Bangladesh was a stable country.

But it didn’t want to give up a military base or take sides on Ukraine.

So in retaliation, psychopathic Democrats backed a coup.

Then the White House lied about it, just like they lied about Hunter’s pardon.

Now it’s going fundamentalist.

https://twitter.com/jonfdanilowicz/status/1863204108208898387

Karine Jean-Pierre lied repeatedly about whether Biden would pardon Hunter. That was a “conspiracy theory” back then and a conspiracy reality today.

Now apply that to claims about other matters. Is it really a coincidence that both Bangladesh and Pakistan suffered coups?

Gautam Adani is an Indian magnate.
He’s built ports, roads — everything.
One of the most prominent men in India.
Now comes the Democrat DOJ.
Indicting an Indian doing business in India.
For some ostensible violation of US law!
Why? Adani is perceived as center right.
And Democrats are now far left.
So it’s just lawfare across borders.
Like their attacks on Elon.
And on Israel’s right.
And on European conservatives.
But…I doubt the Trump admin continues it. Adani is to Indian ports what Elon is to American space. That’s why Indian leftists hate him.

But the left is too weak locally to attack him, so they whistled for backup to US Democrats.

After the Trump admin takes office, let’s see whether this case is still around in a year.

https://twitter.com/rajeevsrinivasa/status/1859448891067740465

What comes after wokeness?
Democrats align with Communists.
Newsom shows the way.
He’s lost DC, but has Xi.
So: TikTok becomes the Democrat X.
And California defies Trump tariffs.
It’s unfortunately the obvious move.
And already underway. You might know that Xi visited Newsom in SF last year.

You might not know that Newsom visited Xi before. And promised to be China’s “long-term, stable, and strong partner.”
balajis.com/p/only-newsom-…

FRANCE IS FOR CRIME, AGAINST FREEDOM

François asks a good question. My answer is: France doesn't care about crime, they care about control.

1) First, Macron hasn't wiped out crime among 70M Frenchmen with all the power of the French State. So it's completely unreasonable to expect Durov to wipe out crime among 1B+ Telegram users with his minimal power of content moderation.

2) Second, the deeper point is that the French state is deeply uninterested in public safety! They allow violent crime, fundamentalist terrorism, and drug dealing to run rampant in France. Just compare Paris to what it was a few generations ago.

3) Third, is Macron held personally responsible for every beheading, rape, and robbery that occurs on French soil? Is he jailed when traveling for violating the human rights of French citizens by not "moderating" his community hard enough? No, he is not. Even though the tools of the French state are vastly greater than those of Telegram, over a vastly smaller userbase. Again: Macron has ~70M citizens to deal with, while Telegram has almost 1B users.

4) Finally, we already know what a real anti-crime policy looks like. It looks like @nayibbukele. And President Bukele is for encryption, and has invited programmers to build on El Salvadoran soil — an offer they'd be well-advised to take up.

5) So: France is an anarcho-tyrannical regime. It doesn't need sophisticated surveillance to stop drug dealing — because it's all happening in public! They know exactly where the criminals are, and the victims too. They are literally setting up spaces for them to do drugs till they die.

I mean, does France need to imprison the CEO of Telegram to stop this? France has fallen to fascism (again).
Build in a country like El Salvador.
Where crime is low.
And coding isn't a crime.

https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1827502729402437924

THE NETWORK SCHOOL

We got an island.

That’s right. Through the power of Bitcoin, we now have a beautiful island near Singapore where we’re building the Network School. We’re starting with a 90-day popup that runs from Sep 23 to Dec 23, right after the Network State Conference. Rent is only $1000/month with roommates or $2000/month solo. And we have plenty of day passes for visitors.

So, go apply online at ns dot com! Then read more below.

THE DARK TALENT
As motivation, I’ve always wanted to expand equality of opportunity around the world. Because my father was born in a desperately poor country, but with the right opportunity he was able to make something of himself. Like dark matter, he was dark talent. And for more than a decade I’ve been thinking about how to give others who are similarly situated the chance to make something of themselves. That is: I’ve been thinking about how to empower the dark talent of the world.

US universities used to fill this role, even imperfectly, and I loved Stanford when I taught there years ago. But the data shows they’ve declined in recent days. And they’re just not affordable or accessible to most of the world. So, it’s time for a new approach. And thanks to Saraswati and Satoshi, I have the resources to endow a new Internet-first institution: the Network School.

The purpose of the Network School is to articulate a vision of peace, trade, internationalism, and technology…even as the rest of the world talks about war, trade war, nationalism, and statism. To revitalize democracy for the internet era, with digital polities and verifiable votes. To train the next generation to be not just leaders of companies, but inspirations for their communities. And to pursue truth, health, and wealth by leveling up our attendees personally, physically, and professionally.

Let me now describe in more detail how the Network School works, who it’s for, and how to apply.

HOW THE NETWORK SCHOOL WORKS
The Network School is for people of all ages, not just the youth. And it’s meant to be lifelong rather than one-off, with both a structured and and an unstructured component. The structured part is about continuous daily self-improvement: learning skills, burning calories, and earning currency. Meanwhile, the unstructured part is about having fun and hanging out with people of similar values.

For short: learn, burn, earn, and fun.

