Ep. 48: Jonathan Hillis - Building a Network City from the American Wilderness, Combining Web3 & Real-World Development and Polycentric Community Governance

Jonathan Hillis is the founder of Cabin.

Cabin is building a network city - a collection of remarkable coliving properties tied by a shared culture, community, economy, and governance.

We start by talking about how a combination of science-fiction and American Wilderness romanticism inspired Jon to start Cabin in the Texas Hill Country.

Neighborhood Zero is a development on 28 acres, with a creek that runs through the property, rolling hills, grasslands and forests, and pet longhorn cattle running around.

Cabin is now a thriving community that has land and real estate development in multiple locations in the USA and internationally (e.g. Portugal, Italy),

Jon talks about the pluralism of moral and community governance innovations that Cabin is working on, inspired by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom.

These practical insights from Jon's work lead us to discuss Balaji Srinivasan's "The Network State" more, and our insights from Zuzalu, Vitalik Buterin's pop-up city.

The key insights are that network state-building is a practical endeavor, and it's hard to build real-world things and deal with the day-to-day of living together.

Jon recommends starting small and iteratively, just like in software and technology development - and you don't need an architecture or mechanical engineering degree for it. You can just go out there and start building.

Jon has learned the value of community, and building things in the real world, and found that evolutionary adaptive processes toward governance are what's needed to rediscover the lost art of building durable and lasting structures.

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