# What are Network Nations - Primavera & Lou

- Channel: [Edge City](https://streameth.org/edge_city)
- Date: 2024-10-18
- Duration: 35:59
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/67120c1a50c4a85480016456
- Download: https://vod-cdn.lp-playback.studio/raw/jxf4iblf6wlsyor6526t4tcmtmqa/catalyst-vod-com/hls/bba56rnkx56xa2f9/720p0.mp4

## Transcript

So we're going to start with a very short presentation of what do we mean by network nation. Hi everyone. So we are the one who read Balaji's book, The Network State, and decided that maybe it would be interesting to propose another framework for decentralized network communities. So as a reminder, Balaji published his book in 2022 and then like it did already sort of like you know inspired some things like Zuzalu which then inspired HCT which you are in today and now we find ourselves in this context of like a very variety of decentralized decentralized pop-up villages, pop-up cities, pop-up communities. All these things we want to study under the term of network sovereigns, so that's the sort of like umbrella term that we define as self-governed communities pursuing collective actions through interconnected means. And we are going to dive into what it means in detail, but just so that you get the basic terms, right? Because you probably have heard the term network state. Today we are going to talk specifically about network nations, and of course there are network cities and maybe more of those names. But this is just so that you can replace the vocabulary and not get confused. And so within our definition, our new concept, which is network nation we want to like specify what do we mean by network and what do we mean by nation um so when when we say network we mean like the structural format by which different nodes can connect and interconnect with one another and basically there is the one that are connected that are inside, insiders of the network, and the ones that are disconnected, but that can also find a way to plug in, that are the larger ecosystem in which the networks operate, which are the outsider. And most important, when we talk about network, we don't mean like a technological infrastructure. We mean more the social relationship and bondings that exist between those different individuals or different communities. And network can be both physical or digital or hybrid of both. And then when we mean like sovereignty, this is also very important because sovereignty has a very strong connotation based on the territorial sovereignty of nation states. And we're going to dig further into this concept later on, but when we use the word sovereignty, we mean it in a functional term, which means that it's actually looking at how de facto there are some entities that can operate in a sovereign manner because they actually have the capacity to govern themselves. They have an internal self-sufficient system and they can also choose the way in which they are operating, what are the rules, what are the norms that they use, independently of external actors and resistant from external interference. And by functional, it means that it doesn't need to be like an absolute type of sovereignty on all the domains, but it's functional to a particular domain. So it's like there is a particular function that is sovereign even if the rest is not sovereign. So even if people exist on the sovereign land of a nation state and therefore they cannot claim territorial sovereignty, they could nonetheless, through specific mechanisms, achieve a particular degree of functional sovereignty on specific domains of their life. So, a little zoom-in on Balaji's network state and why we thought it would be helpful to also provide an additional parallel framework to it. So as a reminder Balaji publishes the network state in 2022 and it's this idea It's like these seven steps to form a network state You start by creating a startup society. Then you build, like, trust offline and, like, meeting in person. You build, like, a crypto economy online. You use these assets to, like, crowdfund territory, gather people, like, fund territories. to crowdfund territory, gather people, fund territories. Then the next step is through growing and connecting the different nodes digitally, creating coherence, and then achieving through a census that shows that there is that much population, income, square meters of territory, gaining diplomatic recognition by the nation states. So the nation states, it is the global governance system of today, right? Like the sovereigns officially are the nations, the nation-states. And the idea here is to gain enough power to be recognized by the legacy system, right? A few, maybe, okay. Before we get into the critique, maybe just being like the advantage of, I would say the positive thing that Balaji books brought is that it had enormous memetic power, right? Like I guess everyone here heard of the network site who, yeah, probably. And it propelled this idea that maybe there is something else than the nation state that we could use as our governance model, because this governance model has in many places not succeeded in addressing the issues that we have on a global scale in the world. Like the United Nations is despondent, we don't have a current global coordination mechanism. But is Balaji's network state the model that will help us achieve this global coordination mechanism? Maybe not. There's a few blocks in the way. First it's a very centralized, oligarchic, funder governance system. So it's this corporate entity first, which is probably not the best thing for democratic, pluralistic governance. On the point number one, it's also this sort of governance by the funders, right? You have like stakes that are in proportion of your funds. It does reinforce state-based sovereignty, right? Because the goal of the network state is to be co-opted by the nation state system. It's