around what future human cities may look like

00:03:04.000 changed with the rapid development of AI and the movement of AI into the public sphere?

00:03:10.000 Or had you, were you such a forward thinking you already accounted for all of this?

00:03:14.000 Well, nobody can know the timing of something like AI, but I think of it as being like somewhat orthogonal.

00:03:22.000 Like I have serious concerns about AI risk, but like, that's not my path, right?

00:03:27.000 I have my part of the world order that I try to make better.

00:03:30.000 And I think, yeah, I think it's like really hard to predict what AI will do, but definitely now is the time when it's starting to do something.

00:03:39.000 So we'll find out.

00:03:41.000 Okay. So when you think about how cities are going to change, what is your sort of go to talking points right now?

00:03:46.000 Well, so I'm, I'm interested in new city states, kind of my life's mission to make it so that we can start new countries, like we start companies today.

00:03:55.000 And at this kind of halfway point, after 20 some years of working on it, what it looks like is what are called charter cities.

00:04:03.000 Charter cities have regulatory authority over some parts of the law while being under a country's sovereignty.

00:04:10.000 And so I'm very interested in the way that, that cities using new governance systems can be a way to kind of upgrade a country, right?

00:04:19.000 Because the alternative, a lot of countries have old laws, maybe like relics of some mishmash of like pre-colonialism, colonialism, post-colonialism.

00:04:30.000 Often the courts aren't great, but it's really hard to reform a whole country at once, right?

00:04:35.000 I mean, you can't make huge changes, the legal system of whole country at once, and you shouldn't, right?

00:04:40.000 You shouldn't change it on top of a bunch of people.

00:04:43.000 But what this has meant so far is like very little innovation in government.

00:04:48.000 No like sandboxes, as we say in software engineering, no ways to test out new things.

00:04:53.000 And that's what's really missing.

00:04:55.000 And the genius of the charter city idea is it says, hey, wait, if we start with empty land and then put a significantly different legal system there and people are opting into it, now we can make much bigger changes and test things out.

00:05:09.000 And also it's a way of kind of creating a bubble with like a different culture and having people like opt in and acculturate it in time.

00:05:20.000 So that's really different about it.

00:05:22.000 I think that definitely the city state, I mean, look, the best run country in the world right now is Singapore, which is a city state.

00:05:29.000 It seems like cities are like kind of like big enough to matter and potentially be independent while like small enough to be responsive to their citizens or customers.

00:05:39.000 As I like to say, one of my main generative metaphors is looking at governments like businesses and thinking about the governing industry.

00:05:47.000 That's all the countries in the world.

00:05:49.000 And citizens are customers who pay taxes and other fees and get some package of governance services and are kind of like shopping for the place that gives them the best deal.

00:06:00.000 Yeah, one of the things I love about what you're saying, and it's something that we often bring up is really government hasn't been experimented with that much in a long time, like there haven't been major innovations.

00:06:10.000 And the last big one was when America was formed.

00:06:13.000 And the reason you had that innovation is because right before that period, you basically had a flourishing of city states, which were the American colonies, combining European governments with Native American governments, which had evolved down completely different trajectories.

00:06:28.000 And since then, we haven't had isolated scenarios where people could in lower risk environments experiment with totally new governance structures, which it sounds like is what you're trying to enable.

00:06:40.000 As you enable that, what are some of the new governance ideas you find most interesting?

00:06:45.000 Yeah, I definitely agree that the industry standard right now, the best practice is constitutional representative democracy.

00:06:53.000 But as you say, that's 1787.

00:06:57.000 I think it was also I mean, it being a frontier was important.

00:07:00.000 Also, the philosophical flourishing around that time around freedom and equality was very much rooted in the Enlightenment.

00:07:07.000 And I think a lot of people don't know that the Europeans, they considered America crazy.

00:07:13.000 Like they seriously were like, this is insane.

00:07:16.000 Like this, like this democracy, like it's insane and it's never going to work.

00:07:21.000 The American experiment, they called it.

00:07:23.000 So it was radical at the time.

00:07:25.000 Now it's the industry standard, but it's gotten it's gotten really out of date.

00:07:28.000 And there's some people who just kind of assume that the status quo is the best that there is and only think about small changes.

00:07:34.000 But like, come on, we've learned so much about science, about mechanism design.

00:07:38.000 We have all of this new technology like there is no way that the optimal form of government is still exactly the same as it was 200 plus years ago.

00:07:46.000 It's funny you ask about what forms I actually these days kind of like I don't like to answer that question or hold strong opinions, because for me, I got into this because there wasn't a country that was values aligned and run well.

00:08:02.000 Right. Those two things.

00:08:03.000 There are almost none run well, none that were values aligned with me as a libertarian.

00:08:07.000 And so I was like, what's going on?

00:08:09.000 Why is this?

00:08:10.000 And like and and and how can I fix it?

00:08:13.000 Yeah. And so that kind of like sucked and I wanted to investigate it.

00:08:17.000 But what I realized along the way is like, hey, what is the reason that there's not a country for any niche group is that we don't have ways to start new countries for smaller groups of people.

00:08:28.000 And that what I needed to do to get what I wanted was to figure out a way to unlock the creation of new jurisdictions in the world.

00:08:37.000 And then I realized, like, wait a second, like that's going to let lots of other people with their own idea of a good civilization, try it.

00:08:44.000 And as far as the approach to like actually engineering a good society, like some people like think that if you agree on morals, you can like create a legal system.

00:08:53.000 That's just it's not true. We have a whole field of law and economics that like there's no way it's in the same way that like I could write on a piece of paper like, yo, I want a car that goes zero to 60 in one point one seconds.

00:09:05.000 It gets infinity miles to the gallon and nobody ever dies in a crash. Like a specification is not an engineering plan and the same way for government.

00:09:13.000 And so I realized that the thing I needed to do to have what I want would actually work, even if I'm wrong about what makes a good society and even if I'm wrong about how to build it.

00:09:24.000 And so for, I don't know, maybe 18 years or so since coming up with kind of those theories, my focus is how can I unlock it so that groups of people can start new jurisdictions?

00:09:35.380 I'm trying to create a startup sector, right, to unlock competition and innovation.

00:09:41.320 And it's not it's not it's not on me to say what those systems are.

00:09:45.700 I mean, I'd be interested in seeing some variant of the terribly named anarcho-capitalism, the system my dad was kind of a co-inventor of, try it out.

00:09:54.620 But that's that's just sort of a personal thing.

00:09:58.080 In general, the one thing, the one criteria that I that I care about for all of these is is exit.

00:10:05.060 And the reason is that if you know that people can freely leave, then you kind of don't have to worry about anything else.

00:10:19.300 Not not quite exactly.

00:10:20.880 But in terms of what are the internal laws?

00:10:23.300 Is it what I think is right and wrong?

00:10:24.820 All of that stuff.

00:10:26.120 If you let people freely choose it, maybe there's like maybe there's the option to have like death matches.

00:10:32.160 Right. And like just go at each other with chainsaws or cars or whatever.

00:10:36.640 And like people do it because like the money they get paid is going to make a huge difference to their family and like elevate them.

00:10:43.140 Whatever. Like not my problem.

00:10:45.500 Right. What matters is that people can choose it.

00:10:47.360 So a place where like people weren't allowed to visit, media wasn't allowed to visit, family wasn't allowed to visit or where people couldn't leave.

00:10:56.800 That I would consider not OK and support intervention.

00:11:01.360 And obviously, like there's corner cases. Right.

00:11:04.440 Like you don't want to allow probably allow zero jail time. Right.

00:11:08.080 What if somebody like runs up debts?

00:11:09.940 Like I'm not saying anybody needs to be able to quit on a moment's notice, but I would want to keep things like that indentured servitude, like anything that prevents people leaving.

00:11:18.740 If someone wants to indentured servitude for five years and they've like gotten to see what things are like, fine.

00:11:24.400 But like 20 years, like no.

00:11:26.920 Yeah. I one thing I wanted to add color on that you were saying that I think is a point that a lot of people miss about the sort of default system of government.

