Praxis Nation --- Towards the Eternal City

[Maxmars]

I notice the effort the producers went to make this seem like a "formal" press-release-style real estate development project for "people."

This is not for people, it's for corporate-funded city planners to occupy while the marketing people engage the media to 'make pretty.'

This is an advertising campaign...

The usual billionaire vision which pops up ever since billionaires discovered their own society.

Note the 'disconnect' with what "citizens" may actually want.  They presume society will work like it does in a computer model... that they really can 'control' reality.

I applaud the idea, the concept motivation as stated.... but the key here is that is meant "as stated."

Populations are not within the sphere of "modeled control." 
Not in behavior, culture, social direction, personal expression, nor in 'civic' propriety.

Let's see the "social contract" between and among it's notional - highly evolved - population... and her "AI leadership."

I stand ala South Park, as a kind of Kyle Brovlofski looking up at Eric Cartman on the roof with cardboard wings...
yelling:  "... Do it!... Yay Cartman! ... Fly, fly, fly!"

[sahgwa]

I notice the effort the producers went to make this seem like a "formal" press-release-style real estate development project for "people."

This is not for people, it's for corporate-funded city planners to occupy while the marketing people engage the media to 'make pretty.'

This is an advertising campaign...

The usual billionaire vision which pops up ever since billionaires discovered their own society.

Note the 'disconnect' with what "citizens" may actually want.  They presume society will work like it does in a computer model... that they really can 'control' reality.

I applaud the idea, the concept motivation as stated.... but the key here is that is meant "as stated."

Populations are not within the sphere of "modeled control." 
Not in behavior, culture, social direction, personal expression, nor in 'civic' propriety.

Let's see the "social contract" between and among it's notional - highly evolved - population... and her "AI leadership."

I stand ala South Park, as a kind of Kyle Brovlofski looking up at Eric Cartman on the roof with cardboard wings...
yelling:  "... Do it!... Yay Cartman! ... Fly, fly, fly!"

Exactly. They are leaving out huge pieces of the puzzle. 
Or they DONT CARE and are going to implement their will with robot bastards.

[cherokeetroy]

Coming at this as a 'dirty occultist' I see their motivation:
The West is collapsing under it's own greed and corruption
They want to revitalise the Western spirit, using common cultural archetypes
The warrior, the scholar, the engineer.
What seems to be missing in all this is the priest and the shaman. The farmer and the nature intuitive.

I am all for revitalising and strengthening 'heroic' culture but it can't all be gymnasiums, supplements, and computers.
I am most assuredly (still) Anti-AI and against biohacking. 

God gave us perfect vessels for our time here, and no this is not some Luddite or fundamentalist Christian perspective, this is me saying that Nature always knows best, it has billions more years of 'thought' than we do, and the more you 'try' to do something, the worse it gets. It needs to be a Daoist let flow naturally life, not a Borg hack hack chop life.

I haven't had time to really dive in, yet, but Dryden Brown (one of the founders) looks pretty young compared to some of his associates so he's probably extremely idealistic about his vision 

Looking at comparisons with the Thule Society, specifically for Praxis, it looks like Praxians want to herald back to their Northern European roots as far as adopting early philosophies of ancient heroes 

A melding of ancient history with advanced technology 

You also have to look deeply into the culture and mindset of the "tech bros" to see how they are creating a religion around technology and artificial intelligence 

Since I've been following the trajectory of their path, seeing the direction they are advancing toward, it's obvious that a percentage of the population is either going to opt-out or will be left out of the new reality they're embarking upon

I can see a bifurcation at some point in the future 
An actual split in the human family tree

I believe there's not only going to be different varieties of human races inhabiting the planet, but different species as well

[Moon68]

Very fascinating intel, thank you for bringing this to my attention.  The kids are all 'grown up' and playing at real life Civilisation now.  
I think of 2 things when I read all of these posts 
1. Where are they going to get their food? Their weak point is logistics, like all 'conquerers/homesteaders' . They are focussed on some AI crap , servers, and crypto shit, but what will they eat?
Also a lynchpin for undermining.
2. Similar to point 1, where is the infrastructure to power all these huge power-draining server farms, AI hubs, and whatever smart BS they want to implement? 
Areas like Greenland don't have the power output do they? 