Learn
The first part of the Network School is about learning technologies and humanities.

As motivation, the existing model of US undergraduate education is broken. You pay $100k+ for a four year degree, and then budget nothing for maintenance over the course of your life. It’s like paying $100k+ for a new car and budgeting nothing for maintenance.

By contrast, the Network School is about continuous education. It’s for remote workers, engineers, creators and digital nomads who want to integrate learning into their lives, rather than stopping everything to be a full-time student.

Here’s how that works. We set up mini-classrooms where you can drop in to see the problem of the day.5 You solve that problem and a proctor awards you a cryptocredential, a free non-transferable NFT sent to your crypto wallet that establishes “proof-of-learn.” Often your solution will involve putting code on GitHub/Replit (to show you understand a concept), or posting content to your social media profile (to show you understand a new AI tool). And over time, these cryptocredentials actually build up a cryptoresume proving what you know.

Our initial material focuses on founding tech communities, as distinct from tech companies. As such it touches on everything from crypto, AI, and social media to history, politics, and filmmaking. It should be useful even if you’re just growing a traditional company or building a following. Over time, of course, every branch of the sciences and humanities becomes relevant when building a community. So if this initial experiment works, we can expand branch-by-branch to build a new kind of university.

But we’re intentionally starting with something simple. Our learning is about continuous education, about solving the problem-of-the-day.

Burn
The second part of the Network School is about burning calories.

Longevity is important, but 20th century communities just aren’t physically set up to maximize physical fitness. Quite the contrary: the default mode of Western society is sedentary and sugary. Those who want to escape this need to roll their own nutrition and workout program, which takes time, money, and energy.

We’re changing that. I’ve teamed up with my friend @bryan_johnson to set up Blueprint-inspired food and fitness for the entire Network School community. Bryan will be on campus to set up the program, and then his designates will maintain it on a daily basis. Like many of you, I’ve been both fit and fat at various times, so this is a product I want to use myself.

Every member of the Network School gets a daily workout slot with a semi-personal trainer, much like a group fitness class. You run and lift in the morning at your chosen time, getting a proof-of-workout from your trainer. Your group holds you accountable for showing up. Then you get a box with your Blueprint-optimized healthy meals and head to work. The whole point is to provide willpower-as-a-service, where the community6 provides the discipline.

We’re starting with the basics of running, lifting, eating, and sleeping properly. The initial goal is to hit the limits of your genetics. But if all goes well, the biotech founders that come to the Network School will eventually help us all surpass our genetic limits, to live much longer than we otherwise would.

But again, we’re starting small! And so the “burning calories” part is about lifelong health and the workout-of-the-day.

Earn
The third part of the Network School is about earning currency.

We’ll have crypto prizes of the day for open source projects, AI content creation, and microtasks. There will be $1000 bounties every day for the duration of the program, similar to the various prizes I’ve posted on Twitter and Farcaster. And community members will post their own prizes.

Next, in keeping with the overall theme of self-improvement, we’ll have office hours to help with your job, your career, your visa status, and your funding. We’re much more invested in you than a typical college career center because our interests are aligned: the more you earn, and the stronger you are financially, the more you’ll eventually have to reinvest in the community.

Finally, we’ll have visitor hours with famous visiting technologists. As my friend Sriram noticed, when investors come through Singapore I typically do a podcast with them. Many will also visit the Network School to meet attendees, invest in them, or hire them. Others will give remote talks. And you can see the quality of visitors from the speakers in our conference and podcast.

So, earning is about constant career development and the prize-of-the-day.

Fun
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, of course. So the fourth part of the Network School is about fun.

This is the unstructured component. It’s most of what you’re here for. It’s just about assembling great people in one place: positive-sum people who believe in technological progress, internationalism, and capitalism. It’s your internet friends, coming from URL to IRL. Stanford introduced the concept of residential education, but this takes it to the next level.

In fact, our initial location is very similar to Stanford. It’s beautiful and sunny, and less than an hour from a major city (Singapore) with an international airport (Changi). That means you can be heads down during the week, head into the city on the weekends for fun, and get to just about anywhere in Asia within the same day. This is convenient for the >50% of the world that lives within the Valeriepieris circle.

We’ll do some group outings too, but most of the fun will be up to you.

WHO THE NETWORK SCHOOL IS FOR
Who is the Network School for? There are four lenses on this: demographical, ideological, professional, and personal.

Demographically
As mentioned, our focus is the dark talent. The more respect you have for legacy institutions, and the more respect they have for you, the less suitable you’ll be as an applicant.

So: the Network School is for Indian engineers and African founders, for makers from the Midwest and the Middle East, for Chinese liberals and Latin American libertarians, for Southeast Asia’s rising technologists and Europe’s remaining capitalists.

It’s for everyone who doesn’t feel part of the establishment. But it’s definitely not only for tech, because a community does not run on tech alone.

Ideologically
Ideologically, the Network School is for people who admire Western values, but who also recognize that Asia is in ascendance, and that the next world order is more properly centered around the Internet — around neutral code — than around either declining Western institutions or a rising Chinese state.

