Techno-Feudalism & the Post-Collapse Network Empire

We discuss how widespread economic collapse could lead to a "techno-feudal" future, with fortified city-states and regions controlled by technological elites. However, networks of these havens may help rebuild civilization. We compare to South Africa's current situation and emphasize why islands and unstable regions are poor choices. This builds on the concept of sovereign network states.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] what makes it a network empire instead of a network state. And I think the core, the, the core thing that Balaji when he came up with this concept and missed is the insecurity of a future world when we're dealing with wide scale economic collapse.

That is the world that we are heading into where it is cheaper. For the wealthy class in our society to isolate themselves from everyone else than it is for them to ensure widespread prosperity.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: I am so glad to be recording these again. Our audience doesn't know, but it's actually been like a week and a half since we did our last recording because we were at this ARC conference in the UK, which is supposed to be, I don't know, like this new alternative to Davos sort of a thing, but I think it's just really conservative British Davos.

But one of the people who we met while we were there and we had a long conversation with was Curtis Yarvin. And in that conversation, I really helped me clarify some [00:01:00] things that I think about what's going to happen in the future of our species. And we may release that conversation because it was recorded at some time, but it was recorded in, like, a busiest restaurant with a Greek reporter interviewing us both together.

So I can't believe that some random Greek newspaper, a monarchist newspaper, by the way, is getting the piece where it's me and you and Curtis Jarvin talking for, like, 2 hours. But, we constantly get accused of being techno feudalists in the media. And, this to me feels not just like an unfair accusation, but almost an insane accusation.

It's a bit like... If you know, I have some friends who their family were, you know, left Germany early, and they tried really hard to convince everyone the Holocaust was coming. And they were just basically told they were crazy, and so, this family is actually descended from a guy who broke into his girlfriend's house at night, took the girl he was dating, and ran away.

Now, they made the horrible mistake of running east [00:02:00] to Russia, instead of west and so then they... For like a 10 year period, just constantly had to flee new places. But anyway, it would be like calling him a, a Holocaustian. And people would be like, well, yeah, but even if he saw it coming, you know, they could have said, well, let's try to prevent it.

Right. And it's like, no, there was a certain point where he was like, look at. Hitler, this guy who was elected to power. Look at what he's writing. Read his book. Okay. He published this like it's not vague what his plans are. And you know, I feel a bit like that when I talk about techno feudalism, where I'm saying it is.

Almost inevitable at this point that something like a techno feudalistic state is going to happen. And we need to, those of us who do not want to be churned up by the system, need to prepare for how the world is going to change. Both in terms of our culture and our families and economically because it's [00:03:00] going to be absolutely catastrophic and very, very significant.

Now, 1st, I would say, when we talk about techno feudalism, we do not mean. So there's this, like, Greek economist guy who keeps he wrote, like, a book on quote, unquote, techno feudalism and the way that he defines the term is vague and pointless, basically what we already know, which is that we live in a world in which large tech companies control a lot of the economic system.

And it's like, yes, we know that. That's not what we talk about. When we talk about techno feudalism, we are talking about something that is much closer to literal feudalistic states. But before we go further, we need to talk a bit about. Where we think the overall economy is going before we can talk about the technophilic states, which are going to be major players within this future economy.

So this actually was a point that Curtis made in the conversation. And after hearing it, it really clarified a lot of how I think about things, [00:04:00] but it was in line with what I thought already.

It just gave me more. Picture as to what the future is going to look like. And he said,

didn't catch the future of the future of the Western world at least.

And the, the, the future, the future of the eastern world is also going to be bleak, but the way it will collapse is going to look very different. And we can get to that in different videos. But. The future of the Western world is going to look very similar to the current situation in South Africa.

aNd this has nothing to do with, with race or even the politics of the country. Right. What specifically we're talking about is the on the ground reality of what it feels like

Simone Collins: to live there. Yeah, well, it is what real collapse looks like. From a, we'll say a modern developed society. So what happens when the infrastructure has been built, when there's electricity, there's housing, there's communities, but then.

Things start falling apart. Infrastructure starts falling apart. Law enforcement starts, starts falling apart. And that's what collapse looks like [00:05:00] in our world. Because I think what most people's evoked set is of collapse is a road warrior. You know, it's like deserts. There's nothing out there, but no, no, no, we're, we're starting.

