Building a contemporary Sparta bringing together the cream of the world’s technological elite on the shores of the Mediterranean. An autonomous and independent city-state, powerful like Renaissance Florence and rich like Byzantium. A zero-tax enclave, governed by free market principles and governed by a king-CEO administering citizen-shareholders, thanks to blockchain and artificial intelligence. It is the utopian project of the technology start-up Praxis, founded in New York in 2020 by American entrepreneurs Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan.
This structure, which claims the support of artificial intelligence troublemaker Sam Altman, has already raised $19 million. It counts among its financiers the billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, the Winklevoss brothers, who knew Marck Zuckerberg at Harvard and made their fortune thanks to bitcoin, but also Samuel Bankman-Fried, the fallen boss of the platform. cryptocurrency exchange FTX, through its investment fund Alameda Research. Added to this is Balaji Srinivasan, a figure in cryptoeconomics who worked on the Coinbase exchange and author of the book The Network State, in which he conceptualizes the notion of the network state. The idea is to abolish the nation-state and its borders to bring about a future composed of a “ archipelago of hyperconnected and interconnected autonomous enclaves (…) with a leader and an integrated cryptocurrency “.
Inspired by the writings of Ayn Rand, Balaji Srinivasan bases his ideal model of citizenship on individual choice: anyone is free to leave the system in search of the best. Taxation of these enclaves must be minimal to encourage membership and then free enterprise. Administration and governance are delegated to algorithmic infrastructures.
“Government tyranny”
A delirium of isolated enlightened people? Not really. Projects of this type are multiplying and attracting capital. In California, the very opaque company Flannery Associates has just acquired nearly 22,000 hectares of agricultural land to implement a “green city” project. after a bitter legislative battle. Among the investors, the elite of Silicon Valley, according to New York Times : LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon and Marc Andreessen of a16z.
Another example: in Honduras, the start-up Prospera obtained authorization from the authorities to establish itself on the coast of the Caribbean island of Roatan. This libertarian enclave offers its inhabitants an ideal living environment, in accordance with the principles of the “longevity” movement, a branch of transhumanism centered on living as long as possible in good health. It was thanks to obtaining special employment and economic development zone status, made possible by a government law dating from 2013, that the start-up was able to begin building an embryonic city.
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