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Techno-Feudalism & the Post-Collapse Network Empire
We discuss how widespread economic collapse could lead to a "techno-feudal" future, with fortified city-states and regions controlled by technological elites. However, networks of these havens may help rebuild civilization. We compare to South Africa's current situation and emphasize why islands and unstable regions are poor choices. This builds on the concept of sovereign network states.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] what makes it a network empire instead of a network state. And I think the core, the, the core thing that Balaji when he came up with this concept and missed is the insecurity of a future world when we're dealing with wide scale economic collapse.
That is the world that we are heading into where it is cheaper. For the wealthy class in our society to isolate themselves from everyone else than it is for them to ensure widespread prosperity.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: I am so glad to be recording these again. Our audience doesn't know, but it's actually been like a week and a half since we did our last recording because we were at this ARC conference in the UK, which is supposed to be, I don't know, like this new alternative to Davos sort of a thing, but I think it's just really conservative British Davos.
But one of the people who we met while we were there and we had a long conversation with was Curtis Yarvin. And in that conversation, I really helped me clarify some [00:01:00] things that I think about what's going to happen in the future of our species. And we may release that conversation because it was recorded at some time, but it was recorded in, like, a busiest restaurant with a Greek reporter interviewing us both together.
So I can't believe that some random Greek newspaper, a monarchist newspaper, by the way, is getting the piece where it's me and you and Curtis Jarvin talking for, like, 2 hours. But, we constantly get accused of being techno feudalists in the media. And, this to me feels not just like an unfair accusation, but almost an insane accusation.
It's a bit like... If you know, I have some friends who their family were, you know, left Germany early, and they tried really hard to convince everyone the Holocaust was coming. And they were just basically told they were crazy, and so, this family is actually descended from a guy who broke into his girlfriend's house at night, took the girl he was dating, and ran away.
Now, they made the horrible mistake of running east [00:02:00] to Russia, instead of west and so then they... For like a 10 year period, just constantly had to flee new places. But anyway, it would be like calling him a, a Holocaustian. And people would be like, well, yeah, but even if he saw it coming, you know, they could have said, well, let's try to prevent it.
Right. And it's like, no, there was a certain point where he was like, look at. Hitler, this guy who was elected to power. Look at what he's writing. Read his book. Okay. He published this like it's not vague what his plans are. And you know, I feel a bit like that when I talk about techno feudalism, where I'm saying it is.
Almost inevitable at this point that something like a techno feudalistic state is going to happen. And we need to, those of us who do not want to be churned up by the system, need to prepare for how the world is going to change. Both in terms of our culture and our families and economically because it's [00:03:00] going to be absolutely catastrophic and very, very significant.
Now, 1st, I would say, when we talk about techno feudalism, we do not mean. So there's this, like, Greek economist guy who keeps he wrote, like, a book on quote, unquote, techno feudalism and the way that he defines the term is vague and pointless, basically what we already know, which is that we live in a world in which large tech companies control a lot of the economic system.
And it'
Published on 2 years, 1 month ago