Our starting point for collapse is quite different from what people typically expect in their fantasies, right? Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think a lot of people, the other thing they think of is they go, Oh no, I'm being reasonable. It's not going to be like road warrior. It'll be more like a developed. being country, but no, no, we're starting developing country.

And the thing about developing countries is that they are going up from nothing. You know, they are building incrementally with every step of development, which is very different from a developed country collapsing. Developed countries collapse if it won't lead to very different cultural institutions than a struggling developing country and the the life on the ground of a developed country collapsing is astronomically worse than the life on the ground of an equivalent of an economically equivalent [00:06:00] developing country.

So I'll give an example here. One thing you see in South Africa right now is very frequent and rolling blackouts in a developing country. You are less likely to see this. The reason you are less likely to see this in a developing country is, and you do still see it occasionally, but like the regions are no, like, they make sure their major cities have electricity and then the outskirts, you know, because they're building new electrical stations to, you know, sort of push out their electrical power generating capacity instead of having a total net of electrical power generating capacity that is in the process of collapsing due to lack of maintenance due to political infighting, et cetera, that is very different.

And what it means when you have things like electricity regularly going out in a district is it means that many of the things that you take for granted, like restaurants or grocery stores are going to look dramatically differently. Restaurants really rely on. Refrigeration systems. Most stores really rely on refrigeration systems.

These types of [00:07:00] industries become very, very difficult to operate without private generators, which can be very expensive. So that's 1 thing that just like an example of the type of thing that you may not have that you would think, oh, I would have this in a developing country where they develop different solutions for that sort of stuff.

Like icebox type of stuff and cuisines that are built around Yeah. You know, local produce, whereas in a developing a developed country collapsing, you're not going to have that. So things like restaurants disappear. Things like food distribution begin to disappear. Another thing that is really interesting that you see in South Africa right now that I think is going to be very common around the world.

Is sort of, fortresses.

Simone Collins: Yes. Like in South Africa there are many, what are called gated communities, which essentially are fortresses, but then each house itself is also fortified in a pretty significant manner.

So you've basically got fortresses within fortresses. And then in between, of course, you have sort of, more dangerous dead zones, but then you're sort of really looking at something that looks actually quite futile. This is, [00:08:00] this is what, when you look at an old, like, you know, medieval or even earlier.

Sort of fortified area. It looks like you have sort of an outer wall and sort of a slightly protected area and then an even more fortified and protected area within. Right?

Malcolm Collins: And this is because I think what a lot of people think of a world with falling apart. Police forces are police forces that are bought by organized crime.

What they imagine is a world was just more like. regular crime, like the type of crime we see today, and that is not what you see. What you see is a large, systemic, organized crime, an aggressive, organized crime that will sometimes collude with corporations, that will sometimes collude with wealthy individuals, that will sometimes collude with the state.

 And not so much. I mean, you will still see random crime and much more random crime, but there is a new type of crime and it's the type of crime we've had in the U. S. before, like when we were developing, you know, mobs of New York is the movie about back in the days when we had more organized crime or, you know, boss tweet or, you know, any of the, I mean, [00:09:00] you

Simone Collins: mean gangs of New York.

Oh, yes.

Malcolm Collins: Gangs of New York. I'm thinking boss food and stuff like that. Yeah. And, you know, we had the mob. We had the, the mafia. We had the, you know, we've had our, our share of organized crime in the U. S. We just don't really live with that right now. We have some organized crime institutions, but they are, mostly relegated to a really high level of prominence within lower income communities. Whereas when a state is collapsing, they are part of everyone's everyday life to an extent, and being able to defend against them or ally with them. And this is where feudalism comes into play, is you are choosing your allies within the state because who you are allied with within the state matters a lot.

Exactly. But we haven't really gotten to why we call this techno feudalism. And this is something we're going to elaborate more on in the next episode because there's a lot to talk about in regards to this. [00:10:00] But when we look at fertility rates, the two dominant strategies right now, when I say dominant, I mean, the strategies that have been very, very successful at maintaining high fertility rates are to either culturally.

impose traditions, which lower the income of members who practice that culture or traditions, which increases the fertility of that group. An example here might be Jehovah's Witnesses banning their kids from going to college. I mean, there's also like practical reasons to do that because they get brainwashed and stuff like that.