For example, the Network School is for those who understand that Bitcoin succeeds the Federal Reserve, that encryption is the only true protection against unreasonable search and seizure, that AI can deliver better opinions than any Delaware magistrate, and that democracy can be rejuvenated with cryptography. It is for those who believe in technology, harmony, internationalism, and capitalism. It’s for those who want Silicon Valley without San Francisco. And for those who want to found, fund, and find not just new companies and currencies — but new cities and new communities.

Professionally
Our ideal applicant is capable of remote work, or has enough savings to support themselves while at the Network School. For our initial cohort, we’re seeking three major groups of people in particular:

- Writers, artists, influencers, and filmmakers
- Trainers, athletes, coaches, and clinicians
- Founders, engineers, designers, and investors

These are, roughly, the demographics focused on learning, burning, and earning respectively. Of course, if you fall outside those categories but still think you have something to contribute, you should still apply to the Network School.

Personally
I should mention that the Network School is a “product” that I built for the young version of myself — the aspiring young engineer. This is the community I want to live in: a technocapitalist college town, a Stanford 2.0 that’s globally affordable and genuinely meritocratic.

So, I’ll be on campus full time. Bryan Johnson and I are supervising the setup of everything from bench press to French press. And we’ll eventually be recruiting faculty in the form of content creators, fitness influencers, and angel investors for the learn, burn, and earn portions of our program respectively. But all that in due time.

APPLYING TO THE NETWORK SCHOOL
Ok, so how do you apply to the Network School?

Just go to ns dot com and click "apply." We’ve set up a simple Luma page where you can apply in a few minutes. Then, if you pass review, we’ll send a second application where you pay rent. As mentioned, our monthly rent is $1000 (with roommates) and $2000 (solo). We also have daily and weekly rates too, but short-term visitors still need to apply.

The rent gets you an air-conditioned room on a beautiful island, with internet, gym, and access to all courses and community services. You’ll still need to handle your flights and pay for your food, but we think the overall package is extremely affordable. And so the Network School could be an amazing option for individuals or small teams looking to save money, get fit, and level up while living in paradise.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there! Just fill out the application at ns dot com, also linked in the tweet below. Go apply to the Network School at ! ns.com/apply

Indians will never be fighting for Taiwan because *Americans* will never be fighting for Taiwan.

Reason: the US military is made in China.

https://twitter.com/sidhant/status/1811459524198564318

Men like Garcetti are fooling themselves about the capability of their military just like they did about the senility of their presidency.

In reality, the US Navy is losing to the *Houthis*, who are China’s proxy’s proxy. They cannot beat China in a conventional conflict.

CHEVRON DOMINANCE

Technology is about to accelerate.
Because Chevron deference is over.
And regulators can't just make up laws anymore.
So, countless new startups just became feasible.
This is often spoken about in the abstract, so let's do three examples and two visuals.

THREE EXAMPLES

1) Genomics. Did Congress explicitly give FDA authority to regulate genetic tests in a bill like Kefauver-Harris (1962) or PDUFA (1992)? No, it did not. But in the early 2010s, FDA attacked 23andMe and forced them to take personal genomic tests offline. Implicitly, this was under Chevron.

2) Nuclear power. Did Congress explicitly give EPA and NRC the authority to implement ALARA? No, it did not. But these agencies came up with this "as low as reasonably achievable" standard, forcing nuclear energy to become as expensive as other energy sources by spending all the cost-savings on "safety." Implicitly, this was under Chevron too.

3) Cryptocurrency. You guessed it. Did Congress explicitly give the SEC authority to regulate crypto? No, it did not. Cryptocurrencies didn't exist when the 1933 and 1934 acts were written. However, the SEC says it has regulatory authority over crypto, even when Congress is deliberating on bills to the contrary. Implicitly, that claim of SEC authority too was under Chevron.

In other words: if a regulator can't point to the law that gives them the power, they may not have the power. And you might be able to win in a court of law.

So! For technology, the overruling of Chevron could literally reopen innovation in the physical world. This is on par with the 1991 opening of the Internet to commercial traffic. It deprecates the 20th century regulatory state. All the safety theater and security theater that they optimize for sounding good while actually being bad now has to face judicial scrutiny.

TWO VISUALS
How to visualize something as abstract as Chevron reversal? Well, Chevron is the company on which the 1984 Chevron deference case is actually based. And its logo had the arrows pointed down. But now that Chevron has been reversed, we're headed up.

And that's one way to visualize what reversal means: from Chevron deference to Chevron dominance. Because rule-of-law now dominates the lawless regulatory state. If the regulator isn't specifically authorized by statute, they can't invent some regulation to stop your innovation.

But there's a second way to visualize the reversal of Chevron: regulators just got disarmed, in the most literal sense. Because ultimately a regulation is a threat of state force. If you disobey one of a regulator's made up rules, they eventually get a cop to point a gun at you, implicitly or sometimes very explicitly.

^ The photo above is from the 2010 FDA raid on Rawesome Foods for selling raw milk to club members that consciously opted in to eating and drinking foods of their own choice. This may have also been done under Chevron deference because FDA only has the right to regulate interstate commerce, and not commerce within one state (which is all that Rawesome was apparently doing at that time).

To be clear, I don't have a position on raw milk other than I do think people should be able to choose their own foods. In their lawsuit against the Farm To Consumer Legal Defense Fund, FDA strongly disagreed, contending that "there is no generalized right to bodily and physical health" and you "do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.” These are real quotes from the now-defanged regulators; see the PDF link below.