just becoming another nation state in the end. So it just kind of perpetuates the system that we already have. It's not that transcendent or new. And this system has been problematic. Lastly, it's an exit-based strategy, right? It really consists into being like, okay, I do not like the current state that the nation state potentially that I'm in or the rules of the place that I'm in. I'm going to take the people who feel aligned and create, like, the state that suits me and what we want to do. The problem with this strategy is that we have a global problem. We have issues that require for global coordination on the planetary scale. And we need to build more interdependence and recognition of this interdependence rather than this strategy and separation. So network nations. So as an alternative to the definition of Balaji, we tried to create the definition of network nation where as it should be obvious while the focus of biology is the state which then becomes networked but it remains looking at this institutional framework of the state. In our model we are focusing on the nation aspect of nation states and we are looking at how nations are actually become networked, and therefore how different institutional scaffolding might be required in order to attend to those new types of nations. And so our preliminary definition of network nations, and again, this is, we spent several months and years coming up with it, but it's still a work in progress, so please give feedback. So it's interdependent communities which are united by a collective identity. So it's like there is a network of multiple nodes that recognize themselves as belonging underneath a particular identity independently. The identity doesn't need to be an additional institution, but it's a recognition that we belong to the same thing. There is shared aspirations, values, and culture, which is what actually leads to the social fabric of the nation. We recognize that we are in the same boat, and we are trying to go to the same destination. Leveraging decentralized network technology, and this is important in the context of sovereignty because we need an infrastructure of governance that is itself, has some degree of sovereignty. Otherwise, it's really weird for a sovereign nation to try and operate in the infrastructure that is actually controlled by another sovereign, with the objective to govern and support each other in a sovereign manner. And so that's kind of like the self-recursivity of the nation, which is it's trying to foster itself and its own community, but also to engage in collective action as a common political unit. So in order to foster the interest of the nation, there might be a need of actually engaging into external action, and the network nation act as a single political unit. And so in order to provide some illustration of where the network nations stand in the existing ecosystem of actors, we can represent the space like this, and then on the ground, on the territory, we have the public sector, which is represented by nation-state, which comes with specific prerogatives and functions. One of them is they have the monopoly of violence, but they also provide public infrastructure, public services, and so forth, to the citizen, which oftentimes those are things that are also territorially bound. On the other hand, on the sky, we have the private sector and market actors, which are actually providing a variety of goods and services, not to citizens, but to consumers, and those things are generally not bound to a particular territory. It's just like the consumers might be located in different places, but the market actor, the service that they provide and the goods that they provide are independent of the territory. And then what we see is that the scope of application can extend in different directions, so the public sector is also providing specific services like public welfare, public education, which are less bound on like the territory. So it's not the same as building a road or a highway as to provide public education, but it's still considered to be like an important public services that the nation states provide. But those same services can also be provided by the private sector. And so we have private insurance, we have private school, private education, which are basically, we have both the state and the market interacting in that space. And then with Balaji, we actually have the optic and the approach of the private sector actually going all the way down to the territory with this kind of corporate state approach to network states. And so what we want to do with the Network Nation is actually we are not interested to focus on this because this is actually very challenging work that is probably to be done with the territorial sovereign. But we're interested in that space, which is these kind of services that are not inherently territorially bound, but that are actually considered to be very important for fostering citizens and the nation. And instead of adopting the public sector approach or the private sector approach, we want to adopt this kind of, like, commons-based, civil society-grounded approach where the community is organizing itself in order to attend to its own need through this kind of, like, common-based, between-the-market-and-the-state approach. its own need through this kind of like common based between the market and the state approach and so yeah not all markets are necessarily capitalistic and not all sovereign are necessarily the states there is something that exists in between and so if we have like capitalist market from the private sector, nation state public sector, we have this kind of privatized public sector which is advocated by Balaji's approach to the network state. And then we are kind of like trying to bring about this alternative approach to the network nations, which is a common centric type of institution, like