Balaji Srinivasan

Hard work is good Fake hard work is not good But fake hard work is better than antiwork And antiwork is the de facto alternative

Many believe that (a) baby boomers were bad and (b) we badly need another baby boom. Another fun observation: In America, the baby boomers are considered the selfish generation, part of a population boom. But in China, the little emperors are considered the narcissistic generation, part of a population crash. https://t.co/1dNWj3qm0Y https://t.co/BeQ4kfhwXl

Every AI agent ultimately has a human principal. It’s possible technology changes this. But right now, AI agents aren’t truly autonomous. They are built for the prompt, bots on a leash. Amplified intelligence as wholly distinct from truly artificial intelligence. The much-cited METR study doesn’t change that. Read the critique linked below; it notes that there METR shows a sigmoid on the messiest tasks. Even anecdotally…agentic workflows absolutely do help, and time horizons have been lengthening since Claude Cowork. But it’s just not the panacea it’s made out to be. Human prompting and verification remains the bottleneck, because digital …

The provably secret ballot. The crypto coalition. The onchain vote.

The right kind of ambition is to compete against yourself. To be the best version of yourself.

The US federal budget is $7 trillion. There are 535 in the Senate and Congress. They collectively allocate that money. Specifically: 7000/535 = 13 billion per official. Which means AOC is a political billionaire. She allocates far more than any market billionaire. Indeed she allocates ten billion liquid, per year. A market billionaire has one billion, illiquid, per life. So: AOC spends 10-100X what a market billionaire has. It's not even close. She's right about one thing, though. AOC didn't earn the tens of billions she spends. The state taxed that money, by force.

Personal emigration is going vertical. So is corporate redomiciliation. https://t.co/mRneu0nGHE Original graphic from @amuse. Data from @LeaveDelaware. https://t.co/3l74fIhXX3

On the new Monitoring the Situation stream with @eriktorenberg and @theojaffee.

Seasteading is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.

If you’re in the Singapore/Malaysia area, we have a Replit Agent 4 hackathon tomorrow at Network School. There will be a tutorial, a little remote guest appearance by my friend @amasad, and a hackathon. Here’s the event link: https://t.co/s0JM5sLVSO https://t.co/CT4isyxUIT

Network School is growing. Come visit us at https://t.co/yrwniI2Q61. https://t.co/NGRl0SnUlt

This may be what happens. America pulls out and stops wasting its blood and treasure in the Middle East. Then dozens of nations form a diplomatic (not military) coalition to reopen the Strait on acceptable terms. With the war over, it’ll be difficult for Iran to charge exorbitant fees to so many neutral nations of Europe and Asia. But regardless, the result will be that everyone just pays for their own security.

BUILD THE SWITCH Ok. I see the “just flip the switch” thing a lot now from the right. But while I’m sympathetic to the desire for law and order, and agree that is a direction worth pursuing, there’s an illusion that should be addressed. Leftists think you can get money without working for it. Just flip the switch on the money printer. Just flip the switch to tax the rich. But in reality, resources are scarce. Rightists often similarly think you can get political power without working for it. Just flip the switch to throw the criminals in jail. But in reality, votes (or political supporters in general) are scarce just like resources are. …

I agree with all this. However, we do have an issue that we’ll need to address with cryptography and AI. While legacy media was on the back foot from 2022-2025, thanks to Elon uncensoring X and permitting basic truths to be voiced…the combination of AI fakery and ideological filter bubbles has recently allowed the journos to regain some ground. Some outlets have pulled back on extreme wokeness to start reporting facts, particularly on the war, that users are citing because their presence at a legacy outlet’s URL indicates implicitly that they aren’t AI. In other words, AI is, in part, subsidizing legacy written news media at the expense o…

Bukele is the greatest American president of the 21st century. So far, Nayib Bukele is on track to be the Lee Kuan Yew of Latin America. The Simon Bolivar of the new century. He focused on building up his own country. He embraced hard money and cut off hard drugs. He did imprison criminals, but did so with the minimum necessary force. He persuaded first, and compelled only when absolutely necessary. Like Lee Kuan Yew, Bukele turned his country into a bonafide showcase for a global audience. Bukele built a domestic coalition in his native Spanish and an international coalition in fluent English. He balanced El Salvadoran nationalism with d…

AI is a shortcut. So it’s useful. But it’s lazy. So it speeds execution. But it hides complexity. So you want to use it. But definitely not overuse it. So the user of AI often loves it. But the reader of AI often hates it.

This is the wrong way of thinking about it. By this logic, a school shooter is "powerful" because they can kill an entire school. Real power is the power to build, to maintain stability and prosperity. It's not the power to destroy. Anyone can kill. Anyone can bomb, destabilize, spread chaos, set fires, create anarchy. Unfortunately, that's relatively easy. The old America could build, not just kill. That's the America I admire. Btw: this isn't meant to be a dunk on @phl43, as I know what he meant. He's saying the (inherited) logistics infrastructure of the US is so impressive that it can seemingly wage endless wars overseas without any …

It's a global energy crisis. But India is far better positioned than it was in 2020. https://t.co/P8A9RIuuPz Graphic from @zerodhamarkets. https://t.co/XVQhve09dr

How does Elon do it? This is the first book that studies that. It summarizes how he operates. Some is of course intrinsic to Elon. But some might be learned. By you, if you read this. Check it out: https://t.co/u9MR80sWtJ https://t.co/sLtx5WvwjI

Libertarianism in theory requires Lee Kuan Yew in practice. Order and borders are prerequisites for liberty and prosperity. Tolerance and internationalism enables trade and capitalism. Pragmatism about the scope of the state minimizes the scope of the state.

