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My First Video (Reaction to The Deprogram and Hasan Piker)
So now that I’m officially soft doxxed with the launch of Blockchain Radicals coming up (up for pre-order), I thought I’d start trying to expand from writing and podcasts into video. For this first try I thought I’d keep it simple and do a reaction video to some comments that were made in a recent…
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BLOCKCHAIN RADICALS BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT
For the past almost two years I’ve been stealth writing a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot…
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OTNS: DAOs and Decentralized Mafias
Primavera and I have been at Zuzalu and took the opportunity to speak with Ameen Soleimani (@ameensol) about his role in Ethereum history and the creation of Moloch DAO and Privacy Pools. We also discussed the geopolitical implications of crypto technology and how it relates to thinking about network states. Overthrowing the Network State (OTNS) is…
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OTNS: Network States is what you get when you have VC-brain
In this episode Primavera (@yaoeo), Tara Merk (@mpg_dd), and I speak to Jahed Monand (@againstutopia), co-founder and partner of Cerulean Ventures, co-host of The Ownership Economy podcast (@ownereconomy), and left wing anarchist. During the discussion we speak about Jahed’s interactions with Balaji, the violence inherent to borders, and the real problem with heavily regulated industries…
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The First Communist Network State is Already Here: Working Class Sovereignty
A few weeks ago, I visited Granada, Spain, to meet with my friend and comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association before heading off to another city to meet more friends. On my last day there we decided to rent a car and take a day trip to Marinaleda, a village in the Andalusian…
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Collective Intelligence, Mini Socialism, and Microsolidarity
In this episode I spoke with Richard Bartlett (@RichDecibels), a co-founder of tech co-op Loomio, non-hierarchical management consultancy The Hum, and director of the social impact collective Enspiral. His most recent endeavour is a community building network called Microsolidarity, Although I’ve followed him for a while now, we met in person at the Solarpunk NOW event in Austria organized by the Crypto…
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OTNS: Critiques and Alternatives from a Former Professional Libertarian
For this episode of OTNS, Primavera and I spoke to Chris Berg, a cryptoeconomist, co-director at the RMIT Blockchain Hub, and a “former professional libertarian”. During the conversation we spoke about Chris’ revisionist history of blockchains, the shortcomings of TNS from a libertarian point of view, and Balaji’s state envy. Like we mentioned at the beginning of the series,…
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BONUS: Join Monetary Activists at Collaborative Finance!
BONUS EPISODE I spoke to Matthew Slater (@matslats) about an upcoming event happening at the Commons Hub in Austria from May 22nd to 28th called Collaborative Finance that he is helping organize with the Crypto Commons Association, one of the projects part of the Breadchain Cooperative which I co-founded. We spoke about what Collaborative Finance means, how money actually gets created in the private…
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OTNS: Institutional Design and Recognizing the Value of Politics
For this episode of OTNS, Primavera and I spoke to Jason Potts (@profjasonpotts), a professor of economics and co-director of blockchain innovation hub of RMIT. This is the first episode in the series where we’re talking to someone who is still a fan of Balaji. During the interview we spoke about his disappointments in the…
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Inside the Cybernetic Forest: Terra0’s Vision for Nature to Own Itself
In this episode I spoke with Paul Seidler (@brachlandberlin), a member of the Terra0 artist collective. Terra0 has been around since 2016 when it released a whitepaper outlining how a technologically enhanced forest combine with blockchain could own itself and exert autonomy. Since then the collective has organized several exhibitions exploring this theme including Flowertokens, an experiment with…
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OTNS: Maximum Freedom in Complex Social Organizations
For this episode of OTNS, Primavera and I spoke to Eric Alston (@IncompleteRules), a researcher at Block Science and Scholar-in-Residence at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, focused on the study of institutions, namely property, constitutions and blockchains. During the interview we spoke about formal vs inform institutions, organizational complexity, and…
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OTNS: How to Optimize for Reality
Michael Zargham (@mZargham), the CEO of Block Science comes back on the show to help us continue to overthrow the ontological framework of network states from the perspective of complex systems engineering. During the discussion we talk about how network states don’t optimize for reality, not confusing the map with the territory, and how an alternative to…
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Lens Protocol: Creating a Web3 Social Ecosystem with Stani Kulechov
We all know that the current landscape of social media is not ideal for various reasons, but one of those reasons is because the revenue model is based on the client-server model giving companies access to massive amounts of user data. For this interview I spoke with Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave and Lens Protocol, a new…
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Overthrowing The Network State: Dictatorship by Tech CEO with Nathan Schneider
Nathan Schneider comes back on the show to speak to Primavera and I to continue Overthrowing The Network State. During the conversation we talk about his experience at ETH Denver, the issue with using tech venture capital as a model for governance, and being intentional when exploring new political possibilities. Mentioned Writing from NathanWeb3 Is the Opportunity We…
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Overthrowing The Network State: Colonize the Memes, the Narratives, and the Land
Primavera and Morshed Mannan from Blockchaingov join me to speak to Raymond Craib, a historian of modern Latin America who recently published the book Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age. We spoke about the neocolonialism inherent to network states and previous attempts at utopian libertarian exits, the colonization of history,…
