Malaysia shut down a school Balaji had been building in the vision of his book The Network State.
Looked like it had some local backlash like not really helping much the local economy and also allegations of letting in Israeli passport holder in (as they're banned).
Balaji's tweet on the matter:
Also note that they're moving to Kazakhstan...
Remember in 2021 when all the Bitcoin miners got kicked out of China? Some tried setting up in Kazakhstan but didn't last long. link
Still some risks involved setting up in tax favorable jurisdictions.
The problem is still that if you want to have the benefits of a state (he's mentioned borrowed security from host states a couple of times) or camp out on "their" land, then you have to abide by the laws, unless you managed to get an exception. Not abiding by these laws is problematic.
Of course, disallowing entry to people based on where they were born is problematic. Happens nearly everywhere though and I expect this overall to worsen the coming years, as we're nowhere near the bottom of the state isolation sinkhole yet, it has only just re-started.
The question for now is: how can we minimize touch points with any state? And building physical hubs and expecting total freedom with no concessions made probably isn't the way. Not in Malaysia, not in Honduras, not in the Trieste or Shannon SEZs either. Kazakhstan? no. The Uruguay/Paraguay/Argentina area? Neither.
What can we achieve without pinning ourselves down to a couple special places that are only there with explicit permission? If the "globalists" managed to pull off global connectivity for an odd 70 years through wars and political oppression and wage exploitation, but without the tools we have today, there is no reason for a peaceful internet-native community to get things done. The only issue that really needs to be addressed is movement of goods (that cannot be printed). Everything else, from money to expertise, can transfer digitally and no longer depends on the goodwill of the guys enforcing a physical border.
That's what I thought the network state was once about, but it feels like what balaji & co really want is a physical state.
Space. That is what befits.