00:11:34.580 We use today, which is typically a copy of the American model is that the American model isn't even really a working model.

00:11:40.680 It's a model that collapsed into a stable state, but it's not working the way it was intended to work.

00:11:46.140 Like early on, it was created to like prevent a party system and stuff like that.

00:11:49.820 And it's more just like, well, it doesn't completely collapse and it's better than the last system, but there is just so much room for improvement, which is what I love about what you're doing here.

00:11:59.120 Another area that I wanted to, before we get into free moving stuff, because I really want to get into that.

00:12:04.580 I think that's interesting, but just at the beginning of the pronatal stuff, we'll get more into it later.

00:12:09.500 But I think a lot of people would hear what he's saying and they're like, why would a government cede control for one of these charter cities?

00:12:16.080 And I want to get to your thoughts on this, but one thing that we've seen within our government work is a lot of governments, when they're talking about their rural areas.

00:12:23.920 So if you're talking about a government with like a lot of small islands and stuff like that, beautiful, idyllic places, they have this fear of like these places they're depopulating.

00:12:32.860 Because people, you have this massive urbanization.

00:12:35.780 And so they are willing to try radical things to try to bring vitality back into some of their areas.

00:12:42.620 I'm wondering what motivations you have seen.

00:12:45.700 I'm kind of on the other side of that, in the sense that like, yay, urbanization.

00:12:50.760 If people need to move anyway, if new cities need to be built anyway, then they can have regulatory autonomy.

00:12:56.720 I think I would just worry like if there are strong, like, look, there are really strong economic forces pushing the world to urbanize.

00:13:05.580 And I would just be really wary about trying to fight that kind of uphill battle.

00:13:10.400 I mean, if there's innovative regulations that will help, sure.

00:13:14.240 But like, I'm trying to fight the downhill battle of like, if you bring in the current best practices, then that is going to be a huge boost to the city, right?

00:13:24.040 I believe that like effective governance, honest courts that act quickly, best practice laws, that just boosts everything about a city and like makes the growth run downhill.

00:13:35.220 So this is a really interesting question then to me.

00:13:38.040 How do you make that argument to an existing country?

00:13:40.560 Because my concern would be if I was coming to a country and I was saying, loosen the regulations and make one of your existing cities, one of your existing wealth centers, have looser regulations.

00:13:51.800 No, no, no, no.

00:13:52.560 I don't change laws on top of people.

00:13:54.380 That's wrong.

00:13:54.900 Like maybe in the future, if there's a system that's really proven, that's gone for a while and a group of people has some really, they vote like 90% to adopt it, like, okay.

00:14:05.960 But for now, no, it needs to be opt-in.

00:14:08.800 So it's about creating land that new cities can be built on, sort of.

00:14:13.340 Why would you?

00:14:14.200 We got a world full of land, dude.

00:14:16.300 There's lots of it.

00:14:17.520 That's what I'm asking where I'm having trouble.

00:14:19.180 It's about building a new city on empty land and for the government, generally it's, the motivation is just straightforwardly economic to get foreign direct investment, to create jobs and to increase income.

00:14:33.700 Like that's the main thing.

00:14:35.160 There are, sometimes countries are interested in the sandbox aspect or even the fact that it's kind of, that it's kind of new and cool, but in the vast majority, it's, it's economic development.

00:14:48.260 Economic development.

00:14:49.440 Okay.

00:14:49.740 That, that's fascinating.

00:14:50.600 So this is where I want to prime you with our thoughts on this and hear what you, where you think things are going.

00:14:55.980 So one of the things that we often focus on is in the developed world or most of the developed world and it, it's not, it's not just a developed world.

00:15:01.960 It's also the developing world.

00:15:03.200 So you have a fertility collapse.

00:15:05.140 And when I say most of the developing world, as of 2019, by the UN's own statistics, all of Central America, South America, and the Caribbean collectively fell below repopulation rate.

00:15:13.400 And we live in an economy that requires constant, that was built on the assumption of constant growth.

00:15:20.600 And there's a lot of stuff that we can get into in this, in other podcasts, like debt instruments that require constant growth or social security systems that require constant growth or marketplaces that require constant growth.

00:15:31.420 But as the world begins to enter a state where, and we had an economy that grew on average over the past 300 years, because the number of workers was growing exponentially and the productivity per worker was growing linearly.

00:15:44.520 If we begin to see the number of workers declining exponentially, we're going to start to see economies decline on average, the world economy decline on average, which means we're entering a very interesting economic time where the only safe places to invest will be the places with technophilic populations that have high fertility rates.

00:16:07.720 Nigeria, woo! 0.99

00:16:09.700 Right?

00:16:10.840 Exactly.

00:16:11.840 Yeah, none of the countries have figured this out yet.

00:16:13.800 But what are your thoughts?

00:16:15.620 What is this work for the cities you can do in economics?

00:16:22.500 Sorry, Malcolm.

00:16:23.880 We have to, did you see him pixelate?

00:16:25.800 Yeah.

00:16:26.360 Yeah, Malcolm, you have to.

00:16:27.840 We'll just focus on the first question.

00:16:29.400 The second question I'll ask later is how does this relate to freedom of movement at an intergenerational and cultural level?

00:16:34.360 But we'll ask that separately.

00:16:35.960 So here's where we're starting.

00:16:38.500 So I'm totally with you.

00:16:40.740 I'm 100% with you on the fertility collapse and the problems.

00:16:43.640 Maybe the only thing I'm not sure I agree with is whether GDP will go down.

00:16:49.040 Certainly, I don't think per capita GDP will go down.

00:16:51.720 And I suppose it's a question for like total GDP of productivity increases versus population decline.

00:16:57.540 But I agree.

00:16:58.140 I'm like super worried about it.

00:16:59.740 I think it's a huge, huge problem, like a ticking time bomb.

00:17:04.740 And I think what a lot of people don't understand, because most people just have zero-sum thinking intuitively, right?

00:17:11.500 Positive sum, just positive sum is a much, much more evolutionary novel thing.

00:17:16.300 So, of course, we're like less adapted to think about it.

00:17:18.940 And for population, people think about the fact that more people means we're sharing more fixed resources.

00:17:24.660 But the thing is, very, very little of our economy consists of fixed resources.

00:17:29.460 Almost none of it does.

00:17:30.420 And the vast majority of humans are able to create more than they consume and that they're actually like kind of economies of scale or benefits in a large population.

00:17:40.400 I'll give two.

00:17:41.060 First is evolution actually happens faster.

00:17:43.860 Most people don't get this, but twice as many people means twice as many mutations, means double the chance of finding beneficial mutations.

00:17:50.440 So, a larger population actually speeds up evolution, which is super interesting.

00:17:54.200 It's one reason that we've adapted as much to agriculture as we have, even though we're not totally adapted.

00:17:59.660 And the other thing is ideas.

00:18:02.080 Like most of the economy consists of ideas.

00:18:04.860 Twice as many people is twice as many ideas.

00:18:07.120 And ideas are basically free to replicate.

00:18:11.000 One person thinks them and everybody benefits from them.

00:18:13.720 And so, like more population is good.

00:18:17.420 And then in terms of like meaning like more resources to throw at the huge problems like settling other planets so that we're like less vulnerable to a certain set of natural disasters also benefits as well.

00:18:31.280 And so, yeah.

00:18:32.840 And the fact that like all the existing systems are based on like a different demographic pyramid and they're all going to break.

00:18:39.440 Like I got to say, I got mixed feelings about that.

00:18:42.200 Like maybe they should break.

00:18:44.320 And like that's what the math says.

00:18:46.400 So, yeah, I really worry about this fertility stuff.

00:18:50.760 Yeah, what I'd love you to pontificate on further is when I look around the world, the countries that seem to have this fixed the most are countries with a ethnically and culturally diverse population, but with a population that has a strong sense of cultural identity.

00:19:09.000 So, the most clear example here would be Israel, whereas the counter example would be countries with an ethnically and culturally homogenous population like Korea, which typically have the lowest fertility rates.

