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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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The El Salvador city state experiment is reminiscent of Dubai and Singapore: a state which seeks to a.) adopt a monopoly on violence while b.) maintaining a capital friendly, laissez faire economic posture c.) exists as a relatively small land and people compared to giants in its region.

There is no shortage of examples for an (a) strong autocrat cracking down on rebel terror groups or (b) economic permissive havens like Geneva, Bermuda, Hong Kong, and Cayman Islands. But deliberate combination of both these characteristics in a truly sovereign nation seems to be a growing trend in the global south, and one that mirrors the musings from the Western dissident right about exit or alternative through seasteeding or "network states".

The limited size of these city states also seems advantageous over large polities for the purposes of preventing outside interference. As others have noted, the crackdown on criminality (and human rights pearl clutching) is reminiscent of Duterte and Bolsonaro. But the smaller surface area of El Salvador make it possibly more difficult for subversion to gain a foothold.

But even with MS13 caged for the moment, what hope do these emerging city states like El Salvador have of defying the international order in the long term? I will speak on two things which may not seem related, but I believe will play a decisive role in accumulating influence to city states, or perhaps a coalition of them, in the decades ahead. These factors are very briefly stated 1.) MeToo, and 2.) Bitcoin on which I will elaborate tomorrow