Update: the original Startup Society inspired by this essay was BTC-based. It has splintered into three expat/digital nomad societies, each based in a different primary money system. Xpat is BTC, Xpatria is ETH, and EXP is USD. It’s not surprising that the larger expat/digital nomad startup community should fragment along money lines. Your base currency is fundamental to TNS affiliations.
AT HOME IN STRANGELAND
Balaji Srinavasan’s The Network State (TNS) is a gift to anyone who enjoys thinking about how technology, memes, and money impact individual vs. collective, i.e. citizen/state, node/network, founder/startup.
Expats and Digital/Crypto Nomads (DNs) are harbingers of the freedom implied by the rise of TNS. Hemingway’s posthumously-published A Moveable Feast (1964) captures the freedom, adventure, and opportunity of expat life. DNs are post-BTC iterations on the classic expat trope, embodying tech-enabled transcendence of the state leviathan. Expats have great lore— check out The Alexandria Quartet, The English Patient, or Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. DNs, by comparison, lack compelling narratives. That’s a big problem in a world where anti-tech legacy media outlets target DNs. See here (“pricing out locals”) and here (“smug American expats”) for examples of zero-sum alarmism. DNs suffer a dearth of memes but a plethora of sound (because decentralized) globally liquid money, a huge improvement over the classic expat forex hell, i.e. swapping major and minor fiat currencies, always looking for the best free market rates.
Both groups embody individual choice and optionality with regard to residency, work, community, and currency. Both groups suffer painful problems that can be readily solved by applying TNS ideas, i.e. new TNS form factors for networked collective action, specifically Startup Societies and Network Unions.
Imagine Xpatria: a Network State powered by Expat and DN contributions (money, code, guidance, admin, hospitality, etc), comprised of an archipelago of expat-owned “embassies,” and recognized by a nation state keen to attract wealthy and talented foreigners to its tax base.
Mercenary Missionaries
Expats— individuals who voluntarily leave their homeland to reside in another country indefinitely— self-define as autonomous in the context of the nation state. Born in one country, they make their home in another, perhaps to one day return to their homeland, or relocate to another “Strangeland.”
DNs— individuals who embody many of the tech-enabled freedom memes of TNS— are even more geographically and culturally flexible than expats, who often end up owning property or have family and business ties to their adopted country. They can work from anywhere and often earn money that works anywhere, i.e. cryptocurrency convertible to local currency anywhere via crypto exchanges or peer-to-peer.
Because they are both freedom-loving, state-flexible, and in need of network-based tools for collective action, community formation, and purpose, expats and DNs make ideal "holy warriors" for TNS transition. They are mercenary missionaries— economically motivated (a big pecuniary plus of living abroad is the lower cost of living) and yearning for moral innovation that can afford them some of the protections and privileges of state citizenship.
This insight lives at the intersection of the fintech startups I’ve been building for the past 10 years and my 15+ years before that living outside my country of birth. Every month I collaborate with DNs living in Havana, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Bogota, and NYC. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and the erstwhile “expat mayor” of Mexico City I’ve befriended dozens of expats from all over the world.
The global and rapidly growing Expat and DN communities are ideal TNS meme super-spreaders because they stand to benefit the most from the novel ideas of TNS.
Expat Explosion
There are tens of millions of Expats and many more DNs. Estimates vary widely, but the growth is undeniably steep, a derivative function of the steep curves of internet adoption, smartphone penetration, tech startup creation, and crypto market capitalization, all of which makes living abroad much easier. In the Peace Corps I communicated with the outside world via snail mailed letters and checked the local post office daily for news from the outside world. Just a few years later in Mexico City I built web 1.0, media, and mobile startups that spread the adoption of those expat and DN-enabling technologies.
Expats tend to be more established in Strangeland and represent an existing archipelago of property all over the world. They also often have permanent residency status or have qualified for a second passport from their adopted country. Land-based and firmly set expats serve as a sturdy trellis for the tendrils of a burgeoning Network State to climb. DNs are more transient and less connected than expats but they have the tech fluency and crypto savvy needed to build the products and services required for viable Startup Societies and Network Unions. The two communities would benefit greatly from cross-pollination, cooperation, and collaboration.
Tens of millions of Expats and DNs already self-identify as flexible with regard to country of residency, source of income, meat/meta community, and base currency. The represent a giant pool of TNS recruits. They are money-motivated to seek out lower burn by living abroad and meme-motivated to seek out freedom, adventure, an unpredictable existence.
It’s a community primed to join a holy war to build a Network State that aligns their experience, skills, values, and interests. They’re ready to be Balaji-pilled.
