Dec 12, 2023·edited Dec 12, 2023Liked by R.W. Richey
Not sure if this is the right place to share these thoughts on The Network State... You'll tell me if it's not.
Balaji envisions new communities that start with a click of a mouse. And he is not wrong, this is an accurate description of the default 21st century community. But calling these social networks communities (little c) conflates them with the Communities (big C) of the previous 50 millennia or so. I suspect that this is a non-trivial mistake.
Click-based communities (*ccs*) of today are a built on exactly that - a click (click like, join, support, donate, etc.). Classic Communities (*CCs*) of the past were action-based, built on shared experience, and required hours, days and sometimes years of collaborative action in order to emerge. What does this mean? It means that *ccs* can have a lot of power as long as things are clickable. They can vote with a click. They can cancel with a click. They can join a movement with a click. They can buy/donate/fund with a click. They can announce a purpose with a series of 140 clicks. These are not trivial powers. And Balaji is very well versed in the technologies and dynamics of these communities.
But *ccs* are limited by the click options available. Outside of the click scope, these communities are entirely(nearly?) impotent. They can destroy, but they are rarely able to create. That's because according to the new rules, it is possible to destroy with a collective click. But creating is still defined by old rules, by man hours. *CCs* have always been very very different from *ccs* and followed the general socioeconomic rules of the IRL world. For something to happen, there needed to be ALPHA LEADERS and WORKER BEES. The ALPHA LEADERS, whether innovators or opportunists, would take actionable risks to set policy and give orders. The WORKER BEES took actionable risks to follow policy and follow orders. Even religion followed a similarly basic protocol. God says to love thy neighbor. Neighbor bakes apple pie and carries it across the street. The consistent variables in a *CC* were risk and work. Everybody took some kind of risk (smart or stupid) and everybody did work (the free riders were the outliers). In the *cc*, the risks are difficult to quantify because there is very little sacrifice of time and work required in a click. In fact, the *ccs* flipped the work pyramid in that a very few do the work (content creators) and the many do no work (default free ridership (powered by ads)).
Our new *cc* status quo came from a convergence of tech trends, economic trends, and an Information Age that made everybody much more informed. Today’s individual is much more likely to know that being a worker bee is a raw deal — "it’s not worth it"… and that being an alpha leader is also not such a great deal — it’s also not worth it. Ironically, or unfortunately, "it's not worth it" — a rational battlecry of this informed generation — is also a very powerful incapacitator. Human history is highlighted by people who took outsized (arguably irrational) risks, and worked into or lucked into outsize rewards — personal rewards, and more importantly, community rewards. The dumb parts —sacrifice, loyalty, work ethic - were sort of the best parts.
Back to Balaji. Balaji envisions a hybrid community of a *CC* and a *cc*. But I think Balaji has a bias. Balaji has spent the last several decades being surrounded by outliers. He was surrounded by studious outliers at Stanford. He was surrounded by entrepreneurial outliers at a16z. He was surrounded by creative outliers at Burning Man. He was surrounded by productivity outliers in the form of open source developers and new rules outliers in the form of crypto fanatics. He is no stranger to hard work, risk taking, sacrifice, commitment, etc. But this is not so for the minions, which is his blind spot.
For a community to start with one click is one thing, but to transition to the next stages, it needs to act in tens/hundreds/thousands of different ways. But the masses, being as disabled as they currently are, are unlikely to make that transition. At the individual level, it will simply not be worth it. Perhaps this is why we haven't seen Balaji's phenomenon (or a similar one) emerge in the recent years. *ccs* consistently start with a bang and end with a fizzle.
I guess there might be a hack for Balaji to dig himself out of this predicament. If a technology emerges that is robust enough to make clickability omnipotent... or at least potent enough to replace the old rules altogether. One can point to Dall-e 3 as a potential example, where powerful works of art and illustration, which previously required years of learning and hard work to accomplish, can now be done with several clicks. So I guess AI is the wild card. Great.
One issue I had with The Network State was Balaji's use of super-shitty examples of startup societies. They were like, "if all Zoolander fans start forming a society, and then start building models of schools, and then building other models at least twice the size..."