A last thought, these people are positioning themselves as 'city states' essentially, but they have to get permission from the 'outmoded' (they say) nation state host to set up camp there, still.

Maybe they can get a good deal on Venezuelan oil for their energy needs.

[cherokeetroy]

Who are these Praxians, specifically? Why don't we find out who they are and judge their intentions?

From Wikipedia :

Praxis is a company founded by Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan, with Howard Hughes Corporation founder David Weinreb as Vice Chairman. Praxis describes itself as an "internet-native nation", and has stated plans to create a 10,000 population city in the Mediterranean. Brown has not determined the location of the city and the company's vision has been called unrealistic.
 
As of April 2024, Praxis states that it has 2,034 citizens, 124 companies, and that companies founded by Praxis members have an aggregate valuation of $452 billion.
 
Dryden Brown was raised in Santa Barbara, California and was homeschooled in order to pursue competitive surfing. He stated that as a high schooler, he studied Ayn Rand and Austrian economists, and when he applied for college, he limited his applications to Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge. He was rejected by them all and he attended New York University before dropping out. Before founding Praxis, Brown worked as an analyst for a hedge fund, where he met Praxis co-founder Charlie Callinan, a former Boston College wide receiver. Brown was fired from the hedge fund. In 2019, Brown and Callinan used money Callinan won in a golf tournament to travel to Nigeria and Ghana, where they met with Ghana's Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and proposed building a financial center.[2] In 2019, a conversation while surfing in Puerto Rico inspired Callinan and Brown to establish a company called Bluebook Cities.
 
Early investments
A December 2023 report in The New York Times revealed that Brown had raised $19.2 million for Praxis. 

Praxis’ largest backer is Paradigm Operations. Other investors include Pronomos Capital, backed by Peter Thiel and first led by Patri Friedman, grandson of Milton Friedman,as well as venture capitalists Balaji Srinivasan and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, both associates of Peter Thiel. In addition, Praxis received investments from Alameda Research, backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, Apollo Projects, launched by Sam Altman, and Winklevoss Capital Management, the family office of the Winklevoss twins.
 
Membership and economy
Brown said the waiting list for the proposed city was 50,000 people long and that 12,000 members were interested in moving starting in 2026. As of April 2024, the group's site states that Praxis has 2,043 members.

The Praxis team recruits new members in cities like Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Miami and at conventions such as Coachella and Cannes. Membership includes many company founders, including of Worldcoin and Soylent.

In a 2021 interview, Brown said the city's style would be "hero futurism" with a "neo-Gilded Age kind of aesthetic".

According to Vanity Fair, Brown has "long been inspired" by Galt's Gulch, Ayn Rand's capitalist utopia. The Praxis organization is associated with libertarianism and cryptocurrency. In the company's Series A pitch to investors in 2022, it called its proposed city a "cryptostate".

[cherokeetroy]

Politico


"As President-elect Donald Trump digs in on his proposal to expand U.S. control over Greenland, many of his allies in the MAGA movement have defended the move in conventional foreign policy terms. According to a common variation of this argument, gaining a greater degree of control over Greenland — either by buying it, annexing it or striking a new deal with its government — would serve America’s immediate geopolitical and economic interests, given the island nation’s proximity to key shipping routes, its geostrategic importance for controlling the Arctic and its extensive reserves of critical minerals. 

But in the corner of the conservative movement known as the New Right, where Trump’s hardline American nationalism co-exists alongside a strong strain of techno-utopianism, Trump’s defenders are making a less conventional — though no less influential — case for taking Greenland. In the eyes of many of the New Right, taking Greenland isn’t just in America’s material and strategic interests; it’s also key to America’s spiritual wellbeing. 

Versions of this argument vary from the Wild West-y to the genuinely wacky: Some on the New Right argue that acquiring Greenland would represent the opening of a new American frontier, reviving the “frontier mentality” and “settler spirit” that imbued the American pioneers largely of the 19th century. Others argue that Greenland could serve as a sort of spiritual and technological staging ground for more ambitious feats of American expansion, including the eventual settlement of Mars.

