26 Comments

Your article Max has sparked a new angle for me in terms of my mission of “igniting a new world of community, connection, and belonging one book at a time.” Books in my view are the true currency of human connection and an informed populous. Inspired to now play with this idea in greater depth thanks to your thought leadership here. Thank you

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That is a great and challenging mission as the world embraces video and games. I hope books continue to serve this function.

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Balaji Srinivasan is a hard guy to peg. No question that he’s a brilliant and creative thinker. I haven’t followed him closely, but I’m a little distrustful of him because of some of his connections with the politically powerful. It’s hard for me to follow him - probably a lot of his ideas are too abstract and theoretical for me to easily understand.

I never managed to get through Diamond Age, but in it, Stephenson describes phyles as a way for people to organize themselves based on their common interests. I wonder how much of a relationship there is between Stephenson’s phyles and Srinivasan’s network state.

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Wow, excellent point. I never made this connection but it’s dead on. I’d have to dig back into Diamond Age but these conceptions strike me as very close. As far as his associations, it doesn’t seem to me that he’s been captured by them. But one never knows… I kind of dislike having to surf on his influence but truth is he’s done a great job building his brand and reach. I’m playing catch-up.

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It is funny because we have received similar pushback on Balaji when we have written praise of his ideas. But the truth is, if he is part of the establishment, then why is his blueprint for wrecking their corrupt control so utterly consistent with our own belief and virtue system? Why would he unflappably champion for the freedoms needed to exit their corrupt system? Why would he be a conduit and catalyst for uncorruptible systems?

Of course billionaires are going to rub elbows occasionally with other billionaires. Association should cause a need for caution. But his steadfast virtue, rhetoric, and most importantly action should weigh more heavily on the scale for which we judge him, no?

For example he gave away over $1 million of his own money just to send out an alert to the possibly of titanic bank failures and more inflation. Was he right about that? We shall see. But he put himself in a lose/lose scenario for what seems like a highly unselfish cause.

We will definitely check out Diamon Age. Thanks!

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You make good points. I could be way off, and pretty much everything he says is worth some thought. But I get the impression that he enjoys technology and imaginative solutions for their own sake, and that he’d just as soon collaborate with freedom-limiting organizations like the CIA as he would with freedom-expanding organizations.

> But his steadfast virtue, rhetoric, and most importantly action should weigh more heavily on the scale for which we judge him, no?

It should, and I’m not in a good position to judge; it’s just that I’m a little skeptical of his steadfast virtue.

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Balaji knows. The way to defeat all of this corruption is to unify - highly aligned people - against it.

Shouldn’t we all be aligned against corruption?

We have a way to fix this - our biggest problem - which is the corruption in the systems that govern over our lives. How? A Network State - a new decentralized 4th branch of government that isn't part of the government at all, but rather 100% built and run by the people. This includes a decentralized news network, decentralized science, a safe have for whistleblowers, a decentralized monetary system we all agree to in case the current one collapses, decentralized debates, a parallel transparent voting system, decentralized education , ballot initiatives and more. Consider this: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/lets-build-a-4th-branch-of-government

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I will republish this article here, soon. This is the outline of a truth-tracking system that corresponds with decentralized media. It's got problems. But it's an attempt to move in the direction of media sensemaking: https://www.aier.org/article/sensemaking-in-the-era-of-authoritarian-media/

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As for truth, and system that tracks “truth” needs to be decentralized. When Wikipedia used to be decentralized it did a good job, but has since been centralized with money and corrupted.

We sort of got to the point where we stopped caring about truth and instead only care about transparency. Show us what is really going on and we can interpret it, instead of letting others interpret it for us.

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Sorry for blowing up your comment section but we need to be allies.

Here is a video on swarm intelligence. This is the old model. The new one we all can add inputs instead of having fixed inputs.

But the results matter most, and the result happen.

We need to have a say in our own solutions instead of top-down centralized corrupt authorities telling us the solutions.

We are infinitely excited to find your substack.

https://youtu.be/Eu-RyZt_Uas

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Oooh, lemme check it out.

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Where are you based?

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Buffalo NY. But we are building VOY (swarm intelligence group consensus app) with people from Chicago - it was actually their baby. We just saw a few additional uses for it. Namely this

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I respond again to comments, largely from a contrary perspective. If you'd prefer not to hear what could perhaps be considered negative, please let me know and I'll stop responding (you could email me separately, if you prefer to communicate that message privately).

In your text, you write "For example, the General Welfare clause has been a monstrous loophole for the powerful, while Amendments 9 and 10—designed to empower the people—are as good as dead."

The idea that those who swear their required oath to support the Constitution so they may exercise its delegated powers using "necessary and proper" means (which phrase is another supposed "reinterpreted" word [to mean, instead, allegedly "convenient") would be laughable if it wasn't so serious.

No person who swears an oath is ever empowered to change that Constitution which they swear to support, nor may they ever change the powers that they may directly exercise throughout the Union, as their oath signifies their subservience.