00:19:21.480 So, one, I think charter cities naturally lend themselves to diverse populations, but how do you create the sense of identity or do you even think that's necessary to maintain a high fertility rate?

00:19:35.160 And how do you think about culture building as it relates to creating these new sorts of entities?

00:19:40.720 I mean, it's been a while since I've looked into this, but it's my impression that, you know, that a huge amount of the fertility rate relates to education, length of education, women getting educated.

00:19:57.180 And women as equal partners in society, which kind of sucks because what I want is a world where women have all of those things and we're making enough babies. 1.00

00:20:07.380 And so, that makes the solution tough.

00:20:09.440 And so, places like Africa and India are going to be like a massive percent of the world's population.

00:20:15.760 But like, is that going to last most likely with the pattern we've seen as they move up the income ladder and become more like westernized or when it's the whole world, it's more just like developed that their fertility rates will probably plummet too.

00:20:32.280 In terms of like charter cities, I think that there's some countries that have tried pro natalist policies, that there's various things that you can do and having more jurisdictional experimentation means that more different groups are trying more different things, whether it's different laws or policies, whether it's a different culture, right, or building communities differently, right?

00:20:56.140 Like, I mean, come on, like the suburban America thing or the urban dangerous America thing, right?

00:21:02.220 Like, the best way to run to like raise kids is for them to be able to like run around and play with other kids.

00:21:08.600 And that makes it easier for the parents.

00:21:10.160 Like, we're doing it all wrong as in like Brian Kaplan's book.

00:21:13.240 But I think there's a lot of things that communities can experiment with.

00:21:16.140 I mean, I'm moving to Austin imminently and I'm talking to various people who have communities where they live in proximity to decide where to live.

00:21:26.140 Well, that's really interesting.

00:21:28.940 Can I ask a question?

00:21:30.420 Please.

00:21:31.240 Yeah.

00:21:31.560 So, I mean, I'll say I personally struggle with the idea of city-states or charter cities because we constantly see people complain about wanting to start or have communities or like live somewhere where it's really cool.

00:21:45.440 But then very few people are willing to move or they want to go to where everyone already is.

00:21:50.960 And it's really hard to get that critical mass.

00:21:53.300 Yeah.

00:21:53.360 And it's interesting you see cities like Austin start to form because that's where everyone already is.

00:21:58.760 I don't know of any example where someone has seeded that.

00:22:01.540 Like, Austin was already like the cool city of Texas.

00:22:04.780 And there were a bunch of sort of tax incentives that got all the tech people to go to Austin because it was like the one okay city, like from a sort of progressive standpoint in a tax-advantaged state.

00:22:16.460 New city, red state.

00:22:17.700 That's the formula.

00:22:18.580 Yeah, right.

00:22:19.920 And so, I mean, I get that charter cities could possibly gain that formula and that other cities have done that as like tax havens internationally.

00:22:26.580 But in the end, I feel like I get this impression that people are more living in like tech-based spheres where like there isn't necessarily a one city where they go to.

00:22:38.080 But it's like sort of social graphs that tend to be governed by the same social laws and work in the same like investment spheres and kind of live off their own floating economies.

00:22:48.320 But they're like cloud economies.

00:22:49.720 They're not anchored to any place.

00:22:51.500 And the only way that, to me, I feel like a charter city would really pick up or get off the ground is for an industry, like let's say with reprotech.

00:23:01.380 We're talking about, well, it kind of sucks that you can't have like really high levels of education and female workforce participation. 1.00

00:23:08.720 But if you had the uterine replicator. 0.93

00:23:12.280 Exactly.

00:23:12.920 And if you had like a charter city that was like built around.

00:23:17.480 Yeah, like genetically modify people to high heaven, like artificial wombs all the way, like zero ethics boards, like let her rip. 1.00

00:23:26.660 I do feel like some communities can build around that.

00:23:29.420 But I've never heard charter cities discussed as like tech hubs or is like regulatory free for all zones in a like really groundbreaking way.

00:23:40.960 Like maybe I'll be like, oh, yeah, well, like we'll be OK with crypto regulation.

00:23:44.080 Are there any examples of charter cities or plans for charter cities that are like really like violently different or even like like Thunderdome?

00:23:52.780 Like you were kind of describing like, yeah, we get a gladiatorial battles in a city.

00:23:56.280 I don't like that word violent.

00:23:57.120 I mean, look, there is one charter city, Honduras Prospera.

00:24:01.480 There is one.

00:24:02.140 Yeah.

00:24:02.440 Right.

00:24:02.760 And their and their legal system is English common law based, drawing from the best jurisdictions around the world.

00:24:10.960 I think they took Texas mortgage law and Delaware corporate law.

00:24:13.980 Right.

00:24:14.480 Put together.

00:24:15.580 But the way I see it is that what I'm in this for is for people to try radical new systems and find the next best thing eventually.

00:24:22.780 Right.

00:24:23.300 But product market fit today is just bringing best practices and honest, efficient courts to new places.

00:24:31.400 Right.

00:24:32.000 That's product market fit, not because there's not going to be experimentation, but because this stuff is brand new and we haven't kind of proven ourselves.

00:24:39.000 And I think like crypto is the place where the governance innovation is really happening right now because it's so much easier in the cloud.

00:24:46.500 And so I think that those tools and governance systems will be there to draw on when people want to want to create more radical things.

00:24:53.160 In terms of what you said about the population, yeah, we call that the cold start problem.

00:24:57.760 It's one of the top couple problems that any charter city startup faces.

00:25:04.980 Right.

00:25:05.420 Is people want to move where people are and how do you get them to move?

00:25:08.760 And we have a few answers.

00:25:10.160 So like biology is network state concept, or you can look at what Praxis is doing is the idea of recruiting a values aligned community online who get together in meetups and build social bonds with the intention of moving together.

00:25:26.660 Now, until one of these has happened, we won't really know, will those people move?

00:25:32.840 But I think if you get to the degree to which there are like compact social graphs, right, where people mainly have connections within a given set of people who can work remotely or are in the same industry.

00:25:48.980 I think the idea is, and it has to be a set of those people who would want to move someplace and live under a new regulatory system.

00:25:57.440 And that may sound like a lot, but we're talking about kind of like the entire population of the world, the entire like nomad population of the world to just find some of these connected graphs where it's like, hey, if this, if like the thousand people closest to me in the social graph, like all move someplace.

00:26:13.380 And look, we're not talking about like the middle of the ocean anymore, like Honduras Prospera is on Roatan, right, an island which has a bunch of tourist stuff and an airport.

00:26:23.660 Praxis is looking at some countries around the Mediterranean that have like lots of stuff going on.

00:26:28.560 So it's not just those thousand people.

00:26:30.740 But, you know, I think that we have a shot.

00:26:32.240 I mean, look at this Zuzulu thing that I just got back from a few weeks ago. 0.99

00:26:36.300 This was this pop-up village in Montenegro where 200 people rented out a whole resort for two months.

00:26:43.580 And then there was about 300 visitors that came through like me over the course of those two months.

00:26:48.820 Vitalik Buterin was one of the kind of main forces behind it.

00:26:52.680 And it was awesome.

00:26:54.360 People loved it.

00:26:55.680 Lots of people are like, how do I come next year?

00:26:57.840 So this was like a group of people into longevity and crypto and network states, new cities who all got together.

00:27:04.600 And I think that to me, what was so exciting about it was not just that it worked this one time for this one vertical, but there are a ton of different nomad verticals.

00:27:15.360 And there's no reason this couldn't work for all of them.

00:27:17.960 So just any vertical, again, where there's a pretty compact, like highly connected social graph, you can start doing these things and having people like get together in person for longer stretches of time and maybe have that location move over time.

00:27:32.700 And then as there's that in-person bonding, I think it's natural to open permanent sites.

00:27:39.200 Zuzulu is already thinking about this.

00:27:40.660 We had a bunch of conversations about what kind of jurisdictions to look at because one of their criteria is, and this works for Montenegro, is being someplace where the government is open to talking about changing regulations.