Despite differences in emphasis and scope, many of these arguments start from the premise that Trump’s reelection has brought America to the threshold of a spiritual revival — and that territorial expansion could serve as a necessary catalyst for that transformation. 

“I think having a frontier is very healthy,” said Joe Lonsdale, a Trump mega-donor and Peter Thiel’s co-founder at Palantir, in a recent interview with the BBC. “It’s a frontier mindset — it’s taking new possibilities, it’s creating new things.” 

So far, these arguments have been ricocheting around a small — and very online — cadre of conservatives, many of whom have ties to Silicon Valley’s emerging “tech right.” But they could find a powerful and potentially sympathetic audience in the new Trump administration.

Chief among those potential allies is Ken Howery, Trump’s pick for ambassador to Denmark, which currently controls Greenland and will be instrumental to deciding its fate. An original member of Silicon Valley’s “PayPal mafia” and Trump’s former ambassador to Sweden, Howery is close to both Elon Musk and Thiel, who is a seminal figure on the New Right.  

More mainstream conservatives have sounded a similar chord as well. This week, Eric Teetsel, an executive vice president at the Trump-aligned think tank Center for Renewing America, published an op-ed situating Trump’s proposal for Greenland in the tradition of “explorers defying long odds in pursuit of their dream of a better life, from Plymouth Rock to Lewis and Clark, the Sooners to the 49ers.” “For 100 years, America’s domestic and foreign policy was dictated by the mandate to control our destiny from sea to shining sea,” Teetsel wrote. “President-elect Trump is reviving a sense of that spirit.” 

Unsurprisingly, some on the tech right see Trump’s plans for Greenland as a potential opportunity to “exit” from mainstream American society. “Greenland represents the reopening of the frontier,” wrote Dryden Brown, the founder of a company called Praxis that is trying to build an autonomous “network state” supported by cryptocurrency. (The project has secured the backing of a number of investors in Thiel’s circle.)

Earlier this year, Brown has said, he visited Greenland as a possible site for a new “privatized charter state” — the project has not come to fruition — which he hypothesized could serve as a “prototype” for a self-sustaining colony on Mars. In his post explaining his proposal, he tagged Elon Musk."

[quintessentone]

[Image: https://i.imgur.com/wfvTFgd.jpeg]


Politico


"As President-elect Donald Trump digs in on his proposal to expand U.S. control over Greenland, many of his allies in the MAGA movement have defended the move in conventional foreign policy terms. According to a common variation of this argument, gaining a greater degree of control over Greenland — either by buying it, annexing it or striking a new deal with its government — would serve America’s immediate geopolitical and economic interests, given the island nation’s proximity to key shipping routes, its geostrategic importance for controlling the Arctic and its extensive reserves of critical minerals. 

But in the corner of the conservative movement known as the New Right, where Trump’s hardline American nationalism co-exists alongside a strong strain of techno-utopianism, Trump’s defenders are making a less conventional — though no less influential — case for taking Greenland. In the eyes of many of the New Right, taking Greenland isn’t just in America’s material and strategic interests; it’s also key to America’s spiritual wellbeing. 

Versions of this argument vary from the Wild West-y to the genuinely wacky: Some on the New Right argue that acquiring Greenland would represent the opening of a new American frontier, reviving the “frontier mentality” and “settler spirit” that imbued the American pioneers largely of the 19th century. Others argue that Greenland could serve as a sort of spiritual and technological staging ground for more ambitious feats of American expansion, including the eventual settlement of Mars.

Despite differences in emphasis and scope, many of these arguments start from the premise that Trump’s reelection has brought America to the threshold of a spiritual revival — and that territorial expansion could serve as a necessary catalyst for that transformation. 

“I think having a frontier is very healthy,” said Joe Lonsdale, a Trump mega-donor and Peter Thiel’s co-founder at Palantir, in a recent interview with the BBC. “It’s a frontier mindset — it’s taking new possibilities, it’s creating new things.” 

