We don't just want to take existing maps of social connections as given and find better ways to come to consensus within them. We also want to reform the webs of social connections themselves , and put people closer to other people that are more compatible with them to better allow different ways of life to maintain their own distinctiveness.

And all three teams are waaay too nationalist: they view things from the perspective of their own country, and ignore or exploit everyone else. Even when the teams are internationalist in theory, their specific ways of interpreting their values make them unpalatable outside of a small part of the world.

Network states, in Balaji's view, are a "de-centralized center" that could create a better alternative. 

Balaji's argument in The Network State, as I am interpreting it, is as follows. While we do need political collectives bound not just by economic interest but also by moral force, we don't need to stick with the specific political collectives we have today, which are highly flawed and increasingly unrepresentative of people's values. Rather, we... See more

Blockchains are the Lego of crypto-finance and crypto-governance: they are a very effective tool for implementing transparent in-protocol rules to govern common resources, assets and incentives.

Team CCP can build, but they are building a dystopian surveillance state that much of the world would not want to live in. 

[3] is of course a more complicated moral question: whether you view paralysis and creep toward de-facto authoritarian global government as a bigger problem or someone inventing an evil technology that dooms us all as a bigger problem. 

They combine the love of freedom of team BTC with the moral energy of team NYT and the organization of team CCP, and give us the best benefits of all three (plus a level of international appeal greater than any of the three) and avoid the worst parts.

One of the curious features of the book that a reader will notice almost immediately is that it sometimes feels like two books in one: sometimes, it's a book about the concept of network states, and at other times it's an exposition of Balaji's grand megapolitical theory.Balaji's grand megapolitical theory is pretty out-there and fun in a bunch of... See more