Like I get that, right? Like, but I'm saying it also helps with their fertility rates because it lowers their income. Another thing is to Prohibit the engagement with technology. Now, both of these practices limit the technological reach of a cultural group, like the I'll say the, sorry, they limit the economic potential of a

Simone Collins: cultural group.

Well, and, and sort of widespread influence you can have, because it is those who develop tech that is unwildly adopted that are going to. have a lot of [00:11:00] influence across groups

Malcolm Collins: in the future. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I should elaborate this word because that's going to then define economic, but I really mean economic and cultural potential a group can have.

You are severely economically and culturally limited as you make these restrictions. And the thing about these constrict restrictions that's important to note is, is some, you know, religious organizations are like, Oh, we'll just minorly restrict this stuff, right? Like some cultural groups, we'll just minorly restricted, or we'll just make some minor things which lower the economic potential of our members.

The problem is, is that if there are different Fractions of your organization, which make more extreme limitations of their members, they will outcompete yours.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We've heard this, for example, with with Mennonites that the groups that are more permissive around technology also tend to see more social ills that.

Undermine the integrity of that particular religious, social, so the

Malcolm Collins: moment you lean into this at all intergenerationally, what will happen to your group as [00:12:00] a cultural strategy is you will essentially be wiped out by the most extreme. And I don't mean, like, it's like a derogatory term. I mean, like, it says.

People who dis, disengage with technology. I mean, that is

Simone Collins: like the most air gapped

Malcolm Collins: subcultures. Yeah. The most air gap subcultures. And it is because on a pretty linear, or I'd almost say logarithmic level from what I've seen in the data, the more. Iterations of your tradition disengage with technology, the higher their fertility rate will be.

So as soon as you lean into this as a strategy, the iterations of your culture that go all the way with it are the ones that will be represented in the future. Yeah, and so then there's other groups that don't lean into this strategy at all, like our group, you know, we might even lean in the other direction with this.

And these are the groups that are going to really determine where our species is going.

And this is where techno feudalism comes from, because these groups will be far and in between on the world stage. So we talk about the concept of like a [00:13:00] network state, right? Like the, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the concept of it. Do you want to go into it, Simone?

Simone Collins: Sure. A network state is basically a fully digital community that may use similar currency, have similar social mores, or similar regulation, but there is no particular geographic concentration of where they're going to be.

There may be like geographic correlation.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Simone, you had talked to me in one of your books about like time zone based.

Simone Collins: Yeah, Cory Doctorow wrote a book called Eastern Standard Tribe a while ago that I think somewhat predicted the way that. communities are going to sort out. And it sort of, it talked about a near future in which social groups correlated more by the type of time zone that you kept, because that's when people were online at the same time you were, and that's when you were all hanging out.

And that's obviously where the title comes from. So network states remind me a lot of that kind of community rather than what we're really describing, which has a strong geographical basis.

Malcolm Collins: So what we would call what we're describing is a network empire. We actually went over a [00:14:00] few names here and we're like, well, it's not really top down.

And I'm like, so it's more like the Holy Roman empire, but unlike the Holy Roman empire for people familiar with your history, the Holy Roman empire was a German empire made up of a bunch of like feudal players that were often largely under the rule of a single individual, but on the outskirts they weren't.

So like 80 percent would basically be under a hierarchical rule and 20 percent wouldn't be. What we suspect the network empire to look like is it's going to be about 10 to 15%, maybe even as high as 25 percent under a single rule, but most of it will be independently ruled, so it'll be much more like a fractured sort of Holy Roman Empire.

You can think of it. And what makes it a network empire instead of a network state. And I think the core, the, the core thing that Balaji when he came up with this concept and missed is the insecurity of a future world when we're dealing with wide scale economic collapse. By the way, if you're wondering why we're so certain there's going to be wide scale economic collapse.

