Brown also kept a private collection of “bad books,” as one of those former staffers described them, that he would only share with someone he thought was likely to be on the same ideological page.
Having a hard time thinking about what books could have been in this collection. You could say it’s my struggle.
it’s actually surprising how many of these I’ll be scrolling through and then see that either FTX or Alameda threw a few million at them shortly before imploding. Sam was really trying to speedrun the whole illegal internet banking to real-life Bond villain career arc that assholes like Thiel and Musk pioneered, wasn’t he?
No location picked let alone land bought or planning permission approved but they've already announced they're building a city. You can just say anything I guess if you're a hip right-winger.
"worked" seems like an overstatement. This wikipedia page is great, just a catalogue of grand plans that never got off the ground. It's easy to see why. They're effectively asking the host government to create a breakaway state within their own country which will get all the foreign direct investment and do all the economic activity. That is a recipe for a power struggle and a civil war which could end with the racist techmen as dictators of a banana republic.
The article links to this blog post from when these lads made a notorious attempt to set up a city in Ghana. It's pretty good value.
For the record, Dr. Bawumia is an economist and a banker, and so how two white boys with no capital or credentials were able to get a meeting with him to discuss an urban planning project is anyone’s best guess. Perhaps Dr. Bawumia harbors a secret obsession with Minecraft that the nation is of unaware of.
Is it wrong to hope they manage to realize one of these libertarian paradise fantasies? I'd really love to see how quickly it devolves into a Mad Max Thunderdome situation.
While this is a dumb idea it's a great article, and led me to some enjoyable wikidives on Ceuta and San Marino.
Frankly, the gall of someone imagining they can carve out a piece of a country around the Mediterranean , an area that's been contested since the literal dawn of history, is breathtaking.