While we've had 220 years from 1803 Marbury v. Madison (and 232 years from Hamilton's 1791 banking opinion) which claim otherwise, both Hamilton and Marshall merely sought to use the inherent powers allowed them for the District Seat (even as D.C. wasn't yet a thing, in February of 1791) beyond District boundaries.

In other words, the scoundrels only change the meaning of words and phrases found in the Constitution, differently, WHERE they have the power to do that, which is in the District Seat.

After all, the Tenth Amendment which you assert is "dead" has no "life" in D.C., for after Maryland ceded that parcel of land in December of 1791, once Congress fully accepted it in 1800, then Maryland had no more State power to exercise there, so members of Congress may there follow their constitutional directive, to exercise "exclusive" legislation power "in all Cases whatsoever."

Although the words and spirit of the Tenth Amendment reserve all unmentioned governing powers to the States which ratified the U.S. Constitution, that doesn't prohibit the States from later giving Congress and the U.S. Government more powers under the Article V amendment process. Well, neither does it prevent a "particular" State from ceding all of its powers over particular parcels of land for exclusive legislative purposes, under Article I (Section 8, Clause 17).

That members of Congress and federal officials have the inherent power to do as they please in the District Seat, except as they are specifically prohibited, means they DO HAVE the ability to do as everyone claims they cannot exercise, it is just that that special power is supposed to be limited to the 10-miles-square area (now, more like 6 miles by 10 miles area, since retrocession of Alexandria in 1846 back to Virginia) of D.C., and all the exclusive area forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards and other needful buildings.

To extend that allowed power beyond rightful geographic and legal boundaries, the scoundrels simply follow Hamilton's plan (more fully implemented by Marshall [in 1803 Marbury, 1819 McCulloch and especially 1821 Cohens v. Virginia [the latter, where he said "The clause which gives exclusive jurisdiction is, unquestionably, a part of the Constitution, and, as such, binds all the United States").

Because Clause 17 is *part* of "This Constitution" which Article VI, Clause 2 says is "the supreme Law of the Land" that binds the States through their judges, this gives immoral men sufficient color of law for them to bluff their way to argue covertly that their allowed special powers may be everywhere exercised, until we show how they can't (because it would invade the Tenth Amendment, where that amendment has teeth).

We do not face all-powerful genies, only fraudulent wizards.

While the genies may exercise "PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER" (in the immortal words of Disney's Alladin genie), they only have "an itty bitty living space."

It is time to follow the lead of Toto and pull back the curtain on the fraud hiding behind it, who has no magical powers, beyond clever sleights of hand, hidden panels, and trap doors.

Frauds are waiting to be exposed, but we must do our part and search out the source of the stench.

Matt Erickson (mail@PatriotCorps.org).

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The lack of Justice in this country should appall us all. Our current system is so far corrupted we cannot bet on it fixing itself. Imagine a computer so far corrupted. We need a “plug in” to fix it.

In other words, we need to create our own new system that makes the old one obsolete. One that cannot be corrupted. Then plug it into the current system and take control back to the decentralized people.

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The lack of justice should appall us, indeed. That is why we need to expose it. We do not face all-powerful wizards, only fraud, which can be exposed for the whole world to see, once we pull back the curtain and expose the fraud, and then BARK like crazy to draw attention to the only thing that matters--their devious work-around process.

The old system isn't "obsolete", it simply needs a little help, by one of two alternate amendments (discussed below, in my comment to your earlier post).

Every member of Congress and federal official ALREADY swear an oath to support the current Constitution--thus the advantage of simply learning to enforce it, and, at some point, modify it in one of two ways I recommend below (but, we can throw off false authority, even before we ratify an amendment [because they base their excessive actions on fraud]).

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If the idea of a competitor constitution gets real traction--and millions of pledged signatories--the result might only be the restoration of the original constitution and original meaning. That would be excellent. My humble strategy is to help pull us back from the brink of authoritarianism through various means. I'd be delighted if the "obsolete" Constitution rose like a phoenix from the embers of this empire. I don't think about this strategy in binary terms. I think about it as a means of changing minds along Jeffersonian lines.

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Looking at the 1791 banking bill shows how Jefferson (and A.G. Edmund Randolph) lost out to Hamilton.

Both Jefferson and Randolph argued the proposed bill was "unconstitutional"--that Congress could "never" do as members proposed in the 1791 banking bill.

What was Hamilton's true response (hidden within a whole lot of nonsense)? His response tells us where to look, if we are paying sufficient attention.

Hamilton writes (with my emphasis, in caps), in his 1791 Treasury Secretary's opinion on the constitutionality of the banking bill "Surely it can never be believed that Congress with EXCLUSIVE powers of legislation IN ALL CASES WHATSOEVER, cannot erect a corporation within the DISTRICT which shall become the SEAT OF GOVERNMENT...And yet there is an UNQUALIFIED denial of the power to erect corporations in EVERY case on the part both of the Secretary of State and of the Attorney General.”

By ignoring the most powerful clause in the Constitution, Jefferson and Randolph wholly ignored a power which easily reached to Hamilton's proposal.

One cannot argue that something is facially unconstitutional, in every case, if one wholly ignores the most powerful clause of the Constitution, bar none, that allows anything and everything to be done, except those precious few things expressly prohibited.