civic based society, which is capable of integrating both with the market and with the public sector but that doesn't actually operate according to neither of those modus operandi. And so again if we try to distinguish we have the concept of the nation which is basically the people, the population which is with a particular cultural identity, which has this sense of belonging to a collective identity, which is interested in like because of the kinship amongst the nation, there is desire of solidarity. And then the nation state is the infrastructure. The state part of the nation state is the infrastructure that is built in order to attend to these nations. And so we want to provide the safety and the protection. We want to provide the basic infrastructure that the territory needs and then the legal rules and the enforcement of those rules. And this is like something that is very useful when we think about a territorially bound nation. But when we actually start thinking about digital nations or network nations, which are not bound to a particular territory, then we need to think about alternative institutional frameworks that will attend to those needs of those particular type of nation, which are not territorially bound but digitally bound and potentially instantiate themselves in multiple territories at once. And so we need to think about what is the digital infrastructure that we need to build for those network nations and what are the services, the public services, or in this case the common services, that needs to be provided to the nation. And so while there is an institutional framework that we know very well that was designed for the nation. And so while there is an institutional framework that we know very well that was designed for the nation state at the time in which nation were only territorially driven, we need to now think about alternative institutional frameworks. And so, yeah, this is a bunch of definition. So the idea with network nation is we recognize the existence of an alternative mechanism for nations to emerge, which is not driven by this repeated and continuous territorial proximity, which eventually leads to a particular form of culture and collective identity to emerge. But because of the opportunities of digital technology, there is a lot of digital proximity that happens recurrently on an ongoing basis, which actually eventually managed to create some emergent form of collective identities and shared values and culture, which can be slowly recognized as potentially becoming a nation. And therefore, as opposed to the territorially bound type of nation, which needs to have some kind of territorial control and authority that manage that territory, the network nation, they need this kind of like more decentralized modalities of governance through decentralized infrastructure. And so there is three core features of network nation. One is the subsidiarity as opposed to the subsidiarity. So subsidiarity is basically when... So subsidiarity is when you have the power that is held by an entity at the top, and this power gets delegated to entity at the bottom, up to the point in which it is believed that this is the smallest entity capable of managing a particular issue. Supersidiarity is the opposite. We start from the bottom, like where the power is always starting on at the smallest possible entity. And then when this entity needs to tackle an issue and realize that it doesn't actually have the necessary resources, the knowledge or the capacity to tackle this issue because it's a larger issue, then they choose to delegate the power to a larger entity, a network entity, and so forth, up to the point in which you reach the sufficient variety and capacity to tackle the issue. And so in theory, those two should actually lead exactly to the same point in the hierarchical framework, but obviously there is a bias when you start with subsidiarity for the people at the top to hold power, even though they should delegate it down and then there is a bias at the bottom to maintain the power at the bottom eventually it will make more sense to delegate it at the top but if we need to err on one of those two sides we prefer to err on the subsidiarity sides so we prefer to the power should always stay at the lowest possible entity until the entity decides voluntarily to aggregate into a larger network in order to collectively tackle an issue. Then there is the concept of, so Balaji is really much promoting the idea of exit-based governance, which means that we don't really need to engage in any type of governance because people that disagree, they can just leave and create something else. And this leads to a lot of fragmentation and competition amongst a lot of small nodes, which creates even more coordination problems. With the network nation, we promote more the concept of interdependence and entanglement, which is instead of exiting, we actually create more entanglement, which is instead of exiting, we actually create more entanglement, which will lead to more interdependence, which will make it harder to exit, but will also incentivize coordination and desire of actually solving a problem together instead of just exiting as soon as something goes wrong. And the last one, which Michel Barwens that just arrived will probably expand upon is the idea of cosmolocalism as opposed to globalization where globalization is that there is one single homogeneous culture that is like spreading all over whereas cosmolocalism is the integration of local realities that then choose to interconnect in order to have like a larger network while also maintaining and actually leveraging the distinctive properties of every individual node. And then finally, the purpose of Network Nation is that they have a dual purpose. One is the intrinsic purpose, which means that the goal of the Network Nation is first and foremost to actually