More efforts from tech bros to build Rapture.

Interesting quotes:

it had backing from tech heavyweights such as billionaire Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, and venture capitalist** Fred Wilson**, a Coinbase board member who sold his shares in the company for $1.8 billion after it went public in 2021.

“Bitcoin, if it wins, completely changes the world, because it changes the ability of centralized states to do what they’ve been doing,” Srinivisan said in a presentation delivered to a Bitcoin conference in Amsterdam in October.

The Bitcoin-based Network State will be based on “internet values” such as “open source” and “peer-to-peer,” Srinivasan has written.

An utopia run on Bitcoin? What could possibly go wrong?

  • schmorp@slrpnk.net
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    1 year ago

    ‘Tech Billionaires give all wealth away to end world hunger.’ ‘Tech Billionaires lobby for wealth tax with national governments.’ ‘Tech Billionaires realize they are normal people like anyone else, not super smart world-saving geniuses, and finally shut the fuck up.’

    Now these would be news.

  • luciole (he/him)@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    The basic idea is that the West has declined irrevocably, beginning with what Srinivisan calls the birth of the centralized state that disempowered wealthy industrialists with antitrust laws, securities regulation, central banking, and adversarial journalism. Now, the thinking goes, we’re on the backswing with wealthy individuals reclaiming their power over supposedly corrupt public institutions, and we have the internet and its currency—Bitcoin—to lead us out of the darkness.

    So the billionaire techbros feel powerless (wtf) and are offended by criticism (oof) so they want their own techbro dictatorship with no free press. Also please no peasant to support, only exploit. Got it.

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Libertarians are mostly just neoliberals who are upset they’re not allowed to be more psycopathic.

      Their new utopia will tear itself apart with greed, drugs and sex abuse just like all the old ones.

    • sculd@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      I feel like they are more dangerous than oligarchs.

      Look at Russian oligarchs. They don’t try to change the world. They know they are not welcomed so just buy properties at London, buy yachts, etc. and then enjoy what they have.

      Tech libertarians seem to view themselves as savior of the world and attempts to change it (for the worse).

      • luciole (he/him)@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Add that whiff of eugenics from the pronatalism mixed with the longtermism and, if they get what they want, we have something closer to good old blue blood monarchs.

        • sculd@beehaw.orgOP
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          1 year ago

          After some reading about Longtermism, it is one of the most bizarre, heartless ideology I have seen.

          It basically tells you to not care about your surroundings and the things that exist now.

  • Ganbat@lemmyonline.com
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    1 year ago

    Ya know what? I hope they do it. That many rich assholes with more ambition than brains in one place? It’ll burn from the inside.

    • explodicle@local106.com
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      1 year ago

      But part of it is decentralized! Can’t we just slap a blockchain on anything and declare the whole thing immune to coercion? /s

  • senseamidmadness@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    We can only hope that, like the citizens of Rapture, the rich tech-bros go insane from their own fumes and start eating each other.

  • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    No society should accept billionaires. There are so many other people who are in dire need. It makes zero difference if they have a billion or a 100 million.

  • treadful@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    I wish them luck. It’s good for people to try new things. I won’t be moving there though.

  • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Of course “libertarian” here is code for “oligarchy”, because they know modern libertarians in the US are aggressively apathetic, will let them get away with anything, and thus form a perfect base to appeal to and dominate.

  • AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Srinivasan has floated the car-free Culdesac private community in Tempe and the Peter Thiel-backed Próspera in Honduras as examples of currently-existing proto-Network States.

    “Suppose you found a new startup society like Culdesac on the basis of car-free living…which is an innovation in parallel transportation.

    Is “fuck cars” libertarian?

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Maybe in a twisted thought process: privatized public transport for the masses, and because the rich have no actual restrictions in reality, I’m sure they can drive a car if they want to.

    • sculd@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      Good question. Since “libertarian” in practice always becomes some form of authoritarian state. They just jumped a few steps ahead.

      On the other hand though, car-free city sounds so nice.

      • AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        “libertarian” in practice always becomes some form of authoritarian state.

        What has been libertarian in practice?

    • Banzai51@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Until a Libertarian decides he wants to drive a car. You can’t expect discipline from these assholes.

    • interolivary@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      The only libertarian I personally know is anti-LGBT+, just not as rabidly outspoken about it as a “regular” conservative. He’s the sort who’d be happy with gay people being murdered on the streets as long as he doesn’t have to do it himself

      • sculd@beehaw.orgOP
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        1 year ago

        That is my observation as well. When it really comes to personal liberty they don’t really care. Remember that libertarian tech bro like Peter Thiel (who is gay btw) somehow thought the world is “too woke” and continues to fund conservative politicians taking away gay rights.

  • Timo@mastodon.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    @sculd freaking Ayn Rand cult strikes again. These 1%ers think they are THE new world order. Regulations are needed to protect our basic human rights from these folks. To piss them off, just say “you didn’t build that” .

    • sculd@beehaw.orgOP
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      1 year ago

      Yea, Atlas Shrugged really presented a very naive and simplistic world view that cannot work in real life. The capitalists all fuck off to build a city? Who is going to build them? Right. The workers. The workers that they despise.