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Overthrowing The Network State: Untangling Balaji’s Helical Theory of History
For this episode, I’m joined by Kelsie Nabben from Blockchaingov to speak to Quinn DuPont (@quinndupont), a historian of technology who recently gave a talk about his criticisms of TNS at the Commons Stack Unconference. He also recently published an article titled A Progressive Web3: From Social Coproduction to Digital Polycentric Governance. During the episode we interrogate Balaji’s misunderstandings of history…
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The Commons Engine: Collective intelligence, non-monetary currencies, and Holochain
For this interview I spoke to Ferananda Ibarra (@fer_ananda), the Director of the Commons Engine, a Holochain Ecosystem service agency aiming to create a community of Regenerative Economy practitioners capable of designing ethical tokens and currencies to enable healthy flow, incentives, and feedback loops in order to evolve the economy and culture of their own communities and organizations.…
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Overthrowing The Network State: Survival of the Richest with Douglas Rushkoff
For this episode, Primavera and I speak with Douglas Rushkoff (@rushkoff). Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, which we found to be relevant…
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Overthrowing The Network State: Forming New Publics and Pluralism with Glen Weyl
In the second episode of OTNS, Primavera (@yaoeo) and I are speaking to Glen Weyl (@glenweyl), the founder of RadicalxChange and a co-author of Vitalik Buterin and Puja Ohlhaver’s article on Decentralized Society. During the discussion we spoke about Balaji’s oversimplifications in the book, how TNS was not written for human beings, and Glen’s alternative for a Networked Society differs. Overthrowing…
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Socialist Tokens: There would be no taxes under socialism
For this interview I spoke to Dr. Phillipp Dapprich, a post doc at the University of Potsdam in political theory who did his doctors thesis on socialist central planning studying under Paul Cockshott. He recently published a paper titled Tokens make the world go round: socialist tokens as an alternative to money.During the interview we spoke about…
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An Anticapture framework for left organizing
For this bonus episode, I dive into the Anticapture framework by Spencer Graham which professes a taxonomy and structure for creating “capture-resistant governance” for an organization. While the piece itself was meant for DAOs, I think there were some interesting things said in the piece that are very relevant for socialist organizations. The piece also…
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The Question of Funding in Palestine
I spoke to Yazan Khalili and Sami Khaldi, Palestinian activists who started a project called The Question of Funding which is an art collective that presented at Documenta 15 this past year. They had a discussion on Outland with Monalisa Gharavi in November about their project as well. During the discussion we spoke about how Israel has forced a reliance on financialization in…
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Algorithms All the Way Down: People Die, Capital Does Not
For this interview I spoke to Ian Wright (@ianpaulwright), the author of the Dark Marxism blog which explores Marxism and the occult. Ian is also a programmer who has worked in machine learning and artificial intelligence. During the discussion we spoke about what Marx means when he refers to capital as a “real God“, how capital is…
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SBF proves we live in post post post-modernism (clown world)
I’m sure most reading this probably have heard the news about the collapse of FTX and the ensuing crypto financial contagion it’s caused. A lot of strange and bad analyses are being spread around crypto Twitter and elsewhere so Ben Basche (@basche42) and I try to describe a more reasonable account of the situation that…
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Techno-Utopianism vs Class Struggle Technologism
For this interview I spoke to Izzy Meckler (@izmeckler), the Chief Science Officer of 0(1) Labs which is currently building the Mina Protocol. Mina is a blockchain that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to be as light and scalable as possible. Izzy is also an active member of East Bay DSA and has a blog called Parametricity. During the…
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Talking Politics with Vitalik Buterin (Part 2)
I interviewed Vitalik Buterin about his thoughts on the political aspects of crypto. It was a candid discussion about his book “Proof of Stake“, the evolution of Ethereum, and the dangers of the far right. Although our discussion happened just before the current scandal with FTX, there were many relevant threads. History has shown that similar types…
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Talking Politics with Vitalik Buterin (Part 1)
I interviewed Vitalik Buterin about his thoughts on the political aspects of crypto. It was a candid discussion about his book “Proof of Stake“, the evolution of Ethereum, and the dangers of the far right. Although our discussion happened just before the current scandal with FTX, there were many relevant threads. History has shown that…
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Participatory Budgeting, Real Public Goods, and why Bernie would’ve won with quadratic funding
For this interview I spoke to Eli Zeger (@ezeger16), a writer, editor, and musician. He is also a worker-owner at Ampled and a member of the Exit to Community Collective. He recently published a piece for the Zora Zine titled Appetite for Redistribution: Budgeting for All talking about how blockchains and quadratic funding could be used to…
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Why Socialists should NOT cede crypto to the Right
For this interview I spoke to Joshua Citarella (@JoshuaCitarella on social media), an artist, researcher, and Twitch streamer who studies niche online communities. He authored the book the Politigram and the Post-Left exploring esoteric online political beliefs. He’s done a lot of work exploring various “e-deologies” and the very online young people who create and subscribe to them. We discussed…
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Extitutional Theory: No Rules, No Roles, just Dynamics
I spoke to Primavera De Filipi (@yaoeo), one of the earliest scholars on law and crypto, Internet activist, and artist. She is permanent researcher at the CNRS and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She is author of the book Blockchain and the Law published by Harvard University Press. During the…