Anyway — now you get a sense of how big a deal the Chevron reversal is, and how out of control regulators can get. The Chevron reversal strips regulators of the ability to make up random rules. It calls all their existing made-up rules into question. And it gives you the power to ask where in the law it says they can make up some new rule.

You know that saying — the only way they can stop you is to shoot you? Well, now they can't shoot you as easily. So we're going from Chevron deference to Chevron dominance.

I can already feel the T-levels across tech increasing.
Many people encountered insane regulators during COVID. I regret to tell you they've been insane for some time.

As mentioned, here's the FDA's official legal opinion[1] in the 2010 case with FTC LDF[2]. They explicitly contend that "There is No Right to Consume or Feed Children Any Particular Food" and "There is No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health" and "There is No Fundamental Right to Freedom of Contract."

They aren't kidding, it's not quoted out of context. Chevron reversal defangs these guys. Very big day.

[1]:
[2]: farmtoconsumer.org/blog/2010/05/0…
farmtoconsumer.org/litigation/ey1…

DEMOCRATS ARE DESTROYING DEMOCRACY

The Democrat primary ended on June 8[1]. So why wasn’t Biden’s age openly contested?

It’s simple: Democrats are intentionally destroying democracy. They all knew Biden was infirm. But they waited till after the primary to acknowledge someone would need to succeed him. They waited till the people no longer had any say in who the Party would nominate. In other words, they waited till there wasn’t any shred of democracy involved in picking the leader of the Democrat Party.

What they want instead is a one-party state like California[2], where “elections” are held but a Party member always wins. They want intra-party selection, not competitive multiparty election. This is why Democrats seek to jail the opposition — so they can run without opposition. And this is also why they seek to control the Internet — so that the Internet doesn’t threaten their control.

All the Party really wants is to steal money and give it to their loyalists. That’s what the millions in student loans[3] and billions for nonfunctional trains[4] and trillions in printed bills[5] are all about — the greatest robbery in history. They just want the public's money, they don’t want the public to have any say over whether they're in power.

Unfortunately for them, the public Internet is outside their power.

Thus, social media circulated clips of Biden’s infirmity[6], even as regime media insisted he should be in charge of the country[7]. And prediction markets bet that Biden would be officially swapped out[8], even as officials tried to shut prediction markets down[9].

So, once again the Network triumphed over the State. Biden loyalists did their level best to control the debate in the smallest and largest senses of that term — by excluding RFK, excluding other outlets, muting Trump, “fact checking” one side, and attacking internet debate itself — but that faction within the regime just couldn’t hide the truth from Twitter.

THE PARTY DECIDES
Now everyone agrees that the hot swap is on. Because only Biden's faction wanted Biden to run.

Recall that after the Democrat primary ended on June 8, Obama very consciously put Biden on stage, let him stumble and mumble, and then held his hand[10] to usher him off stage.

That was the act of a savvy politician: Obama was ostensibly appearing with Biden to help him, but was really there to help finish him. He intentionally ushered the old man off in that way to visibly (but deniably) show the world how powerless the “most powerful man in the world” was.

That primed his team for an intra-party contest, and foreshadowed what just happened. The Party put Biden on stage for the debate, let him stumble and mumble, and is now very firmly ushering him off stage.

So, as often happens these days, internet “conspiracy theory” anticipated the regime’s now-consensus reality. Solzhenitsyn[11] put it well: we knew that they were lying, they knew that they were lying, they even knew that we knew they were lying…but they were still lying.

It suited the Democrat Party to lie, to keep an aged and infirm man as their nominal head, just as it suited the Communist Party to have Andropov and Chernenko[12] in nominal command towards the end of the Soviet era. With no one man in charge, each Party apparatchik can quietly loot the public blind, while letting the walking corpse take the public blame.

PRESIDENT NPC
Remember also: the nature of the NPC is that any one man is dispensable. The NPC’s role is to just repeat the party line, strengthening the Party in return for the support of the Party. The person is nothing, the Party is everything.

Biden simply took this principle to its absolute limit. With no onboard cognition whatsoever, he was the NPC President, and has been for years. A mindless mouthpiece for party propaganda, a hollow shell of a man, a Potemkin[13] president. He was nothing without the Party. And now, without the Party, he is nothing.

AMERICAN KREMLIN
So, what happens next? Well, in the late Soviet Union, there was a discipline called Kremlinology[14]. It was about inferring what that opaque and undemocratic system would do, about reading internal factional conflict from public hints.

Today the free world is online, while Washington itself is the Kremlin. So we do Kremlinology through digital prediction markets[15] that the state can't stop. There you will see the Obama faction, the Newsom faction, the Clinton faction, the Warren faction, and the likes of AOC and Bernie all viciously clash and contend for who will succeed President NPC.

Needless to say...there will be no democracy in those smoke-filled rooms. No public input into those Party struggles.

But there will be at the end. Because despite the Democrats’ best efforts to destroy democracy — despite all the show trials and Internet censorship and dissident prosecution — unlike the Soviet system, there does remain that extreme inconvenience of a presidential election.

