Freedom Cities and Network States
I know that we're days away from an election that some of you are surely nervous about. I'm nervous too. But I'm nervous either way: do we continue apace with an administration that is providing aid for a genocide; or do we switch back to the idiot-despot who is promising to take us from incipient shades of fascism to outright? Ignore it, for now. The system is broken and we're fucked either way. We'll prepare for what comes as we have before. You'll find, no matter who wins, that the next election feels strangely worse, and worse, as if the walls are closing in on you. That's no mistake. That's the collapse of our government. If we want to survive, we have to do something different. But that's for another day.
You might recall I've mentioned a time or two that within some stretch of years–more than five, fewer than twenty–some of us will probably be living and working in AmazonTowns(TM). What I meant by that, other than the obvious, is the sort of ultra-capitalist outfit we had at the start of the previous century when miners lived in houses owned by the mines they worked for, bought their groceries and light bulbs at the company store owned by the mine owners, and paid for their electricity straight out of their paycheck from the mine owners, to boot. That's a closed circuit–a worker gets their pay, if any, and it gets paid immediately back to the company that issued the paycheck for goods necessary to survive. If anyone should happen to fall short on their rent, or need to fix a kid's broken leg, say, then that conveniently comes immediately out of the check and the miner now gets paid in the negative on payday. Then you're stuck. It's not so different from capitalism in general, just with tighter ropes.
We've known this is a bad thing for over a hundred years. But now we're looking to do it again under the guise of different names: for Trump, these are "Freedom Cities," and for bitcoin dipshits, they're "Network States." There are subtle differences but I don't especially care. What they are is an attempt by the rich and political to create spaces–be they simple towns, cities, or mini-states–that are free from the ever-decreasing strictures of government to amass more wealth and do whatever hell else they want. This, of course, is under the guise of freedom and strengthening economies. They'll probably happen, too, whether under Trump in full or under anyone else in fits and starts. And it's simple enough to say "maybe don't live in one," but we already live in capitalism, and escaping that or our other conditions is more complicated than simply moving. So this is probably going to be a problem for us, eventually.
The Con
Brian Armstrong, billionaire CEO of Coinbase–a crypto-exchange–has been making the rounds in Washington trying to get politicians behind his idea for de-regulating his industry. He's of the opinion that the United States is in decline, which, well, yeah. His solution is to create the crypto-equivalent of government. This is word salad, of course–absolutely meaningless shit. In his words, he is looking for ways "that you can tokenize real estate and actual physical land to create better forms of society." Nonsense.
But it's something the rich have been trying to do for a while. Peter Thiel, another notable billionaire wishing to remake society, has been trying to create "seasteader" nations. This isn't just someone jonesing for a long cruise–they're trying to create libertarian paradises like someone who didn't learn the right lessons from BioShock. Attempts in the past have failed after smaller runs have been towed in by the Thai navy, for example, or their ships fall apart/lose their crew. But they're marketed as alternatives to existing governments, with citizens able to stretch those over-regulated muscles (do financial crimes and maybe a little light pederasty). This would mostly be harmless fun akin to the Titan sub, but from these isolated expeditions comes the landlocked version, and that comes with real costs.
For his part, Trump's "Freedom Cities" initiative is pretty sparse on details, but it looks like this: give away federal land to the best designer (the cheapest, of course), who will build a city meant to provide affordable housing and revitalize the American dream. That's about all the policy says. But as this is Trump we're talking about, this would be a giveaway to big businesses who would wind up, almost certainly, making a bunch of tall-and-skinnies or those new apartment complexes made out of balsa wood–you know, the ones with a craft brewery or restaurant on the first floor. Trump launched this initiative at the same time he pressed for flying cars, so. You know he'll follow through.
The Danger
We're in an airtight room running low on oxygen and someone in the corner is ranting about NFTs. Some of you are trying to bust out, some of you are conserving your energy, and this guy is talking really, really loud about his Bored Ape. Dropping the metaphor, we're just too damn close to collapse to be entertaining billionaires fantasies about creating their own government. Ignoring the fact that crypto is a huge drain on resources, it's one more fucking distraction on top of all the normal ones keeping us from thinking about the fact that we're driving our planet over a cliff.
There are more localized dangers, too. Where these crypto-bros try their hands at network states on land, they're largely going to be buying out property from poorer nations and destabilizing those economies–should they last that long–by undermining national currencies. Now, again, I hate a state as much as the next bro, but I don't delude myself into thinking I can run my version of one and call it something else. This is actually happening, to some extent or another, today in Honduras (see the link above). These billionaires have enough money to sway people–people in power–and with that they can pretty much do what they want, for a time. They'll buy a little territory in a nation already abused by colonialism, offer an injection of capital in exchange for a chunk of land, and become tinpot dictators. This may not wind up changing your life much, but you can bet it will fuck up the lives of those who live nearby: a tech-heavy city-state in a country with poor infrastructure is going to get the blood sucked right out of it, in many ways and some of them literal.
For one, as these bros already pull massive amounts of energy off supposedly stable grids like in the United States, you can imagine that either major overhauls will have to be done to supply these cities or the bros will have to come up with it themselves, taking up the raw materials and fuels necessary for such an endeavor and basically gentrifying the power grid. They're also bound to police this fiefdom of theirs, and anyone they don't like the look of is going to wind up exploited at best and murdered by a Blackwater thug at worst. It's a Neill Blomkamp movie waiting to happen.
The Rub
Whether successful or no, these cities or states or whatever hyped up name they eventually call themselves are going to come into existence–already have, in some limited cases. The effective endorsement by Trump with his Freedom Cities initiative means we can count on at least one candidate to give these crypto goobs carte blanche. But, unsurprisingly, neither side is opposed to folks like Thiel and Brian Armstrong, because they have money, and that's all either party cares about.
So expect more of this kind of thing. It'll definitely happen outside of the US, and probably happen in some fashion or another inside it. Fighting against these deeply, deeply uncool behemoths may require some NIMBYism, which is generally shitty but perhaps necessary. Then there's always the kind of dissent we see from Stop Cop City Atlanta–which could help shift a location if it gets too close to you, but is unlikely to stop the momentum of such a thing altogether.
It's another symptom, ultimately, of a faltering system. Armstrong and his ilk are right about that–the world as we know it is crumbling down around us.