00:27:52.540 I mean, longevity regulations and the crypto regulations were presented to the head of state during Zuzulu, and they're looking at other countries like that for the future.

00:28:03.040 So I think that you could just do this, bond more and more, have this happen more each year, have it grow more, and then have permanent settlements.

00:28:10.620 And whether people float between them or stay in them, it's kind of up to the people.

00:28:13.940 So what are your thoughts on...

00:28:16.500 I can interrupt you here.

00:28:17.780 Just for your heads up, Simone, we were invited to Zuzulu, and with Praxis, the Collins Institute does have a contract with them to provide their education system.

00:28:28.200 So we've been very involved with a lot of this stuff, and I think it may look like we're just total outsiders to the space, but it is something we've been very interested in.

00:28:35.340 And the core thing that we were looking at was Praxis that I found really interesting, that I wanted to get your pontification on, is how do you build holidays?

00:28:44.900 How do you build culture for new city-states to create a sense of identity?

00:28:50.880 And what do good state holidays look like if you're creating them from scratch?

00:28:55.700 And do you think that they're necessary?

00:28:58.280 Yeah, I mean, I think, again, I'm very meta.

00:29:01.540 I've worked to find what I think is the highest point of leverage.

00:29:05.320 And so in terms of the design of a society for common culture and values, I don't get into the specifics of that.

00:29:13.560 But what I will say is our greatest bottleneck is founders.

00:29:18.560 I don't follow up on leads to countries anymore, because I have way more countries interested in talking than I have founders.

00:29:27.480 And it's been like that for a couple of years.

00:29:29.640 Things have really changed.

00:29:31.540 And so I often get asked, like, what do I look for in a founder?

00:29:34.920 And obviously, the first thing is all of the same things as everyone else.

00:29:38.060 But the second thing I used to say, some real estate experience.

00:29:41.580 And I totally changed my mind.

00:29:43.880 I think that was just wrong.

00:29:45.260 I think that that's something more of a commodity that can be hired.

00:29:48.660 My, like, one specific or first specific thing now is community building experience.

00:29:54.700 And then the last one is, like, connections with a given country or region or, like, really strong partnership building ability to create them.

00:30:03.940 Because a charter city is, like, a partnership with a single, like, key stakeholder.

00:30:09.580 But that community building side, like, that, that is a key skill that's needed.

00:30:13.880 Because these things, whether it's an online community or the first in-person community, they are small communities.

00:30:19.420 And so people who are good at that, what is the experience designed for a country?

00:30:24.060 Like, and who think about things like songs and holidays and things like that, I think is a really important part of this.

00:30:31.840 So Simone, what were you going to ask?

00:30:34.300 As a solution to the cold start problem, what are your thoughts on, like, Company Town 2.0?

00:30:40.320 Where a company like Google or Amazon or anyone with sufficient funds, who's also bringing in a lot of talent and possibly tax revenue,

00:30:49.020 don't approach as a nation or even a state in the United States and says, hey, allow us to create a city,

00:30:56.020 allow us to create our own laws or have these sorts of allowances and bring in people and own their housing and own their restaurants and everything.

00:31:04.540 A lot of people describe Company Towns as being very dystopian, but it also seems like it could be a quick solution to the cold start problem.

00:31:11.240 Do you feel like there are serious problems with it?

00:31:13.280 Well, I mean, first of all, it's good because it's more cyberpunk and the cyberpunk future is part of what I'm here for.

00:31:21.920 Yeah, sign me up.

00:31:23.220 I think it's great.

00:31:24.140 No, I think you're very on point.

00:31:26.180 I think it's a great solution to the cold start problem.

00:31:28.600 Again, like people need to be able to exit.

00:31:30.640 Like, I don't worry about a Company Town so much.

00:31:32.700 If it's Google engineers, right, like they're not going to, they're not going to like be in a situation where like they're getting charged more than they're getting paid in salary or any of that, like terrible crap that happened in Company Towns.

00:31:45.800 Right.

00:31:45.980 Like they'll just go to Facebook or whatever.

00:31:48.540 Yeah.

00:31:48.740 So I think it's great.

00:31:50.580 It's a great idea.

00:31:51.900 Yeah.

00:31:52.140 And we'll, and we'll just see whether they go for it.

00:31:54.540 There's a great story here.

00:31:55.800 I have to tell.

00:31:56.260 So WeWork at one point decided to try to create like a, their own building complex, right?

00:32:02.500 But it was like WeWork branded like live and work, right?

00:32:05.820 And they initially had planned to make it like a Company Town.

00:32:08.500 Like they were going to stock it with their own employees, but they were so disorganized that right before launch, they realized that they paid almost none of their employees enough to afford it.

00:32:18.100 So they ended up having to desperately find other people to fill it.

00:32:21.920 And I think that follows your point there where if you're doing a Company Town like this, make sure you're not building it for the CEO's salary.

00:32:30.780 You're building it for your employee's salary.

00:32:34.220 Yeah.

00:32:34.840 I mean, I think that effective organizations are just going to solve that automatically.

00:32:39.240 Like you only need like one competent project manager to make sure that doesn't happen.

00:32:44.560 But yeah, I mean, one way of generalizing, because I'm sorry, I'm relentlessly meta.

00:32:50.820 Actually, I'm not sorry that I'm relentlessly meta.

00:32:52.340 The Company Town idea is saying that like if you can get like a set of people who all have like shared economic activity and like shared culture such that socializing with each other is valuable and like an existing community.

00:33:09.780 Like this is what's what's different and like one it's like not happening yet.

00:33:14.460 Right.

00:33:15.060 Because these ideas are so new, but it's my opinion that not the first ones, but that the first really big charter cities that happen will be drawn from like large existing communities.

00:33:28.800 So, for example, I worked a little bit on a concept to make an e-sports city, right?

00:33:34.740 Like for gamers where it's like you have like a huge e-sports stadium where you might see your favorite streamer having coffee or a restaurant where people would move to.

00:33:44.980 From my investment perspective, I was mainly stuck on I just didn't see any like regulatory things.

00:33:50.900 I was like, well, maybe legalization of betting on them or something, but there's not really regulations needed.

00:33:56.060 But, you know, even though governance change is my focus, like the broader state space of these new communities, what I call sovereign communities, is it can be value aligned or culture aligned or based on like a lifestyle thing, having different education system.

00:34:10.300 So I kind of consider the work I do on governance to be in this broader space of any group of people who get together to live in person with some differences from the rest of society, some parts of the Civilizational Text Act that they want to rewrite.

00:34:24.620 And so I think that drawing from big existing communities like e-sports or like Oprah, like I think celebrities, like Oprah City, Tony Robbins.

00:34:33.600 Oh, yes. Yes.

00:34:35.260 I don't know. I would consider living in those places.

00:34:37.960 People have like huge audiences and have opinions about health and wellness and how to live a good life.

00:34:43.880 Martha Stewart Town. That's for me.

00:34:46.080 I had the pleasure of having dinner with her actually in South Korea like some years ago, and she's amazing.

00:34:52.140 She is.

00:34:52.960 I think, yeah, I think those will be like, we have to prove the concept, we weirdos.

00:34:58.160 But then I think it's going to be stuff like that.

00:35:00.040 Yeah. So I know here to what he's saying, a lot of people may think this is an insane concept, but if you look at the early city states that made up the Americas, a number of them were essentially celebrity colonies, where they were based around a celebrity preacher who often had interesting ideas.

00:35:16.640 Like Brigham Young?

00:35:17.380 Well, Brigham Young is an example of a celebrity city state, but that's not America, right?

00:35:23.740 That's more a religious city state.

00:35:25.800 When I'm talking about a celebrity Protestant preachers who would have been seen as just another person within their faction, but that had interesting ideas about things like diet and stuff like that, very similar to your modern celebrity.

00:35:38.940 Did Kellogg create something like a – no, he just got a lot of retreat.

00:35:41.760 Kellogg was not early in America. That was about 100 years, I think.

00:35:44.020 Yeah, that was – yeah, really that year.

00:35:45.420 Do a small scale.

00:35:46.720 But yes, do a small scale.

