What's really happening

[Breathe]

Ok, so, basically I see a few different different threads but I don't know how they are all tied together or how they can all coexist.

1. Trump and his jerk mates have deep, long lasting ties with the Kremlin. Russia infiltrated the US government some time ago and has been manipulating us to cannibalise ourselves with the goal of bringing down the west and expanding their territories. They've made deals behind closed doors but I'm not exactly sure what Trump and the US gets out of it besides getting a share of Ukraine's minerals. Maybe Trump was blackmailed, I'm not sure.

2. Project 2025, we all know about that, no big secret here.

3. Network states. This is some scary shit. These fuckers just want to burn it all down and erect virtual but sovereign nations. Basically, societies that operate like tech startups. The primary industries include AI, defense technology, cybersecurity, and other tech shit. These would be cryptocurrency-based societies. Backers include Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and other tech billionaires.

Network states have been spoken about  and written about openly. There are books, interviews, videos, etc. I do not know why this isn't getting more attention and I've yet to hear anyone in the current administration even mention it.

Someone on this forum posted this link which led me to look into it a little further: https://www.vcinfodocs.com/

Other resources:

https://www.amazon.com/Network-State-How-Start-Country-ebook/dp/B09VPKZR3G

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts?

Edited Tuesday at 06:32 AM by Breathe

[Staples]

There is no secret cabal that runs the world. All the people you mentioned above would just devour each other if given the chance.

Life is a free-for-all match and might makes right, until we evolve otherwise.

Any virtual state would collapse immediately without broad military and economic influence. By virtue of being a virtual state, you have no borders, nothing to defend and no one is tied to the state. It's a flimsy, doomed concept. A cryptocurrency is not economic influence. Military protection over resources and a workforce is.

[Staples]

I read this part from the blog you linked:
 

Quote

 

Another Network State site is Itana, in Nigeria. Despite being located on Nigerian soil, it is outside of the jurisdiction of Nigeria. Like in Honduras, Itana exploits special economic and free trade zones: “When the Lagos State Government expropriated land to create the free trade zone in 2004, it signed an agreement with nine affected communities, promising compensation, alternative acreage, jobs, health care, and educational opportunities. According to a study from international researchers in the journal land, however, the government has not held up its end. Of the 56 households promised compensation, only one was allowed to negotiate the amount and only four were told how it was calculated. Less than a third actually received the money.”

 

On paper it is outside the jurisdiction of Nigeria, but that's only true for as long as Nigeria wants it to be. It's on Nigerian soil, they can walk in whenever they want with machine guns and say what's what. Nigeria benefits from Itana and that is why it allows it to exist.

[Sucuk Ekmek]

12 minutes ago, Staples said:

 

 

Any virtual state would collapse immediately without broad military and economic influence. By virtue of being a virtual state, you have no borders, nothing to defend and no one is tied to the state. It's a flimsy, doomed concept. A cryptocurrency is not economic influence. Military protection over resources and a workforce is.

 If each state has AI like citizens there would be no collapse for a potential virtual state, then the whole concept of nation state becomes  blurry. There are things to own and to protect, if these go away nation state would go away too.

[Staples]

28 minutes ago, Sucuk Ekmek said:

 If each state has AI like citizens there would be no collapse for a potential virtual state, then the whole concept of nation state becomes  blurry. There are things to own and to protect, if these go away nation state would go away too.

What? You miss the point entirely. A virtual state is not a piece of software.

[Leo Gura]

Peak libertarian stupidity is afoot. The dragon of corruption and megalomania is loose.

This is what happens when no one is properly educated and spiritually bankrupt.

Edited Tuesday at 09:38 AM by Leo Gura

[Frylock]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Peak libertarian stupidity is afoot. The dragon of corruption and megalomania is loose.

This is what happens when no one is properly educated and spiritually bankrupt.

Is there any way out of this, or are we doomed to continue down this path?

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, Frylock said:

Is there any way out of this, or are we doomed to continue down this path?

Foolishness is self-correcting as it plays itself out and necessarily fails.

Now we watch it play out and fail. Those who are incapable of educating themselves will be educated by the laws of reality in broad daylight.

Edited Tuesday at 12:24 PM by Leo Gura

[Joel3102]

9 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Foolishness is self-correcting as it plays itself out and necessarily fails.

Now we watch it play out and fail. Those who are incapable of educating themselves will be educated by the laws of reality in broad daylight.

My hope is their overreach is so bad that MAGA is completely discredited and indefensible. Then things will become more normal in 4 years time. If not it seems the US Republic may fundamentally become a semi autocracy 

[Rafael Thundercat]

Dont forget VOA. Yes,the Channel now is a plataform for Trump Propaganda.

 

[zazen]

The problem is structural - Trump/Musk are cutting the excesses of the system ie trimming the fat, but aren’t making the systemic changes that will keep the fat off ie dietary and lifestyle habits. They are basically shooting up ozempic, but not changing the root cause that made someone need it. The cause generally is financialization. 