So, it’s quite possible they pick Newsom. If the Party needs someone completely without conscience to succeed Biden and make centrist noises, he can do it.

Newsom is after all a 6’3” tall, handsome white guy with a beautiful wife and four children. Visually, he's a candidate from central casting. Sure, running him would be a completely unprincipled throwback for a Party that nominally opposes “white privilege” — but all that matters is that the Party retain control to loot the public, so they may get behind him regardless.

And what would Newsom do if he wins? Well, he was mayor of San Francisco and governor of California. So he will bring San Francisco- and California-quality governance to America — complete with dysfunctional million dollar toilets[16] and nonfunctional billion dollar trains[17].

Even more ominously, as you can see from the screenshot below and citations here[18-21] Newsom has already strongly committed in Chinese state media to be "China's long-term, stable, and strong partner". That's why Xinhua welcomes more Newsoms to come:

Moreover, as many in San Francisco saw to their dismay, Newsom personally welcomed Comrade Xi to California by escorting him from the plane, cleaning up the city, and (as you can see above) symbolically handing over the Golden State to Xi with a giant smile[22].

In short, Newsom has very publicly committed to reversing the last eight years of US resistance to China and completely conceding DC to Xi. If he is the candidate, that is the likely consequence.

FROM DEMOCRACY TO ONE-PARTY STATE
So as the journos keep saying, this election may in fact end America's democracy...but for reasons completely different from what has been publicly discussed. It's not the Republican who could end democracy, but the Democrat, in the sense of ending competitive multiparty elections and erecting a one-party state.

Newsom wouldn't acknowledge it, of course. His party will lie without apology just as they lied about Biden's senility. As Democrat Party leader he'd just maintain the pretense of democracy, just as the PRC calls themselves the "People's Republic" of China.

But in practice, as in his home state, and in many blue states, all multiparty elections will be replaced with de facto intra-party selections. They'll accomplish it through court-packing[23], gerrymandering[24], persecuting[25], and prosecuting[26] — as they've actually already done and promised to do!

So the threat to democracy is real. But it comes from the left. If Newsom wins, there is a real risk that he'll succeed in destroying democracy and replacing it with a one-party state.

As they've already done in California, and in China.


CITATIONS

[1]: Guam and US Virgin Islands were the last primaries, on June 8, 2024:

[2]: California is not a democracy, it's a one-party state:


[3]: Student loan forgiveness is a political bribe to Democrat Party supporters:

[4]: Not a single mile of track laid as of May 2023 for the $100B California train:

[5]: We don't even really know how many trillions they printed. That's all just seizure by the state — because as Milton Friedman said "inflation is taxation without legislation."

[6]: See for example the clip of Biden at the G7:

[7]: Remember how they called these "cheap fakes"? They even doxxed one of the RNC staffers for doing this. Regime media defended Biden to the hilt just days ago:

[8]: Polymarket is a prediction market that had a nonzero price of Biden getting swapped out even before the debate:

[9]: US Senators attacked prediction markets just last year:

[10]: Here's the video of Obama leading Biden off stage:

[11]: The full Solzhenitsyn quote:

[12]: Andropov and Chernenko were two Soviet leaders elevated at a late age that died within a year of taking office. They were then replaced by the much younger Gorbachev, who ended up ending the Soviet Union:

[13]: A Potemkin village in the Soviet Union was a fake facade erected for the purpose of fooling outsiders. In Woke America, given his now-acknowledged senility, Biden has been a Potemkin President — a fake cardboard cutout to fool the public.

[14]: Kremlinology:

[15]: There's now almost $60M in volume on who will be the Democrat Nominee in 2024, with Biden crashing:

[16]: It was a $1.7M public toilet in San Francisco:

[17]: California spent billions on a high-speed rail train, spending it all on "jobs" but not actually building the train. See here:

[18]: Xinhua: “Welcome more Newsoms to come”


[19]: China Today: “Newsom said he is willing to push California…to be China's long-term, stable and strong partner”


[20]: CGTN: “Newsom's visit…strengthen the relationship between China and the US”


[21]: CGTN: “California governor says China's success to benefit the world”


[22]: Here's Newsom symbolically handing over the Golden State to Xi:

[23]: Democrats proposed packing the court in 2021, one of the few remaining institutions that they don't fully control:

[24]: Here's ProPublica on how "Democrats fooled California's Redistricting Commission". It's a hint of the gerrymandering to come:

[25]: The Democrat Party has been persecuting Elon relentlessly with lawfare for opposing them:

[26]: Even Cuomo, former New York State attorney general, admitted the Trump prosecution was a show trial, a case that "should never have been brought" and would not have been brought if his "name was not Donald Trump":

And here are a few supplementary references.

