Building Startup Cities - Balaji Srinivasan | #84

Balaji Srinivasan (0:00)

How can you vote against a one-party state? It doesn't work.

You can vote against Democrats as much as you can vote against communists. Like basically, elections are held, but the party always wins. So we have to begin by, I think, delegitimating that order, because it isn't legitimate. It's not delivering results. That's why people are fleeing blue cities. That's where they're fleeing blue states. And that's why they're voting with their feet for things like what Josh is building, where things like Ridge Runner, things like startup societies around the world are restoring democracy by allowing people to exit the two-party system for the thousand-city system.

Nathan Halberstadt (0:55)

I'll begin by introducing everyone we have today on The New Founding Podcast. First, Balaji, former chief technology officer at Coinbase, former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and founder of the Network School. We also have Josh Abbotoy, founder and CEO at Ridge Runner, and Nate Fischer, founder and CEO at New Founding. I actually wanna start today with the Politico piece that came out over the weekend, talking about the Ridge Runner project that Josh Abbotoy is leading in Tennessee.

The subtitle of the piece is sort of interesting. It was quote, inside the conservative plan to chart a new political future one town at a time. And reading through it, I think we all sort of saw that there were certain ways that this either related, the project relates or contrasts with some of the ideas Balaji has been talking about, the network state and then separately ideas Nate has been talking about and exploring through New Founding. Obviously, some core differences, some similarities.

So, specifically in the Politico piece, Ridge Runner is described as, and I'm quoting now, placing a premium on developing communal spaces like schools, community centers and churches where large families can gather to work, worship or socialize. So, I guess starting with Josh, Balaji has talked about successful communities having creeds. Do Ridge Runner neighborhoods have a creed and if so, why?

Joshua Abbotoy (2:29)

I would say that yes, Ridge Runner neighborhoods do have creeds. In the sense, I would speak of that as a way of life or a certain ethos. Much lower resolution, I think, than journalists would often like to tell us that we have. So really, the ethos of a Ridge Runner neighborhood is the American way of life and then it's particularized a little bit to a particular region. So right now, we're operating in the foothills of Appalachia, and so we want to do a lot of stuff in the way of life that gets down to the level of neighborhood design that evokes the traditional way of life that people would have lived out here.

But I think often journalists, and there's a bit of a cottage industry now, they're trying to paint a picture of a very top-down ideological project. They want it to be at some level politically revolutionary or like a conspiracy.

Really, what I often tell people is, no, we're just we're just harkening to the way that neighborhoods have like felt and looked in America for 200 years. We use a very simple tagline, faith, family, freedom. That's our creed. If you're a person who values a little bit more than just pure consumerism, if you're a person who cares about your family and raising your kids in a healthy natural location, and if you value a sense of self-determinacy in your personal life and at a communal level, then a Ridge Runner neighborhood is very good for you. I'll lay that out right at the top. I think this is far less specific than what people will often talk about when they're talking about a creed. But that's our ethos.

Nathan Halberstadt (4:21)

I want to talk about how that relates to the network state thesis Balaji, and then also the network school in particular.

With the network school, this is something that people are directly opting into from all around the globe. I think there's sort of a Silicon Valley core to it. But how do you think about opt-in versus opt-out, opt-in opt-out societies versus the sort of sticky multi-generational, maybe less chosen types of societies that have characteristically defined America and the West?

Balaji Srinivasan (4:56)

I actually want to show you something in terms of opt-in and opt-out, and also rebut the kind of journal critique of the kinds of things Josh is doing.

Basically, do you see this tweet? Democrats and communists have both built one-party states.

Nate Fischer (5:14)

Yep.

Balaji Srinivasan (5:14)

Right? Can you see that? Yeah. Yeah.

It's both a joke, but it's also true. If you look at California, it's not a democracy. Elections, quote unquote, are held, but the party always wins. And that's been true for 15 years. In fact, it was the end of democracy in California that led to the $100 billion California train and the homeless industrial complex, the end of effective Republican opposition within California to keep the Democrats honest. As opposed to often on the right, they'll say, oh, we need less democracy. In a sense, this is a sense where you needed more democracy because it was the one-party rule that led to essentially this out-of-control spending. Now, of course, China has also turned full communist, and this photo shows the Democrats and communists are not averse to working together. Of course, they have done so historically. There's Carney who's doing this with Communists in Canada. So the crucial point is that Democrats, unless they actually say, Carney is wrong for meeting with Xi, and Newsom is wrong for meeting with Xi, and Mamdani and Walls and everybody else who's praised China. Unless a journalist or Democrat says that that was wrong, and they're against one-party rule in California, and they're going to push for multi-party elections in California, they simply cannot say they're against one-party rule, top-down, authoritarian, hierarchical. Like, their fundamental belief is in that.