The Nerd Reich has been extensively documented. ​Their goal is to usher in a techno-dystopic future comprised of corporate city-states (presumably one in which societies will be measured by their ability to sell targeted ads). According to their underlying philosophy, anyone can launch a new state. You simply need to rally people to your vision. The reality is that only those with significant resources would be successful.

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What would these city-states even look like? That’s easy: 21st-century company towns with less freedom, fewer choices, and a narrower path for creativity. I doubt you could use Snapchat as a citizen of the Metaverse or a Dell if you lived in Apple Valley. Does anyone believe in the Kingdom of Bezos, you’d have options outside of Amazon? And can you imagine how cringey some of these places would be? It’s the Ministry of Memes, not Propaganda. Edgelord is his hereditary title. May 28, 2016, is a day of remembrance. Mourners wear armbands emblazoned with an "F." (Obviously, these are examples of life in Musk’s Landing.) And how would these city-states interact with each other? My guess is poorly. We’re talking about men with fragile egos, insecure in their masculinity. What happens when relations between Valinor and Guy’s Gulch sour because one takes Silver in Settlers of Catan? Drone strikes, that’s what. No one but an idiot or a sadist would think tech CEOs would make for noble leaders.

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Let’s look at a few of the aspiring.

 

 

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Marc Andreessen

 

 

Marc Andreessen is a real-life egghead. He is also very smart. Andreessen co-developed Mosaic, a pioneer internet browser, and was an early investor in Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase, and Lyft. He is a former Democrat who endorsed MAGA in the 2024 election. To explain the switch, he cites the Soft Authoritarianism of the left during Trump’s first term. His only recourse was the Hard Authoritarianism of the right. Governing, it turns out, is a lot like losing control of a car; you must steer into the skid. (And pray you don't crash.)

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Andreessen is a proud Techno-optimist. You don’t have to ask him. He will tell you. He wrote a whole manifesto. Tech is the answer. Don’t regulate it. Step back and let him and his friends work. Trust in tech, specifically Andreessen, and it will all be okay. Historically, the benefits of technology have not been distributed evenly. Does he have a plan to address this? No, because that’s the hard part. Reconciling developing technologies with social inequalities is challenging, so Andreessen doesn’t bother. Whatever difficulties exist, he dismisses with no real consideration. The manifesto reads like he’s on a parade float; it’s all celebration and hand waving. That’s the problem with these people. They badly want to be visionaries but consistently duck the tough questions.

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Andreessen is part of the crypto faithful. He pimps it constantly. It’s conceivable he wants to secure a corpo-future to finally demonstrate a use case for the underlying technology. (It would still be a dumb idea.)

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Peter Thiel

 

 

Peter Thiel is a fascinating figure. He is both devoutly Christian and part of the tech elite. Thiel co-founded PayPal and has a data mining company called Palantir. (He, like Andreessen, is a big Lord of the Rings fan.) Peter is conniving. In a MAGA universe brimming with Iagos, he is Jafar. Thiel enjoys his power and uses it regularly. He has sponsored projects like seasteading and invertebrates, like JD Vance. Thiel sees the country's collapse as inevitable. His goal is to secure his own realm for when it happens.

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Curtis Yarvin

 

 

Curtis Yarvin is a maverick. He doesn’t conform to society’s conventions. Go ahead, say good morning to him. He'll disagree. He is the last of the intellectual rebels. Even his reading jacket is leather.

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Curt began writing under the pen name Mencius Moldbug. His blog started out as Harry Potter fanfiction. Moldbug’s stories focused on the return of Voldemort armed with Muggle technology. As he continued to write, he lost sight of the characters amidst the world-building, a common problem for his ilk. Eventually, he went back and scrubbed the site of all wizarding references, declaring what was left a philosophy. It’s reminiscent of 50 Shades of Grey. (Both advocate bondage.)

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Yarvin is no dummy. He almost went to Harvard. His technical knowledge is sufficient. And yet, he has an outsized ego. He believes he has uncovered a hidden secret: America is not a democracy but an oligarchy. Many, many people think this. What separates Yarvin is his belief that the solution is an even greater consolidation of power. He is, and no, I'm not kidding, a self-described monarchist. Sort of.

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Curt's case for monarchy is bloated with historical references and attempts at wit. His blog is the written equivalent of a crazy board, with long-winded digressions in place of string. However, this has not stopped him from finding a degree of success.

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Yarvin is Peter Thiel’s in-house philosopher because when you’re rich enough, you have a cleaning lady, a personal chef, and someone to wipe your ass across the span of a few thousand pages. Perhaps Moldbug should talk to the chef about using less dairy. But as of now, his work is full of shit. Let’s look at an example.

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Curt is fond of pointing out that it takes a company like Apple to make the iPhone. He jokes about how awful a government version would be. Apple, in his mind, is representative of the corporate structure all governments should embody. Little kingdoms with more complete power. He never wonders why those companies emerged in a democracy, not an autocracy. That is beside the point. In his estimation, our government should be dismantled and replaced with smaller, more efficient tech fiefdoms. If this is true, then why did he build Urbit? Urbit was designed to allow you to reclaim digital sovereignty from the tech companies that currently hold dominion over your online existence. According to Yarvin, governments should be run like tech companies, with absolute power, but also, you shouldn't surrender control to them. There. I spared you hours of wasted time skimming his awful fucking blog in search of an honest argument. You’re welcome. Oh, and he defends race science. No, wait. Here it is.

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For years, Yarvin laid the groundwork for attacking bureaucrats. Recently, he has expressed a modicum of regret over their treatment. It's not his fault. Who could have predicted that his plan, RAGE (Retire All Government Employees), would lead to the aggressive dismissal of those workers? There was no way of knowing. It never happened in Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew.

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Before we move on, I want to say this about Yarvin: serious intellectual achievement takes both insight and rigor, and he sure put in the work. It’s as if Yarvin spent seven years in his garage walking in place because that’s how long it would take to get to the moon on foot. No, he never got anywhere, but the effort is undeniable.

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Balaji Srinivasan

 

 

What do you get when you cross an autocracy with a cryptocurrency? A Network State! Yes, it's a bad joke. At least my setup for the punchline wasn't 474 pages. The following are real reviews of Srinivasan's book: