Huge thanks to @ojutel.bsky.social and folks in the Media, Film, and Community programme at U-Otago for helping me think through and refine the ideas contained here.

Although Jaron might not approve of me using social media to express this — oops!

Part of the “selling point” is that investors and would-be entrepreneur-residents can just pick their legal code from a figurative dropdown.

Extra-judicial zone. So essentially has its own laws or lists of laws. With prospera for example, the only laws they were bound to were the Honduran constitution and criminal code. The rest is a free for all.

The so-called “cathedral” that Musk and others (following the writings of Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land) have set their targets on includes not just government, but the press and higher education. What appeared to be a batshit political theory just a few years ago is becoming a serious proposition.

Yes, but it’s often scholars who make things more complicated in the first place. I mean, that’s practically our job.

Digital proof-of-personhood (World ID) is the ultimate data tracking tool. Most countries/authorities have pushed back for this reason causing world to scale down those capabilities, but with Musk currently steamrolling the US gov.. the functionality remains a potentiality.

Nah. It’s just a catalyst for the ai arms race that investors in “Open”AI said they wanted to avoid. The private commercialization of AI was always inevitable, and so was an arms race. Buckle up, and don’t badmouth AI just in case it becomes self-aware and decides to kill you (and me!)

Belgianth?

Ah yes, the guy that hosted the first Bay Area fundraiser for Trump this cycle, breaking the seal for nervous wealthy tech folks who didn’t want to offend their liberal neighbors. Money buys political office. Who would have guessed we were a plutocracy..

I like this piece a lot, especially the repudiation of lazy ascriptions of widespread libertarianism. However I think a fundamental factor here that you do not mention is an almost unanimous adoption of “contrarianism” in the valley — the idea that the masses (i.e the demos) are wrong. This is key.