Anomie & Vulnerability
Although expats might be fluent in the local language and know their adopted city better than their original hometown, they often lack the local connections and influence that define successful legal outcomes in Strangeland. During my time in Guatemala and Mexico City, it was common to hear about expats having legal problems with properties they purchased or wanted to purchase. In my experience they also tended to be jaded and lonely, disillusioned with society in a way that is best captured by the word anomie. Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (first line: “I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.”) and Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky depict the negativity and despair that often infects long-term expats. Humphrey Bogart’s Rick in the movie Casablanca or the desperate expats driving nitroglycerine in exchange for a ticket out of Strangeland in the Wages of Fear are memorable fictional examples of anomie.
Likewise, DNs may possess fat crypto stacks and tech chops easily monetized on Toptal or Upwork, but they typically also have very precarious residency status in Strangeland and lack meaningful community, especially local mentors. They may not suffer from anomie, but they are especially vulnerable to corrupt law enforcement who demand bribes and threaten jail and deportation.
Over the past 10 years building startups, including Uphold, Airtm, Air Protocol, Cadoo, and Slyk, I’ve worked with DNs from Turkey residing in Ukraine and living in constant fear of deportation. Others from Havana are desperate to get sponsored to live in the U.S. Many Venezuelan DNs contributing to Airtm live in Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina, having fled Maduro’s hyperinflation. DNs typically can’t open bank accounts, buy property, or take local jobs due to their residency status. They are free in many ways but constrained in many others.
Both Expats and DNs gain freedom from their decision to live in Strangeland but relinquish much of the predictability and protection of living in one’s country of birth and original citizenship. They often don’t physically resemble locals, making them conspicuous targets for criminals. They also often lack a higher purpose that comes from aligning their unique soul/self with market and community, i.e. building a wealth-generating startup using their talents and passions that solves a problem they care about for a community they want to see thrive.
Both Expats and Digital Nomads would benefit from collective action to defend their rights, identify scams, build community, share resources, and collaborate to build something of transcendent value. Expats need help exploiting the metaverse tech stack that DNs dominate. DNs need better meatspace memes and the wisdom of elders to guide them on the ground. Both groups would benefit from the publication and spread of positive media about their lives in Strangeland, something like this literary journal (called Strangeland) that I published to celebrate the end of my expat stint in the Big Taco.
Xpatria: At Home in Strangeland
The solution to the most painful Expat and DN problems is straight out of TNS playbook. It looks like an Expat-owned and operated Network Union for collective advocacy, PR, and protection. For DNs, it looks like a Startup Society connecting them to local expat mentors, guides, and opportunities.
Xpatria takes collective action under local law to protect private property and help expats avoid scams and find reliable local professionals. It provides a community of veterans who can help newbies navigate the often confusing legal and administrative systems of their adopted countries. It begins as a coin-gated startup community for expats, a play-to-learn/earn/own community that crowdfunds contributions and organizes advocacy and PR initiatives.
Xpatria shreds anomie, providing expats with greater connection, meaning, and upside, a way to match their freedom and economic well-being with the excitement and opportunity of building a startup that helps young people who share their interest in living abroad.
For DNs, Xpatria is the opposite of Lonely Plant. It’s a community to help them navigate residency status, as well as a promising startup they can proudly build, benefit from, grow, and own.
Lonely to Local Planet
Xpatria has memes and money— the two essentials of Community.
DNs and Expats can earn EXP by helping it grow and contributing to Xpatria products. EXP earned can be used to pay for Network Union dues and to access services provided by the Startup Society. EXP can also be exchanged for upside in the cashflow generated by sales of Xpatria’s startup products and services. Ownership of Xpatria’s value creation, i.e. cashflow generation, is represented as EXP, an onchain governance token. EXP voting decide how cashflow from product sales and crowdfunded capital deposited in a BTC treasury is allocated to execute on Xpatria’s advocacy, PR, and product development initiatives.
It’s a sustainable DAO, owned, operated, governed, and grown by Expats and DNs who have the most to gain from Xpatria’s moral and tech innovations.
Call for Co-Founders
I’ve been an Expat and collaborated with many DNs. In Mexico City my home on Tabasco street was widely known as “Tierra Gabacho” (“Gringoland.”)
There are tens of millions living in Strangeland, suffering from a lack of community, purpose, and collective action.
No more!
These communities are ready for TNS. They already live its message. They desperately need its memes.
Xpatria is a Startup Society and Network Union for expats, digital nomads, and anyone who wants to learn more about life in Strangeland.
Share this essay with DNs or Expats you know.
Join the Xpatria Startup Community.
Collaborate and earn upside in the form of Xpatria Coin: EXP.
Apply to be the “Expat Mayor” of your adopted city or an Xpatria Co-founder. Redeem EXP to join the Xpatria Discord and Monthly Meetups.
You can even apply to be an Xpatria Co-founder.
Expats and DNs of the world unite!
We have nothing to lose but our anomie.