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Will New City-States Replace Nations?
We interview Patrick Friedman, a leading thinker on competitive governance, about his vision for decentralized societies. He explains the charter city model as a way to "upgrade" existing nations by allowing innovation in legal systems. These startup societies enable jurisdictional experimentation absent in most countries today.
Patrick argues exit rights are paramount so groups can self-determine governance. He envisions charter cities as platforms where many opt-in communities with niche values/cultures can emerge. We discuss economics, recruiting celebrity founders, penal colonies, and more unorthodox concepts. Overall Patrick sees charter cities as unlocking competition to find better forms of social organization.
[00:00:00] Hello. We said, we're going to get a very special episode today, which can almost be thought of as a lost interview, because it was one of the early interviews we did. Uh, but it was in a very different format than our other episodes. And so we didn't want to release it until we had a bit more of a following. It was, was Patrick Friedman who runs Pronos capital, the first venture capital fund that focuses on charter cities and network states. So when people are trying to start new countries, uh, this is the main funder of that. And Patrick Friedman, who we've known for a very long time since Silicon valley. Is the guy who would have been at the center of the seasteading movement when that was really growing. He coded at Google for 10 years, rent a small angel fund since 2, 7, 11 has degrees in CS and business and has been a leader in the competitive governance scene for over 20 years. Yeah. Leaders understatement there.
He was basically he's the, what was the early charter city guy, when [00:01:00] most of the charter city movement with seasteading, which was this idea that people would go live on. Uh, sort of floating boats that would be made up of, uh, autonomous components that could like break apart and recombine. So like even your house, you could easily leave one government system and go to another government system very easily. So, uh, Some other stuff here I have 2001 began thinking about a new approach to upgrading governments. The side hustle 2008, started the sea setting Institute with funding for Peter teal, 2009. Co-created a famous phrase, a self-organizing festival on water, still running annual annually. So for if ever raises another thing, cause this is actually a really important event within. Silicon valley culture, which was seen as sort of like the rationalist slash less wrong version of burning man. Um, but it was done on boats, which honestly seems much more appealing to me. Uh, 2011 co-founded future cities development, which have had the first M. Oh you for a modern charter city in 2012 in to southern 18 started promos capital patrick [00:02:00] has board memberships and advisory positions across this charter city network state space He does talks interviews and events regularly around the world Very excited to, to bring this loss a bit of context for you and we have a few other interviews we might be able to put out this way Um so very excited about that.
Simone: Hello Simone.
Malcolm: It's wonderful to be here with you today. And Patrick Friedman. Patrick Friedman, he is and has been for a long time, known as one of the most preeminent thinkers of what. Future cities may look like what future society may look like. And given that we've been talking so much about the future of the world economy and the future of what human civilization may look like in ways that are very orthogonal to the way people think about civilization today, we are so excited to have him on.
Malcolm: I would love you to give a bit more of your background if you think as any is necessary. And the first question I will prompt you is, is has [00:03:00] any of your thinking around what future human cities may loo
Published on 2 years, 2 months ago