take care of itself and take care of its people. And so there's this self-recursive objective where everything they do is because they exist and they want to be better and they want to foster themselves and they want to increase the collective well-being of themselves. But also, oftentimes in order to do that, in order to fulfill the, in order to like fulfill the aspiration of the network nation, in order to ensure that the wellbeing collective operates, there is also a need of acting on the outside world, which is the extrinsic purpose. And this is where the network nation starts acting in the global arena as a political entity and is trying to mobilize and engage in collective action in order to actually foster specific purposes. Even though the extrinsic purpose is always instrumental to the intrinsic purpose, which is fostering the network nation. And this is important because this distinguishes from a lot of international organizations and collectives, for instance, that are fighting for environmental rights, which have essentially an extrinsic purpose first, as opposed to the intrinsic purpose of fostering the community itself. And then this grief will focus on this. So in order to achieve this goal as a sovereign, functionally sovereign entity, there is a need of actually exploring specific, at least digital infrastructure that can facilitate sovereignty because they are not controlled by any existing sovereign. And so decentralized network technology, including blockchain, can actually be very useful for this. And then the legitimacy of the network nation is actually something that arise because of the supersediarity. The legitimacy arise because they're actually capable to attend to the needs and to the desires of the members of the network nation. And they have both an internal legitimacy that they need to operate in a way that the people continue to want to be part of the network nation because there is opt-in, but also external legitimacy. They need to act in a way that also is perceived by at least a sufficient amount of people as something that is respectful of everyone else's rights and so forth. So the idea of legitimacy is really important because they don't have the legal endorsement and so their power emerges essentially through the creation of legitimate operations. So political agenda or not. So in building this framework, we thought of what is the political agenda, and it felt important that there is not a very ideological or specific one to leave the room for pluralism and the variety of model. In the search for suitable models of global governance, we do think it's good that there is several attempts and research. But we also realize we do have some sort of underlying motivations. But rather than being on a very specific political checkerboard, they are more on the meta level. One, it's to empower civil society with more agency, like civil society seems to be an actor that is absent these days, really on the global scale, and Network Nation really aims to make room for more direct participation empowerment of civil society by fostering self-governance and collective action and participation so the goal is to become recognized as a new geopolitical actor that has influence in international relations. Actually not necessarily to be recognized, but to simply have influence in international relations. We'll see that later. Number two, acknowledging planetary interdependencies. So we touched base on this a little bit, but the idea, again, is that we have a number of really huge, urgent existential challenges that humanity faces. And we are all in the same boat, right? We are, by definition, interdependent. And the actions of a node or like our geography on the globe like impacts the other. And the ideal would be to build a global management system of these things that integrates this meaningfully so that there is not negative, I mean, negative and positive externalities are not externalized but integrated. And doing that through a commons-based stewardship, which is an important tenet of network nations. This is a process-based solution, so we are not coming saying that we know exactly what the ideal model is. This is an ongoing research and construction. There is this like poly-crisis, like climate change and the need for global coordination around the creation of very powerful technologies such as artificial intelligence, the potential for arms races around this. We don't know exactly how to solve it, but we believe that we can improve the process at least and increase the chances of process resolution. And that's what we are trying to aim for. And that's it. Yeah. Questions? We have seven minutes for questions. Yes, Atin. What is the closest existing structure to one you've ever seen in the world? What's the closest thing to the following line up? I'm going to cheat by responding Edge City maybe not the biggest but it's the most accessible one and we've been discussing a lot of those topics with Timur, with Janine and so forth and I will say Edge City is actually maybe a node within a larger network nation which is all those communities slash pop-up villages that kind of like resemble or are the spin-off of like the initial Zuzaloo pop-up villages and everyone has his own flavor and community, eventually the community is very interweven, but there is, I think, a very interesting proto-network nation emerging as people recognize that there is this kind of tribe and potentially a collective identity that is emerging. And I think what is happening slowly, but still very... It's a very early stage, I would say, like from the axis to becoming a network nation. And one, I think, is recognizing the axis to becoming a network nation. And one, I think, is recognizing those interdependencies and those commonalities between those different communities. And second, I think, is the mutualization of resources and