A financialized system will always serve the financial class because that’s what financialization does. It detaches the economy from real productivity and labor, turning it into a machine that extracts value from workers and funnels it into the hands of asset holders. This is neo-feudalism in a suit and tie. The lords own the land, the assets, and the markets. The peasants work harder for less, trapped in an illusion of mobility while the ownership class pulls the strings.

And that’s the problem with the so called populist uprising. Trump, Musk, and the deregulation crowd are right that change is needed - that regulation can throttle productivity, bureaucratic bloat stifles growth, and wages don’t keep up. But their solution doesn’t fix the disease. Deregulation may create more growth, but in a financialized system, that growth doesn’t go to the people who produce it. It gets siphoned off by the same mechanisms that created this mess in the first place. It’s a hamster wheel of exploitation.

The distinction is: China HAS a financialized economy, the US IS a financialized economy. In China the state dictates, directs and checks capital - in the US, capital dictates, directs and capitalizes its influence on the state. Until this dynamic and relationship between the state and capital changes, nothing will improve for the everyday person.

Cutting debt and expenses (DOGE) doesn’t change the fact that the system is designed to accumulate more debt, due to financialization. It only buys the unsustainable system some more time and breathing room, unless they are so aggressive in their policies as to cause a systemic collapse.

The US and China have the ingredients of great powers (raw material, energy, population, industry and tech). In the past Europe had power from colonially extracting what it lacked from beyond its borders, in the present it remained somewhat powerful by being adjacent to a great power (US). The US and China have the ingredients it takes for a great power to exist, mainly within their borders. Russia does too but to a lesser extent (smaller and aging demographics)

The flaw with MAGA is thinking that because you have these ingredients = you can be self sufficient = means you are powerful and prosperous. They think they can play the isolation game and come out strong. But no empire is great only due to its ingredients - but in how it uses them in strategic in engagement with the world. Then, it’s about how those gains are domestically used to develop their society, or misused and hoarded amongst the ruling class.

Russia as an example engages with the world, with its main resource being energy - but they domestically mismanaged the gains from it due to corruption. Those gains haven’t translated to widespread upliftment of their people compared to how China has used its resources. The US likewise has mismanaged its gains because the system of financialization is designed that way.

China is using the same engine (financialization) but without over-revving it. It has financialized aspects of its economy, but it isn’t fully financialized in that finance isn’t in the driving seat itself.

Self sufficiency is for survival, but for powers to thrive they need engagement with the world - not the kind of isolation MAGA thinks will make them great.

Edited Tuesday at 05:05 PM by zazen

[zazen]

The accelerationists techno-optimists sold one side of the political aisle the supposed solution to the unsustainable system I outlined above.  They know:

1. They no longer have a young enough demographic (demographic dividend) to fuel long term organic economic growth.

2. Their productivity isn’t increasing fast enough to offset the effects of financialization and debt accumulation.

3. The financialized economy is fundamentally unsustainable in the long run, and they need a way out before it collapses.

So they want to buy some time and kick the can the can down the road long enough to reach a moment where productivity skyrocket (economic singularity) at which point they hope to use that productivity boom to sort out their debts and economic imbalances. Some of them believe that they should speed up the inevitable technological shift that will supposedly save them.

But the way they are trying to get there is designed to benefit only corporations and the ownership class, not the working population.

Because when capital no longer needs labour, how does labour gain capital? This is why Musk and his cohort discuss UBI as a solution to their techno feudalism. The irony is that their very base hung ho about liberty and freedom - and economic dependency is very much contrary to their own ideology. China will be able to implement what’s needed because they aren’t idealogical, but pragmatic. Their ideaology is whateverworkism. 

The techno accelerationist vision is essentially the next step of financialization- except instead of detaching capital from real economic productivity (as financialization did) it detaches productivity from human labor entirely.

See the divergence between wages and productivity (that financialization consolidated) in the following chart:

 

Notice when the divergence takes place - 1971.  The moment Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold in 1971, financialization was born. That was the big bang of the modern casino economy. That’s when Wall Street and Main Street became two separate realities - introducing an economic apartheid.

Notice also how the gap has increased despite the left or right political parties being in power. Once you sign up for this game it’s very hard to get out of it without collapsing the system.

The only solution I see is a two pronged approach.

1. Stop the bleeding by stripping away reckless financial excesses that make the system unstable.

2. Seize control and decouple capital from politics and the state. Reorient capital toward serving the economy, not ruling it.

This requires being strategic in regulations, it takes a surgeons scalpel not a chainsaw.

Trump/Musk should be regulating financialization, speculation, monopolization, and capital flight. Instead, they’re just deregulating industry including financial class by slashing oversight, making it easier for capital to extract even more.

It’s about regulating the right things and deregulating the right things. And that’s what they’re failing to do and what Americans will struggle to do due to being ideological rather than pragmatic.

Interesting insights from Balaji:

Edited Tuesday at 04:57 PM by zazen

[Wilhelm44]

Whats really happening seems to have become even stranger than the alex jones show.

