What Balaji Srinivasan thinks about government
Co-founder of Counsyl and of Earn.com; a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz from 2013 to 2018 and chief technology officer of Coinbase from 2018 to 2019. Wrote The Network State, which he publishes free and in full at thenetworkstate.com, and writes at balajis.com.
Balaji Srinivasan did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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8 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Balaji Srinivasan has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsI think it's quite unlikely that this "8-bit world" that we've inherited from the 20th century, which still has less than 256 nation states, will continue indefinitely.
↗Why did Stu Woo of the Wall Street Journal Follow Me to Singapore?balajis.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 2 weeks earlier
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Their wordsnew laws are like code that is pushed live to production without even being read (let alone tested), often in the face of tremendous opposition, affecting millions of citizens, with minimal monitoring to ensure they’re producing the desired results, an extremely slow customer feedback cycle, and few ways to truly opt out.
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Their wordsEncryption thus limits governments in a way no legislation can.
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Their wordsIn this sense, the Network is the next Leviathan, because on key dimensions it is becoming more powerful and more just than the State.
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Their wordsAs mentioned before, Uber and Lyft are better regulators than the State’s paper-based taxi medallions, email is superior to the USPS, and SpaceX is out-executing NASA.
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Their wordsThis US government can’t build a bathroom in San Francisco, let alone a costeffective fighter jet, destroyer, combat ship, or aircraft carrier.
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Their wordsThis gives us a new perspective on why micronations like Sealand don’t work: they start backwards, from the territory and the government, rather than working forwards from a people and their culture.
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Our readingA government is legitimate internally if the governed have consented to it, whatever form it takes.
Their wordsGiven the consent of the governed, any form of government is internally legitimate.