The Network State – Balaji Srinivasan [video]

I think he's hugely underestimating the power of violence. Physical force can't break math, but it certainly can quite easily force you to surrender your key or physically take possession of any infrastructure. All the digital stuff he's discussing is actually very fragile and very dependent on a ton of complex infrastructure including but not limited to power and wiring, and all that is very easy to physically possess or physically destroy.

He's also forgetting about the majority of humanity. The other major problem here is inequality. If all the best and the brightest secede from nation states and go borderless and trans-national, that leaves the remainder of humanity to suffer in poverty. Eventually this condition would evolve into serfdom. Enforcement of a feudal serfdom relationship will require just the kind of totalitarianism that these cyber-libertarians don't like, and totalitarianism doesn't really work unless almost everyone submits to it. (Even the leaders of totalitarian regimes are subjects in that they are not free to oppose their own system. Kim Jong would be killed by his generals if he questioned his own system too much.) Failure to enact totalitarian control to enforce and maintain extreme wealth disparity will result in violent revolution. So your choice in the end will be submit to a totalitarian cyberpunk panopticon or be lynched by the masses that you have abandoned.

In short I do not think these ideas are viable as presented. This "cyber-Platonism" forgets about physical reality. Information systems are physical embodied things. Bits actually do take up space. "Virtual" is an illusion.

Case in point: Bitcoin, which he extols as an example of a borderless post-state information system, consumes a gigantic amount of energy that must be supplied by physical mines, power plants, solar panels, etc.

I don't want to totally dismiss everything Balaji says. It's definitely true that information technology changes the nature and balance of power. But he vastly overstates his case when he starts talking about post-statehood.