But pretty soon, Balaji's examples do start to point to some particular themes:

This style of thinking is foreign to me, but I find it fascinating, and important. Stereotypical "wealthy white liberals" ignore this at their peril: these more "traditional" values are actually quite popular even among some ethnic minorities in the United States, and even more so in places like Africa and India, which is exactly where Balaji is... See more

Individual blockchain participants are of course vulnerable to national regulation, and enclaves of network states even more so. 

What is common about all of these examples is the value of having a physical region, at least of a few hectares, where the network state's unique rules are enforced. Sure, you could individually insist on only eating at healthy restaurants, and research each restaurant carefully before you go there. But it's just so much easier to have a defined... See more

New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for helping the Soviet Union starve Ukraine into submission, 90 years before the Times decided to instead "stand with Ukraine".

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

I think there is an important idea hidden in [1]: while the "social technology" community has come up with many good ideas around better governance, and many good ideas around better public discussion, there is a missing emphasis on better social technology for sorting . 

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

The truly interesting stuff is the governance innovation: using network states to organize in ways that would actually not be possible under existing regulations.