[27]: Only Newsom Can Go To China.
This details how Newsom/Xi is shaping up to be the new Nixon/Mao:

[28]: Here's Newsom greeting Xi as he comes off the plane, a visit that only happened after Newsom visited Xi personally in China, and a visit that many other Democrat Party members tried to make happen without success:

[29]: And finally, and most importantly, here's video of Newsom admitting they removed San Francisco's drug addicts for Xi's visit...thereby conceding that Democrats had the power all along to clean up the city. But they did it for Communists, not for Americans.

apnews.com/article/presid…
balajis.com/p/california-i…
aei.org/op-eds/student…
cnbc.com/2023/05/17/why…
mises.org/power-market/h…

https://x.com/thevivafrei/status/1801347846974661062

apnews.com/article/biden-…
polymarket.com/event/democrat…
ft.com/content/9108f3…

https://x.com/chrissgardner/status/1802239454314410096

goodreads.com/quotes/1075742…
britannica.com/place/Soviet-U…
britannica.com/topic/Potemkin…
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kre…
polymarket.com/event/democrat…
archive.is/5OHSb

https://x.com/CaHSRA/status/1785798979222925439

english.news.cn/20231027/fbab3…
chinatoday.com.cn/ctenglish/2018…
news.cgtn.com/news/2023-10-3…
news.cgtn.com/news/2023-10-2…

nbcnews.com/politics/supre…
propublica.org/article/how-de…
wsj.com/articles/elon-…
thehill.com/regulation/cou…
balajis.com/p/only-newsom-…
ourchinastory.com/en/10775/Xi%20…

https://x.com/balajis/status/1724666626006815214

This is San Francisco.
It’s not a bad part of town.
It’s the Embarcadero where families walk.
And now?
It’s where howling mobs light cars on fire.
Not even as a protest.
Or for some fake cause.
But for fun.


Like a Black Mirror episode.

CALIFORNIA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY

California is not a democracy. It’s a one-party state.

Because California Democrats do not hold competitive multiparty elections. No matter how the people vote, a Democrat always wins.

The real election is thus actually a selection, where candidates are chosen[1] before the primary in a smoke-filled room by the Party. And around the time one-party control was consolidated in the early 2010s, governance started to dramatically worsen, and California's growth rate suddenly leveled off:

Now more than one million citizens have fled[2] the once-Golden state for other locales, voting with their feet because they’ve been stripped of the ability to substantively vote with their ballot.

ONE PARTY "DEMOCRACY"
California illustrates the gap between deed and word. Consider that Democrats managed to (a) build a one-party state that (b) a million people fled while (c) holding faux “elections” that a Party member always won whilst also (d) endlessly proclaiming their regime democratic!

This unmistakably resembles China. They've also (a) built a one-party state which (b) millions of people fled that (c) holds faux “elections" where a Communist Party member always wins while (d) endlessly proclaiming their regime democratic[3,4].

There are other similarities, too.

Democrats ruthlessly censor internet speech, just like Communists. Democrats use the state as a battering ram against tech companies, just like Communists. Democrats tax citizens and hand the resulting funds to Party affiliates, just like Communists. Democrats encourage loyalists to move to contested territories to strengthen political control, just like Communists. Democrats funded gain-of function research, just like Communists. And most ominously, Democrats are now persecuting their political opponents on trumped up charges — just like Communists[5-16].

This is no small thing. When Communists talk about "communism", what they mean is rule by the Communist Party. And when Democrats talk about “democracy”, what they mean is rule by the Democrat Party. California is their desired end state — where blues never lose.

Now, let’s handle the objections.

FOR CHOICE...BUT AGAINST DEMOCRATIC CHOICE
The first objection is that Republicans do it too. Look at all the red trifectas, as per the quoted tweet[17]! But this argument fails on three counts.

1) First, when Republicans overturned Roe, Democrats affirmed reproductive choice at the state level[18]. They didn’t just copy Republicans — they did something different. So if Democrats actually believed in democratic choice, they would affirm competitive multiparty elections in their states even if Republicans pursued the opposite policy. They aren’t doing that. Which means Democrats genuinely believe in reproductive choice, but not democratic choice.

2) Second, Democrat control of blue states is much stronger than Republican control of red states. For example, even within a “Republican stronghold” like Texas, Austin is a deep blue city. There is no equivalent of red cities within blue states[19]. This alone means blues have significant political power within red territory, but not vice versa.

3) Third, Democrat control of national institutions — both elected and unelected — is overwhelming. As the graphs show, Democrats control academia[20], media[21], US government agencies[22], and even 70%+ of GDP[23]. In the language of diversity, Republicans are vastly underrepresented. They’re not even close to 50/50.

So: Democrats have more control at the national level, more control within red states, and total control within their own blue states — yet have not used that control to restore democratic choice.

Actions speak louder than words.

NO COMPETITION = FAUX ELECTION
The second objection is that no really — Republicans do it too! They have one-party states, so Democrats are justified in having the same thing. You can’t expect Democrats to enable other parties to not just run, but win. That’s not in their political interest. And it’ll weaken the Democrat Party!

And now we get to the nub of the issue. Communists also have one-party states. Does it then follow that Democrats should have them too?

Because the whole theory of why democracy is supposed to be superior to communism is that it provides real alternatives, real feedback. Just like capitalism provides choice in the market, democracy provides choice in the electorate[24]. So if you actually believed in democracy, you’d believe alternation of power strengthens society in a way one-party control never would. And you’d hold competitive one-party elections even if the other guy didn’t, because it makes your society stronger.

This gives the game away. We know Democrats do not believe in democracy, because they’ve ended competitive multiparty elections in the states they control. Unless other parties are routinely taking political power, it is not a democracy.

VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO
The last objection is around motive: ok, but why would Democrats destroy democracy?