00:35:48.820 Yeah, that's awesome. I didn't know about the preachers having lifestyle stuff. I mean, obviously religions have a lot of lifestyle stuff in them, but, you know, it's very old and immutable.

00:35:59.340 Yeah, I mean, it wasn't – what is Confucius if he is not a lifestyle brand? What is Jesus if not a lifestyle brand?

00:36:05.480 I've actually been – by the way, I've been getting into the Jesus lifestyle brand lately.

00:36:10.300 Yes! Well, I mean, you got the long hair going, you know.

00:36:12.660 Yeah, I've been – there's this Christian preacher I really like, John Mark Comer.

00:36:20.080 I got into him because he has videos on the Sabbath, so bringing Shabbat to Christians, because it's one of the Ten Commandments that was kept. 0.99

00:36:27.900 Like, it's not one of the, like, two or three that changed, but it's kind of mostly ignored, and he's into kind of slowing down and minimalism, and the Sabbath is one of his practices.

00:36:39.180 But he has a recent book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, because hurry is a profound enemy to spiritual life.

00:36:48.160 And I learned, like, these awesome points about how, like, Jesus literally says, hey, I have an easy life.

00:36:55.800 If you want an easy life, come with me, listen to me, follow my principles, and do the stuff that I do.

00:37:01.760 But yet, Christian churches have gone so far from that.

00:37:05.240 They're not teaching people to, like, to live like Jesus.

00:37:07.660 There are some little principles from there that they teach, but it's, like, it's this whole different thing.

00:37:13.180 And, like, Jesus was very clear.

00:37:15.020 If you want to, like, if you want to be like me, live like me, right?

00:37:20.080 It wasn't just about, like, listen to my sermons.

00:37:22.120 It was about a different way to live, one that we've very much gone away from in the modern day.

00:37:26.600 And so there's this, like, much smaller subset of, like, Christian religious authorities today who actually, like, put this viewpoint forward and think that the church has kind of lost its way and that it should be saying.

00:37:41.780 And but the problem is that living like Jesus is, it's really hard.

00:37:45.300 It's really hard in the modern world.

00:37:47.060 Maybe it could be done better in a community dedicated to it.

00:37:50.660 I mean, I don't know.

00:37:51.380 It didn't end well for him.

00:37:52.840 I'm just going to say, like.

00:37:54.140 Like, we don't nail people to cross it so much anymore.

00:37:58.660 Have you seen, because I actually think it would work really well if you're talking about intergenerationally durable cultures and stuff like that and of the good recruitment mechanism, any celebrity preachers or anything, has the Charter City community reached out to any of them about starting potentially a religiously themed Charter community?

00:38:16.900 No, but it's a great idea because it's just a classic community seed.

00:38:20.820 I think we've talked to some, the closest is talking to some, like, very, very large musicians in Africa who have kind of a big following for, like, both their music.

00:38:35.380 But it's, like, it's more than that in Africa, these huge artists.

00:38:39.300 There's also, like, a culture aspect, too.

00:38:42.280 But it's a great idea.

00:38:44.120 Sweet.

00:38:44.640 Okay.

00:38:45.260 I want to take us from utopia lifestyle brand cities, which sound really cool, to another form of city-state that also addresses a major, we'll say, wicked problem, which is penal colonies.

00:39:00.760 So you talk about, in the beginning of this, the value of being able to get away, but I do think that there's this growing concern about crime in cities.

00:39:10.220 Some nations are like, well, just screw it.

00:39:12.560 Let's, like, round up all the criminals, put them in jail. 0.96

00:39:14.820 What are you pitching here, Simone?

00:39:16.300 Well, I'm just wondering.

00:39:17.180 I don't know, but it's going to be awesome.

00:39:20.100 Everyone wants to, like, create these solutions.

00:39:21.800 I'm like, company towns that own people, penal colonies, make it happen. 0.98

00:39:25.940 But, I mean, one of the things I'm really interested in is recidivism and people concerned about crime in cities. 0.82

00:39:32.540 And also, like, it really sucks and it seems really stupid to me that you just lock someone away and that that costs a lot to people.

00:39:40.020 When instead, like, if this is about removing people from a society where it's not working for them, would it be possible to build a society where it does work for them or where at least they're not hurting other people? 0.99

00:39:53.640 That's an insane idea.

00:39:56.120 I mean, it's not like Australia is, like, a functioning modern country.

00:39:59.820 I know.

00:40:00.180 It's not like that.

00:40:01.080 I mean, come on.

00:40:02.000 It did so well.

00:40:03.440 Think about how many problems this solves.

00:40:05.120 So, one, states, it costs them a lot of money to house an incarcerated population.

00:40:09.860 They do have a recidivism problem.

00:40:11.780 They would likely be willing to pay for some external entity to take this population, especially if it was being handled in a humane manner or more of a humane manner than their existing prison system.

00:40:22.260 It could even be opt-in.

00:40:23.580 And you could make this opt-in.

00:40:24.420 Yeah, opt-in.

00:40:25.140 Like, I think it's really tricky.

00:40:26.660 You have to be careful.

00:40:27.320 Like I said, like, the right to exit, to me, is, like, the thing that kind of makes it so that we don't worry about other things.

00:40:34.280 If it was opt-in, then sure.

00:40:36.820 But look, so one of the things my dad does is study lots of different legal systems throughout the ages.

00:40:42.240 He has a book, Legal Systems Very Different From Ours.

00:40:44.840 And banishment was a very traditional punishment, right?

00:40:48.860 Because it is very expensive to keep people in jail through much of history.

00:40:52.620 It wasn't done except for very important prisoners or for, like, shorter periods of time.

00:40:57.040 And so I think banishment is, like, a fair and effective solution.

00:41:01.680 Like, a society should be able to decide who's in there and who isn't.

00:41:05.040 As far as, like, crime in cities, I mean, I really think it's ineffective governments without incentives.

00:41:09.720 Like, I don't think a privately run city that makes its money from rents and taxes, like, that's just, that's not going to happen.

00:41:17.340 And by the way, like, as a lawyer, I used to be so against taxes.

00:41:21.080 And now I'm like, wait, if you have an entity, like, a for-profit company, like, creating GDP, then, like, having an, like, taxes are just, it's like a rev share.

00:41:32.980 Yeah.

00:41:33.240 It's like they have an equity share.

00:41:34.640 If you're taking, like, 7.5% taxes, not a random number because that's what you need in the OECD to not be labeled a tax haven.

00:41:41.120 It's like you have a 7.5% equity share of the economy, which you're doing work to create.

00:41:46.980 It kind of makes all the sense in the world.

00:41:48.980 But, yeah, I agree.

00:41:49.760 Like, again, if you're, like, a profit-maximizing company that's trying to, like, make money by making a great place to live and work that people want to come to that's growing, where people's incomes are increasing, like, that's the incentive.

00:42:03.780 Then something expensive like incarceration, like, it just, it's just very unlikely to be the best solution, right?

00:42:10.440 Like, it's just very, very costly.

00:42:12.540 And there's maybe circumstances where it's the best thing, but, you know, probably not, right?

00:42:17.300 There's got to be other mechanisms.

00:42:19.760 I don't know.

00:42:20.040 Maybe if you don't want to vanish, people can kind of be in the society for a period of time in, like, a certain, like, limited area where there's more security and protections from them leaving, but they can actually, like, work, right?

00:42:34.120 Yeah.

00:42:34.420 Like, stay economically productive enough to pay for the housing.

00:42:37.160 There's an old Heinlein story, which is, like, a, like, utopia, whole utopia society, and there's this one place where, like, they send the people who break the rules.

00:42:45.740 Ah, timeout zone.

00:42:48.100 Well, I feel like for many people who end up going to jail, it's also for some reasons.

00:42:53.180 It's for, it's because society just hasn't worked for them.

00:42:56.840 So I'm really intrigued by the idea.

00:42:57.960 Well, I think because we have way too many laws.

00:42:59.500 I mean, there's just a lot of reasons.

00:43:01.060 Yeah, and so if there were, like, an opt-in option for, like, all right, you know what?