So far, these arguments have been ricocheting around a small — and very online — cadre of conservatives, many of whom have ties to Silicon Valley’s emerging “tech right.” But they could find a powerful and potentially sympathetic audience in the new Trump administration.

Chief among those potential allies is Ken Howery, Trump’s pick for ambassador to Denmark, which currently controls Greenland and will be instrumental to deciding its fate. An original member of Silicon Valley’s “PayPal mafia” and Trump’s former ambassador to Sweden, Howery is close to both Elon Musk and Thiel, who is a seminal figure on the New Right.  

More mainstream conservatives have sounded a similar chord as well. This week, Eric Teetsel, an executive vice president at the Trump-aligned think tank Center for Renewing America, published an op-ed situating Trump’s proposal for Greenland in the tradition of “explorers defying long odds in pursuit of their dream of a better life, from Plymouth Rock to Lewis and Clark, the Sooners to the 49ers.” “For 100 years, America’s domestic and foreign policy was dictated by the mandate to control our destiny from sea to shining sea,” Teetsel wrote. “President-elect Trump is reviving a sense of that spirit.” 

Unsurprisingly, some on the tech right see Trump’s plans for Greenland as a potential opportunity to “exit” from mainstream American society. “Greenland represents the reopening of the frontier,” wrote Dryden Brown, the founder of a company called Praxis that is trying to build an autonomous “network state” supported by cryptocurrency. (The project has secured the backing of a number of investors in Thiel’s circle.)

Earlier this year, Brown has said, he visited Greenland as a possible site for a new “privatized charter state” — the project has not come to fruition — which he hypothesized could serve as a “prototype” for a self-sustaining colony on Mars. In his post explaining his proposal, he tagged Elon Musk."

Why don't they fix whatever is the problem that they see in the USA then they can have a new frontier without exiting from American society.

I see the names Elon Musk and Peter Thiel as being prominent, and I imagine all the no holds barred freedom, without regulation or obeying the laws, that will be afforded them in Greenland; without mainstream Americans' oversight.

[cherokeetroy]

Why don't they fix whatever is the problem that they see in the USA then they can have a new frontier without exiting from American society.

I see the names Elon Musk and Peter Thiel as being prominent, and I imagine all the no holds barred freedom, without regulation or obeying the laws, that will be afforded them in Greenland; without mainstream Americans' oversight.

I think that issue traces back to the Dark Enlightenment and its theory that Democracy/Capitalism is dead

I'm assuming they're waiting in the wings for economic collapse at which point they can take center stage and offer their solution 

Yes, one of the reasons they want private city-states is to evade current laws that put a stranglehold on their advancement 

I read somewhere that Peter Thiel wants to get out from under the CIAs thumb

[Maxmars]

I think that issue traces back to the Dark Enlightenment and its theory that Democracy/Capitalism is dead

I'm assuming they're waiting in the wings for economic collapse at which point they can take center stage and offer their solution 

Yes, one of the reasons they want private city-states is to evade current laws that put a stranglehold on their advancement 

I read somewhere that Peter Thiel wants to get out from under the CIAs thumb

And... if I might respectfully add...

It seems there is ample evidence that rather than help to resolve and correct democracy and capitalism as it is 'played' in the LARPing games of the billionaire elite; they don't just bet against and prepare for failure...

they help it along...

Smacks of a Banking operation...

[cherokeetroy]

This is big reason why they want to remove government overhead:

Link

Medical development is a key motive for the Network State. 

"Venture capitalists are investors in thousands of biotech startups, working in genetics, disease treatment, development of new drugs, stem cells, insurance, clinical trials and other areas. These startups face regulatory burdens from bodies like the FDA, while trailing the funding power of big pharma. This has driven venture capitalists to seek roads around regulatory bodies through off-shore clinical trials, FDA-free “Network State” zones in the global south, and political maneuvering to gut regulatory bodies and medical agencies and infrastructure. Their backing of Trump’s second term is significantly motivated by their biotech ambitions, and their model of medical development – as for AI, weapons and crypto – is accelerationism.