We can learn to "change" minds "along Jeffersonian lines" by fixing what he missed.

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As for the Constitution we did a similar exercise where we imagined we could go back in time and have a seat at the table, writing the Constitution. What amendments would you add in order to prevent the corruption of the systems today.

As Balaji’s friend Naval Ravikant says, “a good system should be able to be turned over to your enemies and they still cannot corrupt it.”

However, we need a tool to write these amendments in groups. A consensus tool. We are working on one called VOY (currently looking for investors) that uses Swarm Intelligence to large groups of people to work with AI algorithms to get group consensus.

Here is the article about the Constitution https://open.substack.com/pub/joshketry/p/what-amendments-would-you-add-to?r=7oa9d&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

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Your proposed amendments do not reach to the heart of the issue, of how those who necessarily swear an oath of support that signifies their subservience to it may instead lord over it.

We cannot add anything to the Constitution that cannot be bypassed as the remainder of the Constitution may be bypassed or ignored now, UNTIL we end that devious work-around process.

Members of Congress and federal officials needn't remain in the "five minutes" of governing authority (of an allotted "hour" on the government "clock", where the first 55 "minutes" of the governing authority was reserved to the States) when they work within their exclusive legislation time-clock, where all 60 minutes are federal minutes, exclusively.

Whereas the States must all follow their State Constitutions for guidance within their allotted/reserved 55 minutes, there is no similar State, State-like, or District Constitution applicable to Congress for the District Seat.

Thus, members of Congress must make up all their own rules, as they go along, needing only to avoid the few things expressly prohibited them.

To prevent the false extension of an allowed power, we simply need an amendment to say, like the 1795 11th Amendment, that their current work-around process is not allowed, saying something to the effect that "the seventeenth clause of the eighth section of the first article of the U.S. Constitution SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED to be any part of the supreme Law of the Land under Article VI that may bind the States."

That would yet allow them to exercise their exclusive legislation powers in D.C. and exclusive legislation area forts and port, but never again may those powers ever bind the States. Oregon's laws never may impact Idaho, nor the laws of Texas invade New York; neither should the exclusive legislation powers of Congress ever invade the sovereign States. This amendment would CONTAIN exclusive legislation powers to D.C., et al.

Or, we REPEAL Clause 17 entirely, and retrocede all parcels of exclusive legislation lands back to the State which ceded them.

In the first case, with containment, this amendment would create the condition which everyone who knows about Clause 17 already exists (i.e., that the exclusive legislation powers are necessarily confined to exclusive legislation lands), but doesn't.

In the second case, with repeal, it would create the condition that those who don't really know about Clause 17, that all governing powers are everywhere DIVIDED into enumerated federal powers and reserved State powers.

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I don't remember proposing any amendments, Matt. I'm trying to build solidarity around a new set of ideas that reify the idea of a social contract.

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Sorry, Max, I meant my response to The Rationalist Society link, on one of their comments and their listed amendment proposals within their link, that I thought I was replying directly to.

I like your ingenuity and willingness to look at things from a new perspective.

I think we need a new perspective, on our current dilemma, of federal servants who have curiously become our political masters, even as they must swear an oath to support the Constitution, that signifies their subservience to it.

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I see. I apologize, as I got this notification (of your comment) via email. Still getting my bearings. In any case, we have a bunch of kindred souls here. We are all trying to figure out how to restore the Founding Project. Most of our efforts will fail, but we must continue to experiment. I'm excited by this community forming in real time.

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Exactly. If we first have a Network State with the same mission, we can then use all different kinds of experiments to see what works best. As long as part of the the Network State's code is RESULTS MATTER MOST, and we swear an oath of sorts to change direction if it isn't working.

Matt you obviously have a deep knowledge of the Constitution and what you think needs to be fixed. But if the entire system is corrupted, how do we get to THERE from HERE? What are the steps to execute your plan? If it involves voting, it is already dead in the water without an alternate system of accountability.

We need a new system to assist us. Justice will never happen when those who are corrupting the system are the same ones who could bring justice to it.

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No need to apologize and I understand if you first saw only an emailed text of a stand-alone comment.

Yes, kindred souls, searching for answers--which is sorely needed. We must look at our old problems in a new light.

I believe we will necessarily succeed, because our political adversaries are only frauds and bullies and truth opposes their continued success.

I argue that we face but one political problem federally, and that is how members of Congress and federal officials successfully bypass or ignore their normal constitutional parameters, with impunity.

I further argue that everything else is but an irrelevant symptom of that single cause. But, we can cure what we can accurately diagnose.

Because our political adversaries merely take an allowed inherent discretion for the District Seat and extend an allowed power (that reaches to be able to do everything and anything except those precious few things expressly prohibited them) beyond its truly-allowable boundaries.

They are merely accomplished frauds and truth is their mortal enemy.

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We propose that we call it the “4th Branch” network state. And treat it exactly as that - a citizens assembly against corruption. I it we rethink all of our systems using transparency, decentralization, trustless systems, and technology to fight back with.

Great article. For starters, we are highly aligned with you.

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