00:43:05.340 Like, if you want a road warrior society where you're just going to be super violent, or if you just want, like, drug society where, like, whatever goes, like, it's all for you.

00:43:13.200 Like, if people could opt into that, you might actually get really interesting innovation.

00:43:17.360 You might actually get people for whom mainstream society or whatever society they would be jailed in doesn't work.

00:43:23.320 They're customers, yeah.

00:43:24.660 People who you banish are, like, I mean, sure, you're saying this person is not a, is, like, a negative value customer for me.

00:43:32.140 Yeah.

00:43:32.360 And that means that they'll probably be a negative value customer for a lot of places.

00:43:36.740 Yeah.

00:43:37.220 But they're potential customers.

00:43:39.440 And so-

00:43:39.660 I mean, imagine, imagine this.

00:43:41.020 A society that can, like, evolve to take those people in and make them productive will make money from doing it.

00:43:46.960 It's an unserved market niche.

00:43:48.880 Yeah.

00:43:49.060 Once you get a critical mass of them, it makes sense for systems to develop to make a negative value customer, a positive value customer.

00:43:56.080 Yes.

00:43:56.440 So here's a scenario.

00:43:57.700 Like, here's one that would be really cool.

00:43:58.820 So let's say that there's, like, lots of violent offenders and, like, just societies that work for them.

00:44:03.560 Like, they're incels, right?

00:44:04.840 Oh, no.

00:44:05.180 The actual underdome.

00:44:05.760 So, no, no, no.

00:44:06.640 What if we created, like, modern Sparta?

00:44:09.200 Where, like, there was this warrior mercenary state that made money.

00:44:13.100 It's like a corporate town.

00:44:14.000 It makes money by selling out its armies.

00:44:17.580 It's mercenaries.

00:44:18.280 It's a mercenary state.

00:44:19.360 Like a Wagner group city? 0.98

00:44:20.000 And it has, like, yeah, but also, like, it has, like, is it, like, prostitution as a service? 0.81

00:44:23.840 I love you so much.

00:44:24.940 Blackwater inmate city.

00:44:27.080 Yeah, like, well, no, it's, like, it's, well, it's, it's warrior city. 0.98

00:44:29.660 So they have their prostitutes. 0.99

00:44:30.900 They have, like, great services, training. 0.97

00:44:32.700 It's Superman.

00:44:33.380 It's, like, the Bronze Age mindset heaven. 0.99

00:44:35.780 And then they, like, go and they, like, raid.

00:44:37.260 And they kill.

00:44:38.480 Gladiators for, like, international television in the city and people.

00:44:41.540 Well, I mean, that's more, like, for show.

00:44:43.760 I'm talking, like, mercenaries for pay, mercenaries for hire.

00:44:47.160 When a lot of people talk about civilization falling apart, and also when you consider,

00:44:52.380 I mean, honestly, for many other nations, aside from the United States, they cannot come 0.95

00:44:55.740 close to our military spending.

00:44:56.880 They can't, they can't hold standing armies like that.

00:44:59.000 They can't train soldiers.

00:45:00.340 They can't afford it.

00:45:01.180 Imagine the business opportunity for someone who figures out how to train incredibly skilled

00:45:07.920 mercenary soldiers, people specialized in drone, AI-based warfare, but also, like, on-the-ground

00:45:13.620 combat, strategic assassination.

00:45:16.320 I mean, talk about a really cool penal colony, right?

00:45:19.820 Simone, it's that it would have so much culture to it.

00:45:23.140 It would be so freaking cool.

00:45:24.800 Gated was the, it was, oh, Malcolm, sorry.

00:45:31.020 Yeah.

00:45:32.480 Ooh, Malcolm.

00:45:33.440 Okay, ready?

00:45:34.160 Are you back?

00:45:34.980 Try to say something.

00:45:36.020 I think so.

00:45:36.780 Okay, now you can say whatever you think is fun.

00:45:39.020 What I love about this idea is because since you're creating this place with such a sense

00:45:44.280 of identity and what it means to be a member, that people would feel that.

00:45:48.100 It would have this cultural ideal of this is who we are.

00:45:52.880 And that's what I love about these models that are built with a goal.

00:45:57.540 It reminds me of the one that you and I have been noodling on for a while.

00:46:01.160 So we have this city-state idea that we've really wanted to put together, which was essentially

00:46:05.360 one in the far north.

00:46:06.920 So in an environment where every day is, like, harsh, similar to Frostpunk.

00:46:11.720 I don't know if anyone's ever played the game, but that aesthetic, which I really love.

00:46:15.620 But then base it around genetic technology and reprotech technology.

00:46:20.120 So you have an industry base there, which is artificial wombs, genetic engineering of 0.94

00:46:24.700 humans, all of the stuff that you can't reliably do in other countries, or it wouldn't make sense

00:46:29.300 to set up organizations in other countries.

00:46:32.060 Basically, I'm trying to create the Kaminoans from Star Wars, but in an actual city.

00:46:37.700 But I think within many of these cities, where you can create this sense of intergenerational

00:46:42.340 identity is by basing them around something you can't do in any existing country.

00:46:47.520 I was wondering if you had any ideas to that extent, Patrick.

00:46:50.360 Yeah.

00:46:51.180 I mean, just briefly to close up on inmate Sparta.

00:46:57.520 Yeah.

00:46:57.980 Yes.

00:46:58.600 One thing about it is that it's a very proven model, right?

00:47:02.580 I mean, not just Sparta, but it's been traditional throughout history for young men who are troublesome 0.99

00:47:10.400 or aggressive to go into the military.

00:47:13.380 It's like a way of making use of that type of people in a way that is pro-social, that

00:47:18.280 benefits the society.

00:47:19.440 But the world has gotten much more peaceful, right?

00:47:22.460 And so there's being a cop, but that's mainly about doing paperwork, unfortunately.

00:47:26.320 And so it's kind of something that's missing.

00:47:30.340 And it used to be that you would sometimes have the option to go to jail or get banished

00:47:36.720 or have some strong punishment or enlist in the military.

00:47:39.980 Yes.

00:47:40.040 And we put people in jail and don't give them the option.

00:47:43.020 So I think that's part of what's compelling about the idea is it's actually a thousands

00:47:50.820 of years long proven model.

00:47:53.660 Proven model.

00:47:54.480 Prada market fit.

00:47:55.400 Yeah.

00:47:55.580 As far as like Frostpunk, I guess I worry that it's very uphill, like dealing with a harsh

00:48:01.640 environment.

00:48:02.380 This is like, I looked at the ocean for a long time when there are things about it that

00:48:06.840 are necessary and make it worth it.

00:48:08.580 Like, sure.

00:48:09.900 But dealing with a harsh, like you don't have to go to a harsh environment in order to like

00:48:14.420 have regulatory freedom.

00:48:16.080 And like, it's not like there's no land unclaimed.

00:48:18.940 Like there's freaking oil and gas in the Arctic Circle.

00:48:21.080 It is claimed and defended.

00:48:22.600 Like Russia and Canada will go after you.

00:48:25.400 And so, yeah, I mean, I think that like, it's a cool idea for a city, but.

00:48:29.360 But it's not about the regulatory aspect.

00:48:32.580 It's I wanted a city state where you had an opt in model where people had to suffer to

00:48:37.620 join in some way.

00:48:38.580 Like, because I don't feel like that really exists within modern city states.

00:48:42.020 And I thought that could create a form of identity.

00:48:44.380 But I don't know what your thought is.

00:48:45.080 In other words, he he wants a city in which the city state in which there are selective

00:48:50.960 pressures that force only the.

00:48:54.700 Yeah.

00:48:55.180 Early American cities did this.

00:48:56.640 I mean, I understand like Burning Man, I started going to Burning Man and I'm like 99.

00:49:01.360 Like it, the fact that it was so hard was this like really strong screener for people who

00:49:08.840 are really, really interested in kind of the easier God over time.

00:49:12.920 The more people who are kind of there to like consume instead of producing.

00:49:17.660 So like it's it's a real thing.

