Friend:

I'm stuck on a particular philosophical problem with cults: imitators are a huge problem, but cults tend to become fertile grounds for imitation-as-substitute-for-substance. The imitators try to create an environment where imitation of the central idea becomes the highest value, rather than production of useful work towards the central idea or whatever. The result is an extremely abusive environment created by the least privileged (competent) members of the group, which ends up brutally abusing them by extracting extreme dedication. Cults are created by their victims.

In light of that dynamic, how do we build a cult around all-in dedication that rewards competent substantive contribution and stable commitment rather than imitation and desperate commitment.

Me: Depends on the productive vector of the group. I like the idea of the Startup Society more for this reason. Live together or live remote, and run businesses in the standard model keeping finances separate. There’s no head, but to be a part of the society you have to be a part of one of these startups. Less wholesome but gets around the worry of the problems in a shared collective.

I didn’t finish Balajis Network State so I’m not sure if I’m repeating what’s in the book, but the core idea of the society would be a mutual agreement to all hold their savings inside of the coin representing treasury of the followers of the society following said philosophy / religion.

This effectively creates a tracking mechanism to track the GDP of the Startup Society and removes the reliance on storing funds in assets which can be subject to corruption via printing by other controlled monetary sources.

The further action that is required to make your currency uncorruptable is gating the purchasing to only members. As many are aware Bitcoin became a corrupted asset by the Central Banking System.

Max Keiser suggests corruption could be at play over SEC's denial of spot Bitcoin ETF

Basically, if a corrupt asset (printable currency) can be used to buy substantial amounts of the token, the token can be just as corrupted as the printable currency.

Would the CIA and Central Banking System use agents to get into the community and use their funds to used corrupted funds to purchase there? It would be completely obvious if that is the case since each person who purchases would be tracked. There would be no way to make massive anonymous buys like in Bitcoin.

A strong social fabric in the community would mean any person “dumping” the token at peaks rather than using it as their bank could be immediately removed. The more people who join, the more everyone's currency would become worth. There would be no pre-mine. The startup society would back the token at a 1:1 ratio.

In a future writing I may expand on this idea:

Religious/Faith based tokens retain their value even when gold does not. Faith and memories have a stronger eternal store of value than gold or any material asset. When gold has no value to man, no material will. People create meaning towards things, after the singularity only these digitally verified things will be irreplaceable.

I wrote a story about how this era we are in which I called “Internet Enlightenment” which focuses on how a strong “one commandment” could create the largest network state backed currency in the world.