It’s simple: once blues gain total control, they begin funneling tax dollars to Democrat affiliates. This is how you get a $100B train in California where no train is built but Democrat unions get paid[25]. And this is how the homeless industrial complex makes money[26], by getting people addicted to drugs and then getting paid by the size of the problem:

This is also how BLM burned down black businesses while lining blue pockets[27], and why student loan relief goes to Democrat voters[28], and in general why so much public money produces so little today in the way of public goods[29].

This, in short, is the blue business model. The purpose of the blue political machine is to fleece Americans while enriching Democrat loyalists.

However, they can only pull off this scam with total one-party control. Outside eyes would stop the gravy train. And that's how you get “vote blue, no matter who[30].”

"Vote blue no matter who" came out of the mouths of Democratic presidential candidates[31]. It's a straightforward rejection of democracy as ideology in favor of Democrat tribalism. All that matters is that blue tribe gains power, so blues can get paid.

Of course, not all blues get paid! Only the connected ones do, political consultants and union bosses and key interest groups and the like. Many blues pull the lever without getting the cheddar. They fall for the marketing.

After all, remember how much blue people pretended to care about black people in 2020, and how little they spoke about them afterwards? “Democracy” serves a similar role for the Party in 2024. It's just a marketing slogan, and can be discarded like BLM once it’s no longer useful.

Look how they pumped and dumped Ibram Kendi[31]. After the election, the Party can easily flip from declaiming for democracy to decrying populism, as it has before.

THE FUTURE
In short, if Democrats actually believed in competitive multiparty elections, they'd pursue them regardless of what others did. All their rhetoric revolves around democracy as stated principle, but in blue states where they have total power they've ended it in practice. The obvious reason for this is graft and tribalism: vote blue, no matter who.

It is only a matter of time before Democrats scale what they've done in blue cities and states to the federal level. That's certainly the goal. And it returns us to the original question.

Given that blues now unapologetically reject competitive multiparty elections at the state level in favor of faux contests that their Party always wins...given that they've created electorally unaccountable governments that steal billions from their citizens...given that California and China have both built one-party states...what might the future of blue governance look like?

It sure ain't multiparty democracy.
What it looks like is an exercise for the reader.


REFERENCES (1-10)

[1]: For example, the Los Angeles DCP endorsement is a candidate interview prior to the primary. In a one-party Democrat state, this endorsement carries significant weight.

[2]: California's growth trajectory dramatically slows from 2013 projections:


2021: "In the last decade, 1.3 million more people left California than came in from other states. And, it’s accelerating. Half a million people have left for other states in the last two years alone."


[3]: China actually holds elections:

[4]: Remember, they call themselves the "People's Republic" of China. Two out of the three characters in PRC are devoted to extolling how democratic they are.

[5]: Here's the Atlantic saying "In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong."


[6]: Here's NYT saying "Free Speech is killing us":

I don't think I really need a citation on China's internet censorship, but you can look up the Great Firewall.

[7]: Here's one of many articles on the Democrat anti-tech turn:

[8]: Here's the Communist techlash, best illustrated with the regime's attacks on Jack Ma:


[9]: Here's an excellent piece on how elected Democrats send taxpayer money to their nonprofit affiliates:

[10]: Here's another from Pirate Wires on the same topic:
lacdp.org/endorsement
siliconvalley.com/2023/07/26/cal…
dailybreeze.com/2021/05/02/the…
english.www.gov.cn/archive/china_…
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opi…
nymag.com/intelligencer/…
edition.cnn.com/2023/07/12/bus…
americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/05/the-no…
piratewires.com/p/san-francisc…

Democrats and Communists have both built one-party states. Biden represents an older generation.
TikTok Democrats will align with China.

China is dedollarizing. Russia/China trade dedollarized after Ukraine.
And Bloomberg reports it's >90% dedollarized now.

[1]:
[2]: archive.is/wip/60pTG
archive.is/KS3vt

The state is going to pursue killer AI. It’s called drones.

So the entire idea of “AI safety” regulation is moot. For better or worse, the drone arms race has begun and you have to defend yourself. The state may *also* try to regulate open source AI. But that isn’t because it’s a threat to you. It’s because they think of tech in general as a threat to them.

Take the EU. In the name of protecting privacy we got cookie banners. Now in the name of AI safety we get logic bans.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1633533008904085504

Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore did well in the 20th century while the Chinese mainland was gripped by a mind virus.

Quite possible that Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore do well in the 21st century while the Western world is gripped by a mind virus. Why Australia and New Zealand?

They’re arguably the best-run countries in the Anglo world. I compiled some graphs in the thread below. But you can see that they’re qualitatively less indebted than the G7.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1656431539641815040

REALITY PRECEDES PROSPERITY
I think we agree on one point and disagree on two points.

THE BUKELE ANTIBODIES
1) First, yes, force alone is not the recipe for an ailing country. Ultimately you need community. Latin America suffered from generations of drug dealing and money printing. So now they have developed antibodies in the form of crime prevention and Bitcoin adoption. And Bukele is the incarnation of those antibodies. But society basically has to be ready to turn around before a Bukele can appear. He can wield force against the 1.6% of criminals because he has much of the 98.4% of non-criminals on his side.