the collective action, which I think there is a little experiment that is happening on that level, but probably there could be much more. But I think this is, in my view, this is the most, the lower hanging fruit of a candidate for experimenting with becoming a network nation. Thank you so much. Beautiful presentation. Two related questions. One, do you see the agreements between network nations as being binding? And if not, so what are the consequences of those agreements being non-binding? is an opportunity to opt out of a network nation? Is there potential for individuals to become essentially stateless? And what are the consequences of that? I'm responding to the second one because I think it's the most critical one. So I cannot compute it because you say stateless, but network nation is not about states. Network nation is about nations. So the fact that you are part of a network nation, first of all, doesn't mean you're also part of, most likely you're also part of a nation state. So the fact that you join or exit a network nation has no impact on your stateness or statelessness. You can join multiple network nation and you can be part of multiple network states. You can have multiple passwords. The two are actually not correlated. And to answer your first question, so we have this concept that we will expand a little bit further, but mostly that we will work a lot on the coming week, which is, it's not really an agreement. I think the question of binding agreement doesn't really compute either, because it's not really that you create an agreement between members or nodes of the network nation. We have this notion of entanglement. And the entanglement is actually something, it's not something legal, it's something technical or practical. So you start mutualizing resources, you start, like, sharing blood, right? And this thing is, like, it doesn't need to be binding because it's actually, it's happening, it is, right? So the challenge, and this is really what we want to focus in the coming week, is, like, what are the various ways in which you can entangle yourself? There is obvious example, for instance, like incorporate domains, which is like, if you if you have two companies that share their stocks, then they're kind of exchanging their blood. And that's a form of entanglement, right? And it doesn't need there's no legally binding agreement, it's not an agreement is because you have started exchanging your blood, like whatever the blood of the thing is, then automatically there is an incentive to care for the other thing that also has a little bit of you and you have a little bit of it. So if I have like 50% in a company, I'm not going to compete with that company, I'm going to try to help that company as much as I can. And that company has 50% of me. So you create a collaborative dynamics without having to need binding agreements. And so what we're trying to explore with this whole concept is, what are the various ways that entanglement can happen? And there is many possible ways, starting from the basic, which is mutualization of resources and we all have some stake together to the more radical one in which you really like share things that defines you and then it becomes hard to exit because you're entangled but also it creates a positive dynamics in which everyone wants to collaborate because it's in their selfish interest to collaborate because everyone is a little bit Benefiting or being harmed if anything goes wrong Last question It's an excellent question and we're going to address it at 4 o'clock. We have like a panel session on this. Yeah, last question. Sorry, just very quickly. I have a question about leadership, actually, because you, for example, said about playing a role on the international scene and so on. So I guess that requires some type of direction, focus, representatives of those nation states. So how do you see that, basically? How do you see the leadership in network nations? I think it's the question of governance. Well, it's a vast question. A very profound one. There is not like a specific model of governance that we have arrived at or that we are proposing. It's something that, of course, we are exploring and thinking about. Probably our hint is that it should be based on the principles that we have mentioned here, like supersediarity or participatory governance, collaboration, but I think it can be various models and also the model that is very much suited to the specific purpose and model and size of the Network nation or node that is discussed Yeah, I mean like there is no It every community will choose their own governance framework as opposed to Balaji, which has that very weird leader based governance structure, which is kind of imposing every network state to use the same governance structure, which has to be an oligarchic leadership structure. It's more like... I think for the network nation, there is specific technical design in the way in which we conceptualize the entanglement of these things that are such that some governance structures are more viable than others. And in fact, because we are also promoting the centralized network technology as a way of achieving this type of functional sovereignty, centralized governance becomes hard just because the infrastructure is not centralized. So how do you govern it in a centralized manner, right? So there is, like, while we're not prescribing any type of governance, because that's not for us to say how it should be governed, the prescription at the infrastructure, like, the way in which the vehicle of network nation is built will make it easier to instantiate maybe more decentralized and participatory governance structure than centralized leadership one. But if you want and if you manage to figure out how to do a centralized one, it's still a network nation. It's just maybe it just operates according to different governance roles.