Current Events > Tech baron wants to "ethnically cleanse" San Francisco

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat

To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to Balaji Srinivasan. Before you do, steel yourself for whats to come: A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpots ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius.

Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody Ive ever met, wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balajis 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balajis ideas in two previous stories about Network Staterelated efforts in Californiaa proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Franciscos government.

Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call described a speech in which he told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become the Microsoft of nations: outdated and obsolescent.

The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator, reported the Times. Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, but his prophecies sometimes fall short. Last year, he lost $1 million in a public bet after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.

Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless. Last October, Balaji hosted the first-ever Network State Conference. Garry Tanthe current Y Combinator CEO whos attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Franciscoparticipated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting die slow motherfuckers at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in moderate politics. But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.

What Im really calling for is something like tech Zionism, he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (spiritual father of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. And if you see another Gray on the street you do the nod, he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. Youre a fellow Gray.

The Grays shirts would feature Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular. Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly policemans banquets to win them over.

Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police, said Srinivasan. What does that mean? Thats, as I said, banquets. That means every policemans son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.

In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Srinivasan recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example: Did you want to take the sign off of Elons building?

This refers to the August 2023 incident in which Elon Musk illegally installed a large flashing X logo atop Twitter headquarters, in violation of building safety codes. City inspectors forced him to remove it. This was the second time Musk had run afoul of the city in his desire to refurbish his headquarters: In July, police briefly halted his attempt to pry the Twitter signage from the buildings exterior. But in Balajis dystopia, he implies that officers loyal to the Grays would let Musk do as he pleases (democratically inclined officers, he suggests, can be paid to retire).

Simply put, there is a ton of fascist-chic cosplay involved. Once an officer joins the Grays, they get a special uniform designed by their tech overlords. The Grays will also donate heavily to police charities and merge the Gray and police social networks. Then, in a show of force, theyll march through the city together.
...
While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: In addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses. There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.

Balaji goes onand on. The Grays will rename city streets after tech figures and erect public monuments to memorialize the alleged horrors of progressive Democratic governance. Corporate logos and signs will fill the skyline to signify Gray dominance of the city. Ethnically cleanse, he said at one point, summing up his idea for a city purged of Blues (this, he says, will prevent Blues from ethnically cleansing the Grays first). The idea, he said, is to do to San Francisco what Musk did to Twitter.

There's a lot of people in corporate with this mentality is disgusting

This is part of Neoreactionaries ideas that have some foothold in the alt-right circles.

It's basically "get rid of democracy and replace it with a monarchy of tech bros".

https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/

Many of us yearn for a return to one golden age or another. But theres a community of bloggers taking the idea to an extreme: they want to turn the dial way back to the days before the French Revolution.

Neoreactionaries believe that while technology and capitalism have advanced humanity over the past couple centuries, democracy has actually done more harm than good. They propose a return to old-fashioned gender roles, social order and monarchy

What the fuck, this is text book 80's movie evil

Intro2Logic posted...

While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: In addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses. There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.

This is the part that is most concerning. Red ideology has long since abandoned anything respectable and there's nothing of value to be found there. And while there are plenty of things Blues have done wrong and studying the mistakes could have value, this is not about learning how to do better but is instead designed to create an enemy.

Intro2Logic posted...

https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat

You didn't even read this
You have nothing to say about it

CervusCanadensi posted...

You didn't even read this
You have nothing to say about it

I have this to say about it: this guy is emblematic of a genre of freak that has spawned out of the tech industry in the past decade or two. In exchange for their prominent positions in the economy, they have produced nothing of value and many things that are actively harmful. They seek to remake the world to prevent people from noticing their lack of clothes.

Intro2Logic posted...

I have this to say about it: this guy is emblematic of a genre of freak that has spawned out of the tech industry in the past decade or two. In exchange for their prominent positions in the economy, they have produced nothing of value and many things that are actively harmful. They seek to remake the world to prevent people from noticing their lack of clothes.

And if they want to fuck around and create a monarchy I'll be more than happy to help them find out when their subjects give them what Monarchs should get.

Anybody who thinks like this needs to be [redacted] for the good of the society they are going to end up destroying.

Holy fucking hell, this is some actual cult shit. Like this is taking the Blue Checkmark to the next level kind of shit.

LeCh0nk posted...

Holy fucking hell, this is some actual cult shit. Like this is taking the Blue Checkmark to the next level kind of shit.

Yep.

The alt-right have this going on, and Christian Nationalism, which also wants to junk Democracy, but replace it with a theologically based government.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/27/bad-faith-documentary-christian-nationalism

"A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpots ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius."

That's because those silicon valley billionaires are crackpots. The only difference between them and some raving crackpot on the street is a lot of money.

1337toothbrush posted...

"A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpots ravings, but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius."

That's because those silicon valley billionaires are crackpots. The only difference between them and some raving crackpot on the street is a lot of money.

I read it more like how people regard Bobby Fisher as a genius. Its more about them being a genius in one thing (investments and tech start ups for this guy) and not the crazy shit they say.

"Tech Zionism". Lmfao

A brand new article about a year and a half old discussion with no other new source than a left website. I dont like it, but Im also too apathetic to read through everything and discuss it, so Ill just post some other older articles (that I admittedly skimmed or didnt read).

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2022/09/13/a-closer-look-at-a-tech-world-manifesto-00056440

https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2022/klingsrinivasan.html

https://www.wired.com/story/balaji-srinivasan-ditch-chaos-country-cloud/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/12/20/network-states--revolutionary-idea-to-potential-new-asset-class/

For me, Long Island native was the first red flag.

LearntoRead posted...

For me, Long Island native was the first red flag.

We need to stop accepting people from Long Island until we can figure out what's going on.

BDSMKane posted...

(that I admittedly skimmed or didnt read).

We'll if you didn't read them, we probably won't.

Doe posted...

"Tech Zionism". Lmfao

Great, another thing the Jews can be blamed for.

so Fallout
or
Bioshock