00:49:19.680 But like, again, there have to be there was big benefits to them doing it in the middle of nowhere.

00:49:24.620 Right.

00:49:25.080 Like gave them much more autonomy.

00:49:26.940 So like if you're going to have that cost, there have to be huge benefits.

00:49:30.480 It's like besides just the screening, I think.

00:49:34.300 Well, I think in the end, what will make for a successful city state is you need one, a

00:49:41.400 forcing function.

00:49:42.240 You need some reason why people need to or have to move there.

00:49:45.400 There's a job there for them.

00:49:47.080 They're literally like it's that or jail or no.

00:49:49.860 So there has to be something that forces you to go there.

00:49:52.380 It has to have a shared sense of identity and belonging.

00:49:55.560 So once you get there, there's that retention.

00:49:57.320 There's I belong here.

00:49:58.200 This is this is these are my people.

00:49:59.600 This is my tribe.

00:50:00.540 This is my lifestyle.

00:50:01.480 These are my values.

00:50:02.340 So something like a lifestyle brand or a celebrity based one or like a preacher based one, religion

00:50:07.480 based one sounds really compelling.

00:50:09.020 And then the third, I really think is is like broader product market fit within the larger

00:50:15.380 like global landscape.

00:50:17.480 There has to be something that you provide that makes you useful to the rest of the world,

00:50:22.360 but there's maybe some trade or where they like want you to be around.

00:50:25.260 One of the reasons why we're really enchanted by the idea of a like far north, very unfriendly

00:50:32.740 frost punk city state is we worry that let's say if sort of civilization crumbles,

00:50:40.020 securities is not a thing anymore.

00:50:42.460 People are really going to go after arable land.

00:50:44.560 They're going to go after where there's resources.

00:50:46.460 So obviously we wouldn't want to go where there's oil or anything, but you'd want to

00:50:49.000 go somewhere where basically no one would want to go.

00:50:51.700 And one of the reasons why we really liked the idea of a place where you'd have to grow

00:50:55.280 food indoors, where you'd have to basically learn how to live in an extremely hostile

00:50:59.440 environment is it would prepare whatever group lives there for space travel, perhaps, because

00:51:04.980 we're kind of excited about that.

00:51:06.060 So if you both have a super like reprotech oriented, like let's edit people with CRISPR,

00:51:13.140 let's go with, let's make artificial wombs. 1.00

00:51:15.220 You can not only engineer people to survive in really harsh environments, but then you can

00:51:19.000 prepare them and have like a demo zone for harsh environments or for seeding other planets

00:51:23.440 someday.

00:51:24.240 But I think that that isn't to that point, it doesn't, it still doesn't fit the model

00:51:27.920 of forcing function.

00:51:30.180 I mean, the sense of identity thing could be there.

00:51:32.040 Cause like we're, we are the weird, what I was saying earlier is that early American city

00:51:36.140 states did do this.

00:51:37.420 So specifically the Calvinist city States founded their cities on land.

00:51:42.520 That was bad for farming, that had a lot of rocks because they only wanted people who 1.00

00:51:47.400 to join them, who had a hard work ethic.

00:51:49.440 And that's something we don't see in the world today.

00:51:51.960 It's any community that's really screening for work ethic.

00:51:55.300 I think that immigrating to America still screened strongly for work ethic.

00:51:59.920 And it did even more so in the 1800s.

00:52:03.120 So I just, I have a general concern about like self-sufficiency.

00:52:07.660 So something that I find in this movement, it was very true in state setting too, is that

00:52:12.180 there are lots of, lots of people who like want to do things themselves, like want self-sufficiency

00:52:16.740 who are, who are attracted to it.

00:52:18.460 And I understand why, right?

00:52:20.040 It's because in the evolutionary environment, that's what we did in modern jobs are amazing.

00:52:23.900 In some ways, they certainly provide a lot more resources, but there's other ways in

00:52:27.320 which they're like much less satisfactory.

00:52:29.640 They're abstract, right?

00:52:31.800 But all of our modern wealth is from specialization and trade.

00:52:35.640 Like self-sufficiency is poverty.

00:52:37.660 It's like deep, deep poverty.

00:52:39.880 And I don't think that technology has changed that.

00:52:42.240 And so I think that this, this kind of instinct, like just doesn't match the economic realities.

00:52:48.100 You do have certain technologies like microgrid infrastructure that is, makes the economies

00:52:53.640 of scale like less and makes local production like less bad, but still like there's still economies

00:53:01.040 of scale and like in all of this stuff.

00:53:02.680 So I think it's important to find like, what are the way, like, what are the ways to satisfy

00:53:08.820 that craving for an older life?

00:53:12.260 Which to me is really what it is in ways that are like still efficient, like cooking dinner

00:53:19.560 together and eating dinner together.

00:53:21.540 I feel like it's like scratches that itch and like, that's how we still do things, right?

00:53:27.720 Whereas growing your own food, like that's mostly not how we still do things because it's

00:53:32.960 like way, way less efficient.

00:53:34.360 So just be aware of how uphill it is to do things yourself and try to pick the things that

00:53:40.560 have the least cost and the most value.

00:53:43.440 But it's like, it's just an, to me, there's this whole space of like intuitions that we

00:53:48.460 have that's something that's called folk economics.

00:53:50.880 I have the saying like folk politics, it's like beliefs and tastes that were true in the

00:53:57.660 tribe where we were monkeys for millions of years in tribes, for hundreds of thousands

00:54:03.140 of years of tribes.

00:54:04.280 Agriculture happened 10,000 years ago.

00:54:06.300 Industry happened 200 years ago.

00:54:08.320 Right.

00:54:08.820 And tech, tech happened 50 years ago.

00:54:11.800 So like, we're not adapted for it.

00:54:14.460 So of course we have all of these cravings, but in most cases, I think they're just not

00:54:20.160 satisfiable, like not achievable.

00:54:23.240 So I really want to highlight something you said there because it's such a really-

00:54:28.500 Kids running around together.

00:54:29.780 Like I'm not saying there's none.

00:54:31.360 There are some, but I don't think it's growing your own food.

00:54:34.260 But self-sufficient communities are typically poor communities.

00:54:37.460 When you have a community where every individual is determined to be self-sufficient or even a

00:54:41.100 small community of people is determined to be self-sufficient, they are not going to have

00:54:44.500 a high quality of lifestyle in a, any sort of-

00:54:47.260 They don't have specialization in trade.

00:54:49.100 Yeah.

00:54:49.600 Really critical point.

00:54:50.740 Another side point.

00:54:52.100 I actually might edit this earlier in the video, just so you guys know, when we were talking

00:54:55.680 more about the prison camp thing.

00:54:57.660 But something that's important to note is that for these militarized forces that recruit

00:55:02.940 from prisons, like Wagner has started to do to make money, they often do jobs in places

00:55:08.040 like Africa, but to make money in those places, sometimes they aren't actually getting money

00:55:13.880 from the state, but they are getting money in terms of mineral rights and stuff like that,

00:55:18.800 which actually would require a city state to do in a way that you couldn't do as easily

00:55:24.760 with an American company or something like that, which provides another reason why you would

00:55:29.780 have to operate this out of a city state, because in that case, you have a state that

00:55:33.560 can negotiate with local countries to say, we get access to your gold rights or your oil

00:55:40.180 rights if we help you win this revolution.

00:55:42.360 I mean, obviously super unethical, but it is another reason to do it that way.

00:55:45.620 I just wanted to, to get that economic point out there.

00:55:48.360 All right.

00:55:48.680 Now I'm going to move back to where we are.

00:55:50.540 I'll move that earlier in the show, but yeah.

00:55:52.800 Any closing points that you guys had?

00:55:56.180 Sparta 2.0.

00:55:57.740 You have my vote.

00:55:59.780 You want Sparta 2.0?

00:56:03.560 I want, I want my mercy.

00:56:04.840 I mean, and there was also some really interesting like mercenary groups in Italy, like when they

00:56:09.400 had some really interesting city states going on, I think there's just, it's a very underrated

00:56:14.240 idea.