I saw this in India as well, after generations of socialism. And in Vietnam, after generations of communism. Those societies finally had the antibodies to fight off the mind viruses that had brought them low. Of course, many societies just succumb. Is Cambodia mounting a comeback anytime soon? Or North Korea, or Cuba? Not really.

This is also the problem in the US. Many in the US have yet to even acknowledge it's declining. Many Democrats are Stalinist Bidenists, whose monthly checks are dependent on mouthing the party line. And many Republicans have replaced G-o-d with G-o-v. They see the US military as a god replacement, in its stern father form, and can't bring themselves to admit the country ain't what it was. They're Soviet conservatives, patriotic to a fault, saluting the worst because they've captured the flag.

I don't think this is true for everyone — people like @realchrisrufo and @davereaboi know what time it is — but it's true for too many. If you still think, like Biden recently said, that his empire is still "the most powerful country in the history of the world" and that it just isn't trying or is like one election away from being fixed — you are wrong in a deep way.

The values that underpin the valuations have been broken. The current society is coasting on fumes. Fixing this is at least a generational rebuild. It's not something one vote will solve.

IT'S NOT RICH
2) We also disagree that the US is a rich country. It has a fake economy, built on debt, with exponentially increasing interest payments, that doesn't have much runway left, and doesn't have factories to fall back on when the money printing stops.

For example:

^ Why are interest payments suddenly spiking? Because the bill for QE is coming due. Either die by high inflation or high rates. Or both.

^ Why is the country issuing debt at emergency levels, without acknowledging it's an emergency? Because that's the only thing that can keep this fake economy afloat through the 2024 election.

^ Why is China the world's #1 trade partner on just about every physical good? Because the US only exports (a) printed money and (b) technology. Anyway, I could keep going, with literally dozens of graphs like this. But X only allows four per post.

IT'S NOT STABLE
3) On the topic of whether it's a country with a "turbulent history of...violence", the level of drug addiction, violent crime, homeless encampments, squatters, road blockages, and massive BLM/Hamas mobs swarming the streets has obviously spiked in recent years.

2020 didn't represent a one-off, it's a preview of what is to come, particularly in Blue America. Crime statistics are systematically faked — in San Francisco, you can actually see some dashboards where things like car ticketing have gone to zero — so we don't have an accurate picture.

Until you see undeniable things like stores closing and people moving out of blue states. And then blue politicians yell at those companies, and try to stop them from moving out. This is systematic: blues always disable the warning lights that tell you we're crashing into the ground, just like the mortgages labeled AAA in 2008, just as a mosquito anesthetizes you before drinking your blood, just as a snake evolves to employ camouflage before it strikes. Alongside lawfare, faking the stats is a core competency of both communist reds and woke blues.

TLDR: I think we just have very different mental models of the prosperity and stability of today's United States. Wokeness is hegemonic and the damage is deep. I wish it weren't so — but agreeing on reality precedes prosperity.

A few more citations follow 👇


Here's how SF fakes its crime statistics. The law is not enforced so the crime is not reported.

https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1734615145618329780

I just got back from Prospera.
A startup city on the island of Roatán.
It’s crypto, it’s bio, it’s robo.
And it’s not San Francisco. We’ve started new companies, new communities, and new currencies.

Now we’re starting new cities.

https://twitter.com/pcekerevac/status/1756439489356947822

We now understand the 2010s.

It’s when legacy media fought a ferocious but ultimately doomed rearguard campaign against the Internet.

That’s why they pushed censorship so hard and constantly thumped their chest about being “journalists.”

It was protectionism.
They were dying.

https://twitter.com/moultano/status/1748897568653017189

Many journalists spent the better part of a decade attacking the Internet for a living.

You understand it better when you realize it was existential for them. They didn’t just lose money, they lost power.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1702199356953071631

1) Ban China
2) Be China
3) Beat China

These are the options. I get the logic, but banning signals technological and cultural weakness. Yet so does capitulation of the Newsom variety. The best way is to build something *better* than China, as Elon and others in tech have done.

https://twitter.com/packyM/status/1724957357195870457

Democrat concern about Russia is similar to Republican concern about China.

I get where it comes from. But the real answer is to build a more compelling product that can win on the global internet.

Otherwise you're giving up on soft power.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1331495615948222471

Democrats cleaned up San Francisco for Communists. Newsom admits they removed the drug addicts for Xi.

“That's true because it's true.”

Congress blew him kisses.
Journalists gave him applause.
Regulators promised to take no action.
So it was only Crypto Twitter that uncovered his deception.

Read the actual history of what happened with Sam Bankman-Fried, before it gets memory holed.
balajis.com/p/crypto-twitt… Meanwhile, Coindesk's Ian Allison was revealing[1] that SBF had no money, while Axios' Dan Primack was asking[2] whether SBF could cure world hunger.

[1]:
[2]:

archive.ph/y7YOi
archive.ph/nlYCj

https://twitter.com/danprimack/status/1720479656825029081

The Army War College thinks war with China could cause 3600 casualties per day. So, they're considering a draft. press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewconten…
One decade's worth of casualties in one week.

"For context, the US sustained about 50k casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In large-scale combat operations, the US could experience that same number of casualties in two weeks." press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewconten…