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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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      It's funny how people think a post-apocalyptic landscape will be relatively flat socioeconomically. At most they think there will be small-scale warlords or Dunbar-scale anarchist communes. No. There will be deathstar billionaires with private armies and narrow-deep tech stacks.

      25 replies 57 retweets 285 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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      The industrial age has made us (falsely) believe that an "industrial base" has to necessarily be a nation-state scale at minimum. No. A complete industrial tech stack can be built as a fairly narrow single-billionaire pillar.

      3 replies 13 retweets 76 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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      A traditional "industrial base" has steel, sulphuric acid, power plants etc. at the bottom, and space programs and aircraft carriers at the top. This kind of stack can now be replicated with a *very* narrow footprint. I think you could do it for $3-4 billion in a small city.

      6 replies 12 retweets 74 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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      "Nation-state industrial base" has basically been miniaturized to billionaire scale. In terms of civilizational capability, it's the equivalent of mainframes evolving into smartphones (smartphone equivalent of civilization being postapocalyptic billionaire redoubt)

      3 replies 9 retweets 44 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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      I mean, I'm larping extended-universe builder in bits form, but with a few billion you can actually do it in atoms space. There are no necessary capabilities of nation states that cannot now be maintained by a small-scale billionaire.

      1 reply 7 retweets 40 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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      If there is to be a broad-based, inclusive, participatory form of civilization to succeed the nation state, it cannot be based on atoms-tech. It has to be based on software-tech that billionaires can neither replicate, nor compete with.

      3 replies 7 retweets 36 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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      Putin vs. oligarchs, and China vs. its oligarchs are probably the last chapter of the ancient conflict between wealth clans and impersonal nation states that the latter have a decisive advantage in. If the nation states weaken by say another order of magnitude, the oligarchs win.

      2 replies 13 retweets 42 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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      I'm an ideologue here. I like some billionaires, dislike others. If there's no broad-based civilizational condition, I'd be willing to pick among billionaires rather than being out in the wilderness in some sort of ratty indie survivalist camp full of starving people in henleys.

      12:25 PM - 5 Oct 2019
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      • Sarcasm Mohammad bin Ra’s Al Ghul Kumara📎Republic↙️↙️↙️ Emily McManus Shulgin's Daemon Kush Country Bear Jamboree vakibs 𝕊ecret James 🧩🧩🧩
      1 reply 7 retweets 42 likes
        1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 5 Oct 2019
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          In many ways, this is already happening of course. I've called it a 4th world condition. And the gated communities are underwritten by billionaire developers, not by states. A lot of us live in one billionaire bubble, earning and spending in other billionaire bubbles :D

          7 replies 8 retweets 68 likes
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