The translation of the third part of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State has been posted. Unlike the second part, it is quite short and is dedicated to describing the current tripolar world:

• 3.1. NYT, CCP, BTC
• 3.2. The Obsolete and the Timeless
• 3.3. Bipolar America and the Tripolar World
• 3.4. Moral Power, Military Power, Monetary Power
• 3.5. Submission, Sympathy, Sovereignty
• 3.6. Conflicts and Alliances

The author argues that the world today is ruled by three ideas: the American liberal agenda, brutal and pragmatic Chinese communism, and the idea of personal sovereignty, which has found its maximum expression in Bitcoin. Additionally, he touches upon the tripolar configuration of the first half of the 20th century in the context of analyzing the primary strength of each of the current poles.

In general, while the second part dealt primarily with the past, in the third part the author has moved to the present, and further on, presumably, he will deal with the future.

I’m completely swamped at my main job right now, and it’s hard to concentrate on something truly creative during short breaks, so I’m keeping myself busy with translation; doing it in snatches is quite feasible.

Another chapter of The Network State is ready, this time much more compact than the previous one. It concludes the second part of the book, in which history is presented as a trajectory, a kind of narrative created to justify changes in the present. In this chapter, a simple rule is formulated that the author urges creators of startup communities to follow: base it on only one commandment; do not try to implement a complex ideology with many independent moral statements right away—you’ll have time to cross-pollinate ideas with allies later, but at first, it’s better to concentrate.

In principle, libertarianism is quite reducible to a Single commandment, and usually, the principle “aggressive violence is bad” serves in this capacity (I am adapting this to the author’s style). So go ahead and build libertarian startup communities, Balaji has given his permission.

I am settling my pre-New Year’s debt and posting the translation of another chapter of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State. It is absolutely monstrous in size, but at the same time, in my opinion, quite interesting. There are plenty of fresh thoughts scattered throughout this chapter, but the key point is that leftists and rightists are not some kind of static groups, but simply the tactics of a particular community in relation to power. There is a left-wing tactic — to overthrow the existing power. And there is a right-wing one — to preserve the existing power. And the practitioners of these tactics constantly replace one another: former leftists, upon coming to power, become rightists.

The author logically does not count libertarians as either left or right, but in his opinion, they have their own cycle: from a startup to a bureaucratized corporation, and then to the departure of the most free-thinking employees to found a new startup. He provides no recipes for counter-cyclical policy in this chapter; we shall see what happens next.

The translation of another chapter of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State is ready. While the previous chapter seemed overly long to me, oversaturated with facts and undersaturated with ideas, here the balance has more or less leveled out.

The author points out that since the world will soon stop revolving around the USA, it makes sense to prepare for this in advance, starting with the dissemination of new narratives and concepts that explain the state of affairs. After which he rolls out as many as four—here they are, from left to right, in the header.

Some of them, such as the frontier thesis, were more or less familiar to me; some considerations turned out to be quite new despite their simplicity—for example, the thesis that the future, in terms of the general level of centralization, will mirror the past in the coming years.

I simply cannot find the time to translate another chapter of Eric Mack’s book, and I really should, because a small donation came in for its translation. But The Network State is an urgent order, and I’m already struggling to maintain the agreed pace. So I feel slight pangs of guilt, but I’ll have to endure them for a while longer.

The translation of another chapter of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State is ready. The translation process was very, very tedious. After all, this tradition of meticulously chewing over the material is somewhat foreign to me. There is too much factual detail and too few thoughts in the text; I would have packed such things into appendices, as that is where factual detail belongs.

One might assume the problem is that the facts here are American, and much of what is mentioned is not particularly close to us. But no, if he were to chew over Chinese or Russian material, it’s unlikely I would find it any more interesting.

In general, the summary of this chapter is fully exhausted by its title, but your tastes may differ from mine. After all, from time to time, I am also asked to tell specific historical anecdotes to support my thoughts, so I fully admit that many people need exactly such anecdotes to be convinced. There are some here.

The translation of the new chapter of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State is complete. In it, he develops the theme touched upon in the previous chapter, showing how Leviathans interact using the example of modern society in the USA. To be honest, it wasn’t the most interesting chapter. In short, the author points out that while conflicts in American society were previously mainly between the right and the left, now, from the perspective of the well-known two-dimensional political compass metaphor, the conflict is between the top and the bottom, authoritarians and libertarians.

In principle, we observe roughly the same thing in our own community. Both right-wing and left-wing anarchists integrate easily into the people of Montellibero, but statists have a much harder time.

War is war, but the book won’t translate itself. I am posting the next chapter of The Network State: God, State, Network. In it, the author develops Hobbes’ definition of the Leviathan as an artificial subject standing above the human community, and points out that this metaphor actually fits not only the State, but also the artificial subject that preceded it, namely God, as well as the artificial subject that succeeds it, namely the Network.

The metaphor turned out to be concise, and the author develops this theme in quite some detail, describing in the tone of a naturalist how little leviathans crossbreed. In my opinion, the chapter turned out to be quite fresh and interesting; I love a skillful packaging of meanings.

I am posting the translation of another chapter of The Network State. In it, Balaji Srinivasan argues that if you look at history from the top down, it is a narrative dictated by power, allowing the establishment to maintain its power—but if you look from the bottom up, it is simply a dispassionate recording of facts from the past. And while there seems to be a temptation to focus entirely on the bottom-up approach, on the purely technological aspects of history—no, that is a path to political defeat. Anyone wishing to have an acceptable world around them must push their own historical narrative, and they cannot manage without a top-down approach.

Work on the translation, as you can see, has slowed down a bit. I hope this is temporary; once the festival is over, I will continue more briskly. By the way, a tiny print run of my own book on ancap will be sold on paper at the festival, which we decided to print as a trial.

I continue to grind away at the translation of Balaji Srinivasan’s book (soon I’ll even memorize that surname) The Network State.

In the new chapter, Microhistory and Macrohistory, the author moves along a narrow and dangerous path along the border of the heresy of scientism, which, as is known, is based on the approval of applying natural science methods to social sciences. So far, it seems the line hasn’t been crossed, but I am viewing all of this with great suspicion and hope to notice any methodological incorrectness in time.

For the first time during a book translation, the layout is taking up almost more of my time than the translation itself—all these endless external and internal links and such. I find it hard to imagine how this will look on paper, although it seems a print version is also planned for publication.

I am continuing the translation of Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State. In the comments for the translation of the first part, the idea was mentioned to translate the fifth part next, which concerns the actual construction of the network state. It is tempting, but no: every sufficiently original work tends to introduce its own conceptual apparatus (this is also very evident in my book about ancap), and reading out of order proves to be more difficult without it.

Therefore, here is the beginning of the second part of the book, where the author presents his thoughts on the fact that history is an applied discipline, that there is no predestination in history, and that true communities should be created specifically on the basis of properly processed history. In the prologue, a brief outline of the entire second part is provided.

I still hope to occasionally mix the translation of the book with my own original posts, otherwise you will get completely bored and scatter. But the translations will be released quite frequently.