In his latest post on his Network State theme, Balaji Srinavasan advocates for Network Unions. The network union is an online group, evolved to be more purposeful and powerful than current online groups. It is an evolution of Facebook groups, Discord servers, even very decentralized, fuzzy groupings like Pro-Tech Twitter. But the network union aligns around a common purpose, with a clear leader and global distribution. It provides concrete benefits beyond fun and belonging.
Benefits
It could enable collective bargaining for key goods like masks. It could organize to protect a member from an arbitrary public firing. It could provide a kind of insurance for unemployed members.
Such a union could also organize around creating things like wikis or open source software projects, or even startup funding for members.
The Bridge
The network state extrapolates further from where we are now to where decentralization trends could take us. This is a vision of a wholly new state founded by people with a common vision, which is hard to imagine at the moment. But the network union is a smaller extrapolation from seeds we can see now.
The network state idea is very ambitious and exciting, but seems out of reach. So the purpose of outlining the network union idea is to give people something closer to work toward. The network state is an ambitious ideal, while the network union is less awe-inspiring but also more attainable. It is a milestone on the way to the network state.
What’s Missing
The general prediction presented in the essay seems obviously correct, once explained. But it's a bit difficult to get excited about it with the examples that are given. The ones that sound interesting and inspiring (open source projects, startups, and collective wikis) are a bit hard to picture.
The problem with the post, in short, is a lack of really attractive examples. The best explained, most concrete benefits are protections against downside risk. But the most intriguing are the ones that point toward extreme upside (software projects and startup funding).
Let's play it out a bit. What if a network union funded a startup founder, that startup became a unicorn, the whole network got rich, then they created a city to make their vision real? Not because they had to, but because they wanted to, because it would be cool. And would just be much better than their current cities.
An obvious example of a network on its way towards startup cities and a network state is the technological progressive community. There's Technological Progressive Twitter, Discords and Slacks around tech progress.
These community buildouts get accelerated when the possibility of wealth creation is in the mix. Look at the growing tech scene in Miami. Look at Praxis Society, where they’re aiming to eventually build a city of people innovating at the frontier: Praxis Discord to Praxis houses to Praxis city.
It’s early days for all of this, but the future looks bright.