The guys I call the brotopians – the tech billionaires funding charter cities, network states, and various other grandiose and extremely stupid schemes to “exit democracy” – tend to be a very particular brand of libertarian. That is, the kind who thinks that taxation is theft when it’s applied to them,
“Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change,” the “free-market” fetishist Milton Friedman once wrote, “When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” Mark Lutter, founder and Executive Director of the Charter City Institute, is one of those guys whose
Scratch a techbro billionaire – scratch him hard, enough to bleed – and chances are good you’ll find a restless dreamer, a utopian of sorts desperate to transcend our messy and sometimes depressing world. Some of these brotopian dreamers seek personal transcendence, adopting bizarre diet and workout regimens and sometimes even