Britain Is In Managed Decline – Here’s The Radical Reset Plan with Balaji Srinivasan

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Liz Truss (0:39)

I have just accepted Her Majesty the Queen's kind invitation to form a new government. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's fantastic to be back. In this new era, we're taking a new approach. It will be uncensorable and uncancellable. We can't give in to those who say we can't do better. That is a gift break. We can make the West great again. The status quo is not an option. Welcome to The Liz Truss Show. How are we going to achieve a radical reset that Britain needs to get out of the path and manage to climb that we're currently on? And how are we going to be able to do that in the face of the woke deep state, the blob, who are determined to stop any change to our country that is going to revive it? That's what I'm talking to Balaji about today. He is the former CTO of Coinbase. He is the author of a book called The Network State. And he is setting up his own alternative society of tech entrepreneurs on an island off Malaysia with a view to challenging the orthodoxy in the West. A quick note from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Native Path. And I'll say this upfront. I'm deeply sceptical of most health products, especially collagen. The market is crowded, big promises, flashy branding, very little scrutiny. So before we partnered with anyone, we asked a simple question. Is there actually a high quality collagen out there? We dug into the research. Sourcing, processing, ingredients, what to avoid, and what actually matters. That investigation led us to Native Path. They stood out because they do what most brands don't. A single ingredient collagen with over 9,500 5-star reviews that say it works. No fillers, no sweeteners, no gimmicks. Just collagen produced to a higher standard. Right now, you can visit getnativepath.com-truss to view the research that changed my mind, including the collagen warnings most brands won't tell you. Read it and decide for yourself. That's getnativepath.com-truss.

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Well, I'm delighted to be joined by Balaji to talk about the future of Britain and the West, and whether or not and how we can save ourselves from our current position. Balaji, what do you think is needed to get Britain on the right track? What do we need to do to create a startup country?

Balaji Srinivasan (3:57)

Well, so, I actually have a book on exactly this topic, I call it Network State. I have somewhat unconventional views on this. I think we're going to need to do it intranet first. That is to say, insofar, you know, Orwell's saying, if there's hope, it lies in the pearls, you know, from 1984, right? So I think if there's hope, it lies in the code. And, you know, the startup company starts on the intranet first, and I think the startup country does as well.

And that means you have to build a community online and crowdfund territory and elect to basically a, you know, you guys have this concept of shadow government in the UK, which, you know, Americans don't know, but basically it's like almost like a parallel government in waiting, which is promoting, it's saying, do policy X rather than policy Y, right? And so like that concept, but an intranet shadow government, which is all consensual and it's all within existing law, but it can crowdfund a large enough swath of territory to show that it's actually got a better government. And, you know, as I was talking to one of your colleagues beforehand, of all the people in the world, the Brits are very well optimized for doing this because you've, you know, you started in New York overseas. Why not start in New London overseas? Right? Show how it's done. And then have the British diaspora reform Britain.

Liz Truss (5:19)

So what you're saying is we need to export a certain number of people, create an alternative reality and show what Britain could be like. I mean, I would argue that that is happening around the world, that people are using institutions that were developed in Britain, like parliament, like free markets, like free speech. And they're frankly doing it better than us, and we've lost sight of what made us great. And instead, we've been subsumed by this technocratic state that has stopped us doing those things like innovation, new companies, new ideas. They're being suppressed at the moment.