Not sure if this is the right place to share these thoughts on The Network State... You'll tell me if it's not.
Balaji envisions new communities that start with a click of a mouse. And he is not wrong, this is an accurate description of the default 21st century community. But calling these social networks communities (little c) conflates them with the Communities (big C) of the previous 50 millennia or so. I suspect that this is a non-trivial mistake.
Click-based communities (*ccs*) of today are a built on exactly that - a click (click like, join, support, donate, etc.). Classic Communities (*CCs*) of the past were action-based, built on shared experience, and required hours, days and sometimes years of collaborative action in order to emerge. What does this mean? It means that *ccs* can have a lot of power as long as things are clickable. They can vote with a click. They can cancel with a click. They can join a movement with a click. They can buy/donate/fund with a click. They can announce a purpose with a series of 140 clicks. These are not trivial powers. And Balaji is very well versed in the technologies and dynamics of these communities.
But *ccs* are limited by the click options available. Outside of the click scope, these communities are entirely(nearly?) impotent. They can destroy, but they are rarely able to create. That's because according to the new rules, it is possible to destroy with a collective click. But creating is still defined by old rules, by man hours. *CCs* have always been very very different from *ccs* and followed the general socioeconomic rules of the IRL world. For something to happen, there needed to be ALPHA LEADERS and WORKER BEES. The ALPHA LEADERS, whether innovators or opportunists, would take actionable risks to set policy and give orders. The WORKER BEES took actionable risks to follow policy and follow orders. Even religion followed a similarly basic protocol. God says to love thy neighbor. Neighbor bakes apple pie and carries it across the street. The consistent variables in a *CC* were risk and work. Everybody took some kind of risk (smart or stupid) and everybody did work (the free riders were the outliers). In the *cc*, the risks are difficult to quantify because there is very little sacrifice of time and work required in a click. In fact, the *ccs* flipped the work pyramid in that a very few do the work (content creators) and the many do no work (default free ridership (powered by ads)).
Our new *cc* status quo came from a convergence of tech trends, economic trends, and an Information Age that made everybody much more informed. Today’s individual is much more likely to know that being a worker bee is a raw deal — "it’s not worth it"… and that being an alpha leader is also not such a great deal — it’s also not worth it. Ironically, or unfortunately, "it's not worth it" — a rational battlecry of this informed generation — is also a very powerful incapacitator. Human history is highlighted by people who took outsized (arguably irrational) risks, and worked into or lucked into outsize rewards — personal rewards, and more importantly, community rewards. The dumb parts —sacrifice, loyalty, work ethic - were sort of the best parts.
Back to Balaji. Balaji envisions a hybrid community of a *CC* and a *cc*. But I think Balaji has a bias. Balaji has spent the last several decades being surrounded by outliers. He was surrounded by studious outliers at Stanford. He was surrounded by entrepreneurial outliers at a16z. He was surrounded by creative outliers at Burning Man. He was surrounded by productivity outliers in the form of open source developers and new rules outliers in the form of crypto fanatics. He is no stranger to hard work, risk taking, sacrifice, commitment, etc. But this is not so for the minions, which is his blind spot.
For a community to start with one click is one thing, but to transition to the next stages, it needs to act in tens/hundreds/thousands of different ways. But the masses, being as disabled as they currently are, are unlikely to make that transition. At the individual level, it will simply not be worth it. Perhaps this is why we haven't seen Balaji's phenomenon (or a similar one) emerge in the recent years. *ccs* consistently start with a bang and end with a fizzle.
I guess there might be a hack for Balaji to dig himself out of this predicament. If a technology emerges that is robust enough to make clickability omnipotent... or at least potent enough to replace the old rules altogether. One can point to Dall-e 3 as a potential example, where powerful works of art and illustration, which previously required years of learning and hard work to accomplish, can now be done with several clicks. So I guess AI is the wild card. Great.
One issue I had with The Network State was Balaji's use of super-shitty examples of startup societies. They were like, "if all Zoolander fans start forming a society, and then start building models of schools, and then building other models at least twice the size..."
Also, what's Lavignia