You can look at any of the videos [00:15:00] where we talk about what falling population means for the world economy. If we enter a stage in which the world's economy is shrinking on average we are entering a stage in which most Western economies begin to collapse. Alternatively, if we enter a stage in which the world's economy is continuing to grow, but it's continuing to grow almost solely because of AI, then we enter a stage in which the The bourgeoisie officially no longer need the proletariat.

That chain has finally been cut in everyone under maybe like a standard deviation or two standard deviations from the mean in terms of IQ or who doesn't have connections is going to be frozen out of the economic system because people just don't need them. And they're like, no, they'll be nice. When have they ever been nice?

Like, historically, when have ever the powerful been nice to people unless it was in their best interest? And then you'll be like, Oh, well, the people will rebel. And it's like, yes, there are, for example, wealthy people in South Africa. They just buy better security. [00:16:00] Okay. They just build better fortresses for themselves.

That is the world that we are heading into where it is cheaper. For the wealthy class in our society to isolate themselves from everyone else than it is for them to ensure widespread prosperity. So either AI is great. It ends up solving the economic problem. The rich end up getting even richer, but we still end up with this wide scale systems collapse or.

We end up in a situation, it may not happen in a few countries, like there may be a few countries like Sweden or Norway or something that through their like national sovereign fund, find a way out of this, right? Fine. It's going to happen in a lot of places. Although it will probably happen to them due to, well, we, we don't need to get into that.

But anyway, or we're just dealing with a global economic collapse, because it turns out that AI doesn't replace the fact that populations are collapsing, and we end up with a shrinking world economy, and due to all the debt and leverage that we've taken out at every layer of the economy, things begin to fall apart.

Again, we've talked [00:17:00] about this in other places. So anyway. This is just likely going to be what happens is wide scale economic collapse. And this is what it looks like now. The reason why it matters so much that the winning strategies are these technophobic strategies and the reason why apologies predictions aren't going to turn out the way he thought they would is in a world in which security is a thing of scarcity.

It makes sense for economically productive groups to cloister together. lIke, like just a lot of sense. Like if you're an economically productive group, you hang out with other economically productive people, both for your kids and family safety and for cultural reasons and for the purposes of more economic production, because you're going to be more economically productive as a, as a group.

And so this will lead to small, what we call hate, uh, essentially, communities where high technology is produced, but that are otherwise defended that likely have their own power generation and everything like that networked [00:18:00] with other havens that exist around the world. And that is what we mean by the network empire.

Each of these havens represents a city state in sort of this network lattice of empire. That is where we think things are going. We do not think it is a great thing that things are headed in that direction. We think it will be a, a during the period this is happening a darker world than the world we live in today.

But I do think that from this networked connection of havens, we can rebuild a better civilization in one that is not likely to collapse in this cycle of civilizational rise and civilizational collapse. We just need to go into building the next one very intentionally. Mm-Hmm. using the lessons we have learned from this one, which is, well, it's

Simone Collins: very much carrying the.

Torch of free markets through what could otherwise be described as a dark age, because you have these different techno feuds, fiefdoms, essentially carrying forward different economic specializations, but in a way that's far more [00:19:00] sophisticated. Thanks to the existing technology into which we're entering this age.

So we're able to sort of carry the torch of what we have and then everyone is still able to accelerate. I think a lot of a lot of development, maybe even in ways that we haven't been able to in the past, because in a post collapse world like this, you know, regulatory oversight is going to. Ease up a little bit.

There just won't be governmental resources sufficient to police people which could actually lead to a sort of weird dark age plus renaissance at the same time. So it's a dark age everywhere you look. But when you go behind some highly fortified walls, you see, you know, some amazing innovation taking place.

And that's why. We're both doomy, but also optimistic. You can be both

Malcolm Collins: at the same time. Yeah, it's a weird mix of doominess and optimism. I would also say that this prediction better explains why we are so interested in far North charter city settlements. So people have heard our ideas around charter cities before. And one of the core is that it is in [00:20:00] an inhospitable, easy to defend region, not adjacent to other population settlements.

Yeah. You don't want

Simone Collins: to be where everyone like. Raids to get supplies or agricultural land or something like that, you know,

Malcolm Collins: right? Yeah. If you build like a high technology settlement in, in the center of an area that has a large population, that means large, well armed gangs or governments that want. What you have, which is technology or wealth.

Alternatively, if you have one that is in the far North somewhere that a group would have to travel a very hard time to both get to and get out of, especially one that was known for extreme austerity outside of their technology. There would be no reason to ever rate it. I mean, what are they going to get our axiodle tanks as we were joking about with receive.

They're unusable by most other cultural groups. So that's another reason why it makes sense to, and I, and some people will go the other route. Some wealthy people will create sort of opulent [00:21:00] gated areas where they try to let in only the, the best and the brightest by their definition. And these communities will, I think, flourish for a short time until people realize how.

Unsafe they are in terms of a long term place to base yourself if you want anything other than short term hedonism and vanity because they are incredibly difficult to fit. And this is especially true of islands islands, you know, growing up. Before they, they lost everything, my family had a, an island in the Bahamas that I would go to all the time and, you know, and I go back to it's all shot up by pirates and stuff like that.

And even when we were there, you know, we had to have guns and everything for piracy and stuff. It was creepy. It was really creepy to see. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, people do not realize islands are about the least defendable thing you could possibly have. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, it's, and it's not just that it's, it's, it's the, it's the extreme weather, you know, it's, it's a climate change and we've, we've, we've spoken with people who are like, yeah, I'm going to build my, you know, city state on an island.

And we're like, I don't know, like, [00:22:00] what are you going to do about hurricanes? And like, oh, we're just going to like raise everything on platforms. And it's like, well, okay. What about the electricity?

Malcolm Collins: That does not work. You, you are, these are people who have, who are, are thinking very short term. They

Simone Collins: haven't spent a lot of time.

They haven't like spent a full year or a couple of years in the Caribbean, I'm guessing.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. And I can tell you another thing about islands. They are not a good place to do anything technological because everything corrodes. You can't even have like a desktop PC for more than a couple of

Simone Collins: years.

Seriously. Like all the electronics, well, and not to mention like all your other supplies. If we're talking about also a post collapse world in which. Like, you know, getting more towels is a little tough, right? Like, you know, even we your clothes, your towel, everything. Yeah. When we lived in Peru, like right, right on the coast, which is kind of like any island environment would be constantly everything was covered in mold.

Everything was degrading. All of our electronics were breaking down. So like, imagine this, like it's, it's a post collapse world. You can't easily get electronics supplies, like clothing, [00:23:00] fabrics, et cetera. And then it's just everything, like you're making the. the lifespan of all of your supplies artificially, you know, unnecessarily short.

It is bonkers.

Malcolm Collins: But alternatively, if you are in the, the, the far North, everything is artificially lengthened in its, in its lifetime. Which is it. And you can do sorts of processing that may not be possible in other areas due to the cooling resources. Like, it's just so obviously the right choice if you are optimizing for literally anything other than immediate personal comfort.

And what, honestly, what a lot of network sites right now are optimizing for without really admitting they're optimizing for Is areas with a high level of government instability because that's where they're able to make the deals typically far North governments or far South governments are the most stable governments and the governments in warmer regions.

There'd be less stable governments. And again,

Simone Collins: why why unstable governments? You know? Yeah, they're going to say, yeah, no, but. They're totally not going to say yes later and be taken over by some other group. Anyway,

Malcolm Collins: you're actually better off setting up [00:24:00] an illegal settlement in the area of a stable government where you can predict their actions than setting up a legal settlement in an unstable government area.

But anyway, I'm very excited to go further into this vision for the future. And I think the, the next of these episodes, it'll be a bit of a two parter, but also a bit separated. And Simone, I love talking with you about this. You have any final thoughts? I love your

Simone Collins: beautiful face.

Malcolm Collins: That's all, that's the sweet thing to say.

I love your beautiful face too. . We were on, we were on just pearly things recently and we were being sweet on each other and

Simone Collins: And I think we made everyone deeply uncomfortable because this is not, you know, . Yeah. The

Malcolm Collins: guy was like, should I not be in between you? Because they sat this guy in between us.

They're like, we're choosing where everyone sits. So lo if you're wondering why we sat apart on just poorly things, that was because we were directed to by the producer. Yeah. We wanted to sit together, not because we wanted to.

Simone Collins: Yeah. .

Malcolm Collins: Love you Gorgeous. I love you too.