[zazen]

Interesting and fiery discussion that shows the different perspectives on addressing inequality - which is a core issue of what’s going:

Just see the comments and the general sentiment displayed - ironically on a YouTube channel of a entrepreneur named Diary of a CEO.

The left generally view taxing the rich as the solution, the right generally view lowering taxes and de-regulation as the solution.

As I said above, the issue is systemic and the solution from the left or right isn’t enough to solve it, but merely just tweaks things enough to hasten or slow the inevitable.

The problem with taxing the rich is that they have ways to avoid (not evade) tax. And you incentivize them to incorporate in tax havens like Dubai, Singapore etc unless the world implements a global minimum tax rate to prevent it them fleeing to places to stash cash.

The reason hustle culture even exists is symptomatic of a broken system. Most people don’t want to be, or aren’t event cut out to be a giga chad bio hacking entrepreneur living lavish in a tier 1 city.

Edited 1 hour ago by zazen

[Breakingthewall]

On 18/3/2025 at 2:42 PM, zazen said:

The problem is structural - Trump/Musk are cutting the excesses of the system ie trimming the fat, but aren’t making the systemic changes that will keep the fat off ie dietary and lifestyle habits. They are basically shooting up ozempic, but not changing the root cause that made someone need it. The cause generally is financialization. 

A financialized system will always serve the financial class because that’s what financialization does. It detaches the economy from real productivity and labor, turning it into a machine that extracts value from workers and funnels it into the hands of asset holders. This is neo-feudalism in a suit and tie. The lords own the land, the assets, and the markets. The peasants work harder for less, trapped in an illusion of mobility while the ownership class pulls the strings.

And that’s the problem with the so called populist uprising. Trump, Musk, and the deregulation crowd are right that change is needed - that regulation can throttle productivity, bureaucratic bloat stifles growth, and wages don’t keep up. But their solution doesn’t fix the disease. Deregulation may create more growth, but in a financialized system, that growth doesn’t go to the people who produce it. It gets siphoned off by the same mechanisms that created this mess in the first place. It’s a hamster wheel of exploitation.

The distinction is: China HAS a financialized economy, the US IS a financialized economy. In China the state dictates, directs and checks capital - in the US, capital dictates, directs and capitalizes its influence on the state. Until this dynamic and relationship between the state and capital changes, nothing will improve for the everyday person.

Cutting debt and expenses (DOGE) doesn’t change the fact that the system is designed to accumulate more debt, due to financialization. It only buys the unsustainable system some more time and breathing room, unless they are so aggressive in their policies as to cause a systemic collapse.

The US and China have the ingredients of great powers (raw material, energy, population, industry and tech). In the past Europe had power from colonially extracting what it lacked from beyond its borders, in the present it remained somewhat powerful by being adjacent to a great power (US). The US and China have the ingredients it takes for a great power to exist, mainly within their borders. Russia does too but to a lesser extent (smaller and aging demographics)

The flaw with MAGA is thinking that because you have these ingredients = you can be self sufficient = means you are powerful and prosperous. They think they can play the isolation game and come out strong. But no empire is great only due to its ingredients - but in how it uses them in strategic in engagement with the world. Then, it’s about how those gains are domestically used to develop their society, or misused and hoarded amongst the ruling class.

Russia as an example engages with the world, with its main resource being energy - but they domestically mismanaged the gains from it due to corruption. Those gains haven’t translated to widespread upliftment of their people compared to how China has used its resources. The US likewise has mismanaged its gains because the system of financialization is designed that way.

China is using the same engine (financialization) but without over-revving it. It has financialized aspects of its economy, but it isn’t fully financialized in that finance isn’t in the driving seat itself.

Self sufficiency is for survival, but for powers to thrive they need engagement with the world - not the kind of isolation MAGA thinks will make them great.

As always , good analysis. I would add that the Chinese oligarchy, the single party, has the unique characteristic, never seen before in history, of being nourished by competent people. It's not based on relationships or kinship(if I'm not totally wrong), but rather on high abilities. And although they are corrupt, and corruption is seen as normal and logical if you're in power, Roman Empire style, there's a very real patriotic spirit and meticulous, intelligent planning and long-term vision, 20 years, vs the American quarterly vision

Edited 3 hours ago by Breakingthewall

[Breakingthewall]

On 18/3/2025 at 2:42 PM, zazen said:

Self sufficiency is for survival, but for powers to thrive they need engagement with the world - not the kind of isolation MAGA thinks will make them great.

I don't think anyone is really thinking about self-sufficiency, but rather about tipping the balance a little more toward industrialization. Trump's methods are crude and scandalous, but the underlying idea is correct. The US has swerved down a path that leads to ruin. It depends on the strength of the dollar and on it being the single currency for international trade; in other words, it depends on its imperial hegemony, and this will end.

In fact, it has ended in Ukraine. Ukraine is the before and after. Biden, trying to consolidate American power, has brought forward its fall by 10 years. Now, radical reform is absolutely necessary, and the revolutionary Trump has set about it. We'll see if he's capable of doing it without creating a disaster. People think that if the economy is falling, it's because of the madman Trump, but they don't understand that the US was on the brink of the precipice.