Most new vehicles in Singapore are now electric. The EV flippening is here. https://t.co/cCWPruVtTS Original from @leRaffl.

I'm going to make some obvious points. (1) Blowing up all the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is an insane idea, and may well result in a global economic crash and humanitarian crisis unrivaled in the lives of those now living. We're talking about the price of everything everywhere rising, from food to gas, at a moment when inflation was already high. All of that will be laid at the feet of the authors of this war. (2) The antebellum status quo of Feb 27, 2026 was just not that bad, but we're unlikely to return to it. Expect indefinite, long-term, ongoing disruptions to everything out of the Middle East. (3) Also assume tech financin…

Zeihan is wrong, China is strong Truth is the most important thing. You first figure out what's true, and then you allocate resources on that basis. That's why I'm a reality shill. On that topic, my colleague Nic Carter believes Peter Zeihan is correct in his worldview, and says he hasn't seen a cogent counterargument. So, let's give that counterargument. First off: I fully grant that Zeihan is an interesting thinker who has books you should check out. I have nothing against the man personally, I just disagree with his thesis, which one might summarize as follows: ZEIHAN (paraphrased): The post-WWII era of globalized trade was a temporar…

Hollywood is over. It's all Internet now. https://t.co/NFESPUnk0F I am sympathetic to @RamboVanHalen and his critique of KPI-driven clickbait. Obviously, there's truth to it. On the other hand, for generations, Hollywood's blind spots were obvious. Thanks to the decentralization of media, new stories will get told. Eventually, some will become art. https://t.co/33f21QciD8 @RamboVanHalen Yeah, but streaming is a transitional form. It will likely be replaced by AI-generated video over time. Streaming already competes with everything else on the Internet. You don’t commit to a two hour stream. Users click away quickly. Moreover, AI video w…

You know how socialists don't get capitalism? Well, nationalists don't get diplomacy. The socialist thinks their state is all-powerful domestically, and the nationalist thinks their state is all-powerful globally, so it can seize whatever it wants by force, because it's so strong, and nothing will ever happen, and no one can resist. Both worldviews are wrong, for similar reasons. The socialist hates capitalists so much, and the nationalist hates foreigners so much, that they often just become blinded by hatred. They come to believe the outgroup is so incompetent that they aren't a threat, and have no use, so long as maximum force is employ…

Networks are a better mental model than states. Within a state, there are many networks. From ideological groupings to digital communities. They aren’t internally homogenous. Between states, the countries themselves belong to networks. Multilateral fora like ASEAN or WEF. China is the closest exception to the rule. Perhaps the most internally homogenous large state, and least globally dependent on others. But even China isn’t fully an exception, if you look closely. All these types of informal networks are becoming more important, relative to formal states, as the 20th century ends and the Internet century begins.

If Iran wins, it's the end of five eras. 1991-2026: the unipolar era 1974-2026: the petrodollar era 1945-2026: the postwar era 1776-2026: the union era 1492-2026: the Western era Specifically, the end of the petrodollar (1974) would also be the end of the unipolar moment (1991) and the postwar order (1945). It would mark the moment when Eurasian powers were once again dominant over Western powers (1492). Finally, a rapid crash in the dollar's purchasing power coupled with military defeat could well break apart the American union (1776). Few seem to viscerally understand just how dependent America is on money printing. But the end of the pe…

This is American Anarchy vs Chinese Control. American Anarchy is the superposition of left- and right-libertarianism, taken to their extremes. We are all equal and you ain't the boss of me. So no one is in charge, and everything is in chaos. America is all about consent, and also no one consents. Chinese Control is the opposite. It's the total integration of nation, state, and network into one collectivist whole. Roughly 96% of people of Han Chinese descent are now governed by the communist one party-state and organized by apps within the Chinese network. China is all about cooperation, and also everyone better cooperate. A useful goal is …

We should build more crypto tools for refugees and stateless people. Because there may unfortunately be many more refugees and stateless people…and from all social classes. Ukrainians leaving the war. Californians leaving the state. Gulf workers leaving the missiles. Doesn’t necessarily mean huge design changes. If you build convenient consumer tools for millions that work in peacetime, then they’ll often be robust enough to work in wartime. Because crypto is wartime mode, but for the Internet. Public blockchains were created to resist datacenter attacks, hacks, and network blocks. It’s simply enlightened self-interest to build scalable,…

Travis Kalanick is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. The bad guys took his company. But they never broke his spirit. He rebuilt from scratch. And now he’s back.