In 2017, venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel financially supported an experimental herpes vaccine trial in St. Kitts, outside of US regulations. This off-shore experiment was performed without regulatory boundaries and little oversight; further, “the government of St. Kitts and Nevis says it was never notified of the trial, which experimented with live viruses on humans”. The trial was internationally condemned; “‘What they’re doing is patently unethical,’ said Jonathan Zenilman, chief of Johns Hopkin Hopkins Bayview Medical Center’s Infectious Diseases Division. ‘There’s a reason why researchers rely on these protections. People can die."

In 2019, Pronomos Capital was founded, with funding from Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, Marc Andreessen and Joe Lonsdale. Pronomos has funded a number of Network State sites -  “new cities” and unregulated zones - with a primary goal to secure locations where they can host clinical trials without FDA or other regulatory oversight


In Roatàn, Honduras, the Pronomos-backed Network State of Próspera has become a key site of venture capital clinical trials. They have adopted a permanent longevity and biohacking hub within Pròspera called Infinita, formerly Vitalia City. Vitalia began as an extended “pop-up” city with conferences, summits and community gatherings centered around gene editing and unregulated medical experimentation. 

Próspera -- now becoming a model in many other countries and states -- is embedded in a libertarian, free-market view that is reliant upon “crypto cities” and blockchain technology to “accelerate” the speed of medical trials while developing "on-the-ground" services and procedures, such as implants through Symbiont Labs and "3D bioprinters” through Life SI, an Argentinian-based 3D bioprinting company with close ties to Próspera.  


Inside the Pròspera compound are three different medical clinics: Minicircle, GARM and Symbiont Labs. These clinics operate with impunity in order to bring “human enhancement” and AI-driven “solutions” to the natural aging process, referred to as “radical life extension.” One startup, Bootstrap Bio, focused on genetically edited embryos or "superbabies", is planning to conduct experiments within the Network State of Próspera, "where the company could potentially avoid US regulations," starting in 2026 or 2027, and has appeared at their events. 

Preventive, another startup funded by Sam Altman and Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, is working on genetically engineered babies. The Wall Street Journal reports "Editing genes in embryos with the intention of creating babies from them is banned in the U.S. and many countries. Preventive has been searching for places to experiment where embryo editing is allowed, including the United Arab Emirates, according to correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal… [According to CEO Lucas Harrington] Preventive is compelled to work outside the U.S. because the Food and Drug Administration is prohibited from reviewing applications for human trials involving embryo editing.” As Brian Armstrong's crypto company, Coinbase, is an investor in Próspera, Próspera is a likely site for these trials. 

Another venture capital vehicle for medical development is Zuzalu. Ethereum CEO, Vitalik Buterin, merged the crypto conference model with Network State enthusiasts for this long-term, residency-based “pop-up” city in Montenegro, starting in March of 2023. This two-month city brought in people like Bryan Johnson, the aging-obsessed billionaire of the “Don’t Die” movement. It became a catalyst for a flourishing “longevity” community with dozens of global conferences and “pop-up” cities. Their goal, according to Laurence Ion (co-creator of Zuzalu), is to “make death optional.”

The success of Zuzalu has paved the way for more pop-up cities including “Zu-Villages”, “Edge Cities” and summits, hosted in the Georgian mountains, Dublin, Thailand, Berlin, California, Argentina and many more regions. These events integrate longevity, biohacking, human augmentation, and virtual reality in their quest to extend their own lives beyond current human capabilities. Like the Montenegro pop-up city, Zu-Villages and Edge Cities are funded by Ethereum grants and utilize cryptocurrency as their preferred financial system. Decentralization, for them, is the key to solving economic and regulatory barriers to biotech innovation. 

In addition to their startups, tech elites fund "non-profits" that are focused on funding research in longevity and aging. One such foundation is the Methuselah Foundation, advertising "Making 90 the New 50 by 2030". The website's homepage shows images of people who appear to be 70ish years of age, reverse-aging into their early 20s. The foundation has been funded by Peter Thiel and Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum and a key player in the Network State. The Methuselah Foundation funds a large number of research projects, and has a venture capital arm that invests in biotech startups.



M Foundation



Link