00:56:15.480 I want to see this come back.

00:56:16.460 After, after what we call the Cambrian explosion of Jewish culture, there were some Jewish groups

00:56:20.120 that specialized in that.

00:56:21.620 And then there was the 300, the tale of the 300, which was basically a roaming mercenary city

00:56:26.220 state.

00:56:26.560 And that and company towns though.

00:56:28.460 I mean, I really think it makes a lot, and you could argue that early nations were essentially

00:56:33.680 company towns.

00:56:34.980 It's just that at that point, the only thing that they could really do is either mine or

00:56:38.600 extract minerals or engage in some kind of specialized trade.

00:56:42.340 Like pottery or dyes.

00:56:44.120 Like even if you go back to the Phoenicians, right? 0.95

00:56:46.180 Yeah.

00:56:46.580 Yeah.

00:56:46.740 And like Venice was like glass place.

00:56:48.780 It was the glass city state.

00:56:50.120 They owned glass.

00:56:51.080 And that's not what Venice made their money on.

00:56:52.580 Just.

00:56:52.880 Okay.

00:56:53.140 What did they make their money on?

00:56:54.840 Venice was fantastically well.

00:56:56.520 They were like an independent city state that, that, that pitted other cities against

00:57:00.140 each other.

00:57:00.560 The economics of Venice is like a 36 hour lecture.

00:57:05.720 Long ocean trade as, as well.

00:57:09.540 Still a city state specialization.

00:57:11.780 Yeah.

00:57:12.000 I mean, I think that like, as far as the company town goes, I mean, one way to look at it is

00:57:16.440 like as a way to start, right?

00:57:18.280 Like it's all to solve the cold start problem and then jumpstart, but like there are significant

00:57:23.280 economies of scale in cities and you can start with that.

00:57:27.040 And then you've got service providers for that.

00:57:28.920 You've got like related industries and it can grow from there to be like a full diversified

00:57:33.480 economy.

00:57:34.640 Ooh, you know what?

00:57:35.880 So there's also this interesting like teen dystopia series that I still love.

00:57:40.120 It's not great.

00:57:40.860 Like, but it's, it's called uglies by Scott Westerfeld and it involves this, this world

00:57:47.020 in which once you reach puberty, you get to live in this city of just young teens that

00:57:54.340 all get plastic surgery and then form all these weird like subcultures and get like giant

00:57:58.780 anime eyes and like weird moving tattoos and like super, it's crazy, but it's all just teens.

00:58:04.380 And then the adults go live actually in a different city.

00:58:06.940 And another interesting city state could be like literally.

00:58:11.100 Is that not college?

00:58:12.980 Well, I mean, we were, we were thinking about this.

00:58:14.900 We were talking about dating markets and marriage markets and how do you resolve the relationship

00:58:18.900 problem now that dating apps are broken, relationship markets are broken.

00:58:22.060 And someone had told us in a YouTube comment, you're forgetting with Mormons who actually

00:58:26.440 have some really interesting solutions on this, like singles wards that ultimate BYU as

00:58:31.920 like a university is such an amazing solution.

00:58:34.780 You know what BYU stands for, right?

00:58:36.740 I mean, people think it's Brigham Young University.

00:58:38.900 I know.

00:58:39.280 Yeah.

00:58:39.600 It's Merriam Young University.

00:58:41.540 No.

00:58:41.920 Oh, Marriam Young University.

00:58:44.740 Oh, okay.

00:58:46.780 Okay.

00:58:47.560 I get you.

00:58:48.440 No, but that's, that's the thing is this person argued that like the majority of people do

00:58:52.540 go.

00:58:52.840 Yeah.

00:58:52.960 It's Merriam Young University.

00:58:54.060 Like they, they go there to get married and you could theoretically create a university

00:58:59.420 town, marriage market city state.

00:59:02.840 We're like, or you go basically like, yeah, you're, you're getting an education too, but

00:59:07.160 we're not trying to be world-class researchers.

00:59:09.180 We're trying to be a place where you can learn some things and find your life partner.

00:59:14.540 I love it.

00:59:14.920 Yeah.

00:59:15.240 So there's like life, life stage is an automatic citizen, but you have to earn your citizenship

00:59:20.940 after that age range.

00:59:21.980 But I like the idea of there being life stage city state.

00:59:25.100 So there is a forcing function.

00:59:26.400 You can come, you can go.

00:59:27.880 There is a very distinct economic need and industry.

00:59:30.920 And then you go there and you live this life.

00:59:33.460 And I think it's a sort of like that.

00:59:35.160 That's another thing that these things could become.

00:59:37.720 So I would also vote for my dystopian teen plastic surgery, Mecca marriage market city 1.00

00:59:44.120 state.

00:59:45.000 Yeah.

00:59:45.440 I love it.

00:59:45.820 And look, I think that the goal of this is for me is to unlock innovation, innovation

00:59:51.560 in different types of societies.

00:59:53.060 And I think that the way I view it, like a charter city is a container, right?

00:59:57.420 Like it negotiates with the host country for what degree of local autonomy it has over

01:00:02.500 regulations, what the rev share agreement is with the government.

01:00:05.800 But then once you have that container, like the city can then allow like neighborhoods,

01:00:12.400 neighborhoods, villages within it with all kinds of different policies, all kinds of

01:00:16.940 different like target markets, right?

01:00:19.520 So the really, the hard part is creating the container.

01:00:22.380 But I think of it like a platform play.

01:00:24.500 Like if you're going to make a bunch of global nomad villages around the world, like if you've

01:00:28.880 got charter cities to plop them into, like great.

01:00:31.680 If you want to do something like what you're describing, that can be one ward of a city.

01:00:36.440 And I think that having these just like cities with flexible governance that are kind of

01:00:42.080 made with people expecting innovation, again, opt-in are just way more likely to try stuff

01:00:47.800 like that.

01:00:49.340 Yeah.

01:00:49.660 100%.

01:00:50.100 Let's, let's wrap this up, Simone.

01:00:52.000 We are an hour in.

01:00:53.180 Okay.

01:00:53.560 I will wrap it up.

01:00:54.120 Let's ask him what, who, who should go his way?

01:00:57.140 Like who, if they're interested in you, should be chatting with you.

01:01:00.520 What should they be checking out that you created in the past?

01:01:03.500 What's the follow-up of listeners who are interested in your work?

01:01:06.140 Sure.

01:01:09.580 Right now they should go to my hand, still hand coded in HTML website, patryfriedman.com

01:01:15.040 or go to P-A-T-R-I-S-S-I-M-O on Twitter.

01:01:19.840 That's where I write the most often.

01:01:22.240 And yeah, who I'm looking for.

01:01:23.460 I mean, number one thing I'd say would be founders, strong entrepreneurial background

01:01:28.220 and drive, same thing as other founders, but with the sort of ambition and vision to

01:01:33.120 create a new society and I deal with some community building experience on the team.

01:01:38.800 You know, of course I run an investment fund and these, these charter cities are done by

01:01:43.880 for-profit companies.

01:01:44.840 So there's always investment opportunities.

01:01:47.660 That's another useful one.

01:01:49.220 And then just, yeah, just follow and boost on social media.

01:01:53.160 I'll be putting out a thread soon with links to actually edit that bit.

01:01:57.800 So I'm on the Pronomos website, that's P-R-O-N-O-M-O-S.V-C. 1.00

01:02:04.780 Our portfolio page has links to all the social media channels of all of our companies.

01:02:10.480 So there's a lot to follow and you can keep updated on the space that way.

01:02:16.080 This is really exciting and this is awesome.

01:02:18.500 And if anybody's interested in starting a penal colony, reach out to us because that's 1.00

01:02:22.140 something I'm interested in.

01:02:23.580 I want to start super jail in reality.

01:02:25.740 I love it.

01:02:26.560 This has been fantastic.

01:02:27.620 I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.

01:02:30.160 Yeah, you're brilliant.

01:02:30.980 This was so fun.

Based Camp - October 05, 2023

Will New City-States Replace Nations？

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