Balaji Srinivasan

Sure. It sounds very bottom-up and libertarian, the kind of libertarian I am is exactly this thing … making a new bottom-up system with software, giving people the tools to self-organize, get critical mass in various local areas, and then using the new tech to bring about change by working with the old top-down structures.

Facebook and Uber and AirBNB did it in social networking and transportation and housing, respectively, starting in colleges and cities.

I am doing it for all kinds of things, and sometimes selling it to political campaigns such as I did with https://qbix.com/yang2020.pdf but that is not really my goal, just to help some politicians was never my goal

I put out a few apps like Groups on iOS and so far we attracted a million small community leaders in 100 countries, who have our app on their phones. So the first phase (bottom-up) is under way

I even launched blockchain applications worldwide, that are actually helpful: https://intercoin.org/applications

including working on launching a fund for refugees that will be crowdfunded by people worldwide: https://community.intercoin.app/t/fund-for-refugees/2688

Years I go I met with Rohingya Project guys and working together to create the R Coin, Identity and Academy on decentralized platform for the Rohingya refugees: https://rohingyaproject.com/platform/

Now this year for the first time, we got a VC (Balaji’s fund) leading our round for Network States. Balaji is a big proponent of these (kind of like…

I like that he's had a successful startup in the field, and is generally smart as hell:
https://balajis.com/about/

Balaji S. Srinivasan (BSS) is a computer scientist, investor, entrepreneur, and academic. Dr. Srinivasan holds a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford and taught data mining, statistics, and computational biology in the Department of Statistics at Stanford University. He was an NDSEG, NSF, and VIGRE fellow, was named to the MIT TR35 and Founders Fund F50 lists, and has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, and Nature Reviews Genetics. He was the CTO and co-founder of Counsyl, a genomics startup that began in a Stanford dorm room and now tests ~4% of all US births. Counsyl won the Wall Street Journal’s Innovation Award for Medicine, was named one of Scientific American’s Top 10 World Changing Ideas, raised more than $65M in funding from David Drummond, Aydin Senkut, and Founders Fund, and has become one of the largest clinical genome centers in the world. After ten years in genomics and five years at Counsyl, he stepped back from an executive role in November 2012 to work on other areas of technology. He now invests in and advises startups, teaches a popular MOOC at startup.stanford.edu, runs the Stanford Bitcoin Group with Professor Vijay Pande of Folding@Home, and writes at balajis.com.

> We've lost so much already... the old Flash content, the GeoCities pages, the forums fallen under Facebook's iron curtain, the archives of obscure culture erased by copyright lawyers. The lit windows of the Internet that went dark, one by one, only to be replaced by gaudy commercial signage.

Have we? I disagree. Why not self host with Ghost? [1]

I think a golden age of decentralized tooling (payments, content, etc) is starting to emerge [2, 3], you just have to be optimistic enough to see it. Let's not reminisce about the "good old days," bc the good days could be ahead too.

[1] https://ghost.org/docs/hosting/

[2] https://balajis.com/set-up-a-paid-newsletter-at-your-own-domain/

[3] https://balajis.com/how-to-gradually-exit-twitter/

> Firms in the broad Russell 3000 share index have a total market value of $79trn

I sometimes try to get people to worry about the catastrophic state of American public finances by pointing out that the net national debt, including unfunded liabilities, is estimated to be $175T [0]. The government could appropriate all the equity from the top 3000 largest companies, and also the entire real estate market, and it still would not be able to pay its debt (RE market is $55T).

[0] https://balajis.com/p/americas-175-trillion-problem

If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have the time to try to convince you, sorry. I don't intend to use that quote in a bad-faith way; it's just the truth.

If you'd like to open-mindedly consider the alternate position, the writing of Balaji Srinivasan might not be a horrible place to start. It seems like you disagree with all the other points I make as well. Unfortunately the same time constraints apply; I can only encourage you to mull them over.

https://balajis.com/and-what